Music of the Spheres

And another explanation for "dropped balls."

When we detach from control or holding on, things may at first appear to be falling. We talk metaphorically about "dropped balls" as an undesirable thing, as a failure. Today I'm playing with the perspective that a dropped ball could also be an invitation to a new way of being.

It can be difficult for many of us to accept help from others. We are worried about imposing and being seen as not "pulling our own weight". As a parent, I notice the difficulty of desperately needing help while simultaneously feeling uncomfortable with admitting that I can't do it all on my own. Though helping others feels good and brings joy, there aren't always a lot of clear invitations from friends and neighbors. When we drop a proverbial ball, however, opportunities open up naturally.

I dropped a lot of balls last week: forgot to pick my son up after robotics practice, forgot to show up to an online qigong group I was responsible for, forgot to remind my daughter to get ready for an acting class. I jumped around in succession from one thing I was late for to another. At first, I turned toward an old habit of "fixing" the situation by holding on tighter; to my online calendar, to my cell phone, to reminder notifications, to linear time. I felt shame for dropping the ball, I felt like a "bad mom".

When I look back at what actually happened, however, I notice an interesting pattern: a friend had the chance to perform a mitzvah and our boys had a sleepover, my daughter's ride to acting was late so she was ready just in time, an incredible bonding occurred in my qigong group that I swear was catalyzed by some planetary movement that wouldn't have happened if we started on time. I also reflected on another incident last week where I stepped in to save the day when our local bus company "dropped the ball" by not sending a bus to drive our kids to school. I received immense joy and satisfaction by being the one to step in and help out. Were balls dropped? Yes. In allowing those balls to be dropped with grace and without blame or shame, I saw that something far greater and lovelier than datebook perfection was being catalyzed.

What if my experiences from last week were the first steps of an invitation to align with a timing far greater than Google calendar? In Zhineng qigong we practice stepping into a paradigm of surrender, where we relinquish control, release fear, and trust that all of our needs will be met. We practice this state so that we can integrate it into our everyday lives. This new way of being feels different, like falling, like flailing, like failing. It's uncomfortable until we remember these are only judgements coming from our old reference framework. When we were babies learning how to walk, we fell a lot. Did we take those "failures" and decide that we should give up and double down on our crawling abilities?

Of course not. We kept on trying and kept on falling and failing. We leaned on others for support until the miracle of our first step where we were initiated into a new upright paradigm. Now we could walk, run, and dance! We got there because we trusted in our abilities, in gravity, and in the physics of cause and effect. In that same vein, what if we could now learn to move in a new way, a way that honors the rhythms of the universe instead of just the very linear schedule of our 9-5 work day, our Monday-Sunday week, the 12 calendar months, the concept of yesterday and tomorrow, or even the structure of 60 minutes per hour? What if we were being invited to see the world less as Pythagoras' theorem on triangle geometry and more as his quote on the movement of the spheres "there is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres" ?

What if all of this dropping and falling was a sign of slowly being initiated into the greater movement of the spheres? What if the "balls" were actually the moon, the sun and the planets, and what if they only looked like they were falling? Honoring the cycles of the universe includes a sensitivity to things like stages of the moon, planetary movement, our own body cycles, cross quarter holidays, and more intimate location-based cycles like blackberry season, salamander mating season, and honeybee swarming season. It invite us to step into the classic Chinese concept of Tian ten he yi: the "harmony between humans and nature". Though these greater movements of the spheres are impossible to capture in our daily planners, it doesn't mean they aren't fundamentally important data points for how to live our most fulfilled lives. Our intellect may not be able to grasp how we fit into the cosmos at every moment, but our bodies and consciousness can. We cultivate this awareness in somatic practices like qigong. At a fundamental level, just as we knew how to walk, we also know how to fly.

Of course, as upstanding members of society, we must live in both realities, weaving together the linear and the spiral. We must keep track of our datebook AND give ourselves and others grace when the cosmos overrides our plans. We can learn to see our own forgetting as a blessing and dance in the reciprocity and relationship we create when we allow ourselves to surrender to the sureness that our fundamental needs will always be met. We can double check our calendar reminders AND reflect on all of the connections, new friends, and shared experiences that occur when the music of the spheres interrupts to shine light on our humanity, demonstrate that we're not just robots tied to our to-do lists, and let a bit of our glorious true selves shine through.

Tuning of the Spheres. Fludd's Elemental Music And Spheres (1617-1619).