Again and again, I find myself taking antidotes for most of what I have been taught. The constraints, the rules, the norms of my culture need to be broken so that I can escape from the chrysalis of my transformation. Each move I make towards freedom is an antidote that dissolves the forms and confines of my past.
Mindfulness is my favorite, most effective antidote. It detoxifies all the constraints of forms and concepts I once was so lavishly taught. The experienced joy of a relaxed and concentrated mind has freed me from the rigors I so studiously examined, learned and absorbed.
My sitting in meditation may be a relatively small part of my day. But it has become an important lesson in the skilled antidote of no effort, of release, of letting go. I carry that antidote with me throughout the day. It is a skill that I am elated to have discovered. It is an antidote that, like micro-dosing, infuses my evolving awareness with freedom and joy.
My aloneness is an antidote that continues to have a slight bitterness and sting. However, I am aware of its powerful effect. I may still resist its bitter taste, but I also know that it brings me a love of my own self, my no-self.
This is something I seldom experienced when living with a partner, and I believe that living alone has become my needed antidote to marriage. Marriage may be a necessity in our culture for many, especially for the young so that they may experience a taste of security and apparent permanence. But it is also a solution with serious side effects.
The alluring taste of a promised secure future is the bait in a trap that imperils intimacy. Intimacy is not fostered where there is no freedom. The proffered forbidden fruit of a certain future is a lie that attempted to shield me, like many others, from a world that is uncertain and unpredictable. The antidote has come to me by being open to and embracing a world that is fundamentally ambiguous, uncertain and unpredictable.
Relationship and singularity is an antidote to the lie of separateness and duality I have been taught. I have repeatedly tasted the joy of overcoming separation and becoming related to people, plants and the planet. I see myself intertwined with much of what I experience. I relax into a connection I never saw or was ever taught to see by my culture.
I embrace the relationship and connection I have with the woods, my friends, my garden, the people on the bus, the joys and anguish of all I see. I am learning the antidote that allows me to expand and absorb it all. The relationship antidote has made me larger, stronger and more full of life.
Dance is an antidote to many of my physical and emotional constraints I have dutifully learned. This is a new discovery of mine as I yield to my uncertainty about how to dance, as I allow my body to move without constant mental direction, as I stare into the eyes of partners, as I float from one exchanged smile to the next. Dance is becoming an antidote to a well-ordered, controlled and distant life. For now, it keeps me from a sedentary life.
Perhaps my antidotes do more than simply free me from much of what I have learned in my earlier time of life. Besides giving me freedom and joy, my antidotes also give me an exuberant elixir of life.