centaur bound

The introduction to Wendy Palmer's book The Intuitive Body: Aidido as a Clairsentient Practice begins thus:

Out of nowhere a horse
brought us here where we taste love
until we don't exist again. This taste
is the wine we always mention.
Rumi

Embodying a dream

When I was a young girl I loved to ride horses. I dreamed of galloping as fast as the wind astride a strong stallion with a long flowing mane. One day that dream came true.
My friend Lynnie and I had watched as one of her father's thoroughbred stallions, appropriately named Bridlefree, was being led "fresh off the track," to a corral with a chain over his nose while he fought and reared, his nostrils flaring red inside. After they put Bridlefree in the corral, the men warned us never to go near him; he was "very dangerous," they said. As soon as they left, Lynnie and I went to Bridlefree, bringing him sugar, carrots, and lots of love and adoration. We would often sneak into the forbidden corral, slide onto Bridlefree's back and marvel about how beautiful, strong, and muscled he felt compared to the mares and geldings that we were accustomed to riding.
One day, I do not know why, we went for the dream. Lynnie jumped on a trusted gelding, bareback with a simple bridle. I put only a lead rope on Bridlefree's halter and once again slid onto his back. We opened the gate to the corral. Lynnie and the gelding began to gallop across a field toward a tree-covered lane. Bridlefree sensed the play and took off, his thoroughbred heart and untamed spirit leaping across the field. We were free!
As we raced toward the lane, I twisted Bridlefree's long mane around my hands. I wanted to stay with him no matter what happened. I was living a dream and determined to live it to the fullest. When we entered the lane, I had to lean way over, sometimes ducking my head below my hands to keep the tree branches from knocking me off. Bridlefree interpreted my position as encouragement and I felt him surge a little more, his muscles driving even harder. I could hear his breath and his hooves rhythmically pounding the earth. When I looked down at the ground moving by so fast, my head swam. I closed my eyes, tightened my grip on his mane, and pressed my body into his as much as I could. I remember trying to feel my way into him. I wanted to become one with him.
The end of the lane was coming up with a sharp right turn that led into a short narrow field. Before that moment, I would have considered it impossible to take the turn at the speed that we were going. Now it seemed that anything was possible. I shifted my weight, moving my head to the right side of his neck. His body responded slightly, and for me it was as if I had whispered in his ear and he had understood me. Bridlefree slipped a little in the turn, but we made it out into the open, grassy field. He slowed himself as he circled and stopped to graze in the lush green pasture. My body was trembling as I unwound Bridlefree's mane from around my hand. His flanks were heaving and his coat glistened in the sun as he nuzzled the earth and nibbled the succulent grass. I had embodied a dream. I sensed anything was possible.
Sixteen years later I saw aikido for the first time. It was as if a crack in the cosmos opened and a whiff of something forgotten yet familiar passed through me. That whiff was the memory of joining with a power, physically much stronger than me, while being open and receptive to my intentions. It was the feelign of flight, of giving myself with the innocence of total love and admiration. Beauty, grace, power, surrender, all of these stirred my desire to embody the dream again. Having dreams and fantasies is great, emdodying them is even greater.

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What Palmer is describing so well is the centaur stage of self-development, defined as complete bodymind integration. As Wilber puts it in The Atman Project, "This integrated self, wherein mind and body are harmoniously one, we call the 'centaur.' The centaur: the great mythological being with the animal body and human mind existing in a perfect state of at-one-ment."

Many years ago, The Atman Project was the first book of Wilber's I read, and at that time I was only ready for a small taste of the map of the kosmos that Wilber offers us. The cetaur was the highest stage of development that I could relate to; as he described the higher stages I felt increasingly lost, disbelieving, disoriented, and frankly, freaked out. I never did finish the book. The concept of causal realms, let alone nondual, threatened and frightened my ego to an exteme. However, the idea of the centaur, of complete bodymind integration - that was very exciting to me! Also quite remote from my level of development at the time: deeply neurotic, fragmented, mind impressively dissociated from body.

I'm writing this almost two decades later. I've practiced t'ai chi, chi gung, yoga, meditation, had a course of rolfing, various types of massage, and tried a handful of other techniques. I tried MDMA in the mid-nineties and fell deeply in love with my body for the first time - that altered state was truly a gift and a revelation to me. Lately my feeling is that the centaur is a reasonably attainable goal for me, no longer the distant, dreamy goal it was back in the late eighties when I first encountered the concept. I'm not sure how close or far I am from that point, and surely it is not an all-or-nothing attainment. Meanwhile my concept of a desirable ultimate goal has expanded toward the upper reaches that Wilber describes in that wonderful book. Now I want to get in touch with the causal realms, even to live from that place. I believe it would be such a calm, centered, spacious way of being. Interestingly, I still find nondual threatening - when I think of nondual, I think of complete and utter death of the separate self. Indeed that seems to be exactly how it is described, though it is universally claimed to be a desirable state of being indeed. I'm not going to worry about that for now. Let me consolidate at centaur, move into subtle realms (which I already seem to be doing to a slight extent) and hopefully causal at some point...and I'll let nondual take care of itself.

Speaking of subtle, I had a lucid dream this morning for the first time in quite a while - wheeee! I felt myself waking up, and quickly spun about and rubbed my hands together to focus on my dreambody. And then, when I felt myself starting to wake up anyway, I thought, "Quick- what should I do in the last few moments?" Instantly I thought of kissing a dear friend of mine so I went into my bedroom, knelt down where she lay in my bed, and kissed her sweetly on the lips. As I was kissing her my dreambody merged with my physical body and I awoke into the gross realm. What a great way to start the day. :)