Tags
Asana, ballet, Knowledge, Melbourne, spiritual quest, Spirituality, Suburbia-Urbia, Synchronised swimming, Yoga
Apparently I now do post topics by request.
Or I’ve been asked to provide more information anyways… actually a single post generated two different requests.
Anthroyogini asked to hear more about my experiences as a young heathen girl, trying out different flavours of paganism. There were a few!
And Catatonic Kid wanted to know more about “that moment you were talking about… when knowledge descends”.
Actually, these requests aren’t that far apart now I think about it! Anthroyogini’s question sorta leads right into CK’s. Just perhaps a little down the track.
So, on with the story, eh?
Actually, I can’t remember how old (or young) I was when I had my first thought about all things esoteric/spiritual. But I was young, and so this tale starts then.
As a child…
From a young age, I experienced things that aren’t supposed to be there – invisible beings, auras, disembodied voices delivering useful/accurate messages. Yeah, yeah, you believe it or not – I don’t give a rats umm… you know what.
Before I’d even graduated from reading my children’s bible, I was obsessed with the alternatives to traditional religion.
This obsession came from nowhere, growing up as I was in the culture-free vanilla world of deepest darkest Suburbia-Urbia (aka south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne).
My prevailing experience as a child was of feeling like a fish in a desert – being in the wrong place and surrounded by the wrong people.
There wasn’t anyone around with personal or intellectual knowledge in any of the topics that fuelled my interests and inner experiences. Not that it mattered.
Because regardless, and whilst still of primary school age, there was some things I knew about the world and how it worked. Not consciously, not logically. Just intuitively.
I didn’t feel like I had to know more, not just then anyway. But I was happy with my little nugget of knowledge, and felt no fear of the things I experienced. It was just how life was. No one told me stories to colour my perceptions and I didn’t talk about it either.
It’s funny how I remember very little of my childhood years, but this sense of what I knew to be real, above and beyond the physical world around me… that I recall very clearly.
What I remember from before the age of ten is limited. But most of the time I was off in my own magical world.
Life grew increasingly miserable the older I got, as I became the target of my brother’s anger more and more, and I was definitely far from popular at school.
But still, this kind-of-knowledge I possessed, it kept me going. I’d write in my diary about things I wanted to learn without knowing what they were called. There were no books to refer to in my school or local library and certainly no internetz (way back then!).
And while I didn’t know anything about yoga til my mid-20s, somehow I’d gotten into ballet and synchronised swimming, both requiring a lot of flexibility and stretching (very much yoga-like practices).
Plus, my best friend growing up was a gymnast and so for fun and as play; we’d practice the splits, handstands, backbends etc.
So I guess I had a head start with asana before I even knew what it was.
~ Svasti
Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness 