Cgunta Elae- God sleeps in our hearts when we are not dancing. When we dance, he wakes up. When we get angry, or jealous, or irritated with someone, all we can do is wake up God. God then chases the trouble away. To wake him up, we must dance.
Thank you Hillary Keeney! Awesome article on the shaking medicine. I got my first academic article published and I end it on the San Bushmen for the last three paragraphs. https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/1100/1793 But the article is about music theory and biophysics. hahaha. I had wild qigong experiences at St. Thomas University where Brad used to teach - and I saw his quote on Patrick' Dougherty's book on qigong from our mutual teacher Chunyi Lin Spring Forest qigong classes. "Qigong in Psychotherapy: You can Do So Much by Doing So Little" and "A Whole-Hearted Embrace: Finding Love at the Center of it all" and Chunyi Lin's assistant Jim Nance is an African-American qigong master who studied shamanism for two years in the 1980s - traveling to a dozen countries. His website is http://guidingqi.com thanks
Or is it a nibble now and then? (Please celebrate if your half-sways and trembles are just nibbles, for many have never felt close to the fishing line.)
Or do you repeatedly wiggle free of the hook? (If almost caught, then go out to the sea again and this time, don’t resist—instead, sink.)
Until the heart is hooked, caught, and cooked by the Creator, you remain in the “hesitate” or “wait for bait” time of your life.
Sacred Ecstatics invites you to welcome interruptions of how you habitually respond to hooks, questions, and instructions.
Our saints are ready to discern and treat every “ain’t.” Good news: only one letter separates “ain’t” from “saint.” (That “S” is a double hook.) Don’t think about this—catch the feeling for it.
I am so blessed and grateful to have this medicine transmitted through you both. To continue to shake in new ways that get the hippo mind out of the way! I love the quote
"God sleeps in our hearts when we are not dancing. When we dance, he wakes up. When we get angry, or jealous, or irritated with someone, all we can do is wake up God. God then chases the trouble away. To wake him up, we must danceI I continue to dance.....thank you for this himma
Hillary, thank you so much for this wonderful explanation about the two kinds of hunger. I love to dance so it's easy to get caught up in Lord Hippo's shenanigans. Going forward I will focus on Himma hunger and welcome her with open arms. Much love to you guys!
Yes we'll never be entirely free of our dear Hippo's habit of needing to prove it exists, distinctly and permanently, in the midst of this interdependent, always-in-flux reality we call "living." But no matter! Nothing keeps Hippo in check like real himma hunger. And of the two, the latter is a much better dance partner. Much love to you!
I think this excerpt from your essay points to the “click” when your new hunger awakened:
"But I didn’t want to just fall back on my former professional skills. I wanted my actions to be n/om-led, fire-fed, and electrically charged. This required throwing away almost all of my prior learning and starting from scratch."
This is the hunger for electrical action that brings forth electrical living.
To say it in a Kalahari manner, having tasted n/om steak, there’s no longer a hunger for eating elephant dung, which was formerly assumed to be the only choice on the menu.
Once you taste the difference between a big pile of dung and the extraordinarily delightful, sweet treats found on the higher rung of the spiritual ladder, you laugh at returning to another taste of employing “former professional skills.”
It’s tasting the meat, the honey, or the Esterházy cake that immediately and forever more changes the hunger, the action, and one’s life.
As you said it, “I was hungry to grow.”
And I can’t eat enough of this cake that you cooked in your essay. I leave it as bait for everyone wanting to grow a new hunger that is electrical:
". . .there’s the good hunger: the desire for n/om, to feel the holy current. It’s accompanied by a sense of urgency to abandon the small cubicle of self for life in the Big Room of mystery. The Sufis call this the first level of himma, the inspiration and motivation to seek God rather than worldly rubble. Himma hunger, let’s call it, is a longing in the heart for divine union and communion. It’s essential fuel for sustaining the effort and patience required of a spiritual life. Paradoxically, we want himma hunger to grow and never be fully satiated. As an elder Black church man once joyfully told Brad, “I just can’t get enough of God.” Himma hunger makes us softer, more flammable, and more conductive."
Himma (aka God’s electricity) is not an acquired taste. Once tasted in-action it creates an immediate, life-changing hunger. Then with laughter we shout forevermore, “I’m done with dung! Give me cake and n/om-steak!”
"To say it in a Kalahari manner, having tasted n/om steak, there’s no longer a hunger for eating elephant dung which was formerly assumed to be the only choice on the menu."
Hahahahahahaha! Yes! But I also know that Lord Hippo is such a deceiver that, to remain in charge it will convince us that it’s better to be a Big Cheese eating elephant dung than it is to be a small, starting-from-scratch know-nothing enjoying the n/om-steak.
We see it all the time in the world. We’ve seen it happen over the years to members of the Guild.
Remember, in the Yunus Emre television series, when his big me shadow tried to convince him that life would be better as an ignorant, power-wielding Cadi eating horse shit than being a powerless dervish sweeping the floor but enjoying Tapduk’s holy halva every day?
The big me shadow often wins.
But it ultimately cannot prevail if the himma halva has been tasted. You’re right, Brad, that, once tasted it creates an immediate hunger that doesn’t go away.
Let’s spread this news:
Come on, everyone: you know you want n/om-steak and holy cake! Leave Big Me at the door and come to this feast! Don’t waste time outside this room fighting Lord Hippo—that’s one of its tactics: taking you out of the room and distracting you with some kind of “personal process.”
Come on in and eat this steak, this cake, this halva, this holy bread! Amen!
Once the scent and flavor of sweet electricity have radically changed our hunger, we have to start from scratch and learn how to live all over again.
There’s a new itch. How to scratch it is the new question.
There’s a new hunger. How to feed it is the same new question.
We must find where the sweet treats of electricity are housed.
They are in a higher kitchen, and that’s a different room than the one we’ve been living in.
You can’t find it in the elephant, hippo, or rhino dung dining room.
The big trickster critters will try to persuade us that they are the ones who led us to the tasty treat. It was the same meal as before, they say, with some new icing on top.
Elephant, hippo, rhino, and their big friends will lead us back to their dung rooms and teach that n/om is only a special icing one adds to sweeten earthly cake.
But the ice in their icing does not cook, and their dung keeps us on the lower rung.
No matter the reframe, mind game, or hypnotic suggestion, dung is never satisfying.
Hunt.
Hunt for the right room.
Hunt for the higher kitchen.
Hunt for what feeds the new hunger and scratches the new itch.
Cgunta Elae- God sleeps in our hearts when we are not dancing. When we dance, he wakes up. When we get angry, or jealous, or irritated with someone, all we can do is wake up God. God then chases the trouble away. To wake him up, we must dance.
I never get tired of reading these words.
Thank you Hillary Keeney! Awesome article on the shaking medicine. I got my first academic article published and I end it on the San Bushmen for the last three paragraphs. https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/1100/1793 But the article is about music theory and biophysics. hahaha. I had wild qigong experiences at St. Thomas University where Brad used to teach - and I saw his quote on Patrick' Dougherty's book on qigong from our mutual teacher Chunyi Lin Spring Forest qigong classes. "Qigong in Psychotherapy: You can Do So Much by Doing So Little" and "A Whole-Hearted Embrace: Finding Love at the Center of it all" and Chunyi Lin's assistant Jim Nance is an African-American qigong master who studied shamanism for two years in the 1980s - traveling to a dozen countries. His website is http://guidingqi.com thanks
Thank you!!
Here's to getting amongst it!
Reading hungry.
Yes yes yes!
A comment from Brad:
Are you hooked?
Or is it a nibble now and then? (Please celebrate if your half-sways and trembles are just nibbles, for many have never felt close to the fishing line.)
Or do you repeatedly wiggle free of the hook? (If almost caught, then go out to the sea again and this time, don’t resist—instead, sink.)
Until the heart is hooked, caught, and cooked by the Creator, you remain in the “hesitate” or “wait for bait” time of your life.
Sacred Ecstatics invites you to welcome interruptions of how you habitually respond to hooks, questions, and instructions.
Our saints are ready to discern and treat every “ain’t.” Good news: only one letter separates “ain’t” from “saint.” (That “S” is a double hook.) Don’t think about this—catch the feeling for it.
I am so blessed and grateful to have this medicine transmitted through you both. To continue to shake in new ways that get the hippo mind out of the way! I love the quote
"God sleeps in our hearts when we are not dancing. When we dance, he wakes up. When we get angry, or jealous, or irritated with someone, all we can do is wake up God. God then chases the trouble away. To wake him up, we must danceI I continue to dance.....thank you for this himma
Thank you, Sarah! Let's dance!
Hillary, thank you so much for this wonderful explanation about the two kinds of hunger. I love to dance so it's easy to get caught up in Lord Hippo's shenanigans. Going forward I will focus on Himma hunger and welcome her with open arms. Much love to you guys!
Yes we'll never be entirely free of our dear Hippo's habit of needing to prove it exists, distinctly and permanently, in the midst of this interdependent, always-in-flux reality we call "living." But no matter! Nothing keeps Hippo in check like real himma hunger. And of the two, the latter is a much better dance partner. Much love to you!
A COMMENT FROM BRAD:
Hillary,
I think this excerpt from your essay points to the “click” when your new hunger awakened:
"But I didn’t want to just fall back on my former professional skills. I wanted my actions to be n/om-led, fire-fed, and electrically charged. This required throwing away almost all of my prior learning and starting from scratch."
This is the hunger for electrical action that brings forth electrical living.
To say it in a Kalahari manner, having tasted n/om steak, there’s no longer a hunger for eating elephant dung, which was formerly assumed to be the only choice on the menu.
Once you taste the difference between a big pile of dung and the extraordinarily delightful, sweet treats found on the higher rung of the spiritual ladder, you laugh at returning to another taste of employing “former professional skills.”
It’s tasting the meat, the honey, or the Esterházy cake that immediately and forever more changes the hunger, the action, and one’s life.
As you said it, “I was hungry to grow.”
And I can’t eat enough of this cake that you cooked in your essay. I leave it as bait for everyone wanting to grow a new hunger that is electrical:
". . .there’s the good hunger: the desire for n/om, to feel the holy current. It’s accompanied by a sense of urgency to abandon the small cubicle of self for life in the Big Room of mystery. The Sufis call this the first level of himma, the inspiration and motivation to seek God rather than worldly rubble. Himma hunger, let’s call it, is a longing in the heart for divine union and communion. It’s essential fuel for sustaining the effort and patience required of a spiritual life. Paradoxically, we want himma hunger to grow and never be fully satiated. As an elder Black church man once joyfully told Brad, “I just can’t get enough of God.” Himma hunger makes us softer, more flammable, and more conductive."
Himma (aka God’s electricity) is not an acquired taste. Once tasted in-action it creates an immediate, life-changing hunger. Then with laughter we shout forevermore, “I’m done with dung! Give me cake and n/om-steak!”
Thank you, chef!
Brad,
"To say it in a Kalahari manner, having tasted n/om steak, there’s no longer a hunger for eating elephant dung which was formerly assumed to be the only choice on the menu."
Hahahahahahaha! Yes! But I also know that Lord Hippo is such a deceiver that, to remain in charge it will convince us that it’s better to be a Big Cheese eating elephant dung than it is to be a small, starting-from-scratch know-nothing enjoying the n/om-steak.
We see it all the time in the world. We’ve seen it happen over the years to members of the Guild.
Remember, in the Yunus Emre television series, when his big me shadow tried to convince him that life would be better as an ignorant, power-wielding Cadi eating horse shit than being a powerless dervish sweeping the floor but enjoying Tapduk’s holy halva every day?
The big me shadow often wins.
But it ultimately cannot prevail if the himma halva has been tasted. You’re right, Brad, that, once tasted it creates an immediate hunger that doesn’t go away.
Let’s spread this news:
Come on, everyone: you know you want n/om-steak and holy cake! Leave Big Me at the door and come to this feast! Don’t waste time outside this room fighting Lord Hippo—that’s one of its tactics: taking you out of the room and distracting you with some kind of “personal process.”
Come on in and eat this steak, this cake, this halva, this holy bread! Amen!
Thank you, Heart-of-the-Spears!
(from Brad)
Hillary,
Once the scent and flavor of sweet electricity have radically changed our hunger, we have to start from scratch and learn how to live all over again.
There’s a new itch. How to scratch it is the new question.
There’s a new hunger. How to feed it is the same new question.
We must find where the sweet treats of electricity are housed.
They are in a higher kitchen, and that’s a different room than the one we’ve been living in.
You can’t find it in the elephant, hippo, or rhino dung dining room.
The big trickster critters will try to persuade us that they are the ones who led us to the tasty treat. It was the same meal as before, they say, with some new icing on top.
Elephant, hippo, rhino, and their big friends will lead us back to their dung rooms and teach that n/om is only a special icing one adds to sweeten earthly cake.
But the ice in their icing does not cook, and their dung keeps us on the lower rung.
No matter the reframe, mind game, or hypnotic suggestion, dung is never satisfying.
Hunt.
Hunt for the right room.
Hunt for the higher kitchen.
Hunt for what feeds the new hunger and scratches the new itch.
Dine with the Top Dancing Chefs!