I was doing the flailing yesterday morning. Short little session to warm up my brain for Week Numero Dos at the new gig. And something about luxury came up while I was lying in savasana. I’m pretty sure it all happened because I decided to give myself a treat and do savasana on the fluffy, warm bed instead of the floor where I usually do it.
Let me tell you: falling into savasana atop a comfortor? Superb idea.
So as I fall into my deliciously comfy repose, luxury comes up. Luxury is a word I have given serious consideration approximately never. In passing, though, it hasn’t struck me as something I needed.
In my mind,
Luxury condominiums = massive gentrification
Lap of luxury = spoiled
Luxury home = suburban sprawl
Luxury car = assertion of manufactured masculinity
Which isn’t to say that my associations are correct. Rather, I recognize fully that they’re highly biased. They’re also significant and meaningful in my construction of who I am and where I’ve been.
But as I sink into my savasana, luxury starts to sound really good. It starts to sound like something I need in my life. Which means that now I’m starting to ponder what luxury means to me. As always seems to happen with Shiva Nata, answers breed questions.
What would luxury look like in the landscape of my life?
What’s up with the pain and discomfort that appears when I start thinking about having a relationship with luxury?
Is it possible to interact with luxury while maintaining a commitment to social and economic justice?
. . .
This post has no simple wrap-up. I’m challenging myself to keep it that way, because I have an overwhelming compulsion pattern of ending each piece of my writing with a neat, tidy bow. But my Dance of Shiva practice is so not tidy. It’s more like a multi-colored ball of yarn with several end spots. So ha! No bow today.
Comments and warm fuzzies: By sharing my seemingly nonsensical Dance of Shiva practice, I’m putting myself out there. Please share your own musings and be gentle with those of others.
Oh the blog posts I’ve let languish because I had no clear way to tie them up! Maybe I can challenge myself to let things out ribbon-free. Just as a practice of planting seeds and sprinkling ponderings…
Briana: Sprinkling ponderings! Now that sounds like fun. I’d like to make a regular practice of pondering-sprinkling.
oh, i have a thing with luxury luxury, myself. i feel guilty for wanting the finer things and and even guiltier for actually indulging in them.
i love that you left us hanging, almost begging us to answer those questions ourselves … and so i think i might …
luxury is what i seemed to go without when i was growing up. always my mother was telling me, “dian, you don’t need that, put it back.” seems i’ve brought this line of thinking into adulthood. and now the question is … how does it serve me now? what to do about that?
Dian: Guilt. Owie. Big hug for you. And as you think about how it serves you, you can also think about the way you feel as you work through this stuff. Where it is in your body, how it increases or decreases in intensity. I find that this stuff might not be serving me in the ways I want, but I can’t just get rid of it. To let it go, first I have to be with it for a while. Or at least try to.
You know me well enough to know that I love luxurious things, but I find that it’s easy to go without the big ticket luxurious items it’s the small luxurious item’s I can’t live without. A shared bowl of icecream over tons of chitchat. staying in and painting my toe nails. Time to read a book. I think Luxury in small doses is fine and especially fine If you remember just how lucky you are to have them. I think luxury is most harmful to those who forget they have it. Doesn’t sound like you’ll take your moments of luxury for granted.
Terra: You’re my luxury guru. Misses and kisses.