Aug 26, 2008, Spanda, Kula, and my Wedding

Spanda is a sanskrit word meaning pulsation. It also refers to the great vibrating consciousness that is the basis for all things.



As I write this page I have just returned from the San Francisco Bay Area. I got married in Fairfax, the town I grew up in, on August 9th.

In the days leading up to the wedding, Chris and I, and some friends from New York, stayed at the neighbor's house across the road from my parents. The neighbor, coincidentally, was on her honeymoon. It was convenient, but also beautiful - my parents live in a small village north of San Francisco, right on the coast of the San Francisco Bay.

I tried to get to the beach to meditate every day before the gang woke up. Sitting by the water, the sounds of the waves had a special message for me on those mornings. I was hearing the pulsation of the mighty ocean as if from the center, as if I were the focal point. As I sat, and perceived the waves drawing in around me and moving out again, I understood Kula, or community, in a new way.



What brought me to this deeper understanding of community was acting the role of the bride. As the married-couple-to-be, Chris and I were partners in the adventure of marriage. But as non traditional as I try to be, the wedding planning somehow became my jurisdiction. Coordinating (sort of) this massive event from afar, I found myself in the last few months at the crux of a great outpouring of effort, creativity, and pure life force. Four of my closest, dearest friends joined together to do the food, the cake, and the flowers. Three of them had scarcely met any of the others. For weeks they emailed each other and talked on the phone. Sometimes they cc'd me, sometimes they didn't. My mother was also involved in this loop, as the senior executive, and my sister, as maid of honor. It is a wonderful feeling to be held in this way.

It was also a new and unfamiliar experience for me. I tend to be a worker bee, taking the role of serving, or supporting, rather than that of Diva. But here I was. In the universe that was my wedding, I was the sun. My nearest and dearest from the many aspects of my life drew in closely around me, but also became connected to each other though me, through their relationship with me and mine with them. As the day grew nearer and the universe expanded, more and more of my friends and relatives were drawn in to help cook and set up, and there was help needed in other areas, too, someone to help me find shoes, to take me to get my hair cut (I attempted to cut it myself first). Someone to remind me to step away from the cutting board myself and write my vows.

The word tantra means weaving, or web. The tantrikas see the universe as a great mesh of interconnectedness, with every being and form related, somehow, to every other. It is easy to get attached to the feeling of group embrace that comes from all forms and beings in your scope drawing in lovingly around you. And when it loosens, even for a moment, pulsing in the manner of all things, we feel the dark side of the human experience - separate, cold. Un-hugged. It took me a few cycles of this rhythm to get into the groove and remember that emptiness is nothing but the way back to fullness. I was the center of this particular universe, but as we pulsed, and expanded, new relationships were formed. New focal points emerged, and entire new universes grew up around them, independent of my individual being.

The waves came in. The waves went out.

Spanda.

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