Kundalini Splendor

Advice to Myself
by Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes. Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic—decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

COMMENT:  Louise Erdrich is one of the most recognized and prolific authors of our time.  What she looks at in this poem is the problem that most of us have--the intrusion of the "insignificant" details of living on the more urgent and important tasks of our own personal calling.
Certainly, once you undergo Kundalini arousal you will be challenged--whether to give yourself totally to this fascinating experience of transcendence or rather to commit yourself to the more mundane tasks needed to "keep up" in this world.
I opt for Erdrich's choice--I would much rather listen to some delighting music or read a volume of poems than clean out the refrigerator or sort through the mail.  As a result, I am surrounded by "things that need to be done" rather than a neat and tidy home.  Oh, well, I say, these chores of "lesser importance" can wait for another time--surely when the snow comes or the wind blows I can find time to turn to these aggravating necessities--but then somehow I seldom do, but rather focus on
what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.