Crying in My Jacuzzi with Dana Balicki

In Our Descending Power Era

• Season 2 • Episode 1

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aaaaand…we’re back! season 2 of crying in my jacuzzi is upon us, BUT FIRST, we need a warm-up. so let’s start with a little drunk history rendition of the buddha’s enlightenment and ride that all the way to the student encampment movement…along the way, we’ll explore the “immovable spot” of inherent power within ourselves and this collective moment, navigate the middle path between spiritual bypass and extremism, and call in the guidance of descending power. 

~show notes~

  • The Buddha's Path (https://www.lionsroar.com/buddha-path-to-awakening/)
  • Bayo Akómoláfé on fugitivity (https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/coming-down-to-earth)
  • Inside the Student Movement  (https://theintercept.com/2024/05/08/intercepted-student-protests-gaza-columbia/)
  • Interactive map of solidarity encampments worldwide (https://www.palestineiseverywhere.com/)
  • Student interview on police violence ~ a must watch (https://bit.ly/3UN770g)
  • A tribute to Dr. Refaat Alareer (https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/palestine-is-a-story-away-a-tribute-to-refaat-alareer/)
  • enter to win a free coaching session ~ when you leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, you'll be entered into a monthly drawing for a free 90-min coaching session with dana (value of $388). DM (@danablix instagram) or email a screenshot of your submission—take it right before you hit submit—along with the review name/title. winner announcements will be made across platforms!


// sound design & editing by rose blakelock, theme song by kat ottosen, cover art by natalee miller // 


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@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭

Speaker 1:

My darling crybabies. Oh, how I have missed you. It's me, your friend and host, the reverently irreverent Dana Balicki. The new season of crying in my jacuzzi, the ebbs and flows of living unexamined life, is almost here. But I wanted to give you this now. I wanna give you everything now, just a full gusher jacuzzi bench. But in honor of our patron Saint Slowdown Medicine, who is not the opposite of urgency, more like a sister wife, more like a sister wife, come here sister wife.

Speaker 1:

So we're gonna drip the jacuzzi verse to you, one big fat crocodile tear at a time. This is the pregame, the warm up, the first touch In the dark as we find each other again. I'm so grateful for you and I know that you missed this banger earworm of a theme song Crying in my jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi. So this is sort of a drunk history rendition of the Buddha's enlightenment You're welcome which happened under a Scorpio full moon just past as I'm recording this, and the Buddha, having been doing some deep work under the Bodhi tree 49 days, fasting all the things, and who was deeply committed to the bit, was going to stay under that tree until enlightenment came or until he died.

Speaker 1:

And that spot under the tree became known as the immovable spot. And when he was basically about to die from the vigilant fasting, he accepted a bowl of rice and had been in this extreme deprivation place as a means to spiritual liberation, had the rice and was like, oh wait, this is pretty nice rice. Maybe all that deprivation isn't really the only way. And thus was born the middle path between extremes. And so in that immovable spot, the buddha was challenged by mara. You know, mara said basically like who the fuck are you? That's my spot. Who are you to be enlightened? Who are you to guide anyone? Who are you to have anything worth sharing? And the Buddha touched the earth and said this is my witness, this, this right here, I am here. That's how I know. Because I'm here, because I showed up and I've been thinking a lot about that, as the students at Columbia University and students across the country and around the world who are now protesting the genocide of the Palestinian people in occupying encampments which, side note, is like a little funny because people all of a sudden getting real mad about settlements like they weren't before but these students and faculty and allies are demanding that their universities divest from Israeli companies which, by the way, is a legit tactic used in the pressure campaign to end South African apartheid and so they are challenging the powers that be at their universities. And the universities are now violently suppressing these students' rights to peacefully assemble, to be on the campuses that they have paid to be on. Most of them will be paying those debts off forever and, in a sense, these university bureaucracies, the media, members of the media, even some politicians and all sorts of people who are not appreciating this courageousness for the radical act of love and solidarity that it is. They're kind of like Mara coming to the Buddha, being like you don't have anything to offer. What are you even doing? This is my spot, this is my power. It's also tourist season, so consolidation of power is a real theme, a real through thread this time of year, but here are the students and faculty and the allies saying we are here. We are here on the earth. That matters. We are going to stand right here. What we have to offer is inherent in our existence the power of solidarity with the Palestinian people, whose lives matter purely because they exist. This is the immovable spot. It's like they're making one on our timeline right now, and so are the thousands of Jewish anti-war demonstrators 300 who were just arrested recently and held a freaking Seder outside of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's house, protesting the 26 big Bs sent to Israel that the Senate had just passed.

Speaker 1:

A little time has passed since I first recorded this episode, and this isn't a news update. You can go read the news. I love the Guardian, al Jazeera English, the Intercept Mondo Weiss. What I do want to say, though, about the student protests the Guardian, al Jazeera English, the Intercept, mondo Weiss. What I do want to say, though, about the student protests is that the violent repression has escalated, but it has not changed the hearts and minds of students now gathering in hundreds of universities around the world, of universities around the world, protest actions and encampments at graduations and commencements, renaming libraries.

Speaker 1:

All of this in the face of the ground invasion in Tarrafa and the fact that there is not a single university left in Gaza, university left in Gaza. This has me feeling things. This all has me feeling really beautiful things, like with this broken heart that I have, that so many of us have in this broken-hearted world that we are living in. It's like that Japanese art of mending porcelain with gold kintsugi. Well, that makes my heart and heartbreak sound like a Pinterest board, but in this case, the gold mending, the crack, the bonding, the reshaping is made up of heartbreak turned into action Whoa Meta and also rageful, rageful anger Redundant, I'm okay with that Also made up of patience, because people wake up when they wake up, because people wake up when they wake up, but also impatience because so many Palestinians already the most oppressed people on the planet Google it are being murdered en masse with weapons supplied by the US and a whole mess of other countries and systems, basically just giving out high fives, high five. There's international pushback, there's still a lot of high fives, high five.

Speaker 1:

The gold is the Palestinians on the ground showing each other care, love, devotion, protection, even in total collapse. Other ingredients Devastation, plain old hurt, but also hope, trust in student movements they're usually not wrong. And, oh yes, the gold is also solidarity Faculty allies, holocaust survivors, labor unions, jewish clergy oh my God, those ultra-Orthodox, anti-zionist Jews. Oh my God, they used to show up at our protests back in the day, wild, oh yes. Of course, the solidarity of the long haulers. Those were raised with solidarity for the Palestinian struggle. And, of course, the regular ass people who have never had two thoughts to rub together about any of this and are here now having learned so much so fast.

Speaker 1:

I just woke up. The gold is movement. The gold is the movement. The gold is fugitivity, a crack in the wall of the familiar, a piercing of the membrane of the habitual Barricades that challenge separation. Yeah, let your noodle be twisted. We must, because Stass quote, ain't it? Huzzah, to the fugitive enlightened ones, the path is long, but we're in good company. That's what this feels like. My heart is maybe going to be a new shape. Maybe yours is too, but I'm remembering and being reminded of my time in the anti-war movement as an activist and organizer, and then down in Zuccotti Park occupying Wall Street. Hell, I've been chasing politicians down the halls of Congress with me, dia Benjamin and all sorts of other code pinkers.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes the immovable spot is on the move and we've been watching Gazans and the Palestinian people so dignified, so generously sharing the stories of their lives and deaths, and they do not owe us anything In that place. That is their immovable spot. They are saying we are here, they're touching the earth with a soft earth of their own bodies, saying this is our witness. Enlightenment. It means coming into understanding and awakening and illuminating. There is an awakening to collective liberation. That is happening, connective liberation that is happening, and I see these people in the streets in protest as a form, as a moving form, of a movable spot.

Speaker 1:

University administrations and police and even regular ass people who do not want this illumination in this way will try to stop it. They will use what little power they have to threaten. But we are here in this moment because millions of people have seen a genocide happen and unfold in real time, all day, every day, over months and months. And you cannot, we cannot, put the toothpaste back in the tube once it's been squeezed out. We cannot unsee, cannot unknow, cannot unfeel.

Speaker 1:

So I was just on this call with this sweet little community that I'm a part of, called Healers for Justice in Palestine that's a little bit of a mouthful, but whatever and it's a group of amazing humans really from all over the world, and we come together monthly, check in, share resources about the various protest movements that we are witnessing or involved in and about our own work in the healing world wellness communities, wealth and healthness industry and various spiritual groups and movements, which, for a lot of folks, is pretty rich with disappointment with the lack of solidarity, and we share all the different ways in which we try to do our work in more solidary ways.

Speaker 1:

And it takes a lot of different shapes and, coming from a long history as an activist, it does take a lot of different shapes. We cannot all be doing the exact same thing in the exact same way. That is not how movements are built. That is not how sustainable movements, longevity, arc of justice that is not how that carries for the long haul. That is not how that goes, and I want to model and potentially inspire and welcome people to stretch into new worlds beyond their own. It's what I do as a coach. It's what I get to do as a seasoned octopus Very, very well seasoned, sometimes a little extra salty.

Speaker 2:

Flip a flavor town.

Speaker 1:

And so on this call. We're all sharing the different work that we're doing in the world and in our own communities in support of Palestinian liberation. And a beautiful soul said I'm planting seeds, like I just trust in the conversations that I'm having, in the different ways that I'm showing up, and I'm planting seeds and I may never see the fruits. So good, planting seeds and being unattached from seeing the fruits, unattached to the outcome, we may never see it happen. We may never see it happen exactly how we want. I never see it at all. Back around 2008, when I first turned towards Palestine as an activist and organizer in the anti-war movement, being fervently against occupation and having very little knowledge of the occupation of Palestine, but I have to know that many, many, many, many, many people, over a long period of time, planted all sorts of seeds for me to wake up to that reality and many, many, many people did not live to see the fruits of that moment, of all the people who were waking up and turning towards that liberation movement all the way back in 2008.

Speaker 1:

Seeds had been planted to get there, and how could I ever know, or maybe ever even imagine, that the seeds that were planted were all just these big public declaration seeds and not the result of a million tiny seeds of less public conversations and small actions planted over time? I know we're in a different world now and the internet did not exist back then in the way that it does now, so I know it's a slightly different conversation. Slightly different conversation, and yet conversations of care and accountability with people in your life that you want to talk to about this and how they are or aren't talking about Palestine like have those fierce conversations. What I'm saying is that and with my sort of drunk history present future take here is that we need all shapes and sizes of seeds and we can't know what the fruits of our labor will look like, and we have to release, potentially ever seeing them. Maybe it's the seed planting touching the earth as witness, saying I'm here now, I'm showing up in this way, and there will always be people who are ahead of us and there will always be people who are behind us that need us to light the way, just as others have done for us always.

Speaker 1:

I believe that your seeds are never too late. You are touching the earth as witness and showing up has to be right on time. Because what if I had spent the last six plus months storming around and being like well, where are all you ding-dongs? Back in 2008, during Operation Castlehead? Like what would that have done? I feel like that would have been denying all those little breadcrumb trail left for those people who are showing up now. And yes, as I said, I know that information is a lot more available, a lot more public right now, and there are also demonic agorathums. We're not all seeing the same things and look, you don't have to take this on at all.

Speaker 1:

But one thing I've learned is that people arrive when they arrive. We don't always know what seeds have been planted, when they'll get watered and when they'll sprout, and when and how people will be moved to action. Everyone has a right to their own journey. I know it's hard to zoom out and take the long view when the urgency is so great, when so many are dying each day. The frustration about seed planting is that it takes time 49 days for the Buddha probably felt like a duration. An urgency has its place. It's also a blunt tool, a necessary tool, but blunt. And I say blunt because it's the tool that our overculture tells us to use for everything all the time, and if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Not everything's a nail, and we can feel the effects of the overuse of urgency in our bodies all the time. And this culture really keeps us being excellent consumers, truly.

Speaker 2:

I feel like a commercial.

Speaker 1:

And so, in that way, we're on a middle path right now collectively, personally between the real-life, actual urgency of the moment and the long game of the seed planting, which takes time for germination, which takes time for germination, and those fruits to grow little roots in, to be pushed up through the earth and then harvested, tasted, savored, shared. But we can't stay in urgency 100% of the time. We can't ignore it either. It's a toxic trait of white supremacist culture and I really think that if we can learn to be with it in more balanced, healthy ways, I'd be so fucking revolutionary. Tell you what Slow down medicine, you know, the great love of my life invites this balance all the time. I'm working on it, we're working on it here together, woo, doggy.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so far I'm clocking the connection of full moon energies across time, the Buddha discovering the middle path and the growing student Gaza solidarity encampments as modern day immovable spots where seeds of enlightenment are planted for the present and future, and seeing how the middle path isn't always some obvious chill zone between extremes. Sometimes it is disruptive. Did I get it all?

Speaker 1:

Nailed it. Spongebob, that sounds just about right, Alex. Enlightenment and the Middle Path are not just some lazy rivers where you hop in and float, lay back and just pee a little every now and then because you can, as you cruise along other free piers, Wait what Pre-peers Wait what?

Speaker 1:

We're talking about waking up to the illusions of the systems we live inside of and don't worry, there's no conspirituality coming with all that waking up business. I just want to say that we're talking here about agency, using our agency to walk a middle path between extremes, and the extremes I'm talking about are apathy, shutdown, spiritual bypass, bypass maybe in all sorts of forms, emotional repression you know, you get the idea and modern-day Western imperialism. We're going for the full Monty, and the middle path there is rocky, uneven, uncertain. It's scary, it can be lonely. It's a life commitment.

Speaker 1:

I listened to this interview the other day with a PhD student at the University of Chicago who had been a part of the encampment that the cops had just come and ripped apart while everyone was sleeping and apparently all the participants in the encampment were being faced with interim leave of absence, criminal trespass charges, all sorts of stuff. And he says I have no idea if that's just a scare tactic or if it's real, but it doesn't matter, because the difference between us and people like these cops is that there are limits to when we continue following orders, and it doesn't matter what you do to us, because there are principles and there are human lives that matter more than our careers and our futures. I know, maybe that in and of itself sounds extreme, but I want you to imagine, try on that this is actually the middle path between the extremes, between the extremes, the extremes that are socially acceptable. And, by the way, I'm going to link to that interview and link to Rick Perlstein's most recent article on the Prospect, where he talks about the evolution of what is socially acceptable around movements human rights movements, political movements, student-led movements and it's going to blow your tits off. I want to ground us in some magic here. I turn to magic when helplessness and hopelessness seep in, when helplessness and hopelessness seep in. Man, I turn to magic all the time.

Speaker 1:

But I'm going to pull a card for us and this is from a deck the Crystal Mandala Oracle by Alana Fairchild. I thought it was the cheesiest looking deck that I'd ever seen when I saw it on the shelf. But I opened it up and pulled a card and, by goddess, it read me. It read me to filth and from a deck I'll take it. I mean, from my friends I'll take it, but from a deck I'll take it. And it has been a love affair ever since this deck delivers over and over. We have a great relationship. Advice Dom would be proud. Okay, here we go, send us up Crystal Mandala.

Speaker 1:

Oracle, what message would support us in tuning into the immovable spot, into the practice of holding urgency and the seed planting with more spaciousness? Ha, of course. Thank you, duck. The card that I just pulled is the one of descending power, which feels like exactly that same energy, of that immovable spot, of that place on the earth where we say this is my witness, I am here, I am on the earth, I am showing up not just out to the world but inside, within our own souls.

Speaker 1:

Descending power is that downward current of energy, the one that supports connection to the body, the soft earth of our bodies, and thus cultivates the space for grounded, connected manifestation, manifestation, as in connected manifestation, manifestation, as in creation, and bringing that light, enlightenment, illumination, bringing that light to each other. And so in many spiritual traditions we all know that there's this big emphasis on that energy rising, expansion, expansion, expanding out, out, out, out, big. But without that balance of descending power we can get lost and feel lost. Lost in our minds, scattered in our thinking in our thinking, perhaps even frustrated in our efforts to see and be with and process the ideas, the information that we're receiving and then translating those into creations and connections in the real world. Like we need this drop, this descending, this balance, that uprising power can help shift frequencies and access new realms of understanding and inspiration. And we are in that right now big time, which is why we need that descending power, that touching the earth, that downward current of energy, the balance of that, to slow down, to call our energies back to our bodies, to connect with our greatest desires and values, to come from that place, and the descending power gives us access to those subtle energies, feeling of the heart, the tending to sensuality, the senses, the sensuous, the sensuous, that vitality, as well as the energy to get, still, feel our feelings, sensations and be with the discomfort of, oh, so many of them.

Speaker 1:

Grounding, grounding, grounding. And this connection, I think, is what we're really trying to tap into when we're grounding. So, whether you're grounding as an energetic practice, whether you're grounding by being out on a piece of land somewhere, questioning authority, saying we are here, we are here, or whether you're tuning in connection to shadow, to that shadow part of yourself and the descent, turning towards those aspects of you, of your inner world and even of our collective experience, right of the world around us shadow right now is just shooting up out of the ground like geysers. Everybody gets wet. There's a gift to coming back to the earth, to seeing each other, the balance to the uprising, that downward current touching, touching as a witness. The earth, the earth of the body, the immovable spot of our own experiences. Descending power helps us perhaps even come back, come back in, come back to our breath, pulling ourselves back from the extremes which we can all be in practice around, and so tune into that descending power within yourself, breathe, ride that energetic slip and slide to your very own immovable spot inside of yourself, even Even right now.

Speaker 1:

Just put your feet on the ground and take a deep breath. Feel your body, feel the air around you, feel the earth beneath you, scan the horizon with your eyes, just gently, at eye level, left to right. This is actually very soothing for your nervous system. Just gently turning your head left to right. This is actually very soothing for your nervous system. Just gently turning your head left to right for a few breaths, seeing yourself in the web, being present, with the sensations in and around your body, to the life that is lifing all around you all the time.

Speaker 1:

Maybe there are sounds around you, sounds of nature or just the ambient noise of the space that you're in or some other life noises. Just let them flow right around you and let all of the places in which your energy has been scattered throughout this day, all the conversations and communications and thoughts and to-dos If you just imagine them out there, maybe like kites with long tails, and you just gently start to bring them in, gently bring them in, calling this energy back to your body, slowly drawing them all the way back in, letting the warmth of your energy fill your core and, on your next exhale, extending that warmth, that light, that sensation, your energy, just stretching it down through the floor below you, all the way down, down down through the layers of planet, down to the center of the earth, and just wrapping the extension of your energy around the core of the planet. And then, look, now you are the kite and there are so many of us. I was just at my friend's birthday party. Someone brought a kite. This little girl, imogene, was flying this kite so high and she was just ecstatic. We all just kept looking up at it getting really still watching this kite above us and I want to read to you now the last poem by the martyred poet Rifat al-Arir.

Speaker 1:

He was a teacher at the Islamic University of Gaza. He was beloved by his students, his family, his community. He was my age when he was murdered by the Israeli government on December 6, 2023, along with his brother, sister and four of his nephews. On April 26th of this year, his eldest daughter and his newborn grandchild were killed by an Israeli airstrike in their Gaza city home. Various university encampments have been establishing memorial libraries named after Dr Rafat al-Arir.

Speaker 1:

If I must die, you must live to tell my story, to sell my things, to buy a piece of cloth and some strings make it white with a long tail, so that a child somewhere in Gaza, while looking heaven in the eye, awaiting his dad who left in a blaze and bid no one farewell, not even to his flesh, not even to himself, seize the kite, my kite you made flying up above and thanks for a moment. An angel is there bringing back love. If I must die, let it bring hope. Let it be a tale. If you enjoyed what we did here today, go over to wherever it is that you are listening to this podcast and give us a rating as many stars Five as your heart desires.

Speaker 2:

Five stars though.

Speaker 1:

Theme music and other musical bits by the very talented Kat Otteson, Sound design and editing by the effervescent Rose Blakelock. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for being here. I look forward to playing with you more in my jacuzzi. That sounded dirtier than I meant it, but you know what I mean.