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Monday, November 2, 2009

Froggie Inspirations

I really liked Kermit the frog as a child, and I still think he's cute. In The Muppet Movie he represented hopefulness, awkwardness, innocence, courage, and morality--I remember him doing the right thing. Kermit had a dream, and he was a leader!

When I was seven or eight I received a similar doll to the one in the picture. Mine had velcro on his hands, and his skin was felty-soft. Froggie! I liked to hug my Kermit. I used to enjoy playing with alive frogs and toads too, even before I knew Kermit. For some reason I was really attracted to them (sorry guys). They probably didn't like the way I would force feed them dead flies... "Frog should eat," I probably thought. I remember one time when the fly went in the jelly-filled mouth, the frog flipped it right back out. At that point I understood that the frog didn't like that.

Later in life I enjoyed finding out that frogs are symbolically rich: since frogs are amphibians, they can live in two realms: water and land. This is similar to humans: our two realms are the physical world and the spiritual one. And just like the frogs are wonderful swimmers (I love watching them), we have skill in the realm of spirit if we put attention there. Frogs are also beautiful jumpers on land, and we have shown great facility in the earthly realm also.

Frogs also go through a fabulous transformation from tadpoles (so cool) into frogs. And we, too, have the potential to transform our lives and experience the world in new ways once we fulfill our potential for spiritual fluency, so our spiritual parlance can be as powerful as our earth speak.

7 comments:

Bob Weisenberg said...

Wow, you really got a lot out of the Frog metaphor!

I didn't get all that when I wrote the following comment on YogaDork's Kermit blog. (SORRY, KERMIT, I TAKE IT ALL BACK.)

"Ok, of course Kermit is delightful. But where’s the meditating, the breathing, the spirituality, the ancient texts? It’s clear that Kermit is nothing but a highly accomplished Yobo.

Luckily we have Babar, who talks about all those deeper things. He also discovers ancient elephant cave drawings that prove that elephants invented Yoga in prehistoric times.

Humans only adopted Yoga many years later and wrongly claimed it as their own. This is probably the secret reason why one of the primary Hindu Gods is an elephant–Ganesh.

So my vote for best celebrity animal #Yogadork goes to Babar, no contest. See:

Babar’s Yoga for Elephants
http://www.amazon.com/Babars-Yoga-Elephants-Laurent-Brunhoff/dp/0810910217"

Thanks for filling me in on the true meaning of Kermit, Brooks.

Bob Weisenberg
YogaDemystified.com

Brooks Hall said...

Yeah, Babar serves as a sweet surrogate for learning about yoga while Kermit is Yoga. The best yogis might not speak in the way one might expect.

Bob Weisenberg said...

I stand humbly educated!

Bob Weisenberg
YogaDemystified.com

YogaforCynics said...

Let's not forget that Kermit also first sang one of the great anthems of self-acceptance (later covered by Frank Sinatra and Van Morrison) "It's Not Easy Being Green."

As for Babar, I never read him as a kid but, literary scholar that I am, have read some rather damning articles describing the Babar books as racist, colonialist, and a number of other nasty ists....then, there were a number of rather disturbing yoga/zen/fascist connections in the first half of the 20th century (with Mircea Eliade and D. T. Suzuki among others wearing suspiciously brownish shirts....Eliot Weinberger wrote a really interesting and disturbing piece about it, which is in a book called Karmic Traces....gotta admit, while I'm not a fan of designer yogawear, I prefer Lululemon pants to nazi uniforms, any day)...

Hmmm...I seem to be getting awfully negative as well as pretentious in a comment on a post about Kermit...then, Bob started it by calling my main frog Kermit a "yobo." All I can say is don't even think about dissing Grover...

Unknown said...

I like this post. I always think of my sister when I think of frogs as she has always aspired to be one! I emailed her your post.

Brooks Hall said...

Hey! Here's another post about Kermit: the yogi! It also links to this one. Thanks!

Kermit a True Yogi

Anonymous said...

I have that same Kermit you had, with the velcro. My aunt gave him to me and I totally love him!