Category: manifesting

What do you want?

This year has been the year of fabulous yoga training for me.  In January I went to Tucson for the Level I training in Amy Weintraub’s LifeForce Yoga which specializes in yoga for managing anxiety and depression.  The workshop was held at a Catholic retreat center high up on a mountain with a fabulous view of Tucson.  We saw the sun rise every morning as we chanted the Gayatri mantra and on the last night were blessed with the rising of the full moon in all her luminous glory. 
Even though I’m an island girl, the deserts of the Southwest are magical to me, and in Tucson the desert is dotted with majestic Saguaro cactuses, which at 6ft tall are over 100 years old!  Suffice it to say the whole experience was transformative.  It was a great opportunity to “get away” and be somewhere else – to slow the pace of life and have an opportunity to be in silence with myself when I wanted, but also to be in joyful communion with others.

One of the things that Amy taught at the workshop was sankalpa.  A sankalpa is an intention.  You can create an intention for your class, for your day, for your stage of life.  You come into this life with a sankalpa – your life purpose.  Your sankalpa is essentially what you want to manifest.  But most often, when we are asked what we want, we respond by highlighting we don’t want!  For example:  “I want to not be so stressed,” or “I want to stop being so disorganized.”  We tend to focus on what we don’t want, rather than clarifying what it is we want to manifest.  In a way, it can be scary to imagine what you do want – what if you don’t believe you deserve it?  Or what if the current circumstances of your life don’t seem conducive to your dream manifesting itself?  Some of us were taught not to hope for too much, so we don’t end up disappointed.  Kriyanandaji, the head of the Temple of Kriya Yoga, often repeats the phrase:  Aham Brahmasmi.  He translates this to mean:  “I am the creative principle.” In other words, I have the power to create my life.  If you have the power to create your life, then why not direct your energies toward what you want, rather than what you don’t want?

So, what do you want?  Amy recommends that you bring your sankalpa into the present:  “Peace flows through me now.”  I’ve spent a lot of my life being tired and focusing on how I don’t want to be tired anymore.  So instead I created the sankalpa:  “Good health and vitality flow through me now.”  Guess what?  When I say it I feel better, clearer, more energized, and a smile comes to my face!  Of course just stating an intention starts the energy flowing, but you must follow intention with action to manifest your heart’s desire.  It is also beneficial to courageously, mindfully and gently excavate the underlying subconscious beliefs that might be sabotaging your best efforts.

The second fabulous teaching was last weekend right here in Downer’s Grove.  Rod Stryker also taught about sankalpa and he mentioned another term that I wasn’t familiar with until recently: vikapla.  Rod described sankalpa as the intention linked to your heart – that which you want, your reason for being – and vikalpa as that belief or desire which separates you from your purpose.  Whichever one of these is strongest determines your destiny.  A lack of fulfillment in life, Rod taught, is based on not living your purpose.  And if you’re not living your purpose, it might mean that your vikalpa is stronger than your sankalpa in terms of your desire for it to manifest.

I think we all get glimpses of our vikalpa.  You might feel yourself recoil when presented with a fabulous opportunity and then notice yourself coming up with reasons why it’s not the right thing or why you can’t do it.  Or you might start to clarify your sankalpa and find that your mind comes up with all kinds of reasons why it can’t happen.  Mindfulness helps us to notice these moments and look at them clearly, examining our deeper motivations, rather than running away.  What is manifesting in your life right now?  What might be the underlying belief or desire that has brought these circumstances into being?  (Rod Stryker has a book about these teachings coming out in a few months.  If you read it before I do, let me know what you think…)

So in two separate trainings this year already, I’ve been presented with the teaching on sankalpa.  Maybe its time to really get clear.  What do I want and do I dare to dream that the desire of my heart could become the life of my dreams?  I’ve seen plenty of evidence so far that your entire life can shift based on the strength of your desire.  If you had told me 10 years ago that I’d be a yoga instructor, energy worker and therapist I would have laughed.  I was a committed database manager with a love of logic, data and computers.  I promise you that life can change in a heartbeat. Aham brahmasmi – you are the creative principle.  The first step to putting that power to work is to get clear on what you want.

If you embark on this exploration, I’d love to hear about your sankalpa!
Namaste!

Are you a karma buster?

I know its been a while since I’ve posted!  2010 has so far been a fascinating year of insights, observances, wonderful experiences and deep internal struggles.  Sometimes I’m not even sure what part of the mix to write about.  So, this possibility of “karma busters” peaked my curiosity recently and seemed just “light” enough that I won’t use too many words 🙂  Lemme know what you think…

It’s no secret that we’re influenced by generations past.  Even on a purely scientific level, there’s the issue of hereditary transmission of genetic conditions and disease tendencies. So when I learned the concept of ‘family karma’ years ago, it had a ring of truth to it.  I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea that many of us are on the planet right now to be karma busters – breaking the chain of reactivity that has characterized much of our individual family histories.

If you think of karma, not this “eye for an eye” concept that it has become in the popular culture, but as a simple system of cause and effect, generational transmission of behavioral or even disease tendencies is not so strange.  One generation’s parenting affects the choices of the next and often leads to reactive swings in parenting strategies from one extreme to the next.  A family with a history of trauma or addiction (or both) might be able to trace the manifestation of that traumatic effect through generations.  Sometimes the original cause of the seeming disfunction is lost in time, and yet the effects remain.

I had a fascinating Reiki Therapy session last year where an ancestor from generations past spoke about the legacy of fear that she had unwittingly released into my maternal line.  She said we were at a point in time when this legacy could be let go.  During that time I felt energetic ‘chains’ being released from my spine.  I realized after communicating with her that I had been working for years to break up that legacy – to “bust up” and transform that karma.

I am blessed to be surrounded by wonderfully mindful and present individuals.  Talking to people, I’ve realized that many of us seem to be involved in this karma busting process.  Not satisfied with just reacting to the family history, we are mindfully creating a different way – whether it be through parenting, spiritual work or ways of thinking about ourselves and the world.  We seem to have come to the planet with a mission to make a change, not just “in society,” but in ourselves.  It feels as if we are releasing those bonds so that we can move forward into a different type of future.  There is a sense that going forward our children should not have to carry the burden of the past.  This is all pretty exciting to me.   I wonder, how will this affect the future of our planet?

Are you a karma buster?

Fear as opportunity

After the last blog entry I had a question from someone I love dearly that touched me deeply.  To paraphrase her question:  What if when you start to bring your fears to the surface it seems that there is nothing but more and more fear, and you realize that you’re living your entire life from a place of fear?

I wish I had a quick and easy answer to that question, but fear is such a huge issue.  One thought that kept coming up for me was the judgment of fear as being pathological. I was reminded of this by a comment to my last post.  Rather than being a black hole of despair, the recognition of fear can be an opening into a place of seemingly deep mystery – your own mind, heart and soul.  It can be opportunity to see the ways we have taken on other people’s ideals and judgments and made them our own without questioning their validity.  Recognition of fear gives the opportunity to question the fears themselves and chose whether to continue to live with them, or just let them be.  It gives us the opportunity to love & be compassionate toward ourselves because we are fearful, not in spite of it.  At the same time we are able to cultivate compassion for all those in the world who also feel overwhelmed by fear.  And rather than becoming caught in our fear, we can recognize it as part of the tapestry of life that also includes success, joy, courage, compassion, love and expansiveness.

Of course frightening things do happen and fear arises as a natural response.  Many people – maybe even a neighbor or a friend – live with a real threat of physical harm, sometimes from the very people who are supposed to care for them.  For them, vigilance is necessary until a safer environment is possible. Recognizing our own fear and feeling compassion for the fear of others we might see opportunities to help those who suffer from the constant threat of physical harm.  From the yogic perspective, the body is not the totality of who we are, and its destruction does not mean our annihilation.  But even from this perspective, death or harm of the physical body is one of the last & most difficult fears to be released – and for the sake of human survival, I’d say thankfully so.

For many of us who have the blessing of living in physically safe circumstances, however, this fear of harm still exists – though perhaps on an unconscious level.  Often, regardless of contradictory evidence, there is the fear that we are unable to handle life’s challenges as they arise.  At a deep level there is the fear that the threat will lead to death of some kind: “Oh my God, if that happened, I’d just die!”  or “It would kill me to not get everything done.”  Though we might express it casually in words, this is often not a conscious fear, and yogis would say that what is actually threatened is the “I” or the “ego” – our own perception of who we are, or how we think other people see us:  If I don’t succeed, other people will think I’m a failure – or even worse, I might think that of myself; if I loose this job, maybe I’m not good enough to get another one; if I let go of blaming someone else for my fears, I’ll have to take responsibility for my life…

Years ago I got really tired of being afraid all the time.  I was tired of always feeling powerless in the face of life’s challenges.  Though fear or itself isn’t “bad,” I doubt anyone would claim it as their favorite emotion!  Living from a place of fear can feel like being in prison, knowing you have the key, but still unable to leave.  So I sat down and made a list of all my fears and prioritized the list based on level of difficulty.  Just the act of naming the fears and making the choice to do something about them diffused some of their power over me.  Putting them on paper gave me a chance to question their validity.  Deciding to be rid of them offered the possibility that they could be temporary. 

Yoga and meditation continue to help with this effort. Strengthening my body, working with the chakras, noticing the ways that I hold fear in my body and learning tools to work with this held energy have also been very helpful. Meditation helped me recognize the difference between presence and avoidance and acknowledge the fleeting nature of emotions.  It has also helped to cultivate a witness consciousness – the willingness to view the rise and fall of emotions from a place of stillness and choose whether to stay “caught up” in them or let them go.

I believe that once you decide to go on an adventure like this, the Universe (God, Source, Higher Self, whatever words you use) supports your intention and the help comes in ways you might not have expected – a chance word, an article in the paper, a book suggestion from a friend or an ad that jumps off the page.  Of course it takes courage to acknowledge your fears, and sometimes your hands will shake and your heart will pound as you decide to “just do it.”  Fear arises, but since we’re here (on the planet in these bodies), why not explore the possibility that just as a smile passes, fears could pass too – if we let them?

May you be healthy.  May you be happy.  May you live with ease.