Category: oneness

Loving Support

I just completed a wonderful 4-week meditation workshop, and in their feedback the participants mentioned how good it was to be able to share the journey into meditation with others who were understanding, kind and supportive.  Even in such a short time, (an hour and a half once per week for four weeks), there was a sense of community and shared intention that provided support for all those who were in it.  Meditation in many ways is a seeking into oneself, and yet this inner seeking is easier to do with the support of others.  

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about this sense of community and how we connect and separate ourselves from each other.  From a yogic point of view, the sense of an individual self is an illusion.  “No man is an island” was an old tune I used to hear my parents listen to as a child.  “No man is an island, no man stands alone. Each man’s joy is joy to me, each man’s grief is my own.  We need one another, so I will defend each man as my brother, each man as my friend.”  (Of course as a kid I wondered “what about the women?” but in the interest of the deeper meaning, we’ll let that pass for now!) 

All the world religions teach that we should care for our fellow human.  Yet watching the political news over the last few years, it has become so evident that we don’t, as a culture, live by that maxim.  In fact, our culture seems to be becoming more and more polarized into “us” and “them” and all based on ideas, thoughts and opinions, and the fear of these being somehow threatened and destroyed.  We identify with these opinions and beliefs and therefore when they are threatened, it is perceived as a threat to our very identity.

Even as yogis we are not immune from “separation-thinking.”  How often do yoga practitioners defend their chosen style of yoga as “better” or “more effective” than another?  Whenever we identify with a practice, an idea, or a way of being (what the yogis call ahamkara), we run the risk of thinking that we are that.  What follows is the assumption that “I am right” from which the logical premise that seems to follow is “they are wrong.”  Yet with billions of people on the planet, all with their own collection of interests, constitutional predispositions and life experiences, how is it possible that there could only be one way for us all to be, think or believe?  

 From a yogic perspective, we are not separate – we are manifestations of the same stuff – awareness, life force, whatever you choose to call it – we are manifestations of the substance of life which is One and yet each of us is a unique expression of that One.  Goswami Kriyandanda describes each person as a microcosm of the whole. Just imagine – you are a hologram of the whole Universe!

 
We are all the same stuff – just packaged in a different way, yet we spend so much time, energy and effort feeding the illusion of our separateness – this sense of “I, me and mine” that yogis call asmita.  The thing about feeding our sense of separation is that it also creates a sense of isolation and brings very little satisfaction.  When we build walls to keep ourselves, our opinions and our beliefs protected and safe, those walls also keep others out.  Those walls prevent us from hearing other people, from having sympathy and understanding, from recognizing in “others” not only our own brilliance, but also our own shadow.  And if we are too afraid or too ashamed to see ourselves clearly, we run the risk of projecting our own disfunction on to others and condemning them for it.   On the other hand, if we are able to really see ourselves with compassion, and even with humor, we can begin to free ourselves and to break down the walls that separate us from each other.
I remember the first time, as a teenager, that I realized that I wasn’t the only one with a particular trait of which I had been ashamed.  I had perceived this trait (can’t even remember what it was now) as a personal failing and when I found out someone else had it too, it was amazing!  I remember the sense of relief and freedom when I realized I was “only human.”  I could let go of that burden and stop blaming myself for not being perfect.  Being in a supportive community provides the opportunity to see yourself in others and be accepted as you are.  But you can do that for yourself and for others at any time if you think of all of humanity (and even all sentient beings) as your “community.”  Meditation is one way practice seeing yourself with gentleness and compassion, accepting yourself as you are – hang-ups, past life history, neurosis, judgments, opinions and all.  It all begins with the choice to accept ourselves as we are, with love & a healthy dose of light-heartedness.  Then we can create and/or find supportive communities where we can share this loving acceptance with others. 
What if we were to just expect loving support from our communities and especially from ourselves?  I wonder what would happen then?
In loving acceptance of you, just as you are…

Namaste.

Unlimited potential

Are there limits to your perception?  How big do you imagine the Universe to be?  How far does your energy field go?  Where do you end and the space around you begin?

My husband and I have an ongoing discussion/debate about the limits of human potential.  I don’t think that there are any limits.  He thinks there are things humans just weren’t designed to ever be able to do.  Maybe I’m just opinionated (an existential hazard of being born with 4+ planets in Aries) but I really believe that as humans we are only limited by our perceptions of what is possible.
Think of all the inventions of the last century.  I was explaining to my 5-year-old daughter tonight that my grandmother Mary, born in 1900, didn’t have television as a child – and read books by lamp light.  And when I was my daughter’s age, TV (in Jamaica) was in black and white!  She could hardly imagine such a horror!  Technology has shifted what we believe to be possible.  And I would argue that our belief in what is possible has accelerated the phenomenal technological and consciousness shifts of the last century.  Because of technology my dad survived a heart attack 8 years ago that would certainly have killed him 50 years ago.  Because of technology we also know immediately when tragedy has occurred anywhere in the world and we can rush to help relieve suffering. 
As technology has supported our belief in what is possible we have dared to dream bigger dreams.  And because we are human these dreams of course have been fueled not just by our altruism and generosity, but also by our fear and our greed. And so even as some people dream big dreams, others are afraid that these dreams will destroy us.  We live in fragile human bodies – the identification with which leads us to be afraid of death.  This fear of death, the yogis say, is one of the things that binds us to suffering.  (It also keeps the majority of us from jumping in front of moving trucks!)  This fear of death (or of annihilation – or non-being) also seems to underlie much of our resistance to life – what I would describe as contraction.
One of my first experiences with Reconnective Healing was through a process called The Reconnection.  This axiatonal realignment process is designed to reconnect us with our true potential.  During this 2-day process I had the realization that I was participating in something much larger than myself that was happening all across the planet and directly impacting human evolution.  It was amazing to me – mind-opening in fact.  It was so amazing that it scared me silly.  I felt that I was on the edge of a precipice – that I had been brought to the edge of the Void and my next step was to jump in – to something I didn’t and would never fully understand – at least not with my mind.  In the Reconnective Healing training I asked Eric Pearl about it and he said “Isn’t it exciting?!”  Exciting? Heck no!  It was terrifying!
In the years since my Reconnection I’ve come to some realizations that my mind still has some trouble wrapping its mind around.  I’ve come to accept that the Void is everything.  There wasn’t anywhere for me to jump because I was already here.  What was missing was my perception.  The Void is awareness and awareness is all that we are.  Some of us have amazing experiences of it, others more subtle realizations.  But whether we are aware of awareness or not, it is the ‘substance’ of which we are made.  Each of us is all that is – “the world in a grain of sand.”  This is why I believe in the immense potential of humankind – if we choose to embrace it.  It’s not an imperative in my mind – it won’t make us better humans than we are now – but I think it would be really, really fun!  I also think our expansion into this understanding is happening whether we like it or not.  We can be immensely joyful and compassionate, or we can be immensely selfish and greedy.  Through it all we are being – whichever choices we make, wherever we go, whatever we do.  We are the Void – nothing and everything.  Immense, unlimited potential.
In this Universe, as we experience it, is the potential for contraction or expansion.  So as we approach the dawn of a new year, the question arises – how expansive can you allow your perception to be?  As you imagine the vastness of our human potential, does contraction eventually kick in?  What form does it take?  Is it fear, is it a belief system or an adopted “truth?”  Is it a sense of how things can’t be or should be?  Is it sadness for the way things are?  So, what if you could open to let even your contraction be expansive?  In other words, what if you could just allow it to be okay to have all those thoughts and welcome them into this sense of expansion or possibility?  Then how much could you allow your heart or your joy to expand?  And in the midst of all of this, how much could you love yourself, just as you are – contraction, expansion, resistance and all?
To quote Blake (don’t be impressed, this was my first time actually reading the poem! These lines actually stopped my breath for a second):
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
You are the world in a grain of sand – all the Universes in one human body.  What could be impossible?
Have a blessed, expansive, loving, joyful, perfect-as-you-are New Year!! 

See you on the other side…

I love yoga

I love yoga!  I really do.  How wonderful to be able to move body, mind, and energy in this  sometimes synchronous, sometimes challenging, but always fascinating dance of Life.  And how wonderful that ancient yogis thousands of years ago shared wisdom that is still relevant in our crazy and mesmerizing modern world!  Getting on my mat is like coming home to myself – a visit with a good friend who has never left me even when I was neglectful. Yoga has helped me to befriend myself.
 
I mentioned in class this morning that it is truly amazing that any of us are here.  If you think about all the planets in the Universe and all the different factors that have had to happen for you to be sitting in front of your computer at this moment reading these words, it is mind-blowing.  Just the wonder of the body itself, heart beating, lungs breathing, liver cleansing, stomach churning, blood flowing, eyes seeing, nerves firing, brain processing – water, fire, air and earth united in this amazingly complex symphony that is a human body.  Wow.  

These past few weeks I’ve been gifted with an awareness of how much my view of the world has changed since committing to yoga teacher training in 2003. When I started that training I didn’t think of myself as a strong person or of my body as a strong body.  There were poses that felt torturous and I was pretty commited to my story.  Never athletic as a child, I danced semi-professionally for a few years after college but it was always with a sense that I wasn’t quite up to the standards of all the other bodies in the studio or on the stage – not strong enough, balanced enough, grounded enough. committed enough, trained enough…  That was the gist of my story – “not good enough.” 
 
The consistent application of the principles and practices of yoga, as well as other wonderful practices & teachers that have crossed my path has helped me to see that story for what it is.  Just a story.  A body that once was seen as weak now feels strong and grounded.  A mind that was stuck in the groove of a limiting story is open to new possibilities.  Beyond even that though, is the sense that none of that even matters, because what is here now is enough.  If I never do a handstand without the support of the wall, this body, this breath, this life, will be no less amazing – and it won’t be any better if I do (though that would be really fun!).  
 
For me, the story of “not enough” is still sometimes present, but I can sooner see it as a story – the mind’s way of (as my Akashic Records said) “concerning itself with matters beyond its jurisdiction.”  Instead of the story being in control, I can let the story be, or let it go.   It is also interesting to notice the other stories rising to the surface of awareness.
 
The journey becomes even more amazing when you realize there’s nowhere to go.  This body, this breath, this moment is what we have to work with. If we keep waiting for some time in the future when it will be better, when we will become more wonderful due to all our efforts, or due to chance, we will miss the magic that is happening now.  I’m not sure we can become more present, but I think we can be more aware – more mindful.
 
Just now.  Just this.  Fascinating.

A ghost in the house – shaking up the “I”

I’m working on trying to be brief and use less words – let’s see how I do…

Last October I asked my Akashic Records how I could live from a place of deeper clarity.  The answer was surprising:  “Be willing to be wrong – about everything.”  What?!  I had to ask for clarification.  The reply: “Being willing to be wrong doesn’t mean you are wrong.  It means you give up the need to be right, which is holding you back.  It means shaky ground… Release the need to be right.”  All my life I’d seen knowledge as a reinforcer of my worth.  Being wrong was to be avoided at all cost.  But what the heck, I was intrigued.  Besides, I could always go back to being right if it didn’t work out.  What I got was a big surprise.  As I let go of the need to be right, something shifted inside.  It was like when you’ve eaten too much and then you loosen the button on your pants – relief!  I understood it later as being freed from the constant effort to protect and reinforce my “I.”

Sutra II of the Yoga Sutras describe the five klesas as the sources of our discontent, the obstacles to freedom.  The klesas are: avidya, or not knowing our true nature as beingness or oneness; asmita – identification as “I,” “me” or “my”; raga – desire for pleausre; dvesa – aversion or avoidance of pain; and abhinevesa – fear of death.  When I first read this sutra and the notion of the identified “I” as being problematic, I thought that was ridiculous (those crazy cave-dwelling yogis – what would they know about real life?!).  After all, who would I be without a sense of my own individuality? If I let go of that I’d be left with nothing – I wouldn’t exist!  At the very least it seemed to me a prescription for mental instability.  I didn’t realize that even that resistance was the manifestation of this “I.”

Dzigar Kongtrul in his book It’s Up to You suggests:  “This mind that we identify as the self, which we could call ego-mind, controls everything we do.  Yet it can’t actually be found – which is somewhat spooky, as if a ghost were managing our home.”  Michael Stone in The Inner Tradition of Yoga describes asmita as a storyteller, and the stories as a rubber band ball, wrapped around and around with more and expanding preconceptions about ourselves.  Even when these stories cause us suffering and separation, we still hold on because we identify them as who we are.  A Course In Miracles Lesson 69 begins:  “My grievances hide the light of the world in me.  My grievances show me what is not there, and hide from me what I would see.  Recognizing this, what do I want my grievances for?  They keep me in darkness and hide the light…” 

So last month when I decided it was okay to be me, I found she was very elusive – like mercury, hard to pin down.  At the same time I found the klesas.  Ah the humor of it all.   It’s been fascinating – sometimes funny, and sometimes really unpleasant – to recognize the storyteller arising, especially when I’m wanting to be right, or in control.  I often recognize my “I” when it is acting up as a shadow that when noticed and acknowledged, shifts slightly to the left to reveal a sliver of light behind.  A long exhale follows, a tightness releases in my chest, and in that moment, I can allow.