My Blog

You are the Wind

Sweetheart -

you are the wind

you are the sea

you are the boat

you are the howling against the wet wood

flapping with nature

you are the crashing of white water

slapping shiny rocks

you are the smallest florescent fish

losing its way down a deep dropoff

you are the oldest turtle swimming

silently guiding the smallest fish home

you are the light shining

through the surface

you are the glistening ray

reflecting all past and future

you are the oars on every weathered boat

the strongest men have felt weak rowing you

you are the tears every brother and sister have cried

you are the giggle and smile of every angel

you are the wind

making no excuses for your fearlessness

you are the sea

you represent endless resource in motion

you are the boat

steer dear, steer.

Intentions and Vehicles for Awakening

I didn’t have any new years resolutions.  Now that I am five months pregnant I pretty much gave up all my vices.  I am starting out this new year by moving back to Maui and getting my yoga teaching up and running again.  Generally speaking, my life is really abundant and shiny.  Specifically, I want more.  Actually, I don’t want more…I want to feel deeper meaning to what I already experience as great.  To feel connection to the cosmos, I use to “star gaze” up in the sky, perched on a rock bedded halfway in the ocean.  I did this once or twice a week close to midnight. I remember laying back on that rock, feeling the solidness underneath me, and looking from budding wave, to dark sand, to horizon, to moonlight, to star and back down to crashing wave…I could feel such beauty and divinity yet couldn’t take all of it in.  Some part of me was paralyzed to receive all the essence of God.  More time didn’t help the situation.  Being present wasn’t the answer.  So this ability to ingest the fullness of essence is my seeking…

I am meditating on the thought that I can not experience deeper levels of gratitude and essence until I move through some old barriers.  The reason I am thinking about “barriers” is based on what is coming up for me now in my life.  In my current relationships with family and friends I am graced with some insights about myself and my ego and my attachments.  I don’t blame (well maybe initially) anyone for the challenges and lessons they bring me.  I am sure they are unaware of all the edges and buttons they are pushing me.  This makes it very interesting on my part…to know that I am feeling anxiety or anger with a conversation and letting the conversation go on with a certain flow and calmness on the surface…watching my heat on the inside build and fester.  When I walk away from a meeting like this I need time to process all the emotions I was having.  I look at my anger (or jealousy or fear) from a few different realities.  First, I look at the other people involved and put myself in their reality.  This could be enough information to let go of my false fear.  If I need more information I will look at my past and when I repeat this anger behavior it will show up in similar ways.  I go back as far as possible.  Usually there is a pattern.  I try and read the pattern like a scientist rather then an emotional lunatic.  Lastly, I go to my spirituality.  I practice what I preach.  I practice what I read.  I practice what I have tried to learn.  I practice compassion.

Everyone is my equal.  This is the practice of compassion.  Compassion is the ability to feel empathy for people you feel equal to.  Compassion is not feeling sorry for the underprivileged or ignorant or arrogant.  We are all privileged and underprivileged due to the blueprint; the map that is set out for us in order to reach our full potential here on earth, and our spiritual potential beyond earth.  I would say that anytime I am feeling anger or jealousy or fear it is due to my inability to feel equal to others – those close to my heart and those I consider distant both pose a threat.  At first it feels like a threat.  When another person is heating me up, getting a rise out of me, or creating worry I feel threatened.  Just as an animal is threatened, I puff up and defend.  Sometimes this encounter is graceful and my words come out sounding friendly to my perceived enemy, and other times I am down right aggressive and cruel. 

I have read and heard all sorts of information on compassion and looking for my “teacher” where  I least expect him or her.  Nobody I know wants to admit that their ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend was a gift and a teacher for our enlightenment.  That sounds ridiculous given all that they did to us.  But I am starting to see that it is true.  Yes, it is probably true that these horrible people did nothing to me.  Of course I am kidding about them being horrible, it just needs some humor to get through this level.  This is the level I am stuck at but seem to be squirming through.  I could have never realized this during my grieving times at break-ups or arguments.  This understanding is coming from a place within healing that is necessary to go through.  What I have found is that you can not speed up healing by reading or hearing the right information, it only happens when it happens…but reading and listening are the ways that directed me here to this point of understanding.

I have chosen the people in my life based on my level of compassion and intuition and my need for spiritual awakening.  I see the greatness in everyone and sometimes this makes me blind.  I think I know everything and this gives me poor perception and poorer decision making.  But in the process of letting go of my ego (my believe that I know best) I practice with those who are closest to my heart, and those who seemingly can take away my outer false image that my ego has created.  Those who threaten me are only threatening my ego or my false image that I am trying to protect.  When I see this I can only see the gross amount of falsehood I have created and the fear it causes me.  I should (on a good day) only thank those who have chiseled at this fear.  The heat I am feeling is not anger really, but purification.

I titled this post “Intentions and Vehicles for Awakening” to look at the difference of surface intentions and emotions and the process that is taking place underneath our still budding minds.  There is a force beyond our recognition that is setting intentions for us in our daily lives.  Thomas Moore writes about this in his book, “Care of the Soul.” Basically, on a soul level, we are living both a mystery and a mystical experience which is beyond our understanding.  We do not need to understand everything.  This is arrogance.  This need I have - to know best -  is ignorance.  Prana and life force energy is running through my blood and cells and your blood and cells and the cosmos blood and cells.  Our intentions can be to surrender to the greater force that brings vehicles for awakening into our lives.  I am asking for the practices of yoga to come forward in my life, and the way that happens is through feeling anger, fear, jealousy and regret.  These emotions are codes to breaking down barriers to compassion.  Used wisely, these emotions are the healers.

When the Goddess Visits

When the Goddess visits…she usually comes in the middle of the night.  I can never plan or know when she will awake me from my sleep.  I know on some subconscious or superconscious level I asked her, invited her or even begged her to come.  She usually comes when I need her most, or maybe these are the most memorable visits.  Of course she is there in nature and in yoga class and love making, but that is usually mandatory.  There is something about being woken up in the darkest part of the day – when my eyes won’t come close to closing and going back to sleep is not an option.  Sometimes I try to go back to sleep.  I get agitated, annoyed and even angered by my little glowing disturbance.  The answers to my questions, prayers and fears come to me in these peculiar hours of the night.  I must get up.  I hear a voice, “Get up” “Write” “Go to another room”

After battling and then giving in to these voices, I get up, grab my journal and go into the living room.  It is sometime between 1 and 2 AM.  As of 5 months ago I started writing a journal to my unborn child.  I title each entry “Dear  ___” I put the size of my little one down as it changes every week, from a fig to a bell pepper.  So on this particular night or morning I write “Dear Turnip,”

                        The Goddess is here.  With us.  She will not let us down, she will not leave us.  She will let us go down to the darkness of our soul to find out truths, to eventually free us.  She will give us distance to wander freely – sometimes going beyond her guidance – so that we can choose which paths will lead us back to her closeness.  She is source of inspiration, which streams out through rivers and dirt and trees.  She says now “You don’t have to drink only from what you think is THE source, the source is present in ALL things.” Isn’t she divine! (smiling) She says “Drink from all sources that remind you of me, and you will never fear loss.” 

                       It is the middle of the night.  My body is hot.  Something is burning inside of me.  Something is “cooking” inside of me.  I feel more curious than disturbed.  Lately, I have been pretty confused.  Which means Goddess has been invited to visit me tonight.  What she needs to remind me is so vital that I need to be quiet and alone and open to hear her words.  She works best on me at the earliest hours of the morning.  She quietly stands over me, next to me or a few feet away, letting her warm ecstatic energy permeate my cold spots.  Sometimes I think she is inside of me cradling my baby.

As I write in my journal I take time to close my eyes and hear her.  I spend time looking at pages in books I love.  I just grab one and open it up.  A Rumi poem falls in my lap:

                                                                     “Humankind is being led among an evolving course, through this migration of intelligences, and though we seem to be sleeping, there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream, and that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are.”

Of course these are Rumi’s words.  But they are Goddess words too.  They are my words.  I tell my yoga students that the yoga poses themselves have no meaning, it is up to us to bring the meaning to them.  I forgot who told me this.  When the words spoken from teachers make sense, we take them on as our own.  Rumi’s words describe my story.  The Goddess talks to me and I speak her language as my own.  It is simply Grace that puts the night in front of me, the paper in front of me, the child within me.  Grace is the evolving course.  Grace is the benevolent energy that is moving us forward.  Grace is seeing or feeling God/Goddess in action, and Grace is also when we don’t see or feel God/Goddess in action. 

Tonight, in the darkness and confusion, I heard, I saw and I felt.