Days of Awe and Wonder

It's December 1, and this crazy year 2012 enters its last month, I look back with a sometimes gaping jaw that my overarching theme of the year (set forth in late December 2011) has been The Wonder Year: Amazing, Astonishing, Awakening

 

It's been all that and more.

I had anticipated that there would be much cynicism and heated snark during the presidential election year and just wanted to try a different approach.  I also knew that there would be a degree of fear and unease riding the coat tails of the idea of a major shift in consciousness predicted by the Mayan Calendar (not the literal end of the world, but paradigm shifts).  Turning to the wheel of the Rasas (essence or flavor of experiences), I knew that the way out of the flavor of fear back towards joy was through WONDER (adbhuta).  Think of the experience of wonder as that of taking delight in the unknowable or the mysterious. Think of awe as the ability to step back and just say "Wow" when the unpredictable and unexpected shows up, no matter how it presents itself before you, and as we all know, that doesn't always take the form of a beautiful sunset.  It can also take the form of the dissolution of community, illness, or a monster storm.

A Holy Wow moment is when we choose wonder and awe over cynicism and snarkiness.  They are often followed by stunned silence or short bursts of expression

"Wow," "Whoa," "Unbelievable." 

To open yourself to wonder and awe is an empowered choice of spaciousness and curiousity towards that which is in the shadows and cloaked, just as you would watch the moonrise or a great work of art. Cultivating a sense of wonder opens the door towards the deeper explorations of who we are beyond the layers of the seen and known.

This month, I invite everyone to join me in a strong practice of allowing awe and wonder into our lives more fully.  These ideas move across cultures and religions. These ideas move beyond unchecked consumerism and can help us move our holiday traditions to a higher level of celebration. 

May we soften and enjoy the lights during the darkest nights.
May we turn our hearts towards gathering together in family and community.
May we give of ourselves fully and intentionally.
May we experience Joy, Peace, and Love in our lives and in our hearts.

It’s Time We had a Little Chat

 Yoga students of the world . . . thank you so much for your devotion to your practice and for showing up to class consistently and with receptive hearts.  The world is a better place because of it.  I know that it takes a lot to get to class. We are busy people--jobs, families, obligations--the fact that we make it to class at all shows effort and dedication.

And yet . . .
It’s time we had a little chat about getting to class on time. It’s gotten to be more than an annoyance. It’s a problem.  And since I don’t believe in locking the doors at class start time because you did make the effort (although it’s getting tempting!) Last week, in one of the classes I teach, there were 6 students present and ready to practice at the scheduled start time. The class ended up with 20 people in it.  There was a full 25 minute difference between the time the first student arrived and the last student arrived.  This is just not cool no matter what angle you look at it.

A class is a co-creation between teacher-student, as well as student-student within a boundary of time and space.  We work as an organism.  Yoga is an individual practice that happens in community, and so respect and etiquette come into play. Yoga isn’t a free for all, do-as-you-please recreational activity. Yoga is a practice, and practices have perimeters, which is also what gives them meaning.

Here’s a little refresher contemplation on Arriving On-Time for Class.

What does “on time” mean?
The scheduled class start time isn't a suggestion.
The class start time isn't the time you arrive at the registration desk.
The class start time isn't the time you cross the threshold to the studio and start putting your stuff away and getting your props.
The class start time isn't the moment you start to move.
"On time" for class means that you are on your mat and completely prepared to begin at the scheduled class start time if not at least 5 minutes before. Belongings stored, phones off, props gathered, sitting on your blanket, ready to start.

Why be on-time?
The hour or 90 minutes that you carved out is your sacred time. Arriving right at the bell or late usually means you arrive anxious and flustered which spills over into your entire practice and is disruptive to the sacred time that others have carved out for themselves.

If your teacher practices grounding, chanting, or contextually setting a theme for the class, you miss or disprupt these practices as they are in process.  If you come late specifically to miss these practices, perhaps you've chosen the wrong teacher.

Your body won't get the proper warm-up prior to more rigorous poses.

Being on time respects the yoga tradition, the other students, your teacher, and yourself.

What if  I did everything I could (really) to be on your mat and ready to practice at the start time, and I got  stuck in traffic, couldn’t find a parking place, etc?

This happens to everyone—teacher’s too.  But first, ask yourself the question? Does this happen to me regularly?  If so, it is more likely that you haven’t taken into account those probabilities and possibilities in your travel time.  Remember, you have to account not just for travel time, but check-in time, changing clothes, preparing your space, etc. You probably want to be at the registration desk no later than 15 minutes before class in order to accomplish that and be ready. Yes. Seriously, I said that.

If you do arrive late and the teacher and students are in grounding practices, sit down in the back of the room quietly and join in the practices. The teacher will help you find a space for your mat at the appropriate time.

If you arrive late and the practice has already begun, first, ask the teacher if it is ok to join. It is possible, if you have arrived too late, that it’s simply not in your best interest to jump right in.

What if I'm just late because I know my teacher always starts late? She doesn't mind?

Honestly, find a new teacher.  Teachers who start and end late perpetuate the problem of students arriving late and leaving early. They aren’t setting a clear and affirming boundary that your time matters.

The Process of Becoming Real

“What is REAL?" asked the Velveteen Rabbit one day... "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When [someone] loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

I'd like to share a personal story that, I feel, has much to offer to our current state of broken-ness as an Anusara community and that it is possible rebuild something that is real and lasting. Last year, my 41-year-old sister suffered seven life-threatening strokes and hovered between life and death in a coma for three weeks. During that, the most difficult period of my life, I had the great joy of realizing the efficacy of all that I had learned from Anusara yoga. Living in the unknown became second nature during those long weeks, and the hope that any spark of life would have given would have been celebrated. The first hope, was that she would live. That was soon followed by . . . what if she lives? Will anything ever be the same again? What of her will we get back? Will we get any of her? Will we, her family, be able to take care of her, or will she need professional caregiving for the rest of her life? Is there any possibility of a ful recovery? Or, harder-to imagine, a vital, healthy, vibrant life?

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

Despite all odds (75 percent of those who suffer her same type of stroke die within 30 days), she not only lived, she was, in fact, transformed into a vital and happy woman. Is her life the same? No. There is a "new normal," but she would be the first to tell anyone, that she is much happier. She is restructuring her life around what is life affirming and enhancing. She has had to look at old ways in a clear mirror and step up to make changes, and she continues to live every day with the limitations she is left with. She has come to love the story of the Ganapati in which he takes the broken piece of himself--his tusk--and uses it to write the epic story. Her significant limp is her broken tusk.

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept."

We have this opportunity as a community. Yes, there will always be a clear and distinct moment when "everything changed." It will never be the same again, but I feel great hope that, as is the case with my sister, the brokeness brought with it the gift of creating something sustainable and beautiful in its real-ness, beautiful because it once had a broken tusk.

"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand... once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.” ― Margery Williams from The Velveteen Rabbit

If you want to make something Real, love it.
May we love our broken community into Real.

Beautiful City

Touched my heart today.
We are a kula who will continue to build a Beautiful City.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&v=EXezjFLTl-c&NR=1

Blessing for Hearts That Are Confused

For the Interim Time
by Irish Poet John O'Donohue

When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline
makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems to believe the relief of dark.

You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.

"The old is not old enough to have died away;
Then new is still too young to be born."

You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow your confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
that you might come free
From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the the new dawn.

Tending the Fire of Intention on Imbolc

Two days ago, glancing out an upstairs window at a plum tree, I noticed small green buds timidly making their first appearance. The first stirrings of life concealed in it potential moving towards life revealed in its fullness.



Brighid Sowing Spring by Gael Kitty

 Today is Imbolc, a cross-quarter holy day in the wheel of the Celtic year, and heralds the stirrings of Spring. As I peered once again out the upstairs window at first light, as if from a whispered cue from Brighid, the goddess of this holy day, those timid buds have declared their presence as delicate white blossoms each holding the promise of luscious fruit come summer. That which was guarded in the dark is stirring towards the light. That which was intangible, manifested. Potency took form.

Brighid is the Fire Goddess, the keeper of the flame, and is closely associated with lengthening of days, the brilliant green tips of new grass’ first beginning, snowdrop flowers daring to bloom on the still frozen earth. She is said to hold and tend the flame of the sun during the darkest days between November 1 (Samhain) and Imbolc. Her flame is the fire of potency and creativity that awakens the earth to begin to spring forth with new life. She kindles the flame of sexual desire which will rage fully by the next cross-quarter day (Beltaine in May) when new life is planted in the womb. Her radiance tends to healing the body and alights the intellect with fresh vision. The warmth of her voice stirs the heart and poetry springs forth. She is the keeper of the hearth, and the light in the dark of despair.

On this day, it is a day to tend to the flame of your intention. The year is still new, that which your heart desires and that you have willfully set into the soil of your being, is showing the first signs of its journey from dormancy to one of action. These seeds of intention must still be kept warm and held in protection against becoming frozen, stagnant, dead. In Sanskrit, stoking the flame of your will is called Tapas. Tapas is like the smoldering fire of Brighid warming the seeds of your intention (Sankalpa) so that they begin to extend beyond the protective boundaries of their seed state and move towards the actions that will take root and sprout, blossom and fruit. Whatever intentions or New Year’s resolutions you made (whether you made them at Samhain, the Solstice, or more traditionally in the United States, on New Year’s Day), this is the critical moment to re-affirm the intention. Re-kindle the fire of the will and heat the potential beneath the surface. With an inner whisper of the Brighid, call forth buds and blossoms into their form.

May the highest intention of your heart continued to be kindled by the fire of your will. May your dreams begin to take root and sprout forth into being as we enter into the stirring of Spring. May the stirring of your dreams bring you to the balanced place of effort and grace so that the buds will blossom and the blossoms will fruit.

Happy Imbolc!

Cultivating the "Holy Wow!"

2012 has arrived! May this year bring you more fully into your heart!


These first six days of the new year have blessed us in Northern California with some of the most spectacular sunsets I've witnessed in my years here. Firey reds and expressive oranges have given way to explosive pinks and deep mysterious purples. Every afternoon I have gone out to witness the unfolding light and a swelling of pure amazement pours out in the oh so eloquent, "Holy Wow! Amazing!" And the cool thing is that each day, it seems to get more incredible.


In our journey into the heart, into the space of the great I AM, we are much the same as this ever expansive unfolding light show I've been witnessing. Delving into our practices and fully engaging our hearts into all we do, we bear witness to our own inner expansion bringing us to a state of sheer delight, wonder, and astonishment at who we are. It's a state called "camatkara," which is eloquently defined by my friend and tantric scholar Chris "Hareesh" Wallis as "the state of fully self-aware expansive wonder, where Consciousness is suffused with the sudden rapture of great beauty, vibrating with awestruck joy." (Tantra Illuminated, Anusara Press, 2011)


As 21st Century adults, it is so easy to step into the current of cynicism (anti-wonder). We get sucked into a black hole of thinking we know everything and being amazed by nothing. People think the spiritual path is is meant to take you closer to a void of nothingness rather than a throbbing, pulsating state of expansive wonder. And, rather than being curious about the mysteriousness of 2012, we grasp on to apocalyptic visions of fear. With all this, it is time for visionaries of the heart to join together and proclaim 2012 as:

The Wonder Year.
Amazing. Astonishing. Awakening.

This is a year to soften ourselves back to a place of curiousity, wonder, and delight at the very fact of our embodiment. To be born at all is really quite incredible, if not improbable. To be born into such an exciting time of Consciousness awakening among so many wonderful practioners of the heart is downright jaw-dropping. In my classes, all of 2012 will be dedicated to actively cultivate this "Holy Wow" so that we can shine light into a cynical culture. Together, we will meet each breath, each pose, each sunset with fresh eyes, enthusiasm, and curiousity.