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!