The Waiting Game and Saying Yes to the Random

Here in Northern California, the rains of winter have subsided and the summer fog has not yet arrived.  All around, people are basking in the sun . . . something precious and often rare here.  Even as I write, I’m sitting at a favorite corner café where the sun kisses my shoulders and dapples its light through the new leaves.  We entered the New Moon in Aries a few days ago and are headed to the great Beltane Feast on May 1.  The floodgates of life, creativity and new beginnings have toppled and a surge of creativity is in the air.

The Oxbow, by Thomas Cole, 1836

For me, I feel that I’ve finally emerged from a year of intentional quiet and waiting.  After my yoga community was rocked to its foundation in the first half of 2012, I knew that I wanted and needed space and a lot of it in order to organically evolve my practices and my teaching.  I only made two decisive changes to my classes—I started chanting the long-lost second verse of the invocation I had been chanting for 15 years, and I uncompromisingly reserved the last 15 minutes of class for pranayama, meditation and savasana.  With those two things, after a year, I find that my personal practices and my teaching have indeed unfolded and evolved in ways that feel natural and authentic.   When I resigned from Anusara, I openly said that I would take the rest of the year to lie fallow.  It wasn’t that I was pining away for what had been and was gone. I was clear, but  I knew wholeheartedly that I didn’t want to rush into something false for me just for the sake of “moving on.” And so I waited. Or, more truthfully, I was waiting.

A few days ago, on the new moon in Aries in fact, I found myself antsy, restless,  and yearning  for something to happen.  I felt in danger of stagnating in this waiting period. I had grown increasingly impatient with the process of evolving, especially since I didn’t (and don’t) have any idea what exactly I’m evolving to.  After 15 years of knowing what was the next step of the process of progression (at least in my professional world), I sit with a big question mark on not only what I’m progressing to, but the necessity of constant forward motion, which can take me to a place of constant striving.  My ansty-ness had reached a crescendo.

And then, a random and funny thing happened. Standing in a parking lot waiting for someone (oh the irony!), a clear voice came into my head, “Stop waiting and get the dulcimer you’ve been wondering about for the past 3 years.”  Without question or thought, I pulled out my phone, did a little research on a good beginner instrument and purchased it. Within 20 minutes, I felt a tremendous excitement and the long year of waiting yielded to a new era to yearning to begin in earnest.  Sometimes, all it takes is saying “yes”  to one random thing that you had stalled on in order to get things moving.  By the next morning, ideas were flooding me and demanding my consideration. 

Today, I don’t feel antsy, but rather, excited at the question marks that still remain.  I have jumped off of the banks and feet first into a new river whose name and character I do not yet know.  It was right of me to stand on the banks for a while. It’s not as if nothing was happening.  A lot was happening at the subtle level, where I believe all things begin. But it is also right that I finally got on the rope swing and let go into the new flow.    Can’t wait to see where She takes me along this river of question marks.

 

Jai Ma! Jai Ma! Jai Ma!