Tag: yoga

Monday – Funday

I’m in one of those “Would you rather be right or be happy?” moments. This is a lesson that comes up to me a lot in my life. I guess that I am sort of a righteous person. (ugh) One day, this lesson will sink in, and this lesson will stop landing at my front door. What lessons come to you all of the time? Look at regular patterns in your life which frustrate you. The failed lessons will keep coming back and around again, until you get it “right.” Then, you’ll be happy. Imagine that, being in a state of “right” and happy. Ha! Honestly, it’s probably best to just breathe. Just breathe.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Your Attention Please

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

(On an aside, I am struggling a little bit with writing today. This is an odd experience for me. As you all well know by now, I’m pretty prolific. I think this morning’s “writer’s block” mostly has to do with the fact that I got a new keyboard. My last ancient, dusty, “several times spilled on” keyboard was disgusting and no amount of spray action from a full can of compressed air was going to save it. It should have been trashed a long time ago. Still, this new keyboard feels foreign to me. Despite being a best seller on Amazon, it’s noisy and stiff and it feels clunky. My other keys were shiny from use. These keys feel matte and dull and too spread apart. Subtleties truly matter. I now understand why the “writers of old” held fast to their old, trusty typewriters. There is more to writing than just writing. The means matter. They truly do. Please, stay with me, as I let this new keyboard slowly become one with the pathways of my mind and my heart, so that I can best convey what I want to say. Like so much in life, I see that this is going to be an eventual process, and a lesson in patience.)

A big trend these days is an emphasis on “staying present”, staying in awareness, staying in the moment, but this usually only makes sense when we are reading about it, or being lead on a guided meditation in a yoga class, and even then, if we’ve had too much coffee, or we have too many things on our plates to deal with, the staying with our breath thing goes right out the window. (there’s a reason why our bodies breathe on their own, right? We’ve got other sh$t to deal with.) The times that we truly are staying completely present, we ironically, aren’t usually aware that we are doing it. These are the times in which we are completely and totally and mindfully and emotionally involved in whatever we are doing right at that very moment, and this is usually when we are engaged in something that we love to do. When we are involved in our passion projects, we are one with the passion and one with the project. Time stops. We are staying in the flow of life, moment by moment, and it feels so great. It feels so natural and the realest we ever feel. So why can’t we always stay in that state of pure, jubilant, in-the-now presence? We can, but like all things, it has to be our daily intention, desire and practice to do it.

I read some of Mary O’Malley’s writings lately about staying in awareness and her writings are the most helpful, practical “take” on awareness, which I have read in a long while. She has a blog and several books on the subject. O’Malley suggests that you take a look at all of the “story tellers” in your mind. If you are worried about the future, you are with a story teller. If you are ruminating about the past, you are with a story teller. If you are harshly judging yourself or others, you are with a storyteller. Your peaceful awareness part of yourself, the part of you that can notice your own breath, notice where pain and other sensations are in your body, the part of you that can notice your emotional response to happenings, doesn’t make a judgment. It just peacefully and unconditionally notices everything right in the very moment. Like it notices your physical pain, and your emotional trauma, it also notices your crazy train flow of thoughts.

Therefore, if you are feeling the need to find a pause in the storm of your thoughts or your emotions, or you need to find a pause in your reactions to your thoughts and to your emotions, check in with yourself. Take that deep breath and ask yourself, “Was I scared about the future? That has nothing to do with where I am right now. I was caught up in my “story telling”. Was I criminally flogging myself for something I can’t change in my past? That has nothing to do with where I am right now. I was caught up in my “story telling.” When you feel yourself getting emotionally roiled, check in with your thoughts. What kind of “story” is brewing in your mind? Call yourself out. “Storyteller!!” When you make this a practice, you can start calling yourself out on your own mind’s imaginary storytelling all of the time. This will help you to better intentionally respond to the circumstances happening in your life, versus having knee-jerk, overly-charged reactions. When we call out our Storyteller, we get back to noticing what is actually real, what is in the moment, what is actually happening now. When we stop with the “story telling”, we get back to what actually is. When we bring our attention back to “what is”, we are truly noticing and experiencing the peaceful flow of Life, without the distractions and made-up stories of our overactive and oftentimes preconditioned imaginations.

“Happiness arises from getting what you want, and this comes and goes in your life. Joy arises from being with what is – all of it!”
― Mary O’Malley

“With full attention, you become an instrument of healing on our planet, for all that you touch and every being you meet is then transformed by the power of your focused attention. Therein lies the possibility of Heaven on Earth.” – Mary O’Malley

“We live in a story in our heads that is always trying to get us to “do” life, dictating to us, telling us we need to make ourselves and our lives better or different from what they are. In our endless trying, we have forgotten how to be. We have forgotten how to open to the marvelous and magical adventure of life. We have forgotten how to trust ourselves, to trust our lives, and to live in joy.”
― Mary O’Malley

RIP

Rest in peace, dear Uncle

When someone close to you dies, you reflect on death, but you also reflect on life. It seems to me that we all live many, many, multiple lives here, during our Life on Earth. We live each of these multiple lives through our different relationships, vocations, interests and experiences. Everything and everyone that “happens” to us, shapes us, molds us, and changes us. Our individual lives are in a state of constant evolution and flux. We like to see our individual lives as “one unit/one long story”, with “I” being the constant, but we do this mind trickery to ourselves, out of our human need for simplicity and categorizing and security. Everyone who we come in contact with, brings themselves and their perceptions and their past experiences and history, into the relationship, and we do the same. And then, when we meet that person once again, and even though we recognize that person through past and present associations and shared memories, in reality, each new meeting, is really like two new people, experiencing each other, in a fresh, new way. This phenomenon even happens with the people who we are closest to, the ones we live with, and who we experience life with, on a daily basis.

So when someone dies, who you have had a long history with, you have a lot of versions of that person in your head and in your heart, and to console yourself, you try to lump all of those versions together into one entity. You realize that you won’t be adding anything more to the relationship together, here on Earth, anyway. All of the fluidity of the relationship, is now just within you. The story, the legend, the history, of that particular relationship is now on your shoulders. It feels like a heavy load of responsibility to bear.

I think that it’s good to remind ourselves, that just because a person whom we loved, is no longer on Earth in bodily form, there is one thing that remains. The only thing that was truly a Constant, the Same, every time you encountered the person, was their God center, their light, their soul. Those of us who enjoy the practice of yoga, greet each other with the word, “Namaste”. Loosely translated, “Namaste” means “the spirit/God in me, recognizes the spirit/God in you.” So throughout the long time periods that you experience your closest relationships, you get to see so many aspects and versions of the persona and of the body, which Life (spirit/God) has lived through that person. These people, who you intimately know, get to see the same with you. How we experience each other is all grand and delightful and joyful and heartbreaking and interesting and awe-striking and overwhelming. We are mirrors to each other. We are the reflection of Life. We get to co-witness the constant evolution of a human life, through our relationships. And all of the while, when we are doing this mirroring/experiencing/witnessing of each other, the one thing that is the very Same and Eternal, within each and every one of us, just sits in peaceful, eternal, loving Awareness. And that Awareness never, ever changes, nor goes away. It remains with all of us. Always.