Anniversaries: A Moment to Reflect (Hard Lesson Part 2)

Wrote this a couple of days ago:

Anniversaries. I hardly celebrate my own. I even just quietly remember the death of my father on the day (November 1st, 2009; 11am) by lighting a candle, kissing his picture and saying "I love you Papa". Anniversaries are things that we celebrate in public and it is not a part of my nature to outwardly talk about the passed past. Pain of loss is a personal thing to me.

Today is just another day in my doings. But the lessons of the heart that/this day are always with me.

The years for me have taken away the palpable experience of the horror and pain of that day. For the most part, it is a faint sensation. That day was so painful for everyone and painful for me to witness their pain; I remember crying constantly as I watched what was happening. As the days went on, watching as innocent lives get taken because they had no other choice but to surrender to the fate of that day. To hear about those who went down with a fight and the stories from those who survived. Hearing about the sacrifices of those who went in to do their part in rescuing, searching, seeking and cleaning up. The aftermath was excruciating. People searching for their loved ones. The vitriol from those who only wanted to blame and attack back, and the pleads of those to let calmer heads and softer hearts prevail. And then, the pain of those innocent people who took the blame in the wake of the evidence against a select group.

But I don't express it outwardly. Maybe it's because it wasn't my country, so therefore not really my experience. I remember that day. I taught a yoga class - Ashtanga. At the time, I felt it was appropriate to have the class do 108 sun salutations (suryanamaskara) for the class. 108 is a sacred number. Like the number of times you are to chant the Gayatri Mantra or the number of beads on a Mala string, the 108 sun salutes were to be a prayer for peace: the chant heard across the land that we are with you in our hearts and souls. I said a few words about something, I forget. I went around partaking in the practice as a teacher would. Assisting to deepen the students' experience.

The experience of what was happening, for me, still felt close to home (I spent weeks at a time for a number of years in the city). I had a dear friend living there at the time. He lived on Bleeker St. and was actually taking a run down by the river as it was happening, not realizing what was going on as he jogged passed people running covered in soot the other way. Himself almost getting caught in it. (A lot of people afterward talked about how surreal and unreal it felt at first.) During the days that followed he talked about his feelings of helplessness. That even bringing socks and footwear for the volunteers to the salvation army did not ease the confusion, deep pain and the need to be able to do something. Living there was a constant reminder: the smell in the air of smoke and soot, and the posters of the missing up for months and months. It was not normal. I've kept the feelings of this day deep in my heart because although I am not American, I wasn't there and I have only tenuous personal connections, my friend's experience, my connection to the city, and witnessing it all on tv made it a part of my deeper experience.

I still mark the day in my heart. I still feel a kind of alertness on this day: A vigilance to treat everyone with kindness and to maintain a softness in my heart even at times when I feel frightened and alone. I still feel the loss and pain of those who experienced it directly, and I am only too aware of how this feeling is experienced by people around the world daily. It reminds me to take the feeling of that day and turn it into compassion in the present.

I was fortunate I feel anyway, to be able to go to Ground Zero on New Year's Eve 2001, to pay my respects and to pledge to always have them in my heart and yes today I am reminded again to do so. Because, of all the lessons we learn from day to day, the one that keeps coming back to me is, to Pray for Peace in the World and in Our Own Hearts.

Thanks for letting me share.

LOVE WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT!

Peace!

Christine

The Hard Lessons You're About to Learn... (Part 1)

When did having a yoga class in a boutique or tea house or any other retail space become a good way to market a business? What does it say about that business? Is it cool? Hip? Chic? Interesting? Relevant? What does it say about us? What is this need to identify with anything that uses yoga as a catalyst for more sales? Has yoga become a label to identify ourselves with those other cool, relevant people? Has it become exclusive in the way that if you don't do yoga then we don't want you around? Has "YOGA" become so vapid in the eyes of those who do it that it's only use is to help promote, sell, or trend? Has yoga become just another item on the list of must-haves at the party of the year?

The attachment to the physical aspect of yoga (asana) without the graciousness of the spiritual aspect has led those who choose to believe it, marginalize yoga to the place of workout, the fountain of youth, and just another thing to help you relax at the spa. All fine benefits of yoga, yes, but not the raison-d'etre. Bringing yoga to our ego-ic level and understanding lessens its impact on our organism: our being. Projecting onto yoga all the same stuff of ego-identity that drive some to have face lifts, be the first to do: to have something, to brag, undermines yoga's essential and primary benefit: union with the Beloved. the Divine Heart, God, the energy of the cosmos. However you like to "name" it, it is all that and more. (As Ramana Maharshi says, to even name it, you have lost your connection to it.) All the stuff that yoga asks you to shed (boosting, grasping, attaching, hating) is actually amplified by the need to make it a part of who you think you are...all the adjectives: good, nice, chill, spiritual, cool, hip, relevant, interesting.

With the words, "I-do-yoga" come many reactions. There's a definite stigma: bad or good. Some of us let other's reactions dictate what we do. It used to be that I never talked openly about my practice or my teaching in front of my family because of all the jokes about it.

Yoga is NOT any of it.

Haha - but that publicly traded yoga wear corp (I even dislike mentioning the name because I don't want to market them) have helped shape the way in which yoga is seen, how we interact with it. Yoga, for a lot of people, has become just another commodity to exploit like anything that trends in social media: flavor of the moment. Look what they've started. And by a guy (the owner) who says he doesn't  do yoga. What a great little marketer. He's helped shape a generation of displayers: Look at what I can do; at what I've got; at who I know...or I've seen (rather).

Is this really the way you want to experience yoga?

Yoga asks you to be the antithesis of a good little marketer. To do without thought of reward. To give without thought of recompense. The lesson is to learn to shake this illusion (maya) of the material world and what you need from it...happiness, love, connection, comfort, prestige. It's all there, you've already got it all. But if yoga is used and not practiced then it can never bring you into the light of day and help shed the doubt that looms over us like a darkening cloud.

The emptiness is always there whether the material world seems to give you everything...you have become a slave to that idea...ask anyone who is encountering their own mortality!

It's a hard lesson to learn. But I will gladly teach anyone willing to go there! Are you? Willing I mean...

Equanimity is in essence a “…wholeness in a merciful awareness that clings to nothing and condemns nothing, that is simply a presence in which nothing obstructs the natural flow of loving kindness.” (quote from the book, Embracing the Beloved by Ondrea and Stephen Levine) To cling to nothing and condemn nothing that is in essence the enactment of being present to the awareness of a non-dualistic universe.

The True Magic of Yoga…

Throughout the centuries of Yoga practice, not only in our age, but since the dawn of Yoga, practitioners have been caught up with some idea or another of what yoga can do to help them “make friends and influence people”. And one of them is that meditation, the practice of asana, etc., can give you powers (siddhis). I’ve always been quite skeptical of that notion and have been vocal on occasion. Through my years of dedicated practice, I have never come across anyone who could actually do what they said they could (levitate for instance) or have never experienced it myself. What I did experience is a shift in the visceral feeling of my body which is probably the burgeoning connection of body-mind; a leveling out of my emotional body, a form of contentment, where now sadness is really sadness, happiness really happiness, anger is really anger, hurt is hurt; and a shift in body-mind consciousness, a taste of non-duality.

This became apparent slowly through years upon years of practice. My practice of either asana, meditation, and pure present-centeredness did not come without struggles, disillusionment, frustration and in some instances, real joy. It was a quiet unfolding which after years of arduous practice, on a retreat (my last at this particular place) something was revealed to me which altered everything and life has never been the same. The practices of Yoga can transform you and draw you in to catch a glimpse of Non-Dualistic reality, our true condition.

Yoga is not Magic; it’s Alchemy. It will not give you powers. You’re not about to bi-locate (although that would be fun), turn someone into a toad, or make the one you love yours just because you did an hour of asana, and some meditation. In fact, it won’t happen at all (but only for those who are to be true adepts). And if someone claims to be a great yogi because they can do such things, turn around and run! Yoga unfolds and unravels you slowly without a tremendous amount of hoopla!

Yoga is Alchemy where, like the quest to transmute lead into gold, your practice is the flame which transforms the raw material of – your body, emotions, and thinking mind into the Diamond body. To fan the flame of your practice, you immerse yourself into no-mind which together with the breath is the fuel for the flame. As Georg Feuerstein says: the traditional purpose is the radical one, not the one for the pursuit of a good looking body and becoming forever young, but rather, where the use of asana is to assist the development of the transubstantiated body – the Diamond Body (…no it doesn’t have “yoga butt”). But, he says, there are very few of us who have the determination and stamina to develop this mastery of the practice. Because of this – Are we left with what he calls “garden variety yoga”? No luckily we’re not. Through asana practice, one can “taste” the existence of non-duality, which is essentially like Samadhi. We can flow in and out of this state . It’ll happen, whenever it is to happen. You have no control over it, can’t predict it or plan it. Although, if in fact you do have expectations of developing some extraordinary powers, they will surely be shattered or dissolved – depending on the strength of the expectation. With sincere and constant practice, self-evaluation and observation; engaging in alchemy with the breath and no-mind, one can achieve this state and experience our true condition, the Non-Dualistic Nature of Reality. This is the true Magic of Yoga.

A prayer: Now is the Time, by Hafiz

Now is the time to know

That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider

A lasting truce with yourself and God?

Now is the time to understand

That all your ideas of right and wrong

Were just a child’s training wheels

To be laid aside

When you can finally live

with veracity and love.

Now is the time for the world to know

That every thought and action is sacred.

That this is the time

For you to compute the impossibility

That there is anything

But Grace.

Now is the season to know

That everything you do

Is Sacred

 

 - Hafiz

From the book - Zen in the Art of Archery

Master: The right art is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen.

We masters say: one shot - one life! What this means, your cannot understand … if the shot is loosed with a jerk there is a danger of the thread snapping. For purposeful and violent peole the rift becomes final, and they are left in the awful centre between heaven and earth.

Student: What must I do then?

Master: You must learn to wait properly.

Student: And how does one learn that?

Master: By letting go of yourself, leaving yourself and everything yours behind you so decisively that nothing more is left of you but purposeless tension.

autobiography - Eugen Herrigel

Love is ever present...

Love never changes. You do. You change with each passing day. Fickle because of who you want to be, who you want to know, what you think. You change according to your needs, your wants, your desires. Love that is projected, narcissistic love, love that is conditional is not real love... 

That’s ok. We all do it. 

Big Love never changes. It is ever present and constant. When you stop, in the stillness of present centeredness; in the silence of equanimity; in the warm embrace of Divine Love, Love will be there. Ever present and available to you with each moment. 

Peace and Love friends!