Time to Travel

I wish I could blog something these days.

I want to express myself. I want to be inspired to write something. I'm not so busy I don't have time to blog. I'm blocked. I can feel something inside of me that wants to come out, but it hasn't made itself clear to me.

This scenario is playing out in other aspects of my life. I've been partaking in some energy work recently, to unblock channels in my body, especially in my hips and lower abdomen, where I tend to hold my tension. And don't we all know about hips right? Since my last session with my energy worker, I have been pretty emotional, to either end of the spectrum and back. Crying in the middle of yoga class, or needlessly outraged because I've been minorly inconvenienced. My patience has absolutely gone out the window. And Universe, please forgive me for these days I've spent backtracking through my work on compassion. Honestly, I feel a bit like I need an exorcism. This energy is waking up inside me and I'm adjusting to it slowly. I see this opportunity as one to discover new things about myself, my body, and as an opportunity to cleanse and find genuine purity in my life.

Part of me is frightened of what I'm going to meet the more I focus on it. Things I thought I'd laid to rest? Things I hoped to never come up against again? Things that may completely blindside me?

So it's safe to say there's some fear, or maybe apprehension is a better word for it. But here's what I know: tonight, I was engaged in a rather dull, yet somewhat cathartic activity at work. Despite it being a task I considered pretty mind numbing, I found myself intensely present in despite of that. Of course, it's only in these moments of Quiet, wherever we happen to find them, that we are able to Hear. And that's when I heard. I am on the brink of something here. Something major. There is a transformation going on in and around me. I don't know what it consists of and I don't know where it's leading me. But what I heard was that it is big and it is good. Far outweighing my apprehensions is this overwhelming sense of peace, sense of calm. That wonderful feeling of knowing I'll be taken care of by the Universe. It's what I can only describe as true Faith.

What I'm conscious of is that the road may be rocky, but I'm headed in the right direction. I was never one to take the easy path, anyway.

So just in case you wonder where I've gone, I'm on a journey at present, and I'll be sending postcards along the way...

Tree. Friend.

I went to Wesselman's Wildlife Nature Preserve this morning to enjoy the weather and ground myself just a little. As I was walking, I thought to myself, "Everything is still dead. It will be so pretty when things are in bloom again." I looked down and saw this.

Touchée, Mother Nature. Touchée. Nothing is dead. Everything is alive and blooming and beautiful in it's rarity right now.

Further along the walking trail, I came across this section of a tree trunk laying on the ground. I was drawn to him for whatever reason. I got this feeling that I might have known him. So we sat together, quitely for a while. We shared our stories. I told him mine and he told me his. I realized they were the same.

I put my hands on him and I felt the pulse of my energy, of his energy and of life energy. All at once, there was no difference in these energies. We were the same, one pulse beating in time.

I left my friend there, in the woods, and as I walked away I wondered if we'd ever meet again or if our acquaintance was one that was not meant to be repeated. Like many other questions in this life, I don't have the answer and that is okay. I found joy in having known him for a short time. And that is enough.

What I Bring to the Mat and Christmas,t oo.

So, I was taking a jaunt around Yoga Journal's Community page as I do more and more often these days (it's like facebook but for yogis, don't ya know!) and I happened upon someone who posted a blog about what he brings to his yoga mat each day. It was really moving to read and I think that it's definitely something we all ought to think about for ourselves.

What do we, individually as yogis and yoginis, bring to the mat? Yes, yoga is about union and about letting go of the ego, but like we say and I've said before, it has to start within. So I think it's important for all of us yogis to highlight what it is that we bring to the mat, to our practice, to our community. I think it would be neat if this started a chain (and we can all credit sat-nam for being the inspiration). In that spirit, I'm going to go ahead and go next:

When I step on my mat, I bring with me a girl who is only beginning to learn and live life. I bring a girl who is healing from mental wounds, self-inflicted. I bring a girl who was lost in the world and who punished herself for it. I bring fear. But I bring courage, too. I bring a yearning and willingness to let go of the past. I bring a girl who has only begun to taste true freedom. I bring a girl who knows deep down that she is beautiful and worthy of the good in life. I bring persistence in my quest. I bring a girl who is resolved to never give up on herself again.

I bring intellect, thoughtfulness and insight. I bring a mind that has faith in a power outside myself and longs to be united with it. I bring a heart that continues to open. I bring a desire for peace, inside myself and out. I bring compassion.

On my mat, I am a student of life who is no longer reluctant. I am inquisitive. I ask for help when help is needed. I am a girl who is learning to release her pride. My mind and heart are sponges. I am a leader too. I bring a dream of helping others like me to find peace. I bring a message to everyone so they may know they deserve peace.

I express myself with the suppleness that comes from youth and am grateful for the opportunity to grow and mature. I begin to express myself without fear. I learn to stay true to myself. I bring awe inspired by the beauty of life. I bring appreciation for my fellow yogis and yoginis. I relish in the energy we create.

And I try with my whole being to bring mindfulness to my mat. To live in this moment and to know that this moment is perfect. I bring the gentle reminder that there is no fight to survive. Everything is as it should be in this very moment and so everything is perfect. I bring an inner light that glows brighter the longer I practice and reaches out to the world.

When I come to my mat and I sit down, I imagine myself as a child sitting down for story time. I am the Earth's child, eager to hear Her story and beside myself with joy to learn that I, that we, are Her story.

When I am on my mat, and I am in this place in me, and you are in this place in you, we are one. When I come to my mat, I cease to exist as an individual and I am home.

Namaste.

~~~~~~~~~~~


So there was that. I'm separating that from this bottom bit because the top part was really for my YJ Blog, but I thought I'd share it here too.

In other news... You ought to have seen the look on my mom's face when I asked her if we could all go to Midnight Mass tonight. It's very un-me to want to do anything related to organized religion, but as I was driving in from Evansville and I was listening to one of my favorite religious Christmas songs ("Mary's Boychild," if you cared to know...), I got a nudge from outside myself to attend Midnight Mass. In my quest to reach the Energy outside of myself, I understood from this sudden urge that if I keep my heart open to it, this is the right place for me to be tonight. Where better to go to honor peace and love in this world? Maybe Catholicism has ceased to be the way for me, but I feel on this Christmas eve that there is a phenomenal energy buzzing through the land and I need to be there for it.

i'm all ears

The time isn't right for any words on fear just yet.

Instead I have a few words about listening. The saying goes that prayer is talking to the Divine and meditation is listening. I think that we, as people, tend to a lot of talking, a lot of asking. But when it comes to listening, we just don't seem to have time. Or we aren't open to the answer. It's very easy to ask, but my goal now is to listen and to receive openly. The answers can often be so subtle that if we aren't in tune, if we aren't paying direct attention, we won't realize that it ever came.

Listening takes practice and patience and an open mind/heart. Today was one of those rewarding days in meditation. So often in meditation we get frustrated because we don't have revelations or epiphanies every time we sit and so we give up. It's hard, but I am trying to be persistent and consistent. It's like payday. You have to work a while and then at the end of the pay period, you get a check. So there I was and I had prayed and I had come to a place in my meditation where I was listening, for a change. Really listening.

And I got an answer.

I knew I was listening because I really felt that it wasn't me that gave me that answer. The answer came from the greater Me, the part of me that is Divine, the part of me that I attempt to reach through my yoga practice and my meditation. I recognized that I hadn't just "come up" with an answer. I'd received an answer.

It was a really neat feeling and it reinforced the idea I've mentioned before about the universe taking care of me. In yoga teacher training the other day, we were beginning a meditation and Chris came over and laid a blanket over me. It was a gesture that was tender and nurturing and motherly. What I got from listening today was the same thing. A tender, nurturing gesture from my Mother.

The time and effort to meditate seems to be a small price come pay day.

i begin to wonder

Sometimes I go to yoga class and I really can't help but wonder. Sometimes I have something really pressing on my mind and Chris' closing zen phrase will seem to address me directly, as though she knew. Sometimes I build my intention mentally before class and that night's instructor will ask as a class that we build that very same intention on our mats for that practice. Sometimes I can't help but wonder what it is... How, how, HOW is it always seeming to be in tune with exactly what is going on in my mind? Tonight, our teacher was Mark, who hasn't been to instruct us in 5 weeks. Just last week I realized that my upper body strength was improving vastly. No... I still can't do a push up, but I realized I can lower myself with impressive (to me) control, leading with my chest instead of my hips and... what's more... I can hover. I can hover. I can hold myself an inch off the floor for about 10 seconds without struggling. Wow, I never thought I'd see the day.

Anyway... sure enough, Mark walks in class tonight and almost as though he knew I was mentally tooting my own horn about my great arms... he humbled me. Not with spite, obviously. And not in a way that made me think, "Oh, I'm not so strong as I thought after all." There was no mental frowning. He humbled me but he gave me confidence. He worked my arms. He let them show themselves off (again, only to myself) but he also seemed to let them know that they certainly aren't done. I'm digressing, but it was exciting. It was like my arms were getting a chance to be excited about the adventure that lay before them. Lucky for me Mark will be teaching the next 2 Tuesdays, so they'll probably get some more action, those arms.

The point is... I am beginning to wonder. How much of this "speaking to me" is just chance? How many times can that happen? Could it be that the message is just all encompassing, so it could speak to anyone in any situation? (The thing is, I know I've been skeptical about this kind of stuff and I'm very, very hesitant because the words I'm going to have to use, for lack of any better, are going to have a religious connotation, despite my not intending them to have one at all.) But I really just don't know if I think it's all chance anymore.

Laura said in her blog the other day, "I believe in energy." And I loved that. Simply and beautifully said. So now I'm really thinking I'm on my way to tapping into that energy, that it's really there. I think it's energy that goes by many different names: God, Brahma, Allah, Mother Earth etc etc. But tonight I think I realized it's there. I believe in it. I believe in Energy. It's there for us to touch 24/7. It's speaking to each of us in every moment. All we have to do is come to the moment, to learn to be alive, and it can be ours.