Short Meditation on Awareness

I feel a shedding of skin. A molting process like a snake goes through when it outgrows its old skin and transforms into newer skin, or a skin that can handle his being and patterning. This meditation on the Gita, one of Yoga's sacred texts describes the process well. The more awareness we can grow into our soma's, a Greek term for body, mind and spirit, the better able we are to navigate life here impacting our life's purpose and choices in the moment; moment by moment.

"The Gita describes spiritual growth as an evolution from darkness to light – from ignorance to full awareness of our unity with the rest of life. Darkness is self-will, ignorance of the needs of others, preoccupation with our own private concerns and prejudices. Being angry, being greedy, being afraid is living in darkness. In this state we cannot see those around us, cannot see life as it is.

"Yet, the Gita says, we don’t have to stay where we are. We don’t have to say, 'Well, I am just what my cells and chromosomes are, what my conditioning is, what my parents or my school made me to be.' We can emerge out of this darkness, through our own endeavor, by drawing upon our deepest resources within.

"Through the practice of meditation and allied disciplines, we can slowly push ourselves from darkness into light. This brings certain on going challenges, and no matter how long a person has been meditating, everyone can benefit from keeping some simple guidelines in mind every day."

– Eknath Easwaran

Flashback

This weekend I started my 500 hour part 1 training of Yoga Therapy. I was hemming and hawing a bit on it because I was not sure I really could bite off this training and still have the downtime I needed to create, write, be present to myself and my family, and continue my deepening in SourcePoint Therapy. But then I flipped the logic on its head. I decided to go for it, and use the training for my own self care and deepening of being an educator that can support people healing themselves.

During the training we learned more ways to heighten our interior awareness of our bodies and how they function in the world. We began to peak into our patterns and habits and see others patterns and habits with deep love and reverence and support one another on the way toward freedom by inhabiting our bodies. More fully, more readily, and with more function and freedom, a steady ease. As I worked through the various sessions in somayoga I had a moment where I recalled driving on Cretin Ave. in St. Paul, the sun was shining, the clouds fluffy and perfectly floating in the deep blueness of the sky, and I realized with such reverence and awe how lucky I was to be alive, in this body at this time with this life. I was freaking in love with my life, with my body in all its glory and with all its imperfections, they were part of my beauty instead of something I needed to fix or heal or get rid of in order to be happy....it was blissful. I was blissed out. And I caught myself being blissed out sitting at one of the red lights on Cretin Ave and Hwy 94. And people I was wildly happy, and no major event was happening I was driving from here to there. That was it. I was on my way. I gratefully was able to witness this moment about myself. Take a snapshot of it, tuck it away. And I remember feeling like this is a glimpse of how some live all the time and bravely wondering could I? Today I recalled that moment and was blissed out knowing it existed.

Photo by Elizabeth Sullivan

As I was having this remembering...I had this beautifully written piece What the dying really regret... sent to me, and then came home from training to this piece in my newsfeed from Momastery...

For so many years, while I lost my hair, I kept telling myself, you will be happy again when you have hair. Or imagine myself and how happy I would be when I did have hair. And a faint whisper would say, but maybe you need to be happy now even without hair. And a fainter whisper said, maybe you need to love your body as it is, and let it bloom again. And a fainter whisper yet, said maybe you need to stop ignoring your body, as it calls out to you, screams at you to listen, to pause, to pay attention, to be in it. Really in this body, not a spirit floating above it, not a mind revving its engine, running it, but a full body experiencing this world, this life as it is now. One of the beliefs I was raised with was that we get one life, and that brings us to the afterlife, which is either Heaven or Hell or purgatory. This thought filled me with fear. With the belief that I had to get it right or else...and the or else was frightening. Thank God, I no longer believe this! Right now is heaven. Right now is what there is, and there is love and abundance if we chose it, and we are energy and energy changes but it does not go away. Isn't that a possibility? That we transform, and what we do now informs what we will do if we come around again, but the next time we come around might look similar or vastly different, but it will never be the same beauty as now in this moment in this life in this body. This is a curiosity I am playing with and an invitation I am exploring as I become more embodied and more in love with this amazing physical tool I have to experience this stunning world! Love wins. Always.

"It would be something like 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' Also, stay open to whatever life presents you with, because it will teach you something if you'll let it. It's about keeping an unbiased heart and mind. A lot of it is forming an unconditional friendship with yourself as you begin to see all the stuff you've been running away from."    -Pema Chodron

Differences

You caught yourself musing over lines, strokes, differences on a predawn run the other day. The difference in three strokes. Three markings. Their directions can make a difference between a capitol A and a capitol Z. Each have three strokes. Yet the letters vary in placement, meaning, and usage greatly.You sit here at night as you write still considering this as you hear the West Seventh cross-country train sound its horn warning the city of its impending approach. A soundtrack that plays in the backdrop of your life. So many sounds that go unnoticed. This train zooms through here with urgency over tracks that are a mile away from your home in Saint Paul, and yet the train's whistle can instantaneously place you in the backyard of the rail yard at the Santa Fe Hotel where this train first came into your awareness. This train is one of the same trains that sits there, where you used to live. The pale yellow box car with the words Santa Fe painted on it in fading red letters. Yes, that box car you noted from your hotel window has passed you at the tracks in Saint Paul and you have sat in your car and watched, as your boys in the back seat delighted at the sight of so many cars, such a long train, passing before their eyes.

Today you swam in the Highland Pool for the first time without a swim cap, without a hair covering, in front of others. You battled and played with the sound track that floated through your mind with each stroke as you did lap after lap of 100's. I wonder what my spotty hair growth looks like to others. Should I have worn the swim cap? You extend your arm scooping water that is in front of you back as you swim. These thoughts like that faint whistle sounding off, a whistle that many nights goes unnoticed. You begin to sense and feel your body from the inside out. Letting the outside judgements float away. Let yourself know yourself from within. You watch. You play being the witness of your thoughts that the practice of yoga, of meditation, of running invite you to be with your life. You watch as your little self shrinks. The thoughts that can pull you down, thoughts that can make you sink without enough ability to catch your next inhale get pushed behind you with your next arm stroke and your feet flutter kick them away.

In between your training plan's laps you rest standing in the shallow end, head above water, playing with the plunge between watching others watch you and the self consciousness that comes from that, and you watching yourself as you moved through water, now standing tall to rest, letting the thoughts move through you. Pulling yourself back toward thoughts of love. Thoughts of  I am enough as I am.  This leads you into playful territory. Into playing with breathing on your left side of your freestyle and alternating your breath between arm cycles. Extending your exhale to naturally lengthen your inhale. Hair, no hair. Three strokes. Covering up. Not covering up. A. Z. Caring. Not caring. Playing with "both and ands" and shedding the "either or" mentality. Letting go of right and wrong thinking and allowing yourself to experiment, to play with cause and effects. Tomorrow you will run the annual trail race at Afton Alps, a 25k, and you've been there before, but this time it is different. And as you conclude this post, the whistle of the passing train sounds in the distance and you become aware again.

Alpha & Omega

When your last name ends in Z you know where you will land in the pages of the morning obituaries; the last page. And quite possibly the last person to be announced that you died that day. You know that your obit will be called up by clicking page 5 of 5, like you did the day your friend's dad died, to read about him--and learn more about her. You know this because with certainty, no letter comes after Z in the English language. But what comes after death?

Maya Angelou's obit would loom before the section of the obituaries. Her death announced on the front page of newspapers would also come on the first page of the obituary section because of the luck of the draw her last name had when it began with the letter A. So many letters fall in-between. You rooted further down the line of letters when you married, going from E to S.

You wonder about the in-between, the pause between the exhalation and the inhalation, the pause that gives rise to the next movement of breath you take for granted until it is no longer present, and what remains is your life settled in print on page. You wonder will you go out on the in breath, or the out like your writing teacher, Natalie, once asked. And the dramatic pause that lives between the inhalation and the exhalation, how big will it be? (And yet, in your study of breath, you learned a little trick if you want to lengthen your inhalation focus on a longer exhalation it will happen without force on the inhalation and you will feel calmer.)

Sometimes like today, the ferns blowing in the wind with the summer sun shining on the greenness of the earth you wonder at yourself and how much you take being in a body for granted. How you just presume your life will follow day after day. Sometimes this presumption when it rises to the surface catches you off guard, takes your breath away, and your heart aches at how much you will miss this life when it is no longer your life. It's sometimes a dull ache and other times quite sharp. You feel your breath, and your body spiraling into form and light and pattern, and you can feel your heart center opening to receive more of what your life has to offer, and you think you are preparing to fly. Yet, some voice inside says humans don't fly. You are told yogis do, and can and you wonder its truthfulness? You feel that sacred soft space at your back body between your shoulder blades where they meet your spine, and you imagine your wings growing out from that soft heart center and expanding like angel wings--shimmery and strong, shades of white iridescent light. And you sit a little taller while you sit on your front stoops watching those ferns sing in the wind.

You sit, amazed at all that was hidden in the winter months from your view, all that slumbered beneath the thick sheets and layers of ice and snow and polar winds. These ferns you think would never survive that howling wind that whipped through the landscape carving out crusted snow dunes, yet they laid buried beneath snow and ice and soil. And you remember your delight when your footing fell through the snow's crust in March giving way to the promise that the greens of the earth would once again reveal itself, because you began to wonder if it would. Your winter so cold.

When your seven year old boy returned home from school angry at being left out and hurting himself on the playground during free time, you were certain that some sunshine and grass on his bare feet would reconnect him to his goodness, his shiny self, his body. And so, you knelt down as he splayed himself defeated on the douglas fir porch floor and peeled off his shin high socks inviting him and his bare feet back outside to the earth's green carpet. Reluctant he went. And you watched him, and wondered about the final retreat back to the earth's soil is it met with reluctance? Do you return to your body with resistance? Do you find your breath with revere? Does loving yourself mean as Thich Naht Hahn states you come back to your body over and over again, saying "Hello body, I will take care of you....You're body is a wonder." And like that your heart wings grow.