PopRocks Chocolate

PopRocks Chocolate

Monday, December 21, 2009

Snow and Joy



Wow! Almost two feet of snow! Woo hoo!
The above picture is of the Twisp River Valley in Washington state where I will be headed soon...and I feel better prepared after this weekend's snow fall. So, I am celebrating with all you fellow snow lovers out there.


Today's entry is for all the non-snow lovers out there, for those of you grumbling and irritated that snow has fallen and there's nothing you can do about it (also for lovers of negativity in general)...here is your perfect opportunity to practice Sutra II.33: Vitarka bhadhane pratipaksha bhavanam. “When disturbed by negative thoughts, simply think the opposite.” Practicing this in circumstances where it's obvious we can do little about the external circumstances makes it easier to recall in less obvious circumstances that we always have a choice.


Choice is our gift. We always have the power to choose, if not our external circumstances, how we feel about the external circumstances. When we can't change the situation, we can change our mind about the situation. We can choose a different mindset, or at the very least, we can be in acceptance of the situation or mindset we are currently in. We've all heard this a million times but how often do we actually practice it? I feel that the above sutra offers us a simple way to practice. Even if the 'opposite' thought feels ridiculous, it at the very least allows an opportunity for us to laugh at ourselves. For example, when thinking something like: 'that driver is an idiot! He shouldn't have been given a driver's license!' the opposite may sound like, 'I am so happy this driver is here in front of so I can witness his driving skills. Thank you, unknown driver, for giving me this opportunity.' Sounds a little ridiculous, but the point is that negativity is lessened.


Another great opportunity to practice this will most likely be with our families this holiday season. Many say we don't choose our relatives...there's an old saying about it that I can't recall in the moment...so what do we do? Do we continue to allow ourselves to be disturbed by things we cannot change? Or can we perhaps try a little acceptance? If this is a completely new concept to you, I encourage you to try it and watch, feel, see what happens. The results may surprise you.


With love and patience,
Blessings to all

Thursday, December 17, 2009

That Darn Cat!


Good day friends,
This abundance practice has been fun! The other day I couldn't stop laughing as I was brought face to face, or face to tail, with the clarity that asking for abundance opens you to more than having more money. Let me explain. 
 
I have a 20-pound cat at home who acts as if he's never been fed and loved. Yes, that's him above, his name is Jasper. In the morning he begs for food as if he hasn't eaten it days.  If he doesn't see me jumping out of bed to fulfill his needs, he moves to his obsessive licking habit as if he could nourish himself with paper's fiber content.  A noise that is sure to motivate me in some direction. This particular morning I was chanting my abundance mantra sitting on my bed. I hadn't yet made it out of bed but because I simply sat up, Jasper assumed food was on the way and he ran to the dish. It didn't take long for him to realize I wasn't following so he returned to my room and, as I was in the middle of my chanting practice, proceeded to begin licking every book in his path. The noise being like nails on a chalkboard to me, I found myself quickly becoming agitated. “Om Shrim Maha Lakshmiyei Swaha, please grant me an abundance of patience. Om Shrim Maha Lakshmiyei Swaha, I pray to spirit, please more patience! Om Shrim Maha Lakshmiyei Swaha, Spirit, grant me an abundance of what it is i need if it's not patience!  Om Shrim Maha Lakshmiyei Swaha, ...Jasper!” I broke my concentration to clap my hands loudly, Jasper jumped, stopped licking, and proceeded to sit watching me as I finished my 108 rounds...as if it was the most natural and relaxed thing in the world for him to do.  Ok, so I'm still praying for patience.

Later that day, as I practiced Yin Yoga where the postures are held for 5 minutes each, Jasper grants me another opportunity for patience. I was folding forward with my forehead on a block in an intense hip stretch called 'shoelace' (it's like cow face, gomukhasana). As I struggled to maintain serenity and awareness of the sensations in my hips, Jasper comes in and starts rubbing against the block. Remember, this cat is 20 pounds so every time the block was 'nudged,' it was threatened to be knocked over. (Nudgenberg is one of his nicknames...think Hindenberg) Boom, boom, boom...head knocks into the block, butt from the right, butt from the left, purr purr purr...and just as I can't take it anymore I begin to giggle and laugh until finally I give in to his quest for love and move pet the beast. Wouldn't you know it, just at the moment I reach to for him he runs away! 
 
Is there a lesson here? Other than the opportunity to practice tracking my emotions through the experience, I was gifted with abundance of joy. I could have remained angry & irritated and instead was filled with laughter. I was granted the opportunity for my mantra practice to be about more than money. Sometimes it seems that all of our problems will be solved if only we had that extra money. Another $100 in my pocket wouldn't have stopped Jasper's behavior...though maybe I could buy one of those fancy self-serving cat dishes...

Abundance and Peace to you all, namaste.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Abundance Experiment

This week I started two abundance experiments.  The first comes from Jerry and Esther Hicks book Ask and It is Given and it it called 'The Wallet Process'.  They suggest carrying a $100 bill in your wallet and mentally spend it as often as you like before it is actually spent.  They say it won't work as effectively without the bill, so it could be whatever amount you choose, because you want to cultivate the feeling of actually spending the money.  So far it has been fun and I've mentally spent the $100 three times.  So instead of generating a feeling that I have no money to spend, I am generating a feeling that I have spent $300!  The Hicks' work was the basis for the popular book The Secret and by generating these feelings that I have this money to spend, this money will be mine to spend.  

The other abundance experiment is to chant to the Goddess Lakshmi for 40 days.  I will be chanting the mantra "Om Shrim Maha Laksmiyea Swaha" 108 times for 40 days.  I started yesterday.  I'll let you know how it goes!

OH, and here's one more practice for cultivating feelings of peace.  Visit the Global Coherence Initiative at www.glcoherence.org.  Play around on their website, visit their Global Care Room and sit with feelings of compassion and peace for Earth for however long you care to.  They have a wonderful image of the globe that spins lit up wherever there is a person signed in.   It's beautiful. Last night I was there and even though there were only 5 other dots on the globe, it created amazing feelings of connection and peace over the globe. (The other dots were in Alaska, Peru, & Australia)


Wishing you all abundance and peace

Friday, December 11, 2009

A Beginning

Hello fellow yogis!
It's been my wish for a long time to write a column, or a blog as they're called in this day and age. I've started and stopped, written lots of pieces but never got there because of the thousands of excuses I would create. Excuses such as: 'It won't be good,' 'no one will read it,' and my favorite, 'I don't have time.' Well, there's no time like the present! How many times have we heard and used that phrase without stopping to think what it really means?

The first Yoga Sutra states, “Atha yoga anushasanam: Now, the discipline of yoga” Now, not before, not later, but now. We have an image of our timeline with the present moment as an insignificant little dot, the line of the past extending infinitely behind, and the line of the future extending infinitely forward. Has anyone ever experienced the future as present? It may be easier to believe that the past comes into the present when we recall emotions, memories...yet, is that old moment really in the here and now? A teacher once described an alternate timeline in which the entire 'line' that we perceive to be past, present, and future, is in fact, all this present moment. So why is this a transformative idea?

With this new image of the present moment as the entirety of time, we may become more aware of how often does our mind reaches back into the past or dreams into the future. Both of these actions bring us out of the present moment, bring us out of contact with what is here in front of us now. We may miss a great opportunity, perhaps one we have always wished for, because our image we created in our mind does not match how it actually arrives. When we pull our past experiences into the present, we color that moment with what our history tells us, limiting the possibilities for the experience of the now. We often see this in relationship when we react to someone in a way we habitually reacted to another (say, our parents) in the past. We forget that this person isn't the other. We confuse past and present.

These ways our mind continuously pulls us forward and backwards, round and round, are called vritti or 'turnings' of the mind. The second yoga sutra states, “Yogash chitta vritti nirodah: Yoga is the cessation of the turnings of the mind.” Yoga, unification, happens when we can quiet the mind, when we become aware that we are not our thoughts, there is something, someone watching the thoughts that stays the same no matter where we are pulled in our mind. This watcher is the Purusha, or true seer. The third sutra: “Tada drashtuh svarupevasthanam :Then the Seer rests in it's own nature.” This Seer is the unchanging, non-judgmental, observing part of ourselves. The watcher of our thoughts, actions, feelings. If you are watching your thoughts and hear yourself labelling, judging, naming that which you are observing, than this is still the mind. The Purusha is just behind that curtain. It's the part of you that heard the judging, labelling or whatever. It is the part of our selves that is eternal, infinite, divine. “Otherwise,” sutra four, “the Self believes itself to be the turnings of the mind: Vritti sarupyam itaratra.”

Some say these four sutras describe the entirety of yoga practice. Some say that simply the first is the totality of yoga and all others describe that one. Being in the now, this moment here, where neither past or future exist, brings the mind to stillness and the Purusha, our infinite nature is revealed. And please, don't trust my words, try it out! How about now?