The True Power of Choice

 At times I feel like I'm living on the other side of the veil. Certainly on the side opposite city life though that's a known. I'm speaking of the veil between worlds. The veil between the dimension we know and those we don't. The veil that mystics and meditators speak of reaching. Having spent time with meditation and mysticism, I can say I have often found this idea illusory at best. I have felt bewildered when trying to grasp the reality that there is a life to be lived just a quantum leap away. (In the quantum world, the world of particles and sub-particles that create the world we see, the nucleus of an atom will blink in and out of existence many times (maybe 1000's) per second. It's happening now. Take a moment to feel that in your body: that each nucleus of each atom that build the molecules that make the trillions of cells you know as your 'body', are blinking in and out of existence. Where is the physical matter when it has blinked out of sight? The best guess of physicists is that it moves into another dimension, one perhaps parallel to our own.

Have you ever seen a black and white image that is one picture when you focus on the white and another when you focus on the black? What if our physical reality was similar and we could choose to focus on the parts of ourselves that seem to have 'disappeared?' Is this making any sense? What if we could choose to focus on the parts of us that are infinite rather than limited? What if we could choose everything about our experience? According to Jan Frazier, we can. In her book, When Fear Falls Away: The Story of a Sudden Awakening, she writes that we have always had the choice. In the grips of fear triggered while waiting to receive the results of a mammogram, Ms. Frazier asked spirit for release from fear. Little did she know that the answer to her prayer would result in all of her fear leaving for good. From the absence of fear she realized that fear, anxiety, worry, anger, etc. are choices we make. Think about that for a second...or better yet, try it out: feel fear, feel the worry or anxiety you carry and then decide not to feel it. What happened?

I tried this today and I can report that it works. What I noticed is rather than choosing to feel happy or peaceful, I chose not to feel the anxiety. The difference is that when I have tried to choose peace or joy (which I have done on countless occasions), I only felt the lack of those feelings more intensely. When I tried simply choosing not to be anxious, the space created in anxiety's absence was already peace. Huh, I just realized this is an example of how we are already peace. I didn't have to 'become' peace, I only had to not be my anxiety and in that space, peace was already there. Wow. Seems so obvious now but I guess that's the nature of 'a-ha' moments! Perhaps the difference is that when choosing not to feel, we are acknowledging exactly how we are feeling and when we try to choose or create a reality other than the one of the moment, we are focused on what we aren't feeling. A subtle yet important distinction. Jan Frazier writes:

Maybe until we are ready to opt out of fear, we cannot bear to look in the face of the truth that we really do have a choice. If I don't realize this suit of skin I wear has a zipper, it won't dawn on me I have any choice but to wear the suit, every day—even to die in it. Another way of saying it is this: I have to realize I'm in prison before there's any hope of getting out.

This brings to mind Stephen Cope's 'Twin Pillars of Yoga:' Awareness and Equanimity.

We must be aware of the choices we are making, or choosing not to make, in order to change something. Non-judgment helps us see clearly. The Yoga Sutras begin by saying our suffering comes from the lack of awareness around our true nature. What if we practiced simply choosing not to be or not to act on that which causes us suffering, i.e. worry, guilt, fear, anxiety? If we 'let go' of the idea that these emotions really say something about who we are...gosh, the world would certainly be a different place. Our lives would be different, though as this is something new I'm practicing, not sure what the qualitative difference would be. Can we really live our lives not ruled by fear, anxiety, worry? I'll continue peeking behind the veil, I hope you peek with me.

More coming on this subject, feels like I'm just scratching the surface.

Gratitude

 This morning I am grateful for food. I'm grateful that I can grow it and that I can eat it. This last week has been a tough one. Before I get into that, let me quickly back up tell you what i've been up to the last few weeks.

In my last entry, I said I was going to be taking a series of primitive skills classes. This is the same series that brought my partner to this valley four years ago. I was interested in taking them, not because he did, but for the personal challenge and the knowledge to be gained (back to the earth kind of stuff). When I first moved here last fall, it seemed they weren't going to be held for a whole list of reasons that I won't get into here. Then, a couple of months ago, when it turned out they were going to be held, I jumped on the opportunity even though it meant it would take me away from farm life and helping my man grow food for us this year. I made this decision with his full support. So off I went.

The first week was great! I learned how to use rocks as tools, how to make fire by rubbing sticks together, and began to know a group of like-minded folks who were there for the same teaching. A highlight for me was being asked to teach a breathing segment during our morning circles. It was well received and I loved being able to share that part of myself. 

Ah, how the lustre quickly fades! Part of the shine of the experience faded for me as I became ill, like parasite-ill. Any of you out there had parasites? Not fun. Today is the first morning I woke without a queasy feeling in my stomach. And I actually wanted to eat, which was a huge thing after having no appetite and eating next to nothing for the past ten days. Still not sure what dis-ease process inhabited my body but it did get almost everyone in camp, I was just the lucky first. Thinking it may have been something in the spring water we were drinking, I attritube my years of drinking filtered water to my body's sensitivity to this pathogen. (I'm so grateful for filters! Love you Berkey!)

With so little food for fuel, my energy levels dropped to nearly zero. Fun, Fun! I went home that weekend thinking it was just a bug and i'd be better on Monday. I returned to camp to find out that everyone was in some stage of the bug and I still had no appetite. Not only that, but when I did eat, I felt sick to my stomach. Having returned and not experienced the renewed enthusiasm I was hoping for, I started looking deeper. (I'm grateful for my years at Barbara Brennan for the tools to look deeper!) I asked myself, what is it i'm not able to digest about this experience? What is it I can't stomach? Most of you know my, how can I say...passion(?) for connecting the mind, body, and spirit. This experience, asking myself this question, has again confirmed the power of these connections between one's thoughts, emotions, and physical experience. I am grateful to the universe for providing these opportunities.

Sometimes when there is something one desires to do, like this class for me, one is willing to go through all kinds of hardships to do so. Sometimes these challenges are a part of the learning...well, challenges are always a part of learning...what i'm trying to say is that sometimes the challenges we experience are simply signs telling us this isn't the right path for us. Has anyone experienced that? You're trying to achieve some goal and it feels like you're just constantly running into brick walls. There are times when the brick wall comes down the third or fifteenth time you run into it or you find a way to climb over. Yet, there are those occasions when you stand back from the wall and look at it to notice that you've been trying to travel through a very narrow portion of the path. While standing back and looking objectively at the entire landscape you notice that it's not blocking the whole path and you can easily walk around it if you take a few steps in another direction. Does this resonate with you? It's not the challenge itself, but what we can learn from it.

So my new perspective, my alternative path, is to move home and not live at camp. I'm still looking forward to being involved in classes and learning the skills I signed up for to learn, but there will be more space in my involvement. The culmination of this series is a month-long primitive project. We walk into the forest with stone-age made clothes, gear, and food. This means buckskin clothes, felted blakets, clay and gourd containers, and dried foods. I feel that even with the space I'm creating around the classes, I can still prepare for this stone-age experience. I'll keep you posted.

Having made this decision, I felt a comfort move into my mind, emotions, and lo & behold! My body. So today i'm eating better, haven't felt queasy...only a little off after eating too much lunch (it was soooo good! Thank you Paco's Tacos!). I have no doubt that my susceptibility to this bug was due to my lack of enthusiasm for this class experience. (Note: there are a lot of details about why class wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Most of it has to do with organization and leadership though i'm not going to get into details here.)

Feeling this shift and knowing it was right for me, my next question was: Now that there is all this space created in my summer, what can I do with it? In other words, how am I now to spend my time? This morning I received the gift of meeting a wonderful woman who I have a feeling is an angel who came to show me a possibility. She is a physician involved in many ways with the large number of care-givers in this area. We were talking about a mutual client, whom she sees as a physician and I see as a bodyworker. In the course of our conversation, she invited me to be involved in creating more holistic health awareness in the valley. I thought, wow! this is right up my alley. I can't see the path clearly before me, unable to see what peaks and valleys it holds, but my mind and body and spirit became excited with this possibility. I'll keep you posted on this too!

So who knows what the future holds, I have some ideas and intentions but will I hit more brick walls? (Um, I think yes.) Will they be of the sort to break through or walk around? (Not sure yet.) It takes a lot of willingness to open one's eyes, mind, and heart to see clearly though it has continued to come back to what Joseph Campbell said: Follow your bliss. I pray that I am always willing to do so.

I pray that all of you, in whatever small way, find the part of your path that will bring more joy into your lives. There's no need to bash into those same brick walls over and over again.

Om Lokah Sukhino Bhavantu

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti

Progress not Perfection

In my previous entry, I admitted how I haven't been in my physical practice of yoga. What motivated me to reveal that personal limitation was the idea that if I told everyone where I really was, if I presenced myself, then i'd have to do something about it. (I was feeling like I was letting everyone down, especially myself, by abandoning yoga.) Turns out as soon as I hit 'publish,' my energy shifted and I have found my physical practice again. On the surface, it looks almost nothing like what I was doing before. Jumping off the wagon, leaving yoga behind has changed my body. (Though having been so disconnected from my body before I started yoga, I cannot recall if this current state of degradation is as bad as it was before I started. I have to imagine it can't be because though I have been away, there is a memory of the practice held in my cells.) A few poses I was doing before now seem out of reach and some muscles were simply refusing to move as they had. As I begin moving in a yogic way again, it's as if I am awakening my cells, awakening each muscle fiber slowly and with intention. I have been practicing making connections from one sore place on my body to another and as such, have begun to make a map of my habitual daily movements. I can feel how my legs are twisted from the tightness in my pelvis. I can feel how my lower and mid-back pull the muscles from my neck and shoulders into a tension to help support the imbalance in the pelvis. (See, even when you're body is way out of balance and you feel there is no one who could possibly help you, your body is still supporting you!) 

 

Just moments ago, after chopping wood, walking across the pasture to help clean up some brush, I realized something important. It may be the something that I was hoping for throughout this non-yogic peroid. The revelation that was sure to come about why I was experiencing this lack in my life, why it was difficult for me to stay connected with something that brought me so much joy! Sure, I made an extreme change in my life, but the biggest difference wasn't changing scenes from East to West, from city to farm. It wasn't going from years of single-hood to living with my partner into his 12x24 foot home. It was that I completely changed what I was habitually doing with my body. Back east, I taught yoga. I lived and breathed yoga so when I wasn't teaching or with clients, I was still thinking about it, reading about it, talking about it. Most of my day was spent in some form of yogic movement in or out of the classroom and truly, I had a fair amount of downtime readily available as I chose to take. As soon as I moved here, days after my actual arrival, I was gathering dead trees for firewood and moving bales of hay. Instead of intentional yogic movement, instead of 'practice,' I was now moving my body all day long in a rural-farm kinda way. At the end of the day, I was too tired to 'practice.' I was sore and couldn't move the way I was used to. In the morning, waking with the sun to begin work all over again, I chose sleep over 'practice.'. When I had a break, I was eating and there was no 'letting your food digest' time if you wanted to 'practice.' There seemed to only be space for maintenance stretches. For me that was shoulder stretches (remember that shoulder flow i'd warm up with in class) with supine hamstring and hip stretches. Shortly after or sometimes while being supine, i'd move to 'sleep-ine.' Anyway, my focus back east was: how do I do this yoga thing?  My focus now is: How do I do this living thing?

I hope that doesn't, in any way, sound pretentious. There seems to be a big difference between the two though I suspect that, somehow, each is contained within the other in a yin/yang way.

Soon I will be starting a series of primitive skills classes. I'll be learning how to make fire, make tools from stone, how to prepare wild foods, and how to outfit myself in buckskin clothing. As this series will take me away from the farm there will be more time to practice these new ways of movement and living I've been exploring, ways that are more in line with what we were designed for and capable of (does anyone still believe we were designed to sit in chairs all day long from the time we started kindergarten?!). I also suspect, or perhaps simply hope, that focusing on movement in this new way will have me doing handstands and scorpion pose SANSKRIT, in no time. Whether I achieve these poses or not, I'm excited about being consciously aware of this evolution of my practice and my body. I'd like to share this journey with you as I explore what all of this means. If you have any thoughts or ideas to share, i'd love to start a dialogue.  

Namaste.

The Inevitability of and Resistance to Change

The fourth translations of Wu Li is “I Clutch My Ideas.” This is appropriate to a book on physics since the history of science in general often has been the story of scientists vigorously fighting an onslaught of new ideas. This is because it is difficult to relinquish the sense of security that comes from a long and rewarding acquaintance with a particular world view.”

I'm struck by the inevitability of the change that is happening all around me. The tsunami/earthquake in Japan, the anti-union bill in Wisconsin and Indiana. It brings me to wonder why i'm not more actively participating in my own evolution. I mean, all these things are happening whether we participate or not, especially Mother Nature's growing pains...or are they death throes? Guess we'll find out. (I like to believe the Earth will outlive us longer than we've been a species walking upon her.) So yeah, my own evolution. I feel it intensely as the seasons move towards spring. Six months of living here and much has changed. The biggest change has come from not being in my physical yoga practice. I stress the word 'physical' because i've been deeply involved in a moment to moment mindfulness practice. It feels as if this 'mental' yoga has taken center stage to the physical because of the transition of moving to another coast and moving in with my boyfriend. A necessary practice as it is super helpful to be aware of what's mine and what is the other's when you are meeting new people all the time and meeting all the different sides of the person you've chosen to co-habitate with. A good friend of mine is in the midst of a move towards co-habitation as her boyfriend moves in to her open loft-style condo. What were the words she used? I only remember the sense of her anticipation, for better or worse.

Anyway, the lack of a yoga practice has been changing my body. I feel out of balance. Was it my imagination the other day and this morning looking at the noticeable differences in my right vs. left legs? I think of the challenge of re-building my body with a regular practice. I know it's possible. I've seen it happen. But am I strong enough? Am I strong enough mentally and emotionally for that kind of commitment. Compared to this, making the commitment to my partner and to a new home seems easy. Can I commit to moving towards my highest potential for health and wholeness? If change is inevitable, my physical form is going to change no matter what, why not help it reach health. The lack of healthy choices leads to transformation anyway though it feels the result of this option would be way less comfortable.

If change in the world that we live in is inevitable, why not make choices that are for health and wholeness? Why stick with the status quo? It seems irresponsible to pretend what we do and how we live can't affect change in the world though i'm working not to motivate myself negatively (thought pattern: you must make these changes for the good of the entire planet!). Mostly because there's no need for it...just as there's no need for negative political ads. Sure, it may work but it's way less comfortable. Although I just had a thought that for some, and certainly for myself at different times in my life, the discomfort of making an 'irresponsible' choice is less than the discomfort of the possiblity of failure to achieve wholeness.

What started this train of rambling thought was reading (in Gary Zukav's Dancing Wu Li Masters) about the enormity of different paradigm shifts in our history—like Newton's physics and Copernicus' proof the earth was not the center of the universe—and how almost everyone at the time couldn't believe that such a change is possible not because it couldn't be true but because of the implications on their way of life. These ideas changed everything! And in this day and age, all signs are pointing to a similar radical change in how we view our world. Quantum physics says that nothing exists and what we perceive as reality is really just fields of energy interacting. Our entire universe is simply the relationships of different fields of energy to one another. The world events we are experiencing as seemingly separate from ourselves are actually events that we relate to as individuals. So what does this mean for our relationship to ourselves? Are we brave enough to step into the new paradigm and make conscious choices for wholeness?

Thanks for reading my this rambling. Sometimes these thoughts interweave through my brain in ways that are difficult to grasp and I wonder if it makes any sense when I try to relate it in writing.

Pros and Cons

The Road into the Methow Valley

I know it's been a while since you've heard from me. All I can say is that i've been immersed in the experience of the now watching how often that moments of now are spent in contemplation of the future or reacting as if the past is now. As I get to know this valley I'm struck by the following:

Con: Living in a small community there may be days where you don't see anyone outside the small group you're living with. The small group for me is my boyfriend, 2 other people who we share a kitchen with, and the owners of the farm. Though, we may not see the owners for days. It can feel isolated at times

Pro: Time spent together is precious and real...and these people like to party! Most events encourage costumes like the roller skating party, the Hot party (friends crank their fire up so the room is heated to over 100 degrees), and casino night. 

 

Pro: The mountains are beautiful and (as stated above) there aren't many people around. No matter what the weather, rain or shine, the mountains around here are stunning. Every day I am amazed at where I am living. Oh, and there is a group of citizens strongly concerned with keeping this area the way it is...as in limited development, a.k.a. no condos or sub-divisions.

Con: Mountains get snow storms that are difficult to drive in. So far, every time i've had to drive to Seattle or back home from Seattle, there's been a snow storm. Last night a 4 hour drive took 6 hours and by the time I got to the airport, I was shaking all over. I've been wondering about my car karma...

Con: Having to stay in a hotel because the mountain passes are too treacherous to be driving on in the middle of the night.

Pro: Well, first, not crashing in the middle of the night, but more importantly: my boyfriend gets to ski a foot of fresh powder at Stevens Pass. Can you say epic.

Con: Living in a little cabin without running water means lots of peeing outside, often in the cold.

Pro: Waking in the pre-dawn hours to relieve oneself as the moon is setting, you may hear the great horned owls hooing their mating calls back and forth. Beautiful... and peeing outside is way better than sitting on a freezing cold toilet seat.

Con: (OK, this is a confession) I've been out of my yoga practice for months.

Pro: I understand in a more real way the advantages of a consistent practice. Also, I've been turning my activities (feeding goats, mixing plaster, chopping wood, snowboarding) into a practice. The increase in mindfulness is great though my body is feeling the effects of being out of practice.

Con: Missing people back home

Pro: I love living here and hope you come to visit.