Apologies in advance

When we preface a sentence with "I'm sorry but..." What are we really doing? Are we sorry? And for what? telling the truth? Expressing who we really are? 

I'm not saying there isn't a time or place to apologize. Socially, we need to pull that out time and time again. Also, there are times when we do or say something that is so out of present moment we are just trying to clean up the karmic mess we laid down. But even then, we learned from out "mistake." We learned that what we just said or did was coming from a place outside our big self Self (not that there is a place that is outside of out self, but for purposes of this discourse, it's all I got from a language point of view.) and why should we be sorry for growing? Oh yeah, that's from back in the day where we started finding a way that was a outside of the social and ethical rules laid sown by our parents, where they got scared and tried to scare us straight into their way of thinking. 

So what is an apology except for something that we use to mask who we really are. Stop apologizing for your Self. It's an act of love to be your fullness and express your point of view for that same place of fullness. What is there to be sorry for? It's as if we are apologizing for being born, and hey, our birth wasn't all on us.

So maybe Ali and what's his name got it right. Maybe "love means never having to say you're sorry." When you love yourself.

#lovestory

Good Grief!

Good Grief Charlie Brown!

Grief. A powerful force. Today is the second anniversary of my sister's death, and I feel it. I'm feeling it now. And I'm glad about that. Because grief can be good, because it may be necessary.

Last year, I wrote about how it hit me like a tidal wave, literally knocking my feet out from under me, to the degree that I completely forgot that I was supposed to teach a very important and packed yoga class for my boss! That really woke me up to the power of this force.

This year, I am awake in a different way. I knew that it might happen, so I was prepared to not take certain things personally. And it came. And still amazed me with the power of this state of being. I don't' really know what to call it yet  - emotion, state of being, state of consciousness, deity, devil? Doesn't really matter, but is an interesting idea to ponder at another time.

Present moment grief can provide an opportunity to release past pain. All those tears we stuff. All those emotions we pretend we don't have that can get stored in the body and the mind. Sometimes a big ol' wave of grief can be just the ticket to setting them free, providing them the time and space they need to fulfill their destiny. Providing me time and space to allow that to happen without judgement of them, or even judgement of myself, as I watch snot run out of my nose in front of a class where I'm supposed to look like a "yoga teacher." Well here's a news flash: Yoga Teachers Have Snot, Too

Maybe that will be an article in some high powered magazine someday.

So in the present moment, I still feel the joys and pain of my everyday life as I carry a wave with me until I cry what I need to cry, how I need to cry it, and for the right amount of time. And with each tear, I let go of the pain of childhood teasing, parental criticism, love life disappointments, career choices that went nowhere, etc...  And I'm ok with that. Because this is part of what life looks like sometimes. And on another day, another year, it will be different.

So if you have anniversaries where the wave of grief comes to town, prepare. Set your intention for how you will ride that wave. Will you blame, judge, criticize? Or will you assimilate and eliminate? No right or wrong. I can tell you which one is more fun.

Did I just say grief can be fun? Yes. Because waking up is where it's at, and it's a very loud alarm clock.

Thank you sister of mine for providing me more opportunities to see and experience an even bigger picture. I love you.

The new 100%

When did 120% become the new 100%? Someone mentioned or somewhere and it stuck. We thought more than the full package- 100%, was better. To work at 100 percent capacity was now not enough. Somehow, we had to figure out how to work more than we were capable of. And at what cost. Because there's always a cost. 

Today, a yoga student reminded me of something I mentioned in a yoga class once- "work at 80%. Why? To put less stress on your joints and ligaments so they will last longer." Pretty smart. And that could explain why my classes aren't packed to the gills. But at some point, 80% might become the new 100%. Because just because your car can go to 100 mph, doesn't mean you should drive it like that all the time for longevity, efficiency, or even gas mileage. 

What if we consumed 20% less? Is less really more? Who says that? And who believes it? Because if it's true, then 80 might actual be 100 without the wear and tear.

Are you ready to be a trendsetter and go for 80? 

#trending80percent #losethatfreshman20

Dream on

Dreams. We have them. They are ephemeral, not solid, therefore we call them fiction. They are not real life. Or are they? Not real physical life anyway, where we wake up every morning, like Goundhog Day, slogging it out over and over until we get it right, or until we die. In our physical life, we have dreams of a better physical life. "Living the dream" and all. In this way we put dreams on a bit of a pedestal. Because we can imagine any reality we want, we make them better than, greater than, that which is physically happening. Some of us live for the dream. It motivates us, inspires us, keeps us going in hopes of a better life.

And then there are dreams when we sleep. How is it that these astral creations have the same name as the aspirations of our desires? These dreams that "happen" when we are "asleep." These dreams that can be nightmares. I don't want to get into the nightmares right now. I just want to talk about one of my favotlrite subjects- consciousness. 

It is proven that rest is one of the best healers. When we go to sleep, we rest. We go unconscious. We may or may not remember our dreams. We may or may not know we are dreaming when we dream. We are asleep. When we start to wake up to dreaming, and we become conscious in and of our dream state- then what? Will we be able to rest? To sleep? No. We will be awake. Awake 24/7. Conscious all day, every day. And isn't that what waking up is? Being conscious? Super conscious? Isn't it's what we want for ourselves? 

So why do we resist waking up? You know we do. We create excuses to go unconscious. To not do yoga. To not meditate. To keep making Matter matter more than anything because it's the Real Thing baby! Maybe because part of us needs a break from our Matter, our dual world of right and wrong/good and bad, and if we are awake all the time we won't get a break from ourselves. 

Something to think about. 

The answer? First of all, I suggest lightening up and taking the pressure off. Get some space. Then start to make things less black and white, good/bad. Blur the edges by seeing a bigger picture. Walk a mile in someone else's moccasins. Then we won't resist and fear our own awakening. We will also be more accepting of what is, and we won't feel like failures when our dreams and physical reality don't converge. 

And in the meantime, get some rest.

Mothers Day

We all have or had a mother. She grew us for up to nine months. We took over her body like a parasite and when we grew large enough to survive life outside of the womb, we came out. Beautifully, painfully, all of it. We embodied all of it.

So this is for the children of mothers on Mother's Day. Lower your expectations of your mother. She did the job that gave you life. For those 9 months, we ran her show, we were her body, her mind. Her world was our world. 

Now we are adults. Are we still looking to our mothers for life support? For sustanence? For approval? For anything?  During those 9 months in the womb, we got into the habit of depending, expecting, counting on life support from the outside- from our mothers. We forgot that in the very beginning, before we attached to the wall via the umbilical cord, we had a yolk sac and we actually fed ourselves. During that time, we didn't eat what our mothers ate. We took care of ourselves. 

Many of us forgot this after we attached to the uterine wall and took over the body of our host. As we grew up, we continued to expect things from our mothers- behaviors, food, money, comfort, approval, safety, etc... Maybe it's time to remember that we can look to ourselves for these things and stop expecting them to magically come from mothers or mother figures to fill our needs. 

Thanks mom, for continuing to mother me past my time. Maybe our gift to our mothers  is their independence. We will no longer suck you dry with expecting you to fill our every physical and emotional need. We will grow up and free your psychic space. We will stand on our own two feet in gratitude for this gift of life that we will not squander. We will lower our expectations of you so we can love and see you as a regular person and bestow the courtesies we share with strangers. And maybe we will take care of you for a change. Not because we have to, or  because it's our duty, or a karmic debt. But because, as we drop our expectations, we see you as a fellow human who is just trying to figure it out like the rest of us.

I love you Mom. Thanks for the whole bloomin thang that it my life. I wouldn't be me without you.

The Caring Conundrum

Caring is sharing. Caring is what good and nice people do. We are taught to care. But what does that mean exactly? And to what end? I think caring is great, as long as it is coming from a place of non-attachment. A place where we aren't attached to the outcome, and we don't have grandiose expectations regarding the fruits of our caring. As long as we can care from a place of clarity, then we won't create more karma for ourselves and others. If I pretend to care, but sit there silently in judgement, what kind of karma am I creating? I believe that it's the judgments, aka the emotional charge that we carry, that creates karma. I believe that if we are acting from clarity, and a place of non attachment then we are not racking up charges on the old karma card. 

So the conundrum is to care or not to care? Not exactly. It's to pay attention to what we are caring about and get honest with ourselves about what and why we care. Then we can start assessing th,e cost of caring and see if we can afford it. We may not like what we see at first. But if we can start by not getting down on ourselves while we figure it out, it's a start. And then we can begin to dig ourselves out of any karmic hole we created. 

And if you are a person who cleanly cares, awesome! It's great to see how it's done! It may it look like what we think it should, or it might. Because if a person cleanly cares, there is an element of not caring that goes along with it. A clean care comes with the part that the carer doesn't care what other people think. It takes guts to really care and not care simultaneously. That's the conundrum. Jesus cared so much that he didn't care how many people's feelings he was hurting when he agreed to do the cross thing. Socrates didn't care how many people he left behind when he chose hemlock over life for the sake of his truth. And I believe that when we get really clear, we even lose the attachment to Truth. But that's another story for another day.

Another question. Another conundrum. Another thing to care or not care about. And I do care about caring. I just want to be clear about what I'm caring about.

Another load

I realized something about myself. As far as household tasks go, i choose laundry. Of all the things on my list, there is something satisfying about doing laundry. There is a clear beginning, middle, and end to laundry. I see the bins. They are full. I wash. Dry. Fold. Put away. I see the bins. They are empty.

Unlike the proverbial "laundry list" with the never ending spin cycle in my brain that keeps churning task after task. The list never ends. But laundry. It gets done and I get to experience satisfaction of seeing empty bins. I get to feel like I actually accomplished a measurable task. That feels good.So does clean underwear.

So take a load off. Do a load and see the empty bin. Empty is space. And space is infinite.