Buried!

What are the masks that we all hide behind? And what is behind those layers? It's Halloween. We get the thrill of putting on a mask and dressing up as something other than ourselves because we love to live out a persona. Especially when the mask is in stark contrast to one's true character: the most docile person in the office dressing up as the Wicked Witch of the West or your mom dressing up like Rambo. We have our laughs, we make the jokes, we revel in the fun. Yet the moment comes later that night when we are alone at the bathroom sink, the wig comes off, we wash off the makeup, and once we've rinsed our face, we lift our gaze and take a good, hard look at the fresh face in the mirror. There you are, staring right back into your own eyes, almost surprised to see that face again. What is behind all those layers?

It's like we are all dressed as mummies, wrapped with layers of things that hide our true form, layers of identity of what I think I am: my profession, my opinions, cynicism, emotions, tensions, attachments, preferences, and prejudices. Those are a mask. To see the mummy in all its bandages is a poor likeness of the radiant being beneath. And yoga is the practice of peeling off the bandages, even just a little, to see what's between the layers. We've all had a look at one time or another. It's brilliant. It's both the most simple and sublime yet natural thing ever.  I believe that I may never get to see fully what's under my layers, but I hope for enough of those small glimpses of the real stuff that I may begin to piece together a sense of what my True Self looks like.  

Sometimes it's hard to take off that mask, especially if we've worn it for a long time and we've come to identify with it a bit too much; the adhesive was a little too effective and it hurts to rip it off. This is the point of our practice: becoming familiar enough with what's underneath the layers that identifying with anything other than our True Self seems as absurd as the ninja outfit we were wearing. And with a little skill, we learn to look at others and see what's behind their mask, because we've seen a glimpse of the same stuff in ourselves. We all have the mask and that's part of the practice, too-learning to see the mask as just that and laugh and enjoy the fun, just like a Halloween party, because we all know there is something more radiant beneath. And somehow we can see a resemblance of it even in the mask.

I love sincere people because I never feel like they are putting on a show. I know where I stand with them because there's no act. At the bottom of sincerity, I believe, rests honesty. Truth. While I love to joke around as much as the next person, I really love sincerity. May we all seek for sincerity in being and learn to see past our own and everybody else's mask. In this way we can show true love and compassion and togetherness. May we all embrace each other, laughing, knowing that something brighter than the mask is dancing beneath the surface. And may we all be brave enough to rip off the mask, to peek between our mummy wrap, and practice seeing our own radiance.

What Is Your Heart's Gift to the World?

What is your heart’s gift for the world? What is that thing that you are really good at? Your heart’s gift to the world could be that you are a fantastic parent and are consistently bringing light into this world by the efforts you make in that realm. Maybe you are a writer and your gift is to touch people in that way. You could be a really great teacher or maybe you are funny or compassionate. Maybe you are a great listener, or a therapist, or a scientist, who knows? But everybody has something that allows them to contribute to the brightness and beauty of this world in a way that is unique. Your heart’s gift for the world can be developed and can change over time, sure, but knowing what your heart’s gift to the world is can be a gift to yourself. 

Knowing your heart’s gift for the world helps you to prioritize and organize our energies and attention in ways that are fulfilling and purposeful and satisfying. Could you imagine if Monet was too busy mowing the lawn to bother with mastering his art? And sure, everybody’s gotta mow the lawn once in a while but once you understand what your gift is you find will ways to make your contribution to the world regular and meaningful, you will sign up for that art class, you will start carrying your camera with you wherever you go, you will finally submit your poetry to that literary magazine.

Maybe we are not sure exactly what our heart’s gift to the world is. Practices like meditation and yoga help bring clarity and insight to our minds and hearts about our gifts. And maybe our work is to discover or refine what that gift is. Once you are aware of your heart’s gift to the world, begin to dedicate yourself to the improvement and expression of it. It’s not just about being good at something, it’s your purpose for being here, and everything you do is contribution to or a distraction from that thing. With practice, we can allow the different energies and excitements of our day to further contribute to that gift and the sharing of that gift. You will exit a movie and have 19 new ideas for an art project. You will go on a walk and somehow along the way you will mentally stumble upon the solution to a problem you’ve been having in your science lab. You’ll see a beautiful sunset and the ensuing emotions will inspire you to go home and practice being a loving partner or parent. 

This week, I invite you to take a few minutes every day to sit, close your eyes, and meditate on the question, what is your heat’s gift to the world? Come to yoga with this intention to cultivate, understand, or discover your heart’s gift to the world. Then in the practice of every-day living, allow the experiences of your life to further inspire you to share that gift.

Wide-Eyed

The Yoga Sutras is a book written by an ancient yoga scholar, Patanjali, (200 AD) which outlines much of the philosophy of the practice of yoga. A major principle in the Yoga Sutras is the principle of Avidya, or misapprehension. In Sanskrit, the word Vidya means to see clearly. Avidya is the opposite of clear seeing. Unfortunately our human experience is rife with Avidya, this unclear seeing. I believe that one of our major lessons in this earthly existence is to learn to recognize our Avidya and enlighten ourselves by simply learning to see clearly.  

 

Seeing clearly precedes good judgment. The world exists. Things just are. We all translate what is and color it with judgment: good, bad, right, wrong. Often, our judgment of the world, our misapprehension, prevents us from seeing what is and makes us see only what we believe about what is.

An old story goes like this: Once, a man was walking through the jungle at night and was very afraid of being eaten by a tiger. He heard something coming toward him and knew that it was a tiger so he pulled out his knife. When the animal stepped out onto the path in front of him, he immediately stabbed it and it fell dead. Only after he killed it did he realize that he had killed his best friend. His Avidya prevented him from seeing what truly was and caused death and suffering.  

 

With the practice of yoga we can learn to place a little space between occurrence and judgment. With this space we reduce our Avidya by practicing seeing things as they are and not how we judge them. The principle of reducing our Avidya is not about being emotionless and dispassionate, but rather learning to stop our judgment for a moment and attempt to see things as they are before making a mindful next step. 

 

A simple but effective way of practicing Vidya, clear seeing, is by doing a simple form of meditation which I learned from my teachers and which I call the There Is Practice. You can do this anywhere and while doing anything but one way to do it is by simply sitting comfortably with a cushion on the floor (a chair or couch works nice, too), close your eyes and acknowledge all the things you are currently experiencing with the phrase There Is. "There is the sound of traffic. There is apprehension. There is a 20-pound cat sitting in my lap and licking my big toe." Anything you sense, feel, think, do, point to it with the phrase, "There Is. . ." Try to erase the personal pronoun "I, Me, or My" from what you perceive. This tends to change our apprehension of what is as something that is only in relationship to ourselves. The There Is practice is about seeing things just how they are without our own personal judgment getting in the way. It allows permission for the world to be the way it is and not just the way I think it should be. I like to set a timer and practice until the timer rings. Start with10 minutes and increase the time as you like.

 

I invite you to practice Vidya this week by coming to yoga and also practicing the There Is practice. With more accurate perception, we will be less reactive and more mindful in our decisions. With practices like yoga and the There Is practice we reduce our Avidya and begin to see the world and what really is.

Where Is Your Life Taking You?

What if where we wanted to end up (read: job, relationship, finances, yoga practice) weren’t dependent upon how much effort we could muster to get there but rather on our ability to place ourselves into the flow and allow ourselves to be carried? 

What is this alleged flow you speak of? Well, it’s the animating force of everything. In yoga we call it Prana, accessible through breath but coursing through everything. It’s what makes the seasons change, the wind blow, and everything in the universe move. It probably has a million names. So maybe the question is how to tap into the already existing current and literally go with the flow. 

A good place to start is to ask where your life seems to be pulling you. Do you find yourself spending an inordinate amount of energy resisting something, maybe the inevitable? What if you were to go with the flow and spend your energy managing what seems completely natural rather than trying to carve a new pathway for the river? 

That’s not to say that there isn’t any effort involved with going with the flow. It’s just the effort we spend could be used to keep us in the central current rather than to swim the entire length of the river. It’s going there anyway, right? Use the effective balance of steadiness and ease, effort here and yield there, to keep yourself into the current.

Maybe you’ve been fighting to keep your mind still in a restore yoga practice when all along you could be using that energy in a power vinyasa class. Maybe you’ve been working all this time at a job that doesn’t feed your soul and you know perfectly well that your desires and interests and gifts would take you into a different direction. Go with the flow and allow the situations that arise to do so. Through practices like meditation and yoga, you’ll know what to do with those situations when they come because you’ll have practiced sourcing your deep inner-wisdom.

Come to yoga this week as we practice balancing steadiness and ease in our yoga practice as a way of inviting us to balance it in the practice of every-day living.

To Whom Are we Beautiful as We Go?

I Wish I knew the beauty of leave falling.

To whom are we beautiful when we go?
David Ingnato

And to whom are we beautiful as we go? This poem seems to point to the fact that even in our failing, there is a part of creation and therefore a part of ourselves that can grant a magnificence to any loss. Such a beautiful concept. Such a bittersweet truth. And perhaps this is why Autumn is so colorful: it is the opulent funeral procession of the death of so much. It is the rush of fireworks before the quiet stillness of winter.
 
Many of the Hindu icons tell stories. The Dancing Shiva is a story-telling icon depicting Shiva, the creator of the universe, and illustrates the five acts of Shiva. The concept is the same whether you call the creator, Shiva, God, the Universe, or Krusty the Clown. In this statue, these 5 acts are depicted by his many arms, one of which is celebrating creation, another that is sustaining his creation, another is allowing death, and another that is not only inviting things back to life, but to live again with a higher consciousness than before. This statue reminds us that our job is to allow Shiva to lead in this dance of life, to follow along as we are slowly refined into greater beings. It reminds us that death is a part of life and with a broader perspective, we can, to some degree, appreciate it as a necessary part of the cycle.

Dancing with Destiny

When I was 22, I worked in a different town for a little loan company , processing loans. The man who owned this company (we'll call him "Jeff," mostly because that was his name) taught me many valuable things, many about people, others about myself. He taught me that even more important than processing people's loans, my real business was connecting to people. Among other things, he taught me how to focus under pressure and how to organize around priority. He taught me principles which I've used every day since then. He showed me parts of myself waiting to come out.

Everybody has their Kryptonite. Despite Jeff's shining attributes, he wasn't a very good business person. And I grew very concerned the day that my paycheck bounced. When I approached him with this dilemma, he asserted that even though the company was in a little slump, everything would soon be ironed out.

Things never got ironed out. 

When I finally left the company, he owed me about $2,000 in wages--a lot of money for a starving student, right before Christmas, who needed to pay tuition for next semester's classes. Come to think of it, that's a lot of money, period.

I became bitter. I wasn't going to easily let this go. I called the Utah Labor Commission and filed a complaint. They began to subpoena Jeff to arrive in court. The process was unfruitful and painfully slow. I soon realized that I could easily gain my $2,000 back if only I were paid five cents every time I heard the Labor Commission say the phrase, "your file is under review and we'll notify you once we know anything different." This empty search continued for over two . . . (I pause for effect) YEARS. Each new attempt to resurrect my file brought more pain and frustration.

Then I had a dream. I dreamed that I met Jeff. I saw him not as the evil person I'd made him out to be but as just a simple dude with a five-O'clock shadow (that's the way he was in my dream) who fell on rough times. In my dream, I forgave him of the whole thing. Completely. In my dream, he didn't seem very thankful or changed, nor did he seem really to even care, but that didn't matter because I had changed. Instead of angry and dark, I was light and free. So, I woke up that next morning let it go. I let it all go.  I felt better Immediately. Incredibly, I forgot very quickly about Jeff and the whole sordid mess.

It took me several years to understand that even though Jeff wasn't a good business person and I had suffered because of it, he still taught me some very valuable things. I began to think that my lost money was a tuition paid for some very valuable lessons. And unbeknownst to me, my lessons weren't over yet.

I hadn't thought of Jeff and that incident for almost a decade when one day something on the radio jolted my memory of Jeff. And so many years later, I didn't remember so much his faults but rather all the positive things he taught me about people, about focus, about priorities. Not only did I harbor no ill will, but remembering Jeff, I felt like I'd even grown from the experience. Proud, I said to myself out loud in my car, "If I ever meet Jeff again, I promise that I will vocally forgive him and thank him for what he has taught me."

Something else I've learned: when you call Destiny out for a bare-knuckle brawl, know that she'll come. She'll test you just like you asked her to. She'll give you what you wanted but expect a little more blood--your blood.

About an hour later I was sitting in the Beehive Tea Room taking a break between yoga classes, nursing a cup of Raspberry Mint tea when over my shoulder I heard a disturbingly familiar voice. I didn't have to turn my head to know who it was. It was Jeff. 10 years later, a different town, in an entirely different context and the first thought was, "Dammit! I already promised Destiny that I'd forgive him. "   

I sat there in a cold sweat. Now that it came to it, I didn't know that I go through with it. I hadn't seen him in several years. It felt like I'd just seen an old girlfriend who didn't leave on very good terms. I'd had even subpoenaed Jeff in court. There surely wasn't a good vibe between us. He started to get up to leave and I realized that iIf I was going to act, it had to be now.

I took a deep breath, stood up, and turned to face Jeff. As I stood there, I reintroduced myself. It took him a minute to remember me but when he did, he sort of stepped back as if I were about to throw punches. As I explained who I was, I reminded him of how he had hurt me and with a genuine smile, told him, "but you know what? I forgive you." I also explained all the things that I learned from him and how valuable that information was in everything that I do. He stood there for a silent second, stunned. He didn't know what to say. He made no apologies. He didn't try to explain. He simply told me that I made his day. I made mine, too. At the end of the day he gave me his business card, I don't know why. Maybe it was a token of remembrance.

And no, he didn't write me out a check for $2,000. He didn't need to; I had already received my money's-worth.

In addition to all the things Jeff taught me while in his office, Jeff also taught me volumes about forgiveness, and how that incredible act  can make a person whole. I also learned that intentions are powerful. Our yoga practice is one way to act upon the privilege of dancing with Destiny. I've come to learn that in yoga we practice experiencing ourselves as whole. With this regular feeling, we have less and less a tolerance for any less, even grudges and hurt until one day we choose to give them up.  

With clarity and self-awareness, we can see through the muddy waters toward the lotus.

The Art of NOT Doing

What is the art of not doing? Seriously. Not as an excuse for getting out of work, but rather in a cultural climate that values production almost above anything else, how do we practice not doing? This a perfect topic for Labor Day, a day where hopefully we were able to have a break from working.

There are a couple of components I’m thinking about here. First, Relaxing is a practice. Like anything you don’t do regularly, if you don’t relax regularly you might find yourself like the cartoon of Mickey Mouse as the magician’s apprentice whose master goes out (to play poker, I think) and comes back to find that Mickey has found his magic hat and wand and in an effort to make his chores more efficient and easier, created a the chaotic army of self-operated mops and rivers of mop water. In an effort to make life easier, Mickey forgot to discover where the off button was and consequentially instead of creating ease for himself, he literally made and ocean of chaos. Ever feel like Mickey, like your life doesn’t have an off button? Gentle practices like Restore Yoga and Yoga Nidra are all about discovering the off button, not as a way of tuning out but as a way of replenishing the source. 

Try coming home from work and dedicating 20 minutes to relaxing before you take on anything else. Your family will get used to this ritual and may even join in. Turn off the phone, dim the lights, lay down with your legs up the wall ( the yoga pose Viprita Karani) put on some Kenny G and practice resting, like a savasana at the end of the work day. The Kenny G is optional. Wouldn’t that be cool if there were a mandatory 15 minutes of savasana to end the work day? Welcome to my world. With a facility and familiarity with rest, we actually become more effective at what we do because we have taken a moment to replenish the source and clarified perhaps the reasons we do all that we do. 

Another component in the art of not doing is very skillfully holding steady and not reacting to a situation. Sometimes, we simply need to hold our ground and see how the situation matures. Often, this is the harder practice. In yoga there is a principle called Ishvarapranidhana. Yeah, sounds serious. It literally means “to lay it down at the feet of God,” to let go of the reins of apparent control and allow God, or the Universe, or the World to make its move. Sometimes, it’s allowing your children to go out into the world and face the hazards of life to learn. Sometimes it’s building something and handing over control to someone or something else and walk away decisively, not beaten or defeated, but as a powerful choice. Letting go can be a very difficult practice but one that ultimately can lead you to understand your own inner character and true being.

In some way or other I invite you to practice not doing this week. Maybe try one of our Restore Classes at Prana Yoga, Wednedsay and Friday mornings at 10:15 am, Mondays 10:15 am and 7:15 pm. This Thursday night is the last opportunity to try Yoga Nidra (guided meditation) until we run the series again in the fall. And if not by a yoga class, discover a way of consciously resting on a regular basis. Or maybe look at those opportunities in life to decisively not act.