Facing Our Fears

I’ve been aware lately of the pervasiveness of fear in our lives. And not because it was Halloween this past weekend, but because, as I return to teaching and hear the stories people share with me, I’m amazed at how many contain a component of fear–I can’t find a job, I might lose my house, my relationship might be over, I’m moving and it brings up a lot of unknowns for me, what if I get H1N1?

I don’t mean to negate or trivialize these fears, as my heart feels for the ways in which we all suffer in relationship to our fears. But I mention these stories because I don’t remember any one of the people who told these stories simply saying, “I’m scared.”

I’ve been learning this lesson myself, too, as I have been trying my best to stay witness to a part of me who holds a ton of fear in relationship, and rather than actually acknowledge it, I usually find every way possible to first avoid it, numb it out, or make it go away.

It has become my practice lately to try to maintain my witness enough in these situations to pause, acknowledge and feel the fear, and say out loud, “I’m scared.” Saying I’m scared is scary, too, but it shifts everything. The feeling of paralysis and struggle go away, and I sense a glimmer of hope that the fear itself might also go away.

I used to be terrified of the dark. My parents could tell you stories of how I would run like a wild person out of the basement when I was a kid because I was certain something would jump out of the darkness and kill me. My family and I made fun of my reaction, and I was ashamed as this fear persisted into my adult years.

I’ve finally mostly gotten over this fear, and not because I’ve just outgrown it, but because at some point I decided living (or trying to live) with this paralyzing fear was worse than facing it and transforming it. It took years of living on my own and many, many nights sleeping in the backcountry alone, feeling just how breathtakingly, devastatingly terrified I was–to realize one night that the fear simply was no longer there. I actually even came to enjoy the dark.

Of course, this fear still gets triggered every once in a while–like this weekend as I went into a neighbor’s pitch-dark house to care for their pets while they were away, and I got so scared that I went home and asked my partner to come with me. If he hadn’t been there I would have faced my fear and fed the dogs anyway, but since he was there, it was just so much easier to ask him to come with me than it was to actually deal with how scared I was. Though I was forthright with him and openly admitted I was scared, internally I remember thinking, “This again? I thought I had dealt with this fear?”

We all have fears; some persistent, some transient, some deeply hidden. And as my friend and grounded-astrologer-extraordinaire Emily Trinkhaus writes about eloquently and insightfully in her November blog, we happen to astrologically be going through a time that is about highlighting our fears. (As I so often say to her–”That explains A LOT!) We also happen to live in a culture–as evidenced in my story above and in the social commentary that is Halloween–that chooses to ignore our worst fears, exaggerate them, turn them into a big joke, or project them in our relationships with other people (personally and collectively) costumed as anger, manipulation, and control.

I revisited the Buddhist nun Pema Chodron’s The Places that Scare You this weekend. She says, “what we most want to avoid in our lives is crucial to awakening.” Gosh that’s hard to swallow. And yet my heart knows it is true.

So what do we do? She reminds us that letting go of the story line and simply abiding with the energy of fear until we can begin to relax with the fear is what transforms it. This is why in my classes lately I am always inviting you back to ease. Relax. Not because the yoga poses are meant to be easy and peaceful, but because when we relax we aren’t fighting with what is. Instead we are allowing ourselves to remember that we are supported, that Spirit and love are present even in the struggle, and with that, the internal warfare subsides and we begin to get a sense of the possibility for transformation that is available in what Pema Chodron refers to as “the nakedness of the present moment.”

In this way our yoga mat is no longer the place that we go to avoid our fears–or anything else for that matter–but a place where we go to relax into and abide in whatever energy is present so that we can be more alive and fearless off our mats.

And so, in this way, never underestimate the courage it takes to go to your yoga mat and the profound power for transformation that comes through abiding with all that is.

It’s good to be back practicing with you all.

10-8 Courtship

Lord Give Me

Life is always up or down,

or yes, or no.

But there is one person who is always a yes.

Though with the usual human complexities.

Lord, give me a few more years

to enjoy such confusion.

~Mary Oliver

What if that “one person” were you?

Not in a narcissistic way, but in a “your ‘human complexities’ are the doorway to your experience of your world” way, or “your ‘confusion’ is the key to your knowing” way.

I think of Mary Oliver, undoubtedly my favorite poet because her love-affair with the miraculousness of the mundanities of the world is both passionate and deep–I can’t imagine a single day goes by in which she doesn’t pause to marvel at God in some ordinary detail.  At 73, she offers the prayer in the above poem for a few more years to steep in her life.  At 29, I pray that I can continue to find the passion she has to seek out presence every day, even if only for a few minutes.

After last month’s newsletter in which I talked about practice as relationship, I heard fellow yoga teacher Kira Ryder describe yoga as a “courtship of the Self.”  I love this, because it speaks to the excitement and the challenge of coming to know one’s Self (higher Self, Divine Self) through one’s self (individual self).  It’s about coming to know our divinity through our humanity.  (Which, by the way, is the only way.)

And yet it’s common to say “I’ll go to my mat when I don’t feel so _____” (insert any human condition/emotion here).  Or “I’ll practice at home when I know enough about yoga or meditation to feel like I know what I’m doing.”  But the reason why this doesn’t work is that our condition as humans is one of complexity and not knowing—you’re always going to feel like something’s not quite right or you could know more!  In order to experience simplicity and knowing you have to connect with your Self, and in order to do that you have to rest into your self in the present moment.

And so here’s the challenge: court your Self. Not in the way you would court someone in high school—by making sure your hair is perfect and you are always at your coolest—but simply by going out of your way to make time for that person—YOU.

So the invitation is: spend 10 minutes a day with your Self for the next 8 days. Maybe it’s in meditation, maybe yoga, maybe something else (like simply lying flat on your back on the floor—one of my favorite things to do!)—anything that invites the possibility of Yoga (union with the divine) by bringing your consciousness to the here and now of being YOU. Being you—so you can’t be doing something else at the same time.

I’m calling this the 10-8 Courtship.  I’m inviting you to do it because I don’t think there is anything more powerful than this practice—than this relationship with your Self.  It’s the foundation for all sorts of transformation and transpersonal development—and everyone can do it. Even you.

I know it can be really hard to do this in your own home by yourself with life and your family whizzing all around.  The thing is, you aren’t alone. You’re doing this with everyone else in the world who takes time out of their day to court their Self. And the very act of you doing this affects everyone else in the world.  Especially the people closest to you.

And just so you feel less alone, I invite you to use this blog to share your experience—How do you spend your 10 minutes? What time of day? Where? What’s hard about it? What’s lovely?  What surprises you?

It’s only 10 minutes for 8 days. Are you in?

Your Self is waiting.

Practice as Relationship

When I decided to take these three months off to write my thesis, I had three intentions that I wrote down and posted on my fridge:

1. Get to know myself outside of my normal roles
2. Deepen my relationship with Spirit
3. Write my thesis

Though I understood, at least in part, that my ability to write my thesis could only come out of knowing myself and spending more time in conscious relationship with Spirit, I didn’t realize at the time the significance of writing my intentions in that order. What seemed relatively insignificant at the time revealed itself to be the very crux of a transformational experience for me.

I chose to do yoga and meditate as my means to knowing myself simply because this is what my spiritual practice has been for ten years. Like any practice, I have struggled with it; there have been weeks on end where I didn’t practice, and many mornings when I forced myself to; there have been times when I’ve used my practice as a way to beat myself up for not being good enough; and as a teacher, I have many times reduced my practice to be about being a better teacher to my students.

But something happened in those first few weeks of my sabbatical in getting to know myself outside of my role as teacher—I realized that my practice itself is a relationship. Yoga, meaning to yoke or join with the Divine, is all about relationship. It was so obvious that I had not seen it. I go to my mat to consciously be in relationship with Spirit: to pray (talk to God) and to meditate (listen to God). When I let myself see my yoga as a relationship to Self and God rather than as a practice, I became SO much more willing to go to my mat everyday!

As I’ve opened myself more and more to acknowledging and receiving the relational gifts available in connecting with my Self and with Spirit through yoga and meditation, I’ve found that I actually look forward to going to my mat the way I would look forward to hanging out with my best friend or with my partner.

Not to say that practice isn’t involved—any intimate relationship, as you know, calls for practice. But even though we understand that relationship can be a spiritual practice, we wouldn’t refer to our marriage or our parenting as (solely) our practice (“let me introduce you to the person I practice with” or “I’m going to take a break from work and play with my son because I haven’t practiced yet today”); we would say that they are relationships AND that they take practice and dedication. Calling a relationship a practice takes the heart out of it; it drains the relationship of the love, the compassion, and the longing to be known and accepted.

In sharing this with the participants in the Guided from Within Workshop yesterday (which was wonderful!), I found that this paradigm shift was big for them, too. It seems both subtle and obvious, and it opens up a whole slew of conversations and teachings in light of the relational context of yoga—conversations and teachings that I look forward to engaging with you in when I come back to teaching in October!

In the meantime, I invite you to consider: What changes for you if you consider your yoga (or whatever your spiritual practice is) a relationship to Self and Spirit rather than a practice?

Ruminations

Well, it’s been a few weeks now that I have not been teaching and have been dedicating my time to writing. I have had some lovely days spent writing, reading, walking in nature, doing yoga and meditating—all as I had intended and had anxiously awaited.

AND, I have also had many days filled with fixing flat tires, grocery shopping, cleaning the house, returning emails and phone calls—among a myriad of other things I had no idea could consume hours of my day. I have been startled by my prickliness and crankiness when it comes to how this time off has borne very little resemblance to the focused, retreat-like vision in my head.
I think the crankiness is because I somehow imagined that if I had no external obligations, I would finally have the time and space to do just what I wanted. But I’m learning that was a tricky assumption, for two reasons:
First: Almost all external obligations—things that I feel bound to do—are mostly of my own making. Many of these things really need not be done, but if they aren’t done, I must accept that my life will transform in a way that is beyond my knowing. Because of a nagging fear of the unknown even within the persistent longing for a new way of being, in the absence of traditional obligations such as work, I will simply create new obligations seemingly out of habit. The extra crappy thing about having intentionally and publically removed myself from my daily life as it has been, I’m learning, is that I can’t deny that it really is ME that’s creating these distractions!
Second: Taking this time off really never was about doing what I want to do, but doing what I felt called to do. That’s a big difference: though I also do want to write my thesis, there is something deeper to taking this time off and focusing my attention inward. If it was simply up to what I wanted to do, well, let’s just say my days would probably look quite different. A call, as in a higher purpose or a spiritual service or heart-offering, also includes the mundane as well as the uncomfortable.
I’m thinking of all of this in light of my upcoming workshop and class series, Guided from Within. I don’t think I’m alone in allowing/creating external obligations and dictates to eclipse the deeper callings of my heart and soul—a fact that holds both promise and peril—and that ultimately calls for practice.
What if you gave yourself the permission to practice yoga as you are guided, not by what the teacher offers? What if that meant that sometimes you just sat there not knowing what to do, or constructing your grocery list in your head? Or maybe sometimes you did a powerful vinyasa sequence because the person next to you was doing that, even though you knew you longed to rest in a restorative pose? Or maybe, just maybe, it meant that sometimes you felt the calm joy of what it feels like to be perfectly in alignment with yourself and your own knowing? What if all of those things were welcomed and understood?
This learning to be guided from within does take practice—and trust, courage, compassion, curiosity, and a great sense of humor. And, ironic as it may sound, it takes community—a community of people you can trust because they’ve said yes to showing up with the best of their ability with the above qualities to explore the unhinged and ultimately essential idea of moving through yoga (read: Life) by what moves them.
So, if you’re at all called to join us at Ombase for this exploration, we would love to have you.
In the meantime, deep gratitude to you, community, for your continued support of my own fledging transfer of this practice from my mat to my life!

Listening Within

Life is a chain.
Depending on how you look at it, it may feel like a chain that binds and restricts you, or it may feel like a chain of connected experiences and moments that hold purpose, meaning, and possibility. I believe the difference between which type of chain you experience life as lies within where you are guided from.
Are you guided from within or from without?
The thing about internal guidance is that you have to be present to receive it—present to yourself in the ever-changing sequence of life. That’s what vinyasa yoga in particular is all about—practicing staying present to your experience in each pose and each transition within a chain of interconnected postures.  Through staying present, you are able to feel in your body how to respond to each pose. The feeling in your body of how to respond is internal guidance.
But most often we default to the external guidance—in the case of a yoga class, it’s the voice of the teacher who conducts the sequence of poses.  We might get the cue from our body that this doesn’t feel right but we keep going because that’s what the teacher says to do and it would be too awkward or rude or embarrassing to not do that. Or we simply don’t know what we would do instead.
But as what our internal guidance says is best for us in the moment goes further out of alignment with what the external guidance is, we can feel like we’re getting dragged around on the end of a chain, and we can begin to lose a sense of connection and meaning in something that once brought us joy and inspiration.
(And I don’t know about you, but a yoga class is not the only place that this happens for me, and certainly not the most crucial!)
I don’t think the question is “how do we get supported in hearing our guidance when we’re present to ourselves?” as I think most of us actually do hear that voice, if quietly: “this pose hurts my knee;” “living in this town no longer serves me;” “eat the ice cream.” The chain of guidance usually breaks once we’ve heard it because we don’t want to hear it, don’t know what to do about it, or don’t trust it.
The question is: how do we learn to listen, discern what to do, and trust acting on it??

Well,:
1. Start with the small stuff! When we’re first learning to listen internally, it’s best to start with the small stuff—most of us wouldn’t run a marathon without slowly building our jogging distance, and yet we usually only turn to our guidance with the BIG questions. Erich Schiffman talks about using guidance to decide what shirt to wear in the morning, whether to buy apples or oranges at the store, what yoga pose to do. Start with the small stuff so you start to know how you know when it’s guidance rather than your “should voice.” If you start with things that are inconsequential, you build trust with the inner wisdom.
2. Know that it won’t necessarily make sense to your rational thinking mind. Guidance is active engagement with the Mystery. It is rarely what your mind would suggest, and it doesn’t always tell you why.  The best thing you can do is to play the game and be curious to the why after the fact. “Oh, maybe it felt right to go the long way home because it allowed me to run into this person who I’ve been meaning to connect with.”

3. Ask for support from the people in your life, but also from Spirit. When you do come upon one of the heavy duty subjects, you can ask guidance for more information; sometimes it may have it to offer, other times not. When you need more support, tell your trusted friends and family. “Hey, I keep getting this feeling like I should do this thing, but I don’t really know how and it scares me.” I find that people are always hugely supportive of helping you come into alignment with your own knowing.
Remember this: the voice of guidance is always compassionate, AND it doesn’t care if you don’t listen, it will keep offering itself to you unconditionally.
And know that when you do listen and then dare to act on what you’re guided to do, your life will feel less like a binding chain and more like an inspiring chain of interconnected events. Your life.

Coming home

“Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.” This line came into my head the other day. I don’t recall the first time I read it, but it is a line from a short story called “The Painful Case,” in James Joyce’s Dubliners.

It’s staggering how many people don’t inhabit their bodies. Even seasoned yogis show up to their mat and settle into themselves with a big sigh as if to suggest they’ve been out for a long morning of running errands and are just now arriving back at home.

The thing about really living in our bodies is that it requires us to feel, and as we all know, opening ourselves to feeling in general puts us at risk of feeling things we’d rather not feel. And so, most people lock the door to their body and go back to incessantly running mental errands.

Yet what is so inspiring to me is how students show up at yoga class, whether consciously or not, with the longing to come back home to themselves. It happens slowly at first, tentatively, and usually only during the poses that feeeel reaaally gooooood. There is a deep breath or a sigh that indicates they are really there and feeling it feel good. And that’s great. That’s the place to start — the place of support and softness.

And then gradually a student will choose to stay with a challenging pose without going back into their head and hardening physically (as those two things always happen together). Instead, they’ll stay in their body. They’ll remember what it felt like to soften and be present, and they’ll apply it here even though it’s hard, and they’ll feel. And once they feel the hard place, they have the opportunity to respond by softening and the whole situation transforms.

Lately, as I’m coming up against my own edge in this place of learning how to stay in my body, feel and be soft even when it’s hard and uncomfortable and even when I’m around other people (especially the people around whom I feel most vulnerable), I am touched by how truly revolutionary it is for a classroom full of people to transform into a community of people at home in themselves.

That’s what the Mr. Duffy’s of the world don’t ever get; in addition to saying that he “lived a short distance from his body,” in the short story Joyce also describes Mr. Duffy as meticulous, ordered, and-not surprisingly–as isolated. I believe we come to class not only because we want to feel at home in ourselves, but also because we long to be in communion with others (as those two things always happen together, too). And God knows that communion is not terribly ordered!

So this is at once my letter of gratitude to you for coming to class and for doing the courageous work of arriving in your life, inhabited and open. This is also my invitation to you to come back home to yourself if you’ve been living elsewhere for awhile. I don’t just mean by coming to a class, but come back to your body right now where you are. And now. And now.

Finally, this is my challenge to you: The next time you come to the community of class, really let yourself feel the extraordinariness of being in your center, soft, and open among a group of people. Feel it so that you can know yourself well in this place of openness and softness so that you can access this off your mat among the people in your life. Feel it because the world needs fewer “painful cases” like Mr. Duffy, and more courageous yogis like you.

Observing the wonders

Last Thursday morning as I was completing my morning meditation and praying for guidance about a question that has been troubling my spirit, a bird collided with the large picture window in my house and fell to the ground. I rushed outside and found a red-headed woodpecker lying still on the deck. Certain he had broken his neck, I scooped him into my hands to offer him a prayer.
Yet as I held him, I felt his heart racing and saw his eyes trying to open. I sat with him in my hands, holding him warm and looking very closely at his exquisite feathers and intricate claws for nearly 10 minutes. At one point I moved slightly, and he suddenly hopped to his feet and clutched to my hand. Still a bit confused, he perched himself on my hand only inches from my face.  For another 10 minutes or so he sat there until he turned, looked right at me, and quite suddenly flew off back to the tree where I had been hearing him peck for the past few weeks. I simply sat there filled with awe and gratitude for our exchange.
A few days later I was doing a walking meditation in the labyrinth at Breitenbush, seeking clarity on the same question from the previous meditation. As I was walking, something quite peculiar caught my eye. I saw what looked like a maple tree seed pod standing up on end. I crouched onto my knees and brought my face very close to the ground. To my amazement the seed pod was sticking straight up off of a root that it had sent down into the pebbly ground. Looking very closely, I saw where green life on the inside of the pod was in the process of unfurling itself and busting out of its shell. I have seen thousands of these seed pods in my life, but never one that has rooted itself. It wasn’t until this moment that it really hit me that this tiny feather of a thing actually becomes a tree. I laid there on the ground totally transfixed, my question shelved.
Telling these stories now, I am struck by how both began with an attempt on my part to seek comfort by dismissing uncertainty. I wanted to know the answer so I could stop being so uncomfortable. I wanted the voice of Spirit to whisper in my ear and say “JAY, THE ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION IS…” so I could stop spinning and find solid ground.
Instead Spirit said, “Hey! Stop looking for comfort in the answers! Come observe the wonders around you. Feel my presence and be comforted.”
I think that’s all we ever want—to know that we are supported, that we’re not alone—especially in times of personal and collective uncertainty. We can become accustomed to thinking that knowing the answers to the big questions is the only way to know we’re truly supported. Paradoxically it’s when we participate with the Mystery around us and we fill with awe at all we don’t know that we can feel the most connected. Like the woodpecker, we find that we are held until we’re ready to fly again; like the seed pod, regardless of whether we are spinning or firmly rooted in sacred ground, we are more than what we seem.

Wishing you the blessings of the many wonders all around you.

Transformation

There’s been a lot of talk about change lately; not only in the collective, but also in very personal ways for many people, including myself. There is a call on many levels for what has been to dissolve and for something new to take its place.

Over the last few weeks I was reminded of the difference between change and transformation: change is external and transformation is internal. One cannot happen without the other. Either something external to us changes and we have to transform to meet it, or we transform and that which we have been wanting to change suddenly does.

Like me, I’m sure you all know this somewhere in your bones, but it’s so difficult to re-member when we’re longing so much for something to be different than it is. We find ourselves holding to illusions of what we want and know to be possible rather than acknowledging what is actually real. And the more we don’t let ourselves feel what’s real, the tighter we hold to our illusions…

The only way to move into what is possible is to feel what is real right now. And when we feel what is real, if it doesn’t match what we want, we get to change it. But we can’t directly change the external event, thing or person by simply wishing it were different. That’s a way of negating the truth that is disempowering and usually rife with agendas, illusions and expectations. It just won’t work. Instead, we have to transform. But how?

With transformation we are called to not only feel what is real, but also to feel what it would feel like to be living the possible. And when I say feel, I don’t just mean emotionally, but also literally in your body and your breath. Think of an aspect of your life where you’re longing for change. Feel what it actually is like right now. And then feel what you want and know to be possible-feel how open your chest gets, how deep your breath becomes, how weight drops off your shoulders, how peaceful and alive you feel.

Rather than waiting for external reality to change so that you can get to a point where you can feel this all the time, claim this feeling as your own and commit to it. Use this feeling as your guidance for making decisions. That is, make choices that support you feeling the way you do when you are imagining living what is possible. This feeling is your TRUTH, and the more you choose to align with it, the more you will inspire external reality to align with inner truth.

It may sound like woo-woo fluff, and it’s definitely easier said than done, but it works because it is spiritual teaching grounded in the wisdom of the body, and all it takes is your commitment to this very clear feeling. “Can I stay in alignment with this feeling of truth when I hang out with this friend? Is eating this in alignment with that feeling? Is this choice I’m making right now, no matter how small, in alignment?” You’ll find you become intolerant for any choice that doesn’t support this feeling. You’ll also find that you’re creating soil that is rich for the change you are longing for to take root in and sprout.

So as we come into the month of the return of Spring when the body of the earth is receiving the seeds of what is possible and cultivating the sprouting of new growth, so may our bodies.

Valentine

Yesterday I wrote a newsletter about the perils and promises of peace and change because this dynamic is present in my life, and obviously, also in the collective. But I also wrote about this because I was avoiding writing about the topic of most February newsletters: love.

To tell you the truth, love is a complete mystery to me, and it terrifies me to broach the subject in front of a group of people. As I’m standing in front of a yoga class wanting to mention the “L” word, the thought has crossed my mind countless times, “Who am I to talk about love??” But today I received a series of teachings about love that made me scrap the other newsletter and venture into the scary territory of writing about love to all of you. (If you want to read the other letter, I’ve posted it on my below).

So…deep breath…here goes.

As I said, love is a complete mystery to me. Funny, then, that the teaching from today was–and read carefully, because it’s so close that it can be tricky–is that love is complete engagement with Mystery. Did you catch that? Love is so freakin’ huge and indescribable and mysterious because it’s what happens when we experience the sacred, the numinous, the divine, in all it’s myriad forms.

You probably know this already, but bear with me because I’m learning here!

This aha moment came for me because of two circumstances that happened to me today that I’d like to share with you. The first one is interactive. This came to me in an email-aptly titled “Share the Love”-from my friend Todd Williamson, the co-owner of Ombase. Check it out at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ3d3KigPQM

I mean it. Check it out right now. It’s only 2 and a half minutes. (And I promise it’s not corny or syrupy sweet). Check it out and then come back and finish reading. ☺

****

Are you feeling it??? (How’s that for ecstatic dance?!) Can you imagine what it would have felt like to be there? You would have had no idea what was going on (mystery), but you would have felt the wave of connection with everyone else (Mystery). And it’s somewhere between the little “m” mystery and the big “M” mystery that love blows open our hearts.

So I know what you’re thinking–that was beautiful and all, but that was such a huge production, it’s just not feasible to do that on a daily basis. Here’s where the second part of the teaching comes in.

Right after watching this clip, I ran out the door to meet a client in Forest Park for a spiritual mentoring session. As we were walking along the trail that he often walks to a site that he considers sacred, we paused and I noticed a funny looking tree; a deciduous tree with leaves on it. Odd for this time of year, yes. But even more odd is that the leaves were wrapped in cylinders around the branches. As my brain was trying to figure this out, my client pointed to the tree and said, “This is part of my offering when I come to this place.” And he invited me to join him in picking a long leaf off the ground, twisting it around my finger into a tight coil, piercing the coil with the stem of the leaf so it would stay in place, and then choosing a branch to slide it onto. As I did this, the same opening in my heart came as when I watched the above clip.

So here it was again, the little “m” mystery and the big “M” mystery together: by adding the leaves, my client had evoked the unknown and had drawn me into what is sacred through the curiousness and simple magic of his offering. It happened again: a moment of heart-opening love.

So here is your assignment for the month: conspire to share a mystery with someone that engages them with the Mystery, thereby creating an act of love. (Extra points for doing it through something body- or nature-inspired!) I look forward to hearing your stories.

The promise and peril of peace

“Unfortunately, peace is boring.”
Having both read the book Three Cups of Tea while we were on vacation (which I highly recommend!!), my partner and I were debating why America would agree to spend millions to bomb Afghanistan, but not the $12,000 per school it would cost to bring balanced education to the children or Afghanistan.
I kept pondering the concept that peace is boring as I witnessed how I subtly resisted dropping into a state of non-doing bliss while on vacation—was I avoiding sinking into peace because I thought I would be bored?
In my questioning, what I realized is not that peace is boring, but that peace is terrifying. Peace is powerful. Peace is revolutionary. We avoid peace not because it is boring, but because if we really felt it, if we knew it in our bones, we wouldn’t accept the way things have been, both in our personal lives and globally. We would have to change. Everything.
And yet, that’s what’s happening. The consciousness toward change and choosing peace is rising. (I heard that there were no arrests in Washington D.C. on Inauguration Day!) But if we understand that it isn’t simply that change inspires peace, but that peace inspires change, how do we find the courage to choose peace, knowing that inherent in peace is a continuous process of change, a dying away of what has been?
Rites of passage and personal ceremony have taught me so much about the cycle of death and rebirth, and about celebrating in community the way we die a little all of the time in order to fully live and offer our gifts. And with all the hopefulness of this year, we all know that there is a lot of dying away happening—people are losing their jobs, their homes, and an entire way of life. Whereas this is all ultimately for the greater good of the rebirth of a sustainable and peaceful way of being, it can be painful.

In addition to having a practice like yoga or meditation where we can access a place of essential peace, in order to be a citizen in the daily world, we must also be willing to be hospice workers. What I mean by this is that we must become comfortable with death and versed in grief. Not just about the death of a loved one or the unspeakable violence that is going on in the world, but also all the little things that we must let go of on a daily basis.

Admittedly I do not have the answers, and as I’m writing this I’m realizing I’m very much in the thick of a peace-inspired death cycle right now. But what I do know is that aparigraha (non-attachment, especially in relation to self-identity)and ishvara pranidhana (devotion to God or surrender to the Mystery) are a huge part of transforming the exquisiteness of pain or grief into peace.

It is my hope that we find the courage to celebrate the tide of peace rising and to grieve all that is washed away as it does.