Thundrous Even

I have a tendency to jerk myself through changes in a manner that is sudden and abrupt. In an instant I'll decide to quit college, change relationships, walk out of jobs. It's not all as sudden as it looks; the change builds inside for quite some time before it happens, then all of a sudden, boom, it expresses itself. Sudden change is my habit. When I was younger I'd make these shifts without knowing why; it would feel like, "Oh, I'm uncomfortable, can't pinpoint the reason," and then move into "I can't stand it any more, I'm out of here."

Today seems like a good time to get more attuned to what's happening, to truth of inner and outer change instead of flailing around as a victim of habit. The thunderous movement is still happening - there are many who see 2011 as a pivotal year in the history of humanity. The goal is to remain calm and even during the shift. Can we remain calm during an earthquake, a tsunami, a break up, a change in jobs, the movement of our children to college, and even when we face what looks like illness and disease?

It's easier to move through our own stages of development from a place of peace. So let's be clear on the goal today: we are here to express and teach the truth - the underlying unity of the love that connects us all - and to experience that connection in a state of synergy.

Enjoy

(The photograph is from the central square in Asheville, North Carolina.)

I am lucky because I have an amazing sister-in-law; she has such a zest for living - even her answering machine ends with the words, clear and sweet, "Have fun!" Erich Schiffmann, the teacher I've been lucky enough to study with for the past 15 years or so is of a similar ilk. If an earthquake happens (we were in a huge one together in Montana, and then another one while we were all doing yoga together here in LA) his declaration is "This is fun." Whenever I mention I am doing anything, even the most mundane chore to him, recently it was registering my daughter for school, his comment is "Sounds like fun," or just like my sister-in-law, "Have fun!"

Yogis tend to be very disciplined when it comes to diet - at least traditionally. So I tested Erich a couple years ago with a lasagna recipe passed down from a Sicilian grandma I know. It is filled with cheese and meat. I figured Erich would eschew this meal offering as inherently unhealthy, but when I offered to it to him he loved it - spicy Italian sausage and ricotta cheese and all.

This morning during meditation I asked for one word of guidance. I've been feeling like a failure as a yoga practitioner; ambivalent about the end of summer and heading back to a teaching job, not writing quickly enough on my second novel - maybe I should be waking up at four in the morning, meditating two or three hours instead of only 15 minutes. Maybe I should type out a regimented schedule for how to navigate through everything from diet to writing to lesson plans to making love. Isn't it a matter of discipline?

My guidance during meditation was "enjoy." What??? Resistance kicked in full force; that can't be right - that's not controlled or organized enough. How will I accomplish anything if I allow myself to do that?

Then I noticed the sun shining through our garden window over Layton's potted ficus plant. I noticed my breath and really started to bliss out on that. I noticed the silence of the early morning. It felt like a great weight lifted from my shoulders, like I'd been tweaking myself the wrong way up until then, and now I was getting adjusted.

Yeah, it feels kind of amazing to "enjoy." Maybe that's the whole point after all.

An Excerpt from my Upcoming Book

This woman just looks like a young Esther, I tell myself. It’s impossible for this woman to actually be her. Then she is running toward me, and we are hugging and I wonder that my arms don’t just go right through her since she must be a ghost. But she is quite solid, and in excellent physical shape, better than I am myself if I am honest. Her arms feel like she’s been lifting weights for the past nine months of her absence. Of course that’s ridiculous; she’s been dead, not off on a trip to a health spa.

She is definitely in her prime now; she receives three double takes from men passing by, but flicks off their attentions like so many flies, like the diva she’s always been, like the diva she is.

“Esther,” my eyes are tearing now from the shock, and the pure joy of seeing her again, “Is it really you?”

“Of course, Dearest Friend, I would think that’s fairly obvious.”

And in that instant I am jostled forever out of my old habits of looking at her, everything. I realize that how I interact with everyone, not simply her has been in error, how stilted it’s been and misaligned – all along – like hitting a repeat button on a skipped, scratched part of an old record album that keeps going back to the same spot, the same scratch again and again because the scratch has been ingrained that way into the record and there’s no stopping it. It would take a bit of rattling to shift it out of there – the scratch has worn deep because of repeat after repeat after repeat. I’ve kept perceiving, kept interacting, kept refusing to see the truth, kept acting out the same patterns of misperception over and over again; it makes me want to cry.

But now her physical presence, alive and vital, has jolted me out of that earlier dream that was a nightmare, and I am buying into the business of immortality because it is right there in front of me.

I want her to feed it to me. I’ve been parched and hungry for it out here in this desert, and now she has finally arrived to help me see it, though space that isn’t there, through time that doesn’t exist, right there in front of me now, holding me together with the truth of who she is, evidence beyond evidence that she is still here.