Friday, December 3, 2010

Little Red Sports Car...

Vroom Vroom

How do you journey through life? How do you actually live?  Are you living within the moment the hour, the month, the year – your life? Are you living your whole life at once, so much so that you’re not living at all…you don’t exist?....

That last question, yes that’s me.  Its a lot of us, not taking the present into account.  Now that the future lies before me as an open barren road, I worry whether I will be able to accomplish my life’s work and build the city of achievements that I envision for myself here in the landscape of my mind.  I don’t know where I want to build, still looking for that perfect plot, presently trodding through the desert caught in a sandstorm.  I can’t see….

In moments like these, these “transition phases”, you need to “embrace the creative process” as someone wise advised me the other day.  The GIANT question mark that’s following you around, you need to embrace that too.  NOT the fear associated with the question mark of “Will you be able”.  That should not even be a question.  No no, embrace the “What do you really want” question mark. What do you want your life’s work to be? I am trying.

I remember a 4th grade teacher saying once to my mom during a parent teach conference “She’s always in a rush.”  I never understood how he perceived that of me, what exactly I did where he observed this truth of my nature.  Years later this hand me down observation haunts me, and remains to be true.  My new years resolution is to SLOW DOWN…what’s the rush?

I was always proud about the way I am open and free, which while a quality to be admired as one gets older needs to be curbed to a degree at least initially.  There are certain things that come with time (or so I have been told), time is mysterious that way.  I finally get it now.  I finally understand!

What kind of car are you when it comes to your life? Presently I am a little red Porsche.  Thrilling I know, but the way I’ve been driving, its time I trade it in for something more calm more smooth…

Rather than admiring the qualities of others of focus and discipline thus their ability to drive better, its time I start to steer my life into the direction I want to take it toward. Contemplating on that direction…



Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Fear & Surrender : My Heart Flies

There are these moments when your heart grows so big it can consume the entire world into its love.  It is suddenly freed of the restraints the ropes of fear that hold your heart back from expanding and filling up with love until it explodes.  Ego is one of these fears that if the heart explodes if "I" explode then what will "I" be, "I" will be finite no longer?  I will not exist.  The finite mind, the finite ego, the finite fear cannot understand this, that by not existing as finite one becomes infinite, fearless and so large….

I felt my heart break through that cage today to be as it is, as I am…open and free of my fears.  My fears have been consuming me like dark spirits eating away at the lush gardens of my self, my love for this world and the beings in and beyond it.  I want to embody unconditional all encompassing love. I don’t want to be afraid and that fear comes from attachment and expectations….I want to let these go.  I want to let go.

Oh how the wind burns me so.  Tossing me about…my heart is fragile but I forget it can be gentle and strong, fertile and flexible all at once….if and only if I let go of my fear it will take care of me.  My heart, the wind an all consuming love will take care of me…not my fear!

I am a bird freed from a cage….flying my heart flies see how it flies up and away.

There was a passage in Paulo Coelho’s novel The Pilgrimage the very novel that is said to have inspired him to write the Alchemist (my all time FAVORITE book), where his teacher, guide or Master who is guiding him along this pilgrimage to Santiago Compostela, teaches him about love or Agape:

"Agape is the love that consumes," he repeated that phrase that best defined this strange kind of love.  "Martin Luther King once said that when Christ spoke of loving one's enemies, he was referring to agape.  Because according to him, it was 'impossible to like our enemies, those who were cruel to us, those who tried to make our day-to-day suffering even worse.'  But agape is much more than liking.  It is a feeling that suffuses, that fills every space in us."

Paulo later goes on to describe the results of a meditative experience associated with trying to experience Agape...

I spread my arms so that agape could flow, and a mysterious current of blue light began to wash through me...The light spread first to our surroundings and then enveloped the world, and I started to weep.  I wept because I was re-experiencing the enthusiasm of my childhood; I was once again a child, and nothing in the world could cause me harm... the strong blue light that was entering and leaving me was now spreading throughout the world... I felt that it enclosed the world, it penetrated every door and every back alley, touching every person alive for at least a fraction of a second.

That is how I feel now, love is pouring down from above out through my heart and to you, through all of us and back in this circular fashion.  No end, no beginning.



Friday, November 19, 2010

Wind: my Friend, my Lover, my God

Something calls me to move forward, move on.  Something calls me but I know not what! All I know is my present situation needs to change to receive the new circumstances that the currents of life are pushing me into…I am not resistant, if I turn rock from wave, it will be more painful. Let me be the wave then, and allow the currents to move me, the natural forces that be, move me on and forward to where I belong.  Which is not one place, which is nowhere in the nameless.

But how do you change or fix a sinking boat while you’re in it and the currents are still flowing onward in the sharpest of fashions? How does one stay afloat? A whisper whispers you listen to the whispers of your heart the gentle nudges that allow you to repair that boat… I am just following the melody of the whispers.

The wind is stirring up, waking and mustering up its might for an even larger storm that is on its way to stir up my life…the present storms are now dim, the next one will be a sun shower that will give me the answer to the questions in mind.



I saw you I saw the wind…I knew it was time you whispered you blew your gentle breeze awakening me from my trance telling me it was time to go, you friend freed me from my cage lifted the cup and suddenly I was free and here I am blowing with the winds whims, a living leaf… I am scared but I know its your arm that leads me across and we fly together across creation as you prop me somewhere else where I am meant to be, and living in your will in this way…there is nothing more joyous because you know me you know where I am meant to be

I smile at your ability to lift me up and plop me down somewhere else or in some other kind of situation…

I try to work on my patience I am trying to enjoy this ride of uncertainty it is something I have hoped and even wished for through the whispers of my heart.

I lay here arms open wide….fearful but ready trying to surrender…. I aspire to live in the beauty of your will…blow me far far away




Thursday, November 18, 2010

Questions Part II

My inspiration for the poetic flow in my previous post was the following by Langston Hughes (also the introduction to A Raisin in the Sun):

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Questions about the future are like dreams, like wishes we wonder will we ever achieve, ever realize these milestones in our lives that our heart so achingly thirsts to behold...

I realized after reading over my previous entry, it is I who is in a holding pattern - It is not all of us twenty somethings and for that matter 30, 40 , 50 and so on somethings.  If we are in a holding pattern it is because we have chosen to be there! Eureka! An epiphany about my/our current state of mind…its time to demolish these walls!  Time to unblock the arteries to our hearts, and breathe in a full breath taking in all of life's possibilities and exhaling out all that is out of our control...smiling in return at the beauty that surrounds us.  I stand on a peak tonight alone, strong.

The most important thing I left out about the whirling dervish, is that eventually he finds God at the end of his spins! ;)

Sunday, October 31, 2010

The significance of the Question mark "?"


Questions that need to hang, that literally once asked hinge on the question mark itself; the sickled shaped symbol that it is….all beginning with “Will you?”  Questions that wonder about a future result, a result that can only occur based on present actions.

These open unanswered questions, with each day may receive a different answer and while the intention is to eventually answer, the question itself may shrivel up on that very sickle and lose life.  The life with which it was hinging on to continue on with the life of the answer the breath that was to breathed into the question.  The story never to have a beginning.

I feel as though the twenties of an adult persons life is this way; a holding pattern. We have so many questions that will eventually lead us into a direction, so many forks, we can keep spinning around and around trying to choose a path. But where?  Like the whirling dervish you may find yourself spinning and spinning yourself into a frenzy, until you collapse with no answers to the questions in your head, just fatigue.

Indecision, is a dangerous disease; a symptom of your twenties

Falling Leaves...

With the Fall chill in the air, I feel as though we are all slowly waking from the haze of the summer, suddenly alert and aware.  The chill is seeping into our offices, our cubicles, the air we breathe in, it brings with it a quality of change;  Of death and decay followed by renewal and rebirth.  We are just dying now decaying now, exfoliating now, awaiting for rejuvenation.  It only gets worse from here only to get better.

The wind flutters in the distance.

It plays and twirls with the fabrics adorned on the bodies nearby, the same fabric that covers the earth it plays with too, water.  The waves come crashing  up high, gaining great momentum in the distant horizon before they hit the coast.

We whisper back to the winds whirling whistles that sweep up the decayed red, yellow and orange leaves with new wants and desires, new goals new hopes and the fears that come with it. Renewed desires come alive bornagain thriving to be realized…

I want…
I want…
I am ready…

One sweep of the wind…I feel the wind, I am the leaf, detached from the tree, a seed to be planted in a new soil. I watch and wait.

I want to blow away with that wind, I am at his will and his mercy
I want to disappear into the wind
And become nothing
Take me with you
Take my everything
    That makes me, me
     Give me no name and make me nameless
Until I am nothing…

Let me give until there is nothing, Until I am nothing
That empty
Then I become everything
…that many


To Rumi, the great poet and mystic, you dwell in my heart

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

When you close your eyes...

What do you see?

I am a dancer - dancing in ancient traditional Indian classical garb, unrecognizable and yet recognizable as my passion, my love manifested.  A haze of cream, red and gold smear before this lense through which I see myself move, telling the story of my self by myself in this solitary place. Swift, sometimes slow; sharp, sometimes smooth in movement and gaze. When I bend deeply into pose the silk in which I am wrapped, spreads like a peacocks’ train, into an embroidered fan. It is through embellished dark eyes, that I speak as there are no words…just music, and the force that moves me with the utmost passion and intention, in a place that is placeless, timeless and spaceless, to be as I am.

I think that each of us sees ourselves as we truly are from within, in these moments of clarity.  Clarity of perception, connection and mind.  While what we see, may remain unexpressed to the outside in literal form, it is very real behind the curtain of the physical eye.

I see myself dancing through this life.  One turn of the body, one bend of the legs, one tap of the feet, one hand gesture after another, a seamless, tireless continuum.  In my minds eye everyone I encounter is a dancer either a partner dancer with whom I perform a beautiful intricate masterpiece, or a chance duet.  Each of us has our own dance form, our own rhythm that allows us to compliment or upset another’s harmony; our own traditional garb handed down to us through history making us inseparable with many pasts and futures to come, connecting us somehow through this ornate singular united melody…

When you close your eyes…what do you see?

I am reminded of a German film I once saw Cherry Blossoms (http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/movies/16cher.html), courtesy of netflix's strange collection of 'watch instantly' movies.  Now mind you, I do not understand nor have a particular fascination for German culture, but at the time I was obsessed with the beautiful metaphor for buddhist philosophies of detachment, and transcience often associated with cherry blossoms.   In this film which I highly recommend, I was introduced to the japanese dance/art form Butoh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butoh), which I find to be similar to bharatanatyam, an Indian dance form.  Both look at the body as a work of art, both try to create ornate shapes with the body, both take you to a place beyond the body...truly beautiful to witness.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Yogini in the making

I have been working on my self these days, through the aid of Yoga. I mean how often do we really take a look under the hood to make sure everything is working okay?

There are so many things I want to work on, like my Ego. I hate when I catch myself being egotistical, at its truest form it’s really just insecurity. It is through this weed in the fertile field of the mind i.e. the ego that gives rise to other beautiful qualities like jealousy and anger – how lovely! But the problem is, to live here, on planet earth you need some form of it, its like no matter how hard you would like to shed it completely, you have no choice but to keep a thin layer on so you can survive here on this plane.

Next is mental discipline and ability to focus. You see these two go hand in hand and without these you really can’t achieve anything; it really is making sure you have a well-oiled engine facilitate the achievement of your goals – your mind! It is where everything begins and ends. And as I have become older, somehow my machine has had a lot of garbage coming in, and not a lot going out,  I desperately need to reboot and reprogram.  These are my two main foci at present; the goal of writing is already manifesting itself with a little bit of discipline ;)

But overall my experience with Teacher Training (3 weekends completed so far for 200 RYT) has begun a much needed internal revolution within myself. Yes the philosophies are familiar, but the danger of familiarity is that we don’t see or appreciate all the details. Because I am learning all this in an unfamiliar manner and territory, so the material is from a fresh perspective, and direct sources – the Vedas, the Yoga sutras of Patanjali, the Upanishads…such ancient scriptures, I am in heaven being such a history buff. The entire experience is slowly allowing me to go after my negative patterns of thinking, one thought at a time, which makes my goals that much more achievable, I am cleaning my internal home.

I feel as though I am experimenting, like my entire body, this life, there is a science, and I am the scientist meant to study and understand and test out these hypotheses. I feel engaged; I feel a slow shift happening, a shift to a place of balance and equilibrium within myself…

Monday, September 27, 2010

I Want to Bleed Sufi...

...My words would whirl about me in Dervish fashion

There are these moments, where I feel crazed, drunk and I want take ownership of the title drunkard.  Not drunkard in physical terms, passion pure passion like a red silk blazing in the Sun's heat, flailing about in merciless gusts of the wind, and welcoming the mystery of the night.

I am mad, possessed, its an energy that brews up within me, turning churning and whirling about, wanting to propel itself into action, but where?

And so am I here, writing. It has been one month to the day since I have sought out this space, place, the nameless. The struggling writer that I am, struggling for the words, worthy words for you, and worthy words for myself – foolishness I know, I spend too much time in my head as result, brewing with the energy that desires to create, instead I just think and think myself into a frenzy.

So here I am in a frenzied crazed state, in love, in love with love, and life and creation..everything and nothing

Music moves my soul so, it always has, listen to my latest discovery via Pandora in the musical corner

I have decided to keep it raw, keep this space, true to me. The philosophy, the truth, the lessons will be there, but wrapped within me, all that is me. A fabric of my existence..

Yoga is helping me to tame my mind, channelize its energies, understand my heart, source and quell its insecurities so I don’t react. I don’t want to react, I don’t want to be jealous, I don’t want to harbor hatred. Its like a rotted seed that will eventually turn me completely rotten, I can’t risk it. Love love love….

Breath, Breath, Breath…"I am only breath" as Rumi says, I never understood the mystical context behind what he says in that verse.  Pranna the life force as mentioned in the veda, it is all so very connected.  A grand metaphor that is all that each religion is according to Ms. Gilbert says in Eat Pray Love, epiphanic thought don't you think?  The Hopi Indians hypothesized that each religion or spiritual system was just a thread and if sewn together would create a fabric of one ultimate truth..

Persian art, culture, and history have always fascinated me, there is something so mystical about what was Persia.  The coexistence of such fierce faith and innovation, and not just coexistence immersion of the two, passion for the world in the form of art, dance, music, architecture and beyond this world. It is perhaps through this world they were inspired into the world beyond..

Saturday, August 28, 2010

“The future comes one day at a time”

My fortune cookie yesterday. I often wonder, why is it that the best of us struggle with the inability to finish something we start. Correction something we dare to start. There are the usual suspects which all end up at fear combined with slothfulness.

I was watching Julie and Julia the other day, and there was a moment where Julie wanted to give up, she said “I’m taking a break” in response to her overbearing mother's inquire as to why she wasn’t cooking that particular night. Other than the obvious fight with her husband which was all to easy to blame her desire to quit on, it was clear she was feeling defeated.  Her mother uncharacteristically ends the phone conversation saying “Don’t quit.  It’ll do you some good to finish something for once in your life. Who knows you actually might learn something.” The scene ends with Julie getting up off bed and heading to the grocery store.

While I am no cook, I too have this problem, unable to finish what I start. I believe its cowardice mixed in with slothfulness. But I want to work through this, I really do believe at the bottom of the task we set out to do, its on its way to completion that we realize a lot about ourselves.

I once read “When you get right down to bottom of the word ‘success’ it means to follow through.” Think about it, how good is the greatest golf swing if you never follow through?

I decided to air this issue out a bit because I think a lot of us struggle with this, and I say this because I can’t really even sum it up in a single word.

The quote I started with is significant in what I’m setting out to do because it takes changing what you do one day at a time, that changes the slope of the line of your life. One day at a time…

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Creative Power - What propels us to create?

I wonder about the Creative Power.  What is it that propels us to create? To create Art.  Art in the form of dance, paint, sculpture, song, music. There are countless forms in which we choose to express ourselves.

I mean, here I am writing to you. Is it that we want to connect to one another, up and outside of ourselves? Not just to another, but to have one common experience amongst many others, a thread that embroiders us together on a single fabric of existence.  For instance, when we all observe a dance or a play perhaps we walk away with a different interpretation of the work, but we still share some universal moments within the piece.

I find it intriguing that God has often been referred to as 'The Creative Power'. While I don't understand the 'why' of the creation process, I am aware of the power and magic of it.  As an artist you become nothing but a tool possessed, needing to express what it is that you have to give to the world.  It is not yours to give, or even to create, you are just a messenger, the pen, the voice, the feet and the hand even in the case of the surgeon.

I've been feeling that way as of late.  Possessed with creative power ready to unleash itself. It is such a raw and potent power, like fire. You become both the actor and audience to this happening within the self.  If you are a writer, painter, dancer or any other form of artist you know the "glimmer" I am speaking of here.  If you are a lover you too know the madness and passion that flows through you.

This potent energy flows from each of us through each of us, like the ocean, something that connects us all...

I had a conversation with a man today about how his novel in progress. Being a heavyset married smoker, father of two, and employed in somewhat mundane industry, he never struck me as a man who may be working on a novel, and a scifi thriller at that.  It just goes to show you just how far our prejudgements take us - into a brick wall.  With a smile that spanned from rosy cheek to rosy cheek, he explained"I just had a dream one night, it was so vivid and real. So at 6 in the morning my wife walked in on me typing away thinking what the hell is he up to.  I had to get all down before I forgot it.  And I work on it every now and then. It's nothing I would ever intentionally write about, or am even interested in, it just sort of manifested itself." His story reminded me of Stephanie Meyer's story of how she stumbled upon her novel.  She too had seen a vivid dream of a couple in love one of which was a vampire, and now here she is 4 books and 2 movies later.

The same has happened to me, a story has manifested itself after a year of just simmering silence. Not in the form of a dream but just on paper, nothing that I would have thought or even the courage to write about.

As I head into the tunnel of creation, I am heeding the following advice:  


The Alcazar, Sevilla Spain May 2010


Trying to make progress when the time is not right would be like trying to cook noodles in cold water.  

(I Ching - Book of Changes, http://daoloatse.wordpress.com/01-creative-power/)

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Advice from a Great Woman...

I heard the below quote over this past weekend; pearls of wisdom disseminated from Mother Teresa herself.  What she says in the lines that follow liberates us from the transactional nature of all our actions. She simplifies our role in our lives to being both true to ourselves and harboring only kindness in our hearts; unyielding to outside forces that may challenge these principles in whatever form they may come into our lives...

"People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway. What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway. In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."

Mother Teresa

Friday, July 9, 2010

To Catch a Dream

"I am here this is happening. First two, then me, then three,
the room is filling up.

I try to calm my mind, it flutters,
overwhelms, at the possibilities
of casting a net out wide,
to catch one's dream.

Calm, Calm, Calm..."

Last night, I began my first Gotham Writers Fiction I Class with Evan Rehill. The Class will meet once a week for 10 weeks and I intend to attend every session. The irony is that I was sitting in this same class exactly one year ago.  However after completing my first short story I stopped coming to class. I ran away because of the coward that I was; but more than cowardice, it was my insecurities that were suffocationg my dream;

tying it up until paralyzed into inaction,
tying it up until there is no life.

But my Revival has come! You too, find your dream, cast your net wide, catch it because you can! (not if) ;)

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Pride Weekend : "Black, White, Gay, Straight, Love Does Not Discriminate!"

This among others were the chants I heard thousands of people recite down 5th avenue - producing a powerful consortium of sound at this year's Gay Pride Parade in New York.

The above chant being my favorite, intoduces such a lovely idea, that Love in its true form does not discriminate. As I walked through the streets, I saw women, men and children, dressed in all the festive colors of the rainbow. Marching, Chanting, singing, and laughing, they were all supportive of this notion of tolerance and the rights of the individual. Of course there were other chants like,

"We're here, we're queer and we're bringing up the rear!" or,

"1, 2, 3, 4 What the hell are we marching for? Equal rights and nothing more. So come on folks, let's hear you roar! 5, 6, 7, 8 Stop the lies and stop the hate. Open your eyes, it's not too late! Show your pride and celebrate!"

Looking into this sea of people drenched in color and sun, I thought this is how we are all meant to interact with one another - with tolerance...and love.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Why do people run races?

One day, my dad asked “Why do people run races?” while driving me to the bus stop during my morning commute.  In the fleeting moments that I had to come up with something clever, I blurted out the first answer that came to mind, “because we should always be striving toward something”.  I was greeted with a somewhat dissatisfied expression, we then looked onward to the road in silence.

I later asked myself: why do people run races and marathons? While I can’t speak for everyone, I can say for me the motivating factor has been:
to feel something,
to feel alive
     and ultimately
to feel human.

As my mom would say, “Human, in what sense?” attempting to get to the heart of the matter. Human to me means to be part of the human race beyond just the common attributes of the body; instead attributes such as the mind, soul or some kind of universal consciousness.  Unfortunately though I have experienced it to be true, I don’t feel this state of oneness with all on a day to day basis.  We all divvy up into our families, our friends, our jobs, our lives.  That’s the damning characteristic of the ego.

So why run a race?

When we run a race, we all run as one, we are acting as one.  We have one common underlying goal that unites us as brethren and that is to cross the finish line! And to add to that gratifying moment when we do cross that line, the knowing that we are helping raise funds for less fortunate brothers and sisters is all the more rewarding..

So why run at all?

I like to think of it as a physical meditation especially when you run alone. The road twists and turns but you have to keep on moving, even when its up hill.  Walking is acceptable, but stopping indefinitely isn't a choice. For the individual it is the goal setting, of distance and time and the discipline that drives you to persevere to the result of accomplishment. You feel alive with your body, mind and soul fully engaged, pushing yourself to new limits!

Therefore not only do you connect to other humans beings but you also connect to yourself, all in a grandiose state of oneness. So that’s my more well thought out answer;)

Monday, June 21, 2010

Introduction

The wells have opened up and I am writing again.  I am so happy!  There were these moments where I felt the words were bubbling up to the surface from within. I have waited and waited, finally the words are now streaming through me onto page.

What is expressed here will be everything and nothing, the real and the unreal, the dream and the waking all at once. No categories here, no classifications, just one seamless continuum..this place shall be nameless…

Welcome and please stay tuned!