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.

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

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! ;)

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

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.

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…