What Would St. Francis Do?

It's been a good if relatively uneventful week. I enjoyed a 3 hour ANY partner yoga and Thai massage workshop with Jeff as my partner and Andrew as our leader this past Sunday, as well as a couple of ANY classes. I had a long chat with Murti today about his upcoming workshop and week intensive at Austin Yoga, Castle Hill, as well as the retreat he and Gioconda are planning in October in Hawaii, which I'm hoping to attend. I enrolled in Keith's Boddhisatva workshop this weekend which I'm looking forward to, dropped by Castle Hill and purchased all my required books for the upcoming teacher training program and enrolled in Murti's events. Yoga and community is good.





Saw my dentist yesterday for my regular six month check-up and his wife and assistant Rhonda really needed to talk about all the difficulties they have been facing of late--an aging parent in a care facility, the devastating effects of Alzheimer's, and a whole range of medical issues she's been having to deal with. I felt so honored that she was comfortable confiding in me, sharing life's difficulties. I realized later that I've been going there for about 28 years. Of course it was impossible for me to do anything but listen as Dr. Heckmann was at work in my mouth the whole time, but sometimes it's best to just listen and let others talk without giving feedback (unless it's asked for). We all need to be heard, with understanding, and sometimes without any feedback. That was good.





I finally found someone who can repair my bath tub/shower without tearing everything out and having to do major construction. He came up with an excellent solution that will preserve the original design yet fix the problem without it all looking like a patch job.





I don't know what to do about all the raccoons we have around here. I started feeding them and now they expect dinner every night---all of them, and they've grown in numbers. Sometimes I count as many as 8. They come around like clockwork. It's so hot out there but I fear I've made a mistake in allowing their population to grow beyond what would be normal for the amount of food nature provides, but I am finding it exceedingly difficult to not feed them. However, we have decided it's probably the best thing to do as they can become dangerous pests. So I've withdrawn food. Well, I noticed one very persistent adult staring at me through the glass, with such a pleading look. They are still wild animals and run off when I approach with food, or step outside, and when this one took off I noticed a significant limp in his/her back leg. I've seen her several times now and wonder if her leg is broken, of if she has a thorn/infection. Dale doesn't know it, but I'm still feeding her. I love all the animals, but did erect a 7.5' wildlife fence around the property to keep out the deer that were eating all our plants. The fence also keeps out all roaming dogs, which is good, but the property is now a haven for raccoons, squirrels, foxes, and neighboring cats. There are so many birds out here too. But about the raccoons, I wonder what St. Francis would do? I suppose that as long as I continue feeding the birds and squirrels, there will always be grain scattered on the ground that the raccons will find.





I made reservations for dinner tommorrow at San Miguel for Dale and I, Gary and Chris, and Richard and Fred. I look forward to that.

A, B, or C

I never know how long it's going to take me to get somewhere, and I mean that both literally and metaphorically. Getting from here to central Austin can take from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours, it all hinges on traffic. Yesterday when I left for practice I had in mind the possibility of 3 different yoga classes in 3 different studios, all beginning at 9:30 a.m. Should traffic be slow, the plan was to get to the closest one in time; if traffic was *normal* then I might just make it to the studio in north central Austin, the one that is further away in distance than the other two. I'm sure there is little logic to this, but such was my thinking. So keeping an open mind I left the house not knowing exactly where I'd end up for my morning practice.

Stephen Levine writes: "The mind creates an abyss, but the heart crosses it."


Certainly I can get totally lost in my mind and that can include the process of making decisions. It easily leads me nowhere. Into an abyss, round and about mazes, puzzling over nonsensical conundrums, in general pretty useless stuff. I like the notion that our hearts are indeed our *second* brain, and in many ways the far more important one. Most times when I follow my heart, something pretty rich happens. All sorts of things open up, and I don't mean just positive, candy-coated stuff. The real stuff, the stuff of life that really lets me FEEL. Laughter and tears and all that stuff. No doubt it would be far easier to follow my mind but I don't seem to ever get anywhere when I do that. Gratitude, love, grace, touching souls, connecting, being a part of, moving deeper into, listening, hurt, pain, sorrow, grief, being totally raw--all things having to do with feelings are associated with the heart.

Traffic was light so I ended up at the yoga studio located in north central Austin. The substitute teacher was just awesome. The class just totally blew me away. It was what I needed and wanted. I'm humbled when awesome things happen and feel that when such richness and ripeness suddenly makes an appearance I'm experiencing grace. Interestingly, I don't know or even think for a moment that had I chosen studio 1 or studio 2, that grace wouldn't have happened there. I think all we can do is open our hearts, and when we do that, we are open to grace, we are open to gifts, to love, and as well to pain. We are open to growth, to living life authentically.

I need to make some decisions: my bathtub/shower area needs to be repaired. It leaks and is causing damage. I don't know if a simple repair will do the trick or if I'll end up needing a whole new tub, tiling, essentially a complete redo. I do know that dealing with house doctors as they call themselves, contractors, salespeople, plumbers, carpenters...can cause me quite a bit of anxiety. Actually I should say I react with stress when I have to do these kinds of things of which I know very little. I just want it done, but there is no wand to wave, no one person to call and say please take care of this asap, thank you. Like so many other things it's a process. You have to do homework and learn stuff you may have no interest in, and hope you don't end up spending thousands unnecessarily. The only thing I know to do is sit with the anxiety and listen to my what my heart says. The sales lady at Moore Supply entices me to buy the deluxe, homeopathic, bubbly, aroma therapeutic, holistic, essential oils-friendly 60 gallon tub. My heart says Oh Yes, my body is a temple, this is really a healthy thing to do, but my pocketbook says No Way. As Jack Kornfield says, in dealing with all things spiritual, mental, physical....sometimes you simply have to rely on you own common sense. I have a folder with a handout that I sometimes refer to entitled How to Make Decisions. Often there isn't a right or wrong involved, but in the end if you feel pretty good with the outcome then I'd say you made a good decision.

I think I'll revisit that handout.

A Simple Perspective--Who Best to Listen To?

I'm not an expert on anything, and the few things that I feel relatively knowledgeable about, well, there are countless people out there that know far more than I do. I'm not an intellectual, nor am I an academician. I say all this because I want to write about a subject that has the potential to be a sensitive one, but I feel compelled to put my thoughts out there, on this blog, because it has hit close to home. So, in the vein of mostly thinking out loud, in typewritten words, I want to send out a caution to all who are in a serious student-teacher relationship.





Quite a few years ago I began taking yoga at one of the very few places in Austin that offered yoga classes, and I mean literally that there were no more than a very small handful of yoga teachers in Austin. I loved it. It was such a wonderful discovery. I was going through one of the more difficult stages of my life and I was hypersensitive, depressed, and very frightened. I found refuge at this beautiful yoga studio, and the small community of people there. In particular I will never forget one very long afternoon when I simply burst into tears and my teacher wrapped her arms around me and held me, for a long, long time, offering unconditional love and comfort. No words were spoken, just her being totally and unconditionally available to me, giving of herself selflessly. But things began to unravel there and I didn't want to be a part of that unraveling as I had experienced about as much unraveling in my life than I could handle at that time. Briefly stated, the yoga studio owner became pregnant and her husband, a Buddhist monk or priest, left her--abandoned her. Anger, sorrow, fear....ensued and penetrated every aspect of her teaching. Understandbly so, but that's all I wanted to know and that's all I came to know. I just never went back and the studio closed shortly thereafter.





It was an important lesson for me to learn that people are people, people are human. No matter how we represent ourselves to the world, no matter what extraordinary heights we may achieve, we are still human. The Buddha taught to always question everything we are told, including his teachings, and if they don't resonate with truth for us, then don't accept them or believe them. We have an innate tendency to place others on pedestals, to look up to wise and learned people, to draw upon their wisdom, their enlightenment, their teachings, and this is a beautiful thing. But we must always keep in mind that even the most enlightened people we know, the wisest of the wise, the master teacher, he/she is human. As humans, we all make mistakes.

"As far as Buddha Nature is concerned, there is no difference between sinner and sage...One enlightened thought and one is a Buddha, one foolish thought and one is an ordinary person."
---Zen Patriarch Hui Neng



In one of my all time favorite books, A Path With Heart (A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of a Spiritual Life), Jack Kornfield dedicates an entire chapter to the topic of teachers, leaders, and gurus (Ch. 18, The Emperor New Clothes, Problems with Teachers). So very often, in fact more often than is generally realized, when a person achieves an elevated status within a spiritual community, and members of his/her flock begin to grow, so does the temptation of the ego, the tendency towards thinking oneself to be somewhat superior, and when that kind of power sets in the consequences are a common theme throughout history--greed and abuse of power (all too often sexual abuse, and the stealing of money). "Power replaces love."



Kornfield writes: "Another student followed a charismatic Indian guru whose powerful love and teachings brought great joy and peace into his life. The student was a gay man, who had lived in a caring and committed partnership for more than ten years, and when the guru later stated that all homosexuality was a terrible sin that leads to hell, the student's life was nearly destroyed. His relationship was torn apart, and the secret guilt and self-loathing that had plagued this man throughout his childhood returned. Finally, with outside help, the student came to see that while his guru might bring him visions and wonderful meditation teachings, he was really quite ignorant about homosexuality. Only when he realized this, was he able to hold both the teachings he so valued and his own life with equal loving-kindness."



This is almost exactly what happened to me, and in one form or another has happened to many others.



"We can see over and over again how one dimension of life does not automatically bring wisdom in other dimensions. Every teacher and every practice has its strong points and its weaknesses."



Andrew Harvey discusses the falling out he had with his guru, a world renowned guru whose name I do not know. One of my all time favorite yoga teachers, someone I admire, respect, love, and care about, fell victim to this very thing. The leader of a spiritual community begins telling his/her flock to not question what he/she is saying. Remedies and cures of a spiritual nature can be obtained through more generous donation of monies, and worse of all, through sexual interaction with the master himself/herself. This is called abuse. And it happens all the time. Because these people are human too.





When things become dogmatic, one should sit up and take notice. When one's leader seems to hold all the answers, and those answers are very clear, those answers are black and white, those answers are the one and only truth, one needs to beware. Something has gone wrong.





There is nothing wrong with the centuries old yogic tradition of having a master and student. In fact, I'm particularly fond of working one-on-one with a teacher. It's a rich and rewarding tradition. This is how precious knowledge is passed on. It's just another way for us to learn and grow from those who have much to offer. In Universities and college we flock to our favorite professors to impart their knowledge to us. We read books by writers we admire, and we learn and grow. I strongly advocate for all these things. But I also advocate for listening carefully to one's one heart, and most especially, listening to one's gut---one's intuition. Intuition is a powerful tool we can all tap into, it is the wisdom that resides in all of us, and if we listen and then follow our intuition, we can navigate through life without falling victim to bad things quite so often. Most spiritual traditions teach that each and every one of us really has all the answers we need inside of us. Easier said than done, but I think there is much truth in that.

Today, Untitled

I feel totally yucky today. Something has gone awry with the functioning of my lower intestines. I feel so tired. I didn't even go to the Iyengar workshop today, the last day, although I did try. Something in me feels out of balance and I can't figure out what. Did I push myself too hard? Do I need to change my diet? Do I need to do a cleanse? Always I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with me, I get totally caught up in that, just totally lost in it before I realize, hey, this is just an old habit. An old core belief. The belief that I'm totally worthless and not worthy of love. It goes so deep. Sometimes it takes all I have to fight it, but usually when I'm worn down by it all something slowly comes back to me that I learned long ago that all those negative core beliefs are just lies. The old story line that I should know better than buy into, especially after all these years of work. Just maybe it's totally okay to feel rotten from time to time. So I feel rotten, tired, weak, vulnerable, lonely...and so does most of the rest of the world. That doesn't make it any easier, but it is a truth. Yesterday, in front of two yoga teachers, a fellow student in the workshop started talking about me and suddenly burst out with "he is just amazing." The teacher said, yes, he is amazing. My face grew really hot and I knew I was blushing red as a beet. It really bothered me that she said that about me, and I kept having those inner dialogs, the monkey chatter stuff, and then it came to me that I was totally rejecting a compliment. That's all it was, nothing more, nothing less, just a compliment, with loving intentions. I certainly thought of her as amazing, and the two teachers are quite amazing, and so why do I find so many other people just fantasically amazing in so many thousands of ways but I can't accept it when someone sees that in me? Ok, here come the tears, the weeping, and the sadness. I just need to sit with it and let it be, rest into it, feel it. So that's all.

Queerily Questioning

I woke up from my nap a while ago wondering why I wonder? Not to be confused with "I wonder as I wander...". I mean really, it is a pretty queer world in which we live, don't you think? Why yes I do, thank you very much. For example, "isn't it rich, isn't it queer, losing my timing this late, in my career?" Bring in the clowns. Very funny, eh? I never really had much of a career, wasn't born knowing by the age of 4 "oh yes, I want to become a concert pianist" or "I knew from a very early age I was born to do great things in this world." None of this ever happened to me. I'm still searching like a lost soul for answers wherever I can find them, and honestly, I don't spend much time even doing that.

We all have our priorities, I mean really, if I can't have my bowl of Fiber 1 in the morning then you might as well put me in front of a firing squad, and take away my coffee and I'll voluntarily put myself in front of that same firing squad. I've taken to walking the long sidewalk outside from my studio to the garage, probably a distance of about 150 feet, one way. At night when I wake up to piss. Barefoot. Actually, totally naked. (I cannot wrap my mind around how in the world people can sleep wearing clothes). I look up at the marvelous night sky and feel overwhelmed and yet joyful, somehow absurdly safe. Which is quite ironic, what? Those bright lights up there that are coming at me at the speed of light are hitting me after about a million years. Is that queer or what? Take your pick--the phenomenon of this whole incredible universe or me walking outside at 2 in the morning star struck and naked, and feeling pretty damn vulnerable. I wonder if wandering bands of armadillos ever attack humans?

If you take time, which is "a conscious dimension created by man", whatever that means, and put it on a clock, not a digital one, but an analog one, and say that this planet's age can be summed up in its' totality by assigning it a 24 hour life span, then we, as human beings, have been here for about the last second. Or is it 2 seconds? The point is, it's a minuscule piece of the circle. Pretty strange for an animal that has managed to nearly destroy the planet, huh? The dinosaurs were here for millions of years and the last theory I heard was that a huge meteor hit the earth like a thousand and one atom bombs and a heavy cloud dust encircled the globe, hence no sun, no grass, no something--saurases anymore. And here I am worried and denying it to all who might ask that I can't do half moon pose. One day in class a yoga teacher, in describing something like a difficult hip rotation said "it really is just ridiculous" and I thought, wow, you just said something pretty funny and pretty profound. It is ridiculous, it is strange, it is queer. Another something I find exceedingly odd is why do so many people like to fantasize about what it would be like to be rich. REALLY rich. Most people that I've met in my life that are pretty darn rich are also pretty darn unhappy. In fact, some are raving mad lunatics who bemoan the tragedy that they were born into wealthy families. They wonder how rich life might be if only they were like the rest of most of the world, NOT rich (monetarily, of course).

I read about a very poor Indian man who went daily to his local temple and prayed before the statue of a goddess to "please, please, let me win the lottery" (in the spirit that this would bring an end to all his suffering). This went on for days and days until finally the statue of the goddess came to life and said "hey you, would you please, please buy a lottery ticket?" You get the point, but in reality isn't winning the lottery close to impossible? I think I've read that you are more likely in your lifetime to get struck by lightening 54 times before winning the lottery. (not Cash 5 or Two Step and some other exceptions). I've also read that a study of big time lottery winners has shown that most find their lives shattered in a bad way, big time. It's just too much to handle for most. They learn that their money cannot buy happiness. Still, knowing all this, I bet most of us would still like to win. Weird.

My nocturnal walks on the sidewalk leading to the garage have me wondering what it would be like to sit my butt down on the sidewalk and try meditating, without moving, until sunrise? Could I possibly do that? Would I want to? I spent a small fraction of 2 afternoons this week picking up trash that someone threw out their window onto our property. Plastic bottles, empty packages of cigarettes, Taco Bell wrappings and drink cups, can after empty can of tree wound paint. That's right, people who would spend their days trimming and pruning trees, painting the cuts with a thick, gooey black dressing so as to prevent any sort of boring insects from infecting the tree would, without thought, toss the equivalent of 2 large plastic garbage bags of trash out onto some unsuspecting person's property. Don't they know it's been over 100 degrees out here in the afternoons and it ain't fun picking up someone else's trash? So as I picked up all this trash I kept wondering what it would be like if I could be out here in this sweltering heat picking up this trash and just be in the moment and enjoy myself? Stop thinking about the who, or what, or why of any of it but just slowly and mindfully pick up the cigarette butts, the rotting jalapeno wrapped in saran wrap, the cans of tree wound goo and just put in the my black garbage bag and say to myself, I can be totally contented doing this right now, in this moment? I tried it and it worked, sort of. Well, it did, sort of. Well, not totally, but I gave it a good effort. Then I found a piece of paper amongst all the garbage with some names and phones numbers listed and made a couple of calls. My messages were like this: do you know who might have thrown garbage on my property? Don't they know it's illegal? Don't they know someone has to pick it up? And so on like that. And yet calmly (well, kind of). The next day *they* sent someone out to the house to pick up all this trash! Excuse me, I said, but in my message I thought I had stated that I had already picked up all the trash? Whatever, it was all very strange.

I'm doing an Iyengar workshop every day this week and still making it to my focus on form class. It's not really an immersion, but still, we are a very small group and get lots of individual attention. I can never get it totally right. Who can? It's a process that has no end, no ultimate goal whereby you can say eureka! I've gone as far as possible with this and now I'm going to be out there amongst all those stars in another dimension totally enlightened.

I highly recommend Vanda Scaravelli's beautiful book Awakening the Spine published by Harper Collins. In her 80's or 90's there are photos of her doing viranchyasana, yoga nidrasana (sleeping pose), kapotasana (back-bend with knees bent on the floor, top of head touching the floor, elbows to the floor, tops of fingertips touching bottoms of toes). It really is just totally ridiculous. :-) But beautifully rich and queer.

Day Bangs and Night Knocks

Regularly, since we built this house eleven years ago, a wide range of birds have come crashing into our windows with a loud bang that sends me running to see what has happened every single time. Even the cats prick up their ears at the sound which can be more than a little disconcerting. One day I watched in amusement, which quickly turned to dismay, then horror, as a beautiful red cardinal, perched on the branch of a very old red bud tree, kept flying and crashing his body into the large, north facing window of my studio. At first I thought he might be trying to destroy or knock down this newly constructed obstacle in a quixotic show of bravado. Thinking that to be an unlikely explanation, I wondered if he was seeing his reflection in the window and, thinking it a rival, was laying claim to his territory in a battle of dominance. No, that's what lions do. Hmm. To the best of my recollection, male Cardinals have always lived in harmony with one another. But as I watched, this determined bird continued to hit the glass over and over until blood began to appear on the glass, and I decided I didn't care why he was doing what he was doing but I wasn't going to stand there any longer and just be an observer. This bird was seriously injuring himself. Why such aggression? I chased him away and hung a large piece of fabric from the rafter directly in front of the window. Mission accomplished until the next day when he was back fighting with his reflection again on the other window. Soon I had ordered colorful banners to hang in front of the suspect windows and watched them blow in the wind as bird after bird continued crashing into windows. Was this a bird flight path? Even today, all these years later, I don't know the answer. Mourning doves make the loudest bang of all and nearly always leave a large imprint as well as a few feathers either stuck to the glass or floating to the ground by the time I arrive to investigate. A beautiful red bellied woodpecker crashed into the window but a few days ago and I watched as he lay on the back porch stunned into near unconsciousness, only minutes later to fly to a nearby branch where he stayed put until he gained back enough equilibrium to take off in flight. (Just this very moment a cardinal flew up to the kitchen window and hit with a light bang of his beak).

Each year we have a pair of painted buntings that come to hatch their eggs and raise their young. Last year I found the mother painted bunting on the ground outside the large pane of glass that frames the view from my shower, dead. I've learned that many birds are knocked unconscious long enough to attract fire ants which begin eating them alive, starting with their eyes. I place the stunned the bird in a shoe box on the patio table until it recovers the strength to fly away. Of course the unlucky ones break their necks and never know what happened. It's a strange phenomenon. I once read that birds crash into trees with some degree of frequency in the wild. How many of us have wished we could sprout wings and take flight? Apparently, it isn't as easy as it looks.

During the year I spent raising my nephew he expressed fear, especially at night, at the sight of the many windows I insisted be part of the design of this house. It was never my intention to have curtains or window coverings but now we have accumulated a few, although most of the glass remains unobstructed so as to bring the outdoors inside. I love that feeling. I was awakened one night by a loud knocking sound. Pretty scary, until I decided that my friend Gary, who never rings the doorbell but always comes to the studio entry and knocks, must be having domestic problems and had come for a visit in the middle of the night. But Gary was nowhere to be seen, after all, it was 1:30 in the morning. This happened more than a few times and I've got to tell you, it scared me and had me wondering if there might be a lunatic on the loose who likes to peek in windows, knock loudly and then run off. While napping one afternoon I was awakened by the mysterious knocking, jumped up and ran outside as fast as I could to see the culprit flying away from the apex of the roof on the far east side of the house, right outside my bedroom. Yes, a woody wood pecker was flying away. He came again for awhile, the powerful pecking of his beak in search of bugs in the wood replicating the exact sound of a person knocking at the door. Strange things happen to those of us who live in the middle of the woods.

I went through a phase that lasted for many years whereby I'd hit my head pretty hard against all sorts of things. When mowing the lawn I'd hit my head on low hanging tree branches--big ones that would have me seeing stars. It happened over and over again on kitchen cabinets, pieces of furniture, I've even opened doors with too much force while moving forward only to get knocked on the head. Cuts, bruises, and bleeding. It was just absurd. By the time the wound would heal, I'd do it again. My therapist told me these were not accidents. I guess I was trying to knock some sense into myself, or trying to get myself to slow down and be present. Rarely am I fully present and I still have to work hard at slowing myself down, but I haven't had a bang on the head for quite a long time. Knock on wood.

Dark Shadow of Self

Yesterday, on the drive home from practice and a brief stop at Whole Foods, I must have listened to Gary Jules sing Mad World half a dozen times. I just love that song, the lyrics are simple yet beautifully encompass elements of the human condition. I'd venture to hypothesize that such songs as this elicit as many meanings and associations as there are people listening. Here's the refrain:



And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very mad world

Many of us have seen the "crazy of the busies" in ourselves and others--running around blindly doing so many things for the purpose of avoidance of coming face to face with ourselves, our unique and beautiful qualities as well as our demons. Busy is wonderful when it's organized, efficient, productive, and examined. But running around keeping busy, busy, busy just for the sake of being busy can easily be labeled as a sort of madness.

I want to hone in on the lines "The dreams in which I'm dying Are the best I've ever had" as dreams have been a topic of much interest to me. For me, when one dies in a dream it can represent the death of an aspect of one's self which is usually a very good thing because after death there is rebirth. We die to the old and are born to the new. We rise as phoenixes. We shed our skins and re-emerge to face the world anew. We let go of those parts of ourselves that no longer serve us, or that are harmful and toxic to ourselves or others and in doing this

We enlarge our worlds ("Enlarge your world" Gary Jules sings).

There is a particular dream that many of us have had in which we come face to face with our darkest side, our most scary aspects, our Dark Shadow. This can be harrowing to say the least, and is usually the prelude to a significant transitional period. Here is how mine played out:

In the middle of the night he appeared at my bedroom door, a dark figure cloaked in black, faceless, not at all unlike Darth Vader. He never speaks, and I find it so very hard to look his way, and I'm very scared. It's a nightmare that's happening in the worse way. I am paralyzed with fear. I try screaming but nothing comes out. He walks over to me and I close my eyes. I can feel his presence right next to me. He plunges a knife deep into my chest and the pain is so excruciating that I awaken from the dream in a panic and feel the pain of the stab until it slowly subsides. Was that a dream? It was so real. He comes again week after week always moving next to me on the bed and stabbing me. These nights are agony when he comes.

I book an appointment with my most beloved therapist, my spiritual guide, teacher, a man I totally love, admire, and respect. I haven't seen him in months. He tells me that my visitation is that of my Dark Shadow. It's those dark parts of me whose very existence I have refused to acknowledge, deal with, accept...this part gets complex so I'm going to gloss over and move on. How do I make him go away and stop scaring the hee bee gee bees out of me? You embrace him, I'm told, you make yourself face him without fear and let him know you want to befriend him, get to know him, love him.

I cannot imagine actually doing this but once I understand this shadow is really me, and that I must go directly into and through the fear to understand it and for healing to begin, I make up my mind that this is exactly what I MUST do. And so I do it, nothing really dramatic, I just do it. When next he comes I somehow manage to sit up in my dream and face him and send out feelings of acceptance, of fearlessness, of a willingness to get to know him. He vanishes and never returns, but my work has just begun. Lots of work. Never ending. Learning to take "the road less traveled", the "path with heart". Fears fall away and I trust this spiritual/psychological process of healing, of recovery, of being real with myself, of being honest with a rawness I'd never known. I brought my dark shadow into the light, hence integration began. Transition.

Jung calls this the Shadow Self. St. John of the Cross writes of the Dark Night of the Soul. I needed to die unto myself in order to move into a new world of being awake, paying attention to me and my needs. (At first this may sound selfish but until we are in touch with ourselves, until we learn to heal and to love ourselves, we are of little use to others). I had to let go, forgive, seek guidance and understanding, and this has been very hard work. Over time we gather the tools we need to help us on our journey.

Last night I picked up Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love and within seconds came upon the following passage:

"I explained to the medicine man that I've been having the same horrible nightmare since childhood, namely that there is a man with a knife standing next to my bed. This nightmare is so vivid, the man is so real, that it sometimes makes me scream out in fear. It leaves my heart pounding every time (and has never been fun for those who share my bed, either). I've been having this nightmare every few weeks for as long as I can remember."

The medicine man goes on to explan that this man is not her enemy...

Wow.

Momentary Lamentations

There is always so much yard work to be done around here, and at times I enjoy it immensely, it puts me outside and more in touch with the natural world. I refilled all the bird feeders, cleaned the bird bath, gave the hummers fresh sugar water, trimmed the Jerusalem sage, made a quick trip to The Natural Gardener and helped Dale select and plant a shrub--Elaeagnus x ebbingei--, watched the buzzards fly overhead in search of dead carcasses. So many slaughtered deer by the roadsides. As I scooped up a bunch of trimmed algarita branches destined for the burn pile I could feel their sharp thorny leaves piercing my skin and noticed little splotches of blood here and there. Suddenly I felt an eerie sense of heightened awareness, almost as if I'd traveled some distance away from all that is familiar. With a crispness of tone I hardly recognized, the nearby cooing of a mourning dove gives me pause to wonder at my surroundings and look at things from a totally different perspective. The ground is dry and powdery in spots, as I walk along I step into heat spots, like walking through a warm ghost cloud. I'm prone to peeling off my clothes, and feeling what little breeze is blowing, the warmth of sun. A few clouds have rolled in and I think I hear the distant clap of thunder. A brief shower of very light rain falls gently like a half-hearted baptismal rite, just a little tease from above. Mixed with sweat and perhaps a drop or two of rain, little trickles of blood flow down my scratched skin and I wonder how it would feel to lay down and roll in the dirt amongst the thorny leaves of the burn pile and let myself bleed into the earth and feel the sky pounding down on me as I listen to the sad lament of doves.

Once upon a time, after ascending the stairs from the smoky depths of the grotto with the 14 pointed silver star marking the birthplace of Christ, on which I planted a kiss, a friend whispered in my ear that she found nothing holy or sacred at all about that place, certainly not even closely comparable to the holy and sacred sight of a field of flowers. I agree.

A Measurement of Time

I have been totally confused as to the day/date the past few days. It all started with my watch which has a little window that shows the day of the week and the date, like this:

SUN 6

Of course I have to already know it's July and it's 2008, which I can usually manage. But when a month such as June comes along with its 30 days, my watch isn't programmed to know that--it assigns each month 31 days. Therefore, I have to remember to make the correction manually, in a timely manner or I'll get all confused. So all week I've thought July 4th was on Saturday, at least on and off. One moment I'll get it straight, but the next moment I'm in sync with my incorrect watch date, fluctuating back and forth in my mind as to the date and day of the week. My friends tell me I have way too much time on my hands. There's a pun or two in there somewhere.

Which brings me to one of my all time favorite yoga teachers David Moreno (Ahbi). I love him dearly and would take as many of his workshops and classes as possible, if I could. We've tried to work out a schedule whereby he returns to Austin and teaches a workshop for my gay yoga kula in conjunction with doing a workshop at Castle Hill, and/or Yoga Yoga but he is so busy that this idea we've discussed several times may or may not ever happen.

David does not like me to wear my watch in his classes. Period. He says it interferes with my internal clock. Even if I never look at my watch during his class, he says it still interferes with my internal clock through some process akin to osmosis. Ironically, David has issues with watches and clocks, and I say this endearingly, because he is always (BEFORE class) asking me what time it is, and he has brought an assortment of little clocks to class that invariably are either not working, have the wrong time and need adjusting, he can't read them because he forgot his glasses, and so he will hand me a little clock and ask me to read it or fix it or adjust it. It's really just hilarious.

Which brings me to my issues with watches: growing up, I didn't know my Dad well at all. He worked in the oil fields of south Texas and was often gone from home for weeks, depending on the rig location. I now know he had a difficult childhood and saw atrocities beyond my comprehension during his time as a WW II soldier. So when he had time off, he would go straight to the bottle and would usually be rip roaring drunk by the time he got home. He and my mother would have awful fights and I spent a great deal of my early childhood living in a state of fear and hyper vigilance (trying to protect Mom). He often presented gifts to my sister when it wasn't her birthday or Christmas, just something he enjoyed doing. But I got nothing, and that hurt a lot. My mother and grandmother would try to compensate for this, but that really didn't help. On Christmas during first grade I got an Elgin watch, presumably from Dad. I wore it with pride and had that watch until I was 16 and it was stolen. Now I feel nearly naked without a watch and have quite an assortment of them. I think they represent a subconscious connection with my longing for Dad and his love.

I must say how delighted I was to see that Kale, a superb yoga teacher from Australia who has been teaching for 30 years, now at Castle, wearing a watch while teaching his classes. He is truly a great teacher and yogi. And he wears a watch! Yes! I'm vindicated!

Feelings have just come up for me and here they are: my mother made many mistakes during her life (who hasn't?), beginning with her choice to get married young and drop out of high school and to stay stuck in a bad marriage for 18 years. But something did shift for her and she set about making many changes to her life, and even though I always loved her deeply, it wasn't until later in life that we became best friends and I admired her in many ways. But our early years were difficult. She died in 1996 after a long and difficult battle with COPD and bladder cancer. I was with her during her final hours, and held her and cried. The last words she ever spoke in this world were to me, and she whispered in my ear "I'm so sorry." So I say to Mom, it's all ok, all is forgiven, we all struggle with life and making decisions and screw up. I miss you. You did your very best. And Dad, I know you loved me but you were suffering with so many issues that you just couldn't cope with, and were so overwhelmed. It's okay, I have only forgiveness and love in my heart for you.

Often, along with our work, it takes time to heal, sometimes a long while. There is liberation and freedom in forgiveness of others and of yourself. For me, letting go of long held resentments, deep seated anger, self-pity, etc...is always the beginning of healing.

"Sacred Activism" (Rifts and Chasms)

I watched a documentary recently featured on P.O.V. (an excellent program that airs on public television stations, and yes, in liberal Austin, Texas, this program seems to usually be aired after 9 p.m., or after 10 p.m.) that profiled the pretty awful plight of elderly GLBT members of our society. I'd no idea how many GLBT elderly people struggle so hard to make ends meet, how rare it is to find GLBT friendly nursing homes, assisted living homes, and general health care. AND, we are talking about a majority of retired GLBT members of our society, NOT just a few. A majority. It must be remembered that these folks grew up in the 20's, 30's, 40's, and 50's and the world as we know it now, in this country, was very different. It was not always easy to find and hold decent paying jobs unless you lived a closeted life. There was a lot of discrimination. Few of these domestic partners knew to go to an estate planning attorney. Who would suggest that to them, and how many could afford it, and how many available attorneys were there at that time that dealt with such matters? Many have lost partners with whom they were in long term relationships, and find themselves being evicted from their homes because the title of the house was in the partner's name. There are no social security benefits to be had from one's partner, hence the exclusion of Medicare. Even today if you are in a long term relationship and do not have Durable Power of Attorney/Medical Power of Attorney you are not allowed to visit your partner in the hospital if anyone objects, and yes, families do object. You may be not be invited to speak at your partner's funeral, or have any part of that whole process. Horror stories abound, even today. So many of these folks are invisible, they are marginalized, they are disenfranchised. No rights or benefits in regards to their partners. Some companies are making exceptions these days, but these people have little to no governmental representation. We don't know who they are, or where they are. An interview with one young gay man said he feared older gay men would only want sex from him, but if he could be guaranteed that wouldn't happen, he'd welcome having coffee every morning with an elderly gay man. Unfortunately that paints a very sad picture in my mind, the fear of our elderly based on such assumptions and in my opinion, very unsupportive reasoning. Another young gay man said he didn't know anything at all about elderly GLBT people, they were indeed invisible. There is a great rift, a real chasm between younger GLBT folks and older GLBT people, and I find this very sad indeed. I can easily imagine a mentoring program between young and old. It has been an incredible blessing for me personally to have a gay yoga kula that is accepting, loving, and embracing, and to find myself accepted into the yoga community at large--in general they are a group of uniquely special people with great big loving hearts. This makes me cry with tears of gratitude. I'm also blessed to have a wonderful life-mate, and we are going on 34 years together soon!

I only recently became aware of Andrew Harvey, a gay writer, yogi, mystic, scholar, etc....he advocates "Sacred Activism"...not dissimilar in my mind to prayer in action. Getting out there in the world and doing something to help others. Really putting your beliefs into action. Reaching out to touch someone. Sometimes a smile given to a stranger on the street can work miracles. We are all connected.

http://www.andrewharvey.net/sacred_activism.html

Faces and Facets of Fear

I started watching Eckhart Tolle's DVD The Flowering of Consciousness I (based on his book(s) which I haven't read) last evening with my partner and wasn't surprised at how the *pointing of his words* resonates with much truth for me. There is no end to self-improvement, no end to seeking, no end to the path, the quest, the search for meaning in all things. Do we ever really discover exactly or totally who were are? Of course not. Answers are enriching when they come, but they are often accompanied by even more questions. I think this is all very good and is the nature of things. Ebb and flow, wax and wane, stumble and fall, stand steadfast, try to be a good warrior, stay fit and healthy in body, mind, spirit, and then stumble again and fall. And cry.

I am reminded of a woman I met and befriended who had a sad look in her eyes that was visible beneath the defensive arrogance and cocky self confidence she exuded. She told me her husband had committed suicide and her high school age son was experiencing similar signs of depression. "Sometimes you just have to put one foot in front of the other and not think beyond that." I thought to myself at the time what little understanding this woman has regarding the complex issues of depression, suicidal ideation and succumbing to the suicidal impulse, the deep scars that many of us bear that pull us down hard. But now I look back on those words of hers and in them I see wisdom, in the sense that if you are focused on just moving one step at a time you are focused on being in the present, and in this there is much relief from suffering. It really isn't that different from focusing on just taking your next breath. I grew to love this woman and to admire her for all her suffering and her constant seeking of solace in the solemnity of an isolated monastery in NM where I too sought answers. Her worldly wealth made issues such as food, shelter, health care, etc., all of which are extremely important to every single human being on this planet, non-issues for her, but in lieu of having to focus on survival issues she had to cope with issues such as deep despair, loneliness, isolation, abandonment, and not feeling loved in this world. (That last one has been a recurring one for me that comes from my core and can have a profound effect on me and my sufferings). Again I quote Bayda:

"Suffering is guaranteed as long as we demand that life be free from discomfort."

"You believe you can't be happy because your life is difficult. This is backwards. You can't be truly happy until your life is difficult."

"Suffering is the result of insisting that something be other than it is."

And so one day while traveling my own deep rooted fears caught up with me, deep depression and despair set in, and I didn't feel I could possibly go on any longer. This same woman saw the fear in my face and when the armed soldiers came to take me away she intervened and spent many hours of her time helping to get me into a hospital that could take care of me. For this my dear E I am forever grateful.

So for now I'm going to simply put one foot in front of the other and not give a whit about knowing anything about anything.

Inner Courtyards of Quietitude

I find it interesting when a yoga class theme (if there is one) closely correlates to my own recent musings whether it has to do with thoughts, feelings, love, relationships, forgiveness, compassion, awareness, letting go and so on. About thoughts, we clearly are not our thoughts and I think I'm finally getting my mind around that, so to speak. (I'm slow). Our thoughts are not who we are, they can often be just mind chatter, a pretend dialog with another, a fantasy, and my favorite is the trio that comprises the IFS of addiction--what if only? (about the past), what if only? (the now), and what if only? (about the future), we can truly become addicted to such thinking. It's natural for the mind to do this, and I don't think I'll ever come close to stopping it, but it's revelatory when one can recognize what's going on and know what the mind is doing and say to oneself "that's just my mind being active, nothing more and nothing less." I don't think that's where our deeper/higher selves reside. We are to find ourselves beyond all that clatter and clutter and clacking. Today during my drive in to Austin I decided to imagine all the cars around me as though they were thoughts, and when someone decided to drive on my tail I decided to be aware of what they were doing but not react or respond. And the same for the cars that rush past me only to find themselves many car links behind me at the next stop light. I merely observe but try hard to not respond. Be aware but relaxed. It's a bit of a meditation that I think may make driving safer for myself and others. Perhaps meditation isn't the right word here because all meditation techniques I'm familiar with should never be done while driving (except maybe short ones at stop lights).

Bayda writes: "See your thoughts for what they are; Just thoughts. And see them for what they aren't: the truth about who you are and what life is."

Anxiety is always about the future. Bring your mind to the present, to what is happening right now, and you can recognize anxiety as just another thought."

"Notice how often thinking and talking are detours from the painful work of being present to life."

In class today Gioconda read a poem by Hafiz that repeats this same motif. Sometimes we can just put our hand up in a gesture of "no, more" to our thoughts to quieten them, to let them know they are familiar companions but they are not wanted in this moment. As Elizabeth Gilbert says, they are like our neighbors, always there, and we can live in harmony with them, but distance is good. I like the metaphor of fences make good neighbors---I think we need to erect fences to our thoughts and tell them from time to time to just stay on their side of the fence!