108seeds

What return on Investment are you getting from your body?

2012-01-24T12:34:00.000+02:00

If you consider your body as a bank account, that when you are born is in surplus, and the currency is Energy. This bank account has a cap on the maximum amount of energy over the course of your lifetime but the withdrawals that you make have a significant impact on quality of life, and these withdrawals can be counteracted by investments back into the body bank account.

The body is the physical machine that carries you around all day long every day. When this machine is plugged in all day, resources are constantly being downloaded and so energy is being used up.

Withdrawals of energy from your physical bank account include those natural functions like urinating, defecating, for women - giving birth/menstruating, and then the less automatic functions that withdraw energy from the physical body are sex (particularly the ejaculation/orgasm), most physical exercise that leaves you red faced, over-eating (especially meat that requires an immense amount of energy to digest), over-sleeping, holding your breath.

The mental faculties that withdraw energy are thinking which include planning, reasoning, worrying, hoping, general mental busy-ness and emotional ups and downs, over-exerting, investing in outcomes that impose time lined pressures.

All these activities reduce the amount of energy in our bodies which becomes a fertile ground for disease as the worst case scenario, milder symptoms that are the warning against disease, and as generally not feeling inspired, energised or vital as the basic day to day symptoms.

These activities might appease the mind, because it is a function of what you are doing, and what you want to be doing, what you are used to doing your whole adult life, and so feel comfortable, familiar and therefore are unquestioned...they give a certain amount of energy back to the bodybank account because what is wanted has been received, but for the most part the result is still a deficit.

If the return you are getting on your investment is headaches, constipation (not defecating atleast once a day is medically constipated), tired, heavy, lethargic, aches and pains, depression, anxiety and worry, generally ill at ease, then your investment is not working for you. If you are managing your investment with pills, drugs, or recreational avoidance techniques, then your investment is not working for you.

Most of us are managing our symptoms rather than changing our habits to get rid of the symptoms entirely.

What investment can you make into your health and vitality?

What to change for your health: what you eat, how you eat, and how much, how you breathe, how you exercise, what exercise is giving/taking away from you, what you think and how you think, when you relax and how you relax.

Physical choices for health and wellbeing: eat lightly. A vast subject but as a first point of changing some habits, start to eat less meat a week, practice eating for your physical hunger rather than delicious taste sensation, eat a smaller meal at night and earlier in the evening, avoid stimulating ingredients at night like garlic, chilli, tomatoes, fried foods, so that sleep is enhanced. Get to bed and asleep before the second wind hits, learn to relax both body and mind properly, learn to rejuvenate your body by breathing properly.

Exercising properly is about rejuvenating and repairing your body with exercise. Exercise that leaves you red faced and gasping for air is not healthy and is not serving you. Moderate your exercise to a pace and challenge that will increase your energy levels rather than deplete you further. Because most of us are living on adrenalin highs, our exercise choice becomes a factor of that adrenalin high and so it has to be harder or faster to keep the body operating at the levels you are living at.

Stop wasting energy on mindless running around, practice the art of doing nothing, stop thinking, stop worrying, stop your mind when you need to allow it to rest and repair, make choices that allow your body to operate like a well oiled top quality machine. Learning to relax properly, where body and mind shut down entirely is a great rejuvenator to body, mind, emotions and Spirit.

Everything you choose has to be in balance with your other choices. If you choose a hard and fast lifestyle then your exercise choice needs to be slower, more replenishing. Often what creates the balance is the choice that feels counterintuitive.

“When you feel skew, mostly, that is when you are straight” This is a mantra for a yoga teacher observing students in class...we have become so out of alignment with ourselves that we have lost touch of what being in balance is, normal and comfortable for us are just a sign of adjusting well to be out of synch. Often to get back to balance we have to go through a process of unlearning what we think we know, take the crooked uncomfortable path, to find the straight and narrow...the path that keeps us hooked into the magic of the Universe, plugged into the flow of life. That is balance, that is aligning with the nature of things.

My own war on words

2011-09-21T10:03:00.000+02:00

In a previous blog I wrote about words...but it came from a place of fear of what someone's words could do to me, and to caution against using words lightly, disguised as an invitation to live deeper than words.

I had a fear of the damage of words and also a knowledge of their uselessness as a form of communication....but the fear was strongest.

I recently had a 36 hour war of words with someone I love. Everything including the kitchen sink got accused and dismantled into a list of its shortcomings, failings as a kitchen sink, and betrayals for being a kitchen sink. The list however was not a nice neat excel document - it was a hurricane of abrasive kitchen sink cleaner and while rub it did....there came a point where what was exposed was the rawest most vulnerable heart of the hurricane, but there was only peace and quiet!

Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never harm me. This adage has often perplexed me - particularly at a time of writing a previous blog on words. The contradiction of be careful with your words, be integrous with your words but hell words can't hurt, then, could not be reconciled.

What went down the drain in the war of words is the sensitivity to their punch. One might think that here I suit bruised to the bone because someone has accused me of so many things, but actually I am liberated.

Hour 1 - 10 of said kitchen sink war....throwing the dirty dishes around
I am not sure I heard everything, and at first I couldn't.
pain, anguish, distress, words cutting like paper and relentless. resistance is the primary feeling in my body as both mind and body contract away from the words trying to hide and squirm from them

Hour 11 - 20 of exposing the soft tissue of a kitchen sink...
pain, outrage, how dare she, a defensive stance is taken and that defensiveness might even look like an attack, and vows of disowning the kitchen sink are made. Avoidance and needing to get out of this quagmire of hateful hurtful things is primary and what you resist persists, so the more I avoid, the harder and faster the onslaught is.

Hour 21 - 30 of past the softtissue of a kitchen sink is iron...
and the tap of an equal and opposite onslaught opened to full blast and no holding back. Aaah, the freedom in speaking unedited thought. The luxury of saying what I think instead of couching between kindnesses to care for the other's ego. Ahimsa's warning to not cause violence to another gone and forgotten. This is a blameful reaction (karma's equal and opposite action sent right back), an attack because if you can so can I. In the thick of it, it is the ugliest moment as the heart that is as black as the night is exposed...

Hour 31 - 36 Metal is buffed and shining...
a mellifluous glow of realisation, that I am not harmed by another's words or intent to harm. I am also free because I got rid of my own thoughts that were harrassing me from within...just dying to get out and being suppressed by some spiritual idea that to speak might harm and therefore be the death of my good intent. The moment was a surrendering to what I found myself in, surrendering to ego, relaxing my spiritual vows of goodness to give free reign to thought...

better to let the thought go before it is an alien tree in my brain, but since that didn't happen, this was a delicious experience! If you can't let go of a thought, you can neither suppress it, for suppressing it will only let it haunt you...it felt great to express myself and my thoughts without a care to the other's level of hurt. I am sure some things I said cut deep, but I now also know this...the speaking of the thoughts was about me, not her, and so the purpose of the speaking was for my healing not for her hearing...

I have long had the philosophy that if you want to really understand somethings' affect on you, overdo it! I have practiced this with meat when trying to become a vegetarian, I have practiced this with sattvic diet of the most stringent kind when looking to understand foods' affect on my mind and emotions. The lessons are learnt in the all encompassing experience of one thing, almost done to extreme, as the lack of extreme dilutes the presence of knowledge. hmmm.

The words that still cut deep after 36 hours I realised were the ones that I had wounds about. The others I realised were necessary to be spoken as part of a cathartic process for the other.

The words that cut deep are my responsibility to heal. The words that didn't I cannot hold against anyone for speaking as they showed me that I am whole.

The words that cut deep show me that somewhere inside myself I have a belief system that is in conflict with what is being said, or they show me that I am trying to hide or pretend to myself about something.

If someone says to me 'you are a miser'. And I am but hate myself for it then the words will sting. If I am a miser but don't care, or if I am not, the comment will slip like water off a ducks back, as the comment is mirrored back to the speaker and a beautiful indication to me that the speaker has an issue with miserly behaviour on one level or another, and it is his not mine to deal with.
If someone says I am fat, and I take offense, then I have an issue with my body image. It is not they they are being cruel, it is that they are inviting me to become whole.

Imagine a society that could not take personal offense at everything...through a process of healing our words. Imagine a society that could speak freely, without having to tailor thoughts for fear of offence or causing pain..
Imagine.
To me it feels like a breath of fresh air!

lies and truth, both reality

2011-06-25T20:25:00.000+02:00

WHEN SOMEONE LIES

I wonder if this has the effect of a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil?

REALITY....
according to Vedanta is defined as only that which pervades every circumstance
making what we feel, hear, see, taste, touch unreal
and therefore what we say and do also unreal

And so, just because we said it, doesn't make it true, just becasue we lied it, doesn't make it a lie
just because we believe it, doesn't make it true, just because we know it is outrageously not the thing we uphold as truth, doesn't make it a lie

rollercoaster is not for one

2011-06-06T21:40:00.000+02:00

The rollercoaster can't be travelled alone

Whe you decide it is time for a trip
It is here I need to gather my wits
because if I am not awake or alert
I might jump on for the ride and probably get hurt

Your rollercoaster ride exists because
I bought a ticket and said I would
let me go through with it
the fee is the cost of experience
an expensive earth shattering dance

what happens if I don't get on with you
I'm preserved the fear but also the view

on a cushion knee to knee

2011-06-06T21:36:00.000+02:00

I sat on a cushion knee to knee with someone else

and elbow to elbow with rows of someone elses
and stared into eyes I didn't really know
and felt the gaze looking back into me

no words were expressed but a million things said
no escape was allowed but a million places visited
as the mind intially tried to hold up certain illusions and pretences
in a game it couldn't win

so the walls came down
and something was lost
and in its place something found
the power of the unspoken moment
and the insecurity of what was said without realising it
or wanting it to be said
and the peace that comes with surrender to the truth of who you are without words

and the being watched as if no one is watching
because as I am not there watching your eyes,
so you are not there watching me
the showing of the self as if this self was me
because in my eyes looking outward for 31 minutes
me is lost and you is lost
and what is found is trancendence

its a love I haven't felt before
not for you,
or for me,
but for the space that we hold when we are honest
and vulnerable
and watched and brave
and being without words

"Life not literature matters most" Erica Jong

2011-06-06T21:31:00.000+02:00

Words are a web of distraction and intrigue
designed to occupy space
to create an image
to manipulate
to elevate
and between the speaker and listener a third reality known to neither exists!

Between voice giving life to thoughts
and ears, mind and intellects interpretation
You have a broken telephone

Add emotion and the telephone is smashed into bits of decomposing communication
Imagine I dared speak without words
listen without fear
to what is beyond words with someone who actually wants to see and hear
with me
not at me

A meat cleaver is to meat
what words are to communication

Words mask fear
are used as a substitute for loving
and exacerbate the human condition of loneliness
my words separate you from me

Words are the cloak I dress myself in
to hide what I'm really experiencing
to dazzle you with the fancy footwork of my intellect
to distract you from what I am really feeling
words are not alone in their crime
words are the sword
but emotions are the hands that wield the sword
words can cut and protect
but are essentially impotent,
and emotion is not what I am feeling
it is the charge that I place on my words to hide
my essential being

words,
the eject button pushed to activate
your get out of here free card
but free has a price
and eject is a return flight
right back into a repeat scenario
hope you get it right
this time

"Without illusions we die. without illusions there is no energy, no enthusiasm for life. Se we have to be replaced by the young who have fresh illusions" Erica Yong, Of Blessed Memory

Tastes so good

2011-05-27T23:27:00.000+02:00

THE ADDICT EATS DIRT

I recently met my addict again...stimulant addict that it. She craves and chases the next high...so that every experience, every meal, every outing becomes an ordeal of expectation to surpass the last high, or in desperate times, to atleast get a high.

Reduced to an example of food, as stimulation hits the tongue, so the tongue celebrates, of course - we are designed to need to feel good - and so the tongue convinces me that I feel good because it is enjoying the taste. But then, if the next meal can't compete, there is resignation and frustration and sometimes a desperate search for something that will give the same pleasure.

Then I went to a yoga workshop...and am relieved to play in Joy and Feeling Good without a need to chase anything, because it is hard work to get there which on some level eliminates that craving...but also because it is real and infinite...the joy of being in my body, surpasses any externally created experience I can have.

However, an externally created experience is like popping a pill, an immediate high and this instant gratification becomes the temptation that leads even the best of us astray from the more difficult inner journey....to feel good through yoga/meditation is hard work! It is a daily commitment - not just to asanas - but to celebrating the body and life!

A friend recently lost a loved one, and I also watched the birth of another friends baby...death and life.
Being confronted vicariously by Death reminded me that the body is just a vehicle for the Soul, and without the Soul, it is lifeless and empty!
This absolutely tempted me into thinking that well, if it is so separate from the Soul, why not abuse it? Only to realise that it is only separate from the Soul on death. Prior to death it is a temple through which we are here to experience Life. Though the addict in me realises that most of my addiction takes more and more energy away from Life and Living and pushes me closer and closer to death. Over-eating, smoking, drugs, alcohol, not sleeping enough, sleeping too much...all these things that are not in balance with Nature, are speeding us toward death.

Or you can be hit by a bus...but that death is different. Abusing substances, in search of stimulation, is a slower less obvious form of suicide! There is no dignity in that kind of death, and no real celebration for Life.

Yes death passes us onto another life....(depending on how we lived this one)...so what does it matter, this life? I am given custody of this life I think...so perhaps I should cherish living. Take care of the simple things like my health, and open up to grace where the magic of living can really happen.

Observing a most courageous woman give birth struck many chords with me....there is a ritual or sacred process as unnatural as it appears to the observer...that makes birth a rite of passage. If we weren't meant to hold this birth as sacred, it wouldn't be such a sacred experience - the magic of cultivating new life, and delivering it to this world, to give it custody of itself, and learn to let go. Magic!

I realised you also have to be fit for life! This body is loaned to us for some purpose...and we underestimate the magic of this journey...which starts in the womb and is all taken care of by some higher power. Nature so divinely instigates these processes - of birth, of some kinds of death, and on a more simple level of sneezes, or evacuation of the bowls, but we no longer trust in Nature. To live Life...without incurring additional cost to the body or mind in the destruction of addiction, is a sacred journey that might bear zero fruits for the labour...

that is FAITH.

Popping Candy, cool like life

2011-01-07T21:01:00.000+02:00

Snap, crackle, pop, rice crispies only not.

Full of tartrazine, no fibre to be seen.

In my mouth, an electric storm,

I want to control it, but it journeys on its own,

from tongue to ears confuse

Hop, skip and jump, I want to play like the candy on my tongue

Feels like frivolity, carefree Duncan dance

Choreographed with no rules,

a way to live my life

Open mouth liberates changed experience

Music made with popping instrument

Death when lips touch, silenced

Thank God the packet, not infinite, has more

My mouth laughs

My mind races to reason

whirls for a moment as

Pop ‘n sound distract to non-sense

To end, the shutters of joy close

Aftermath, sugar induced mimic of play

What my mind doesn't know won't hurt it

2011-01-07T20:38:00.001+02:00

So on New Years day I woke up. I went to the kitchen to prep as I was serving on a Vipassana course. Chop, chop, chop and for fun we baked! (anyone still with me?). Then to a meditation. All very innocent really, except for 3 days I had been in a routine of serve, eat, meditate, sleep, and the night before I had changed rooms with someone at her request. I had wanted my own room so the opportunity seemed like one to jump at. I over-ruled the little voice saying well, I am actually quite settled and happy where I am surrounded by wall of curtains and other close bodies asleep.

It is the meditation and the energy within the embrace of the mountains I previously christened Profile Mountains that must have been the catalyst. From the female dorms you can see human faces profiled at different angles and sizes and sexes along the profile of the mountains themselves. Very awesome. It is like having a grandfather or mother holding the space for you as you travel inward. It can’t have been the peace and quiet of meditating, because even to take a nap felt like work – to squeeze in the most amount of time in a short hour of zzzz was pressure to fall asleep, deeply, quickly. You can imagine how well that worked?

The new room was less than desirable for many reasons, and I realized that sometimes we get what we want but we were better off with what we got. Note to self, don’t want.

And the meditations (3 hours of 1 hour each) on day 2 which was New Years Eve were all excruciating as it seemed my mind would just not shut up, and my emotions were hovering dangerously close to that thing called anger…at someone in particular – maybe 2 someones, whose names I shall keep to myself to protect the innocent. I have since committed to figuring out how to let my emotions come out safely when they need to instead of being stoic. A deliciously frightening challenge. Do something every day that scares you, right? Enter, the weeping willow?

So meditation on Day 3 arrived with much trepidation. An hour. More emotional blackmail? And well, this is what I love about Vipassana, yes, there was more, but today was the unraveling of yesterday. Or rather, somewhere in yesterday I had processed so much that today was fresh, new, realized! A new kind of emotion surged up in my body, a whole body BORED. Then a whole body SMILE that couldn’t help but erupt on my lips. And a decision. Somewhere between bored and decision something happened. Bored is not necessarily the right word for what I experienced…it was boredom not with the situation, it was boredom with my year of decision making, none of which had really served ME, boredom with myself as I knew me, and an apparent idea of what I wanted (we see this theme again of what you want and what you need are not necessarily the same, and former not necessarily true, accurate, or good).

So, somewhere between boredom and SMILE I made a decision. A decision that made so little sense that I had to spend the rest of the day trying to let my mind catch up with this decision that seemed to have skipped the compulsory (?) hierarchical stopping places on the way to being made. But as I sat, completing the hour, I knew the decision was absolutely not negotiable. But, I will have to explain this decision, I will have to come up with reasons, I thought?

I love that meditation is so many things…

So, then I chopped, allowing a space for this decision to percolate. (If you wondering what the decision is, it really doesn’t matter – but broadly, is a decision to make different kind of decisions, because staying within the familiar of what and how I chose in the past hadn’t worked for so long, it was time to try alternatives as risky as they seemed). And, I looked forward to the next meditation session where I hoped that somewhere in my being, I would galvanize my own strength to stick to new guns. And all the while, my mind was trying to catch up with the decision. How could I have made this decision that my mind didn’t even know about?

And then, I sent out some feelers to people who know me, one opposed the decision with all the internal dialogue I had already thrown at it, another supported the decision with all the internal dialogue I had interjected in amongst the first internal dialogue (yes I know, it sounds schizophrenic!). And somewhere my mind caught up, and the decision was made. The wheels of the Universe started to spin in new ways that proved to me it is right to do crazy (nonsensical) things sometimes, because what makes sense is only the box we have created for ourselves.

And since then, making new decisions on a daily basis, has proved to spark new experiences completely. In the old, my faith in life had started to diminish, my faith in magic and faith in serendipity, in all the right things arriving at my door at the right time. This was because I was controlling the exchange with more firepower than at the Berlin Wall. The Universe respected the barbed wire I put up.

Without the reinforcements keeping the Universe out, I have noticed an amazing abundance, that somewhere I knew about, but had started to believe happened to others.

It all makes so much sense, and then I speak with someone who doesn’t see what I see of threads connecting magic to me, nor who believes in the Universe and it’s big hand that responds to us, and I am tempted back into that ‘safe’ world of control where I alone create opportunities…until it is decision time again, and almost counter-intuitively, I make it going against the ways of pro’s and con’s and all the old valuations I used to apply, and make it from a place of non-thought.

My mind can catch up later.

2011, welcome! Universe, welcome! Magic, welcome!

Journal of Change

2010-11-26T20:54:00.001+02:00

I used to be an avid Journal writer...until one day I stopped. The story is a little long, and this is how it goes: I lived in New York for 6 years and in my process of packing up the life I lived there to move to East Timor, and then eventually home, I had to clean out a lot of stuff! My journals were a strong contender for the keep pile, but I decided it would be cathartic to have a bonfire instead. Burn the old me, make way for the new! And so on the afternoon of the proverbial bonfire – I lived in an apartment so, bonfire turned into a – tearing the pages of the journals into confetti sized pieces and throwing them away - event, I couldn’t help but read excerpts and snippets, and then whole chapters as I got drawn into the drama. Almost as cathartic as a bonfire I presume.

Page 1: 1996 - me

Page 2: 1997 - me

Page 3: 1998 - me

Page 4: 1999 - 2001 – me

I realised that I am inescapably me. Years change, the story of names and places change, but very little about myself or my reactions and 'the experienced' changed...the language changed, sometimes a little more poetic, sometimes more angry, but that is the understandable and expected vascillation of life. Or is it?

I re-read quotes that I had loved enough to re-write into a journal, and would wonder why I didn’t put into practice the message of the quote. I re-read moment by moment accounts of a situation that unfolded, with the doubts, the insecurities, the my-side-of-the-story familiarities, and a seed of realisation planted deeply.

If I was writing so much and yet, nothing in 6 years had changed – not really – then what was the point of the writing? I wondered if perhaps the writing of so many ‘realisations’ had been an excuse to not put the realisation into action. The writing of the realisation was the action. And then, revert straight back into old patterns.

It is part of a – the last 10 years of my life since leaving New York – question about whether change happens because you make it happen, or change happens because it is your destiny. Inner change I am talking about. Or do leopards never ever change their spots.

So, despite 6 years of immense trials and tribulations, winning over adversity and surviving myself in a lonely city, I seemed to be unchanged. How disturbing, or gratifying...depends on whether I like myself or not. And that depends on the day 

Today, I actually noticed that for 3 days past I have had to consistently close the cupboard door to the secret hiding place of my teenage journals which kept opening. I decided it was a clue to have a peek. Again, I am reminded, that changing some things is impossible, and it behoves me to put the language of the last 10 years of my life into action – the karma we come into this life, and the karma we are here to deal with cannot be escaped. The themes of my teenage pre-occupations were by and large the same themes of my adult preoccupations, inescapably my experience of me, mirrored back to me by the world, despite changing countries or people or wisdom with age, which I had assumed was my age-right!

A statement made by someone I met recently has taken me further into this question: “I was raised Muslim, but I am not a practicing Muslim”, he said. I was raised Catholic, and now am wondering if ingrained in my belief systems that inform my behaviours and my reactions, even as I change the language to say, the language of yoga, am I still inescapably the oldest daughter, Catholic, hormonal teenager with a family who by account of a journal entry in 1991 has not changed at all either?

So, a proud statement of “I have got it! That lesson I have learnt!” is merely a moments ego-gratification and an opportunity to feel good now for the lesson learnt, and again in 6 months for the lesson learnt, and to feel good again in 16 years for the lesson learnt! Because it seems, the lessons we are here to learn, we simply keep learning.

I am amazed at how thwarted memory is. How many times have I placed value on my memory - my ability to put facts into my head? Facts? Ask me now of my childhood and I will guaranteed convey a different story to the words in my journals. My memory NOW of who I was, what I was like at 15 is not entirely similar to the written perceived experience of 1989... somewhere in my current memories, I have added, subtracted, romanticized or deleted events, or personality traits of me or others to suit the idea that I have changed, or am not that same little girl any more. It is a matter of convenience. The axis of who I am does not change it seems, just how I rotate around that axis (nice imagery happening here) does, as the light reflects differently on a different horizon in a moment.

How we perceive things changes, and how we choose to remember. Perception is nothing to place a bet on, or to mark new strategies for life by. And without perception, what is left?

NO MORE WORDS

2010-08-31T22:00:00.000+02:00

Surrendering the intellectual

The problem with being intellectual is that thinking. As I typed this I paused to refer to my notes, ending the sentence at THAT thinking...how apt. The problem with being intellectual is that thing called thinking. Thinking too easily becomes a habit. Like a creeper weed, before you know it, you are living in your thoughts, everything and yourself defined by your statements or others’, this creeper of intelligence a wall of protection suffocating your true identity and real experience. This wall of protection a projected identity of intelligence, a safe haven or cave of words.

Underneath this tough exterior, underneath the words defensively defining you as intelligent, as all-knowing is a far superior intelligent and all-knowing entity, your heart!

Living with fewer words – oh the silence is huge. It’s a rejection.

The word-addict has intravenously fed the words into every cell of existence, every moment to the worders’ body and anyone nearby who had to listen or chose to listen. This currency of words overvalued and devaluing the heart, though words will say, 'my heart is open'. How deep those words really go can only be measured by a really quiet mind.

It’s the labels, the definitions, the projections of intelligence that become a backpack of bricks we carry around and have to protect. The interesting thing is that the intellectual will defend this projection as not a protection at all but rather himself/herself, his/her right to intelligence. what a waste of energy.

Feel a moment without words.

“I think therefore I am not!” Wordless, I Am.

In debating the source of the original quote “I think therefore I am”, the intellectual will ironically focus on who owned the words rather than realising that this very attachment has created a diversion from the point. “I think therefore I am not”. I own words and ensure others can own theirs too as if there is a value to them, yet we can throw words around like confetti, fool's gold.

We need words for some basic living needs. The rest is all escape, mind junk.

Mind junk.

I stopped recently to notice someone. He was talking. The words he was using were interesting, but far more interesting, is what he was not saying. I listened to myself, the words I chose - to facilitate some end...protect, defend, assert, hide. I am the biggest victim of the word disease.

Mind junk.

Peace. From myself. From you. From words. From my reliance on them, my addiction to them, the noise they create, the entertainment, the obligation to hear if not listen, the distraction.

I opt for words as protection against intimacy. I notice in others the same, and their body language closes the shoulders in front of the chest, the head is projected forward, the mouth is always moving, asserting ‘life’ or that they think they have life by speaking.

I opt for words because I don’t know how to be any different. I’ve already asked, ‘Who am I if I am not thinking?’

I opt for words because I feel it’s important for you to know me, but really it’s because I am trying to know myself.

I opt for words because they taste good in my mouth.

I opt for words because they dress you and me in the colours of my choice.

I opt for words because essentially I am Stupid. If I wasn’t stupid I would know better and meet you at your heart. But I know too that you are also afraid, and so I choose words to protect us both.

I opt for words because in the silence I might feel lonely or scared even though you are sitting with me.

I opt for words because that way I can be in control. Even if what I am saying makes no sense, at least I am in control of that moment because I own it with words, and I own you while you listen.

I opt for words because they seem like a paint brush colouring in an experience, but really they are the eraser!

Mind junk.

Versus Silence.

I opt for words because I don’t know what to do with the silence when I am with you. When I am alone, silence is a warm embrace, a huge sound that engulfs me and hugs me, but with you, silence hurts.

I opt for words, because the greatest intimacy is not sexual but stillness, stillness that you hold with me in the moments where we touch but no one is touching, and no one is moving.

Silence sitting next to someone is a knife that cuts away the personality, and bares you naked and vulnerable.

In silence, I am undressed...

Know Myself

2010-05-18T11:40:00.000+02:00

March 2010

“Know thyself and be free,
And you will soon attain immortality”
Last 2 lines of Sivananda Ashram mantra

To know myself: what does this mean?
With each crossroads I meet in life, where how to invest my energy is questioned, which ideas to pursue, which to leave alone, I feel like I don’t know myself when in a situation without answers. (control?)

Attaining the state of Godliness is listed in the yoga texts as the ultimate state to realize, but the texts all also say that to define God is to limit God. To know God is a feeling, often expressed within a cautious list of words like Samadhi (super-blissful state) and Turiya (enlightenment), but stress the value in not defining God further to box the image of God, and I was created in God’s image?. Super-blissful state and Turiya both suggest to me a feeling. To know God then is a feeling. To know myself, is a feeling.

How do I strive to know myself without words that define me? If I am to achieve self-realization which I understand it so achieve union with God, why do I expect to travel the dictionary of descriptions to find which fit me or rather those that I can attach to for now?

How can I know myself without words?

Won’t words keep me in the past as a summary of actions?

So my next guess is to move to a feeling. Know myself by feeling – as suggested by super-blissful state. It feels like feeling my way around an unfamiliar room with the lights switched off – so how is that enlightenment? Being in the dark?

But using words to pinpoint me is surely avidya (ignorance and hence darkness).
By reasoning then, it’s ignorance to think I know myself, and arrogance to use words to prove it!

So who am I? With a dose of creative intelligence I can stay as much within the ‘present’ as possible when using words to describe me (so as not to let words keep me in the past), so, I am expressed (on purpose or by mistake) in each moment, from present to present. In the small space of the present, there is not a lot of space for words. Does it mean I will be defining myself from second to second, and therefore, am not really definable, because looking at a collection of seconds, there would not be a single state to describe but rather a collection of states of being, which to the outsider would look like a fickle mind, but to the inside, looks like being in the present?

If knowing myself is all about a sense of control insofar as I can deduce and reason consequence and action which implies control - action and decision as guided by my sense of self – the words listed to define me. (i.e. I am this which determines my behaviour and every situation that appears like this results in executing that predetermined behaviour, which is control).

So when I can’t rationalize, do I not know myself? Or am I really, finally living in my true self?

Feeling. Heart. Surrender.
I can’t get my head around it?
Is that Freedom?

“ We can continue to make choices in the absence of definite answers” Julian Baggini

On Being Yogic

2010-03-16T16:28:00.000+02:00

On Being Yogic

This article comes to me through various discussions in the past weeks on the topic. I find, particularly among yoga practitioners who are familiar with the philosophy of yoga, that a set of rules are adopted and life stops being free. A new set of controls are created that become so similar to organized religion which most committed yogi’s are set to avoid. Yoga becomes an external lifestyle based on these rules and regulations and no longer a practice of Union.

In the 8 limbs of yoga, the first two limbs, Yamas and Niyamas outline outward and inward practices respectively in order to attain Bliss, which is my understanding of Union. These practices are guidelines to living and I think they are profound, I just think most of us stop at ahimsa (non-violence) – outwardly, because it is tangible and easier to master and also easier to show the fruits of our labour through.

This doing of Yogic lifestyle instead of being Yogic and therefore affecting our lifestyle has become clear to me recently, through intellectual observation, and I am still learning to not fill my intellect with ideas and notions as I think this is where half the problem arises. Nonetheless, Lent came around this year, and sometimes I participate in Lent as a personal offering and sacrifice, 40 days of giving up something…I usually succeed because of the spiritual impetus behind my intention. I also usually give up something tangible – sweets, meat, and alcohol. This year I decided to give up something different – I gave up negative thoughts. I am not sure I succeeded. I observed some negative thinking, and sometimes, I pretty much know that I forgot it was Lent altogether. Doing outwardly being so much easier than not doing inwardly.

I could recycle, I could use electricity saving light bulbs, I could save the earth – these could all be testament to my choice to live a physical yogic lifestyle, but these are things I am NOT doing. Though they do count, I just don’t know how much. I think the focus of being “good” is about the external measure of my labour, so I have to ask the question, would it not be much better to achieve 40 days of no negative thinking than 40 days of using the water saving toilet flush mechanism? For me, on my path, I strive to achieve the former, but in this trying, I again create discord. I am not naturally there yet…

Union, I believe is when there is no discord within our being (not trying to be what we are not naturally i.e. without intellectual decision making). I liken this experience to a radio that is out of tune, the fuzz of disconfigured sound is usually the backdrop of our lives as we try our best to be yogic and to live a purposeful life, against our own Nature. The white noise is the duality of trying to be something we are not, of trying to do instead of BE.

I create my own buzz of background noise because through yoga philosophy I struggle with understanding how to be content for example, how to be always balanced in mind and body when life is happening to me. I realized that for a long time I avoided with all my being, anything that LOOKED out of balance. So the fire of my anger was drowned, the water of my vulnerability was evaporated – all so I could appear outwardly in balance. I wonder, like I often say in tree pose, Vrksasana, life is not about being in balance, but about learning to return to balance without reaction or resistance being the internal – mental (or deeper sensational) response to falling out of balance. It seems that in trying so hard to be in balance, I pull myself more and more out of balance with the Divine – I create a lot more mental activity that is not positive – directed to me or out into the Universe. It seems that in trying to be in balance I strain against the rhythm of life and am no longer free.

Krishnamurti in his book, Freedom from the Known, expresses that true Freedom is the free-flow of everything through your mind and body – unreacted to, unchecked, unedited. When we start to censor ourselves toward an ideal, we create the noise of duality and this suppression veils our True Selves. When we live in truth to what is, even if it looks “bad” then we start to embrace living in Union with the Divine, we start to return the pendulum from its extreme swings to a neutral place (without any particular DOING!) Because, despite how it looks, in THAT very moment, we are in Union with the Truth, by accepting what is (contentment?) and there is no signal out to the Universe that is cluttered or unclear. The Truth is a perfect broadcast of each moment as it is!

Our thoughts are energy, energy that cannot be created or destroyed and yet we focus more on our outward actions, almost victim or resigned to the internal world. Mindfulness speaks of being witness, observer to all that is. I believe in my attempts to be yogic, although I can also witness that, I am no longer mindful. I am doing my life and not being my Self.

We practice awareness, but it is easier to be aware of how much fuel we are using and therefore must plant trees than how many negative vibes we have sent into the Universe that also affect our Earth, our lives and others’.

I think that everything we can do is good. I just have to wonder if the focus is not misplaced. I wonder if I left myself to my own devices, who I would BE? I wonder if I stopped filling my intellect with ideas and notions of philosophy, how my life would look? In striving to be so good and yogic, I have become the very antithesis of YOGA.

And my yoga practice can be more observation and less of everything else.

Mystery of Being Me

2010-03-16T16:21:00.000+02:00

The Mystery of Being ME

Have you spent your adult life searching, trying to uncover how to live your life? Have you read books on this subject only to learn their solution to despair or feeling that something is missing in life is always: Know Thyself? Do you feel that there is a huge mystery that is YOU that needs to be unraveled and the obstruction, that the mystery doesn’t really want to be revealed, making life an obstacle course of trickery and veils and illusion that you feel you have to win over?

Many of us feel that we don’t have the tools to unravel the big mystery of who is “I am”, and that if for one moment we cast an unconscious eye in any direction we might miss the biggest clue of life and stay trapped in the darkness forever. This causes a heavy fear of missing that one big opportunity to understand “myself”. Fear causes procrastination. Fear becomes waiting. Waiting for some benevolent act of God to show us what we need to know. Fear that this act of God may never happen to ME. It seems that many of us still hold a belief system that God is only benevolent if ‘I am good’! And this belief system comes often from either religion or yoga philosophy! Unfortunately, in the vedic era of yoga, rites and rituals were engaged for the purposes of finding favor with God, to have God bestow luck and bounty upon the yogi and community. The mindset of our practice on the mat and in life easily diverts to action to win favor from the Gods for the purpose of getting the clues to know “myself”. This striving for perfection in intention, attention, and thoughts, words and deeds to earn and to deserve to receive favor or to avoid the threat of discredit from the heavens is a heavy burden to bear. (And sometimes it is not the Heavens we fear but our own reflection in our friends and family!)

How much fear is ruling your life? What belief systems are you stuck in? Reflecting on this answer takes you into that maze of ‘know myself?’. More importantly, is your mantra that you think you don’t know yourself and still have a long way to go, or can you simply now embrace yourself?

Neale Donald Walsh in Book 2 of Conversations with God puts the power back in the individual’s own hands. His idea is that there is NO obscure TRUTH to UNRAVEL, but rather a TRUTH TO CREATE.

The duality that is made clear in this article outlines the option of adopting a passive versus proactive life philosophy. The passive option is to be your observer – the yoga journey of self-realization. The proactive option is to be the creator – ‘The Secret’ inspired journey. “Thoughts become things” are the famous 3 words for realizing the life you want to live by Mike Dooley of The Secret. The life you live is a representation of your “I am” consciousness, it’s the manifestation of your inner self, not what you do but how you do it!

Yes, yoga clarifies the relationship with “myself” through observing the internal dialogue and the experience and relationship with ‘me’ on the mat. Being on the mat in yoga, you see what goes on inside, and so learn about your subtle madness and idiosyncratic belief systems that you wouldn’t believe if a stranger pointed them out. But taking yourself so close to the center of your own crazy can become a self-obsessed egocentric focus and a life-destructive process. Being the observer or witness is confusing because in watching, you listen to the drama of your minds, and by listening, too often become involved in it. You become one with your drama instead of with your creative power.

So, instead of observing yourself to learn about you, you could create an attitude and live it, both on the mat and off the mat. Yoga on the mat is a microcosm of life off the mat, the macrocosm. Who you are on the mat with yourself is who you are off the mat, with influences around you. But by practicing joy and abundance on the mat, which is a safe space without the world tugging on you, you can develop the muscle to and practice being forever in joy and abundance even while off the mat.

By micromanaging yourself through your undisciplined witness, you makes yourself passive to your creative energy. This is Neale’s message as I interpret it. Instead of wasting all this time watching yourself to understand who is “I am”, rather spend the time and energy creating whoYou want to be, and recreating and reaffirming that Creation in every moment! Who you are in the observation of a moment ago does not necessarily exist in this moment! It implies you live in the past of yourself instead of in the present, or future of who You create. Instead of realizing who You are, You decide to embrace the potential of who You could be, and put that emotion of self-realization into the present moment!

Viktor van Kooten is quoted from his book with Angela Farmer ‘From Inside Out. Book III’, “In yoga asana we pray with the physical in order to connect with the great, invisible source, making use of duality to come to and into unity. All effects, flexibility, health etc., sprouting from this practice, are trivial and not the reason for this practice. Yoga asana is a prayer that brings creation back home where it belongs: in the hands of the Creator.”

It might seem like a lie to be creating and recreating yourself at every moment, and perhaps not very reliable, since we all rely on the past of who we have been to define and identify ourselves with today and how others have come to know us, and anything deviating from that seems to be a misrepresentation. The old adage “fake it till you make it” comes to mind!

“I create a compassionate person and act it” Done! “I create a trustworthy friend and be one” Done! “I Realize my Self” Done! “I create Eka pada rajakapotasana” Done! Well, now there is a glitch. Your body doesn’t comply with your creation? Is this the truth of life – that things take time, that the matter of our bodies cannot change in a second or can it? Only your belief systems stand as an obstacle to your power to be Creator. Time is relative, invest the time now in creation, as the time will pass anyway. You are what you think.

There is a seed that is inherently attracted to the light. In the same resource by Viktor, he speaks of a potato, put in a cupboard and left there, and in time, the potato has “pale arms reaching for its lost lover – the Sun. A seed in the ground knows where the sun is, You can separate yourself from yourself, from nature, from God, from the communion and suffering of others, but inside you is a light seeking release from your body’s darkness, and an invisible seed reaching for the light!”

The problem is that we don’t accept our light and we don’t really know who we want to be. We are confused by the media and icons and social norms that might be attractive to us, and that has dictated who we have been, so we now all own our personal trademark of ‘normal’. Actions and reactions are dictated by an inner dialogue that asks if this is what is expected of me right now, if this is the appropriate place for this behaviour right now, and so we choose to act, considering the consequences rather than what we want, and to be frank, bugger the consequences. We have been conditioned to live in the world of consequence, and learning more about karma on the yoga path instills more “God-fearing” behaviour.

The choice to be who you want to be does not require a knowing of who you are, but it will certainly highlight who you don’t think you are right now – this will unravel belief systems that clearly do not serve you.

And again we are back in the dichotomy of how to know who you are in order to create who you want to be and is the one necessary for the other?

You have a choice: you can choose to flex the detachment muscle that allows everything without personal investment, or you can flex the realization muscle that puts your own personal investment as the priority to successful living. Detachment is then from the fruits of that labour, patience a virtue in watching the magic of your Creation unfold.

Is ancient yoga philosophy out of date or have we just not adapted it to the current age in which we are living, and have we been living in the past with outdated belief systems of certain social order? The teachings of the Bhagavad Gita would teach to act according to your dharma. Has our dharma as a society not changed? Is life not about the journey rather than the obligation?

You choose!

NUMBER 1. Sensory Addiction

2008-05-07T15:44:00.000+02:00

I lived 6 years in New York City, on Manhattan Island, right in the thick of it – live music shows, concerts, Turkish delights, rollerblades. I became an experience collector. I collected experiences like they were badges of honor. I saw live shows, plays, people and things. I chewed gum. I walked because the bus was too slow. I listened to my walkman too loud. It was grand.

Until one day I realized I was angry, depleted, and lost. I felt that my existence had become senseless…ironic in a place that stimulates all your senses!

I left Manhattan via a number of experiences internationally – collecting more – they validated me you know. The more cool experiences I could speak of, the better I was as a person right? I got back to a new unfamiliar Johannesburg South Africa. Nothing. No people. No music. No arts and culture. No friends. It was an extreme to test any junkie’s ability to cold turkey. I started to suffer withdrawal symptoms, but mostly I chased the next high, the next hit. I found this easiest through emotional rage…anger at any chance, irritability, short tempered interactions with anyone who came across my path. I listened to my music too loud alone in my car. I drove too fast. I ate food that was too hot, too spicy, and drank my tea scalding!

On my way home to South Africa, resisting the stillness there, I took my self around the world, with 1,5 months in India studying a yoga teacher training course.

2 years it took me to come down, to detox from being stimulated through every single sense on a second by second basis. I was teaching yoga in these two years but was still seeking pleasure through experience so, I went to India again for 2,5 months. I practiced yoga in between bouts of diahorrea and vomiting, which lasted an entire month of alternating yoga with the long drop…I was purging, it was a very much needed final detox to cleanse cellular memory of stimulant and craving for it.! It wasn’t the food in India! I sat a 10 day silent meditation course which was hell. For someone who couldn’t sit a second in silence, this was ten days of eleven hours a day with myself. Whew, I thought I had died or ceased to exist and only when I saw myself in a mirror did I sigh the relief of recognition, I am still here. I slowly started to learn to breathe restfully, I finally felt I could be with myself, just me and all of me all at once!

I came home again. I started a business. I started to grow. I started to explore what yoga philosophy was all about and practiced at it for 3 years. I was miserable or ecstatic. The inner journey has no words to describe, but I missed the world. There was very little balance. The cleaner my physical body and aura got, the more intolerable the world around me seemed. I would then brush up hard against the world, binging on stimulants of any kind to find a semblance of balance. What a rollercoaster.

Until I decided, yoga philosophy and lifestyle didn’t work for me. I had to remember living in the world, and I went on the biggest binge yet. It was like an alcoholic returning to the bottle. I was absolutely enamoured with life and all it had to offer – martini’s with olives, tequila, loud music – rock, lots of people, new friends and conversation, gorgeous flirtations, and sex, garlic, chillies, coffee, and sugar and rubbing up people the wrong way. My behaviour flew in the face of everyone who knew me and thought I was on a yogic path. I stood in their judgement and cringed, and squirmed, and smiled. I knew I had to do this, and I wanted to. It was awesome. I felt in such a familiar place and the more stimulation I got the more I craved. I started chasing the next hit, planning my day around a cappuccino. Plotting the next live act event between friends.

But, I used words like over-stimulated to describe myself as I searched to find a balance, but there is none in an addiction.

Stimulation through the senses is an addiction; it is an attachment to something that is outside of yourself – designed and believed to make you happy. It is projecting your happiness on something that you can see, touch, taste, smell, hear or experience on any of those sense levels, but the bar keeps moving higher and higher. Stimulation through the senses speaks to the emotional self, stimulating emotions to a bubbling energetic euphoria. When you seek external stimulation to be happy, you are admitting there is no internal happiness outside of interacting with the world. The world is your source of joy, the world is what you are hooked into, the senses are your umbilical chord to the world’s happiness, but denies your own potential to exist in happiness independently.

Yoga is the journey of dependence to INDEPENDENCE.

I realized I was no longer connected with my inner quiet. I had lost me. In the chaos of acting outward, I lost the center of being inward. I could no longer practice yoga unless it was also entertaining me, and the breath was too quiet, even the snoring sound ujjayi ashtanga yoga breath! An ashtanga yoga primary series sequence too long to bear in its stillness and focus. My mind was agitating for joy.

I know the journey that begins now, again, is the challenging part. Going against the perception of friends and community around me to act out an experience that in my heart I knew was my next step to a profound lesson, was one of the most difficult things I have done consciously – struggling against how people looked at me, and realizing that it doesn’t matter what they think of me, it matters that I live my Truth even when it doesn’t look like my Truth.

You see, on the yogic path, we all have an idea of what that means and how that should look, and judge anything that doesn’t quite look the same as lost, confused, not knowing him/herself, hypocrite. Yet these experiences are the most profound teachers offering exquisite lessons.

Now, I practice coming back to myself. Now, I struggle against an addiction that is blissful in its own way. Now, every time I want to reach for that garlic infusion, the coffee, for the sugar high, or ego-boost through interacting with the world as a mass of all my past collected experiences, I have to choose to change my habit, to overcome my addiction. I have to choose to be enough in this moment as ME. I have to choose to live in the present and not in my past. I have to make the choice moment to moment until my body and my mind are settled in themselves again. I want to be bliss in my Self.

I am fortunate to have had the experience of the joy of inner-connection, to know what it feels like to simply breathe for an hour and half as the body moves to that rhythm and the silence is expansive and the wellspring of over-joy bubbles within. There are experiences to collect from within.

From this place of being centered in myself, I am sure I can interact with the world without it becoming the source of my next high. Eventually the alcoholic can sit in a bar with a group of friends all drinking wine, and stay beautifully content with water, and even be the life of the gathering, ironically probably is the only one living...

My name is Kerry Weavind. I am a stimulation-junkie. This is my story toward health.