Inspirations: Crazy Love

There might be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are a million ways to be a lover, not just lover to another lover, but a passionate life-lover, those who move through their days in light-filled Grace because they are not slaves to fear. The dreariness of mid-winter calls for re-booting fires of passion.  We are hungry for heat, desperate for the growing light, and in older times, fearful we would not survive to see spring. In ancient cultures, from the Iroquois to the Aztecs, mid-winter celebrated the increase in light with rituals of re-starting hearth fires.  The New Year of the ancient Celts was Imbolc, a fire festival that became Christianized into Candelmas.  The New Moon this week signals the Chinese New Year of the Rabbit.  These cycles underlie and promote desires to begin again, to let go of old baggage, and re-boot heartfelt hope.  The great wonder taking place in Egypt is not an accident. It is a convergence of planetary energies for change, memories of ancient cycles, and people whose hearts have grown so full they stand to face fear. Love is rebelliousness for it listens only to the heart. The mind creates boundaries from fear.  There are no boundaries with love.  It moves us out of the past, into the unknown.  Whenever we love, we win, and whenever need is great, we can always find reason to begin again.  The question is, what keeps us from beginning over and over in any moment with everything to gain and nothing to lose?  What darkness keeps us from our love-light?  How do we put conditions on love that cause it to disappear? Why do we manipulate love so it manifests as destruction, not creation?  In becoming passionate lovers, what elixir can we offer Self that we ever so… Read more »

If I have any chance at all in becoming remarkable, it is through and by the people who love me.  I grow from the gift of their generosity, their open-eyed non-judgment, and their ability to see inner lopsidedness and move beyond it.  They may not always like my behavior.  I do not desire or expect them to, but they do and will stand fast, allowing me to explore, fail, grow, and love. This remarkable love sees me as I would wish to be viewed, perhaps as they hope I will see them.  Together we grow toward some strange unconditional loving, and love of self through the other.  We become each other’s pets, warm animals, there when we need them, without judgment, barking when we get out of hand. Present society tells us we must be remarkable to be seen, to be heard, to have any presence.  It says things like, “We are only excellent.  Are you excellent?”  How can I possibly answer that other than by, “No.”  Hopefully I will laugh, but a voice inside niggles, “why aren’t you excellent?  Why aren’t you somebody?” These days, everybody is somebody. It is a tough and true friend/lover/mate who loves you when ain’t an excellent somebody, and your run of the mill-ness often runs to mule-ishness. I so appreciate being loved in spite of myself. It makes me possible. It makes life excellent. Pose With Seasonal Notes Asana: Uttana Shishosana/Extended Puppy Pose.  Come to hands and knees, as in Cat-Cow.  On exhale, pull hips up and back toward heels, toes flat, fingers extending, extend until forehead comes to floor between arms.  Make puppy noises of contentment if it increases your pleasure of relaxation. Health Notes: This is a good beginning warm up, and- or closer.  It gently stretches spine, upper back, and shoulders. It… Read more »

Special Saturday 1st, 2011- 10:30 AM New Year’s Day Ritual   Let us call down the angelic source to see us through the high wire act of coming year.  Treat yourself to Pranayama, chant, Shakti-dance and Vinyasa heat, followed by restorative poses, perchance – space for revelation.  2011 is a four year, a Saturn energy. How can you best use it?  How does it tie into your personal number?  Come and explore New Year dreams, poses to conquer, Shakti Dances to sing, journeys to enter, Ideas to enlarge upon…the new life waiting to take its shape.  Share what you will while eating burnt toast, hosted by Namaste Gang.  …It’s all grist for the mill as we grind slowly toward becoming in 2011. Class donations go toward buying a water buffalo through Heiffer International, spreading joy and generosity ever outward.       Third of three Breaths on connection. What is the greatest connective energy?  As an element, it is air. If it’s a force field, it is electricity. If it is through a mental process, it is a thought.  From the emotional body, I say it’s love.  Each in their way provide routes for unique and/or quotidian connection.  We use them in every moment, rarely hesitating over how transference happens, never mind, why, what or with whom. Facebook has made ‘the who’ pervasively relevant/irrelevant, Electricity connects the what of every city and citizen without hesitation, while thoughts roam air’s free ride, shooting out ideas every nano-second. I suspect the heart would like to feel as free, fast, and easy about connecting, and in a perfect world, it would.   How, in this New Year, do we connect more with, from, to the heart?  Where does the courage come from to move toward another when we have not yet been welcomed. What is… Read more »

Our best friends remind us of the right stuff. They feed us soul food. They hold our hand when we cross risky roads. They’ve got our back. Crossing between an old life/old friends and new life/new found amis, I am constantly reminded how lucky we are in our vast array of friendships, how profoundly important they are to us, and how wonderfully weird and iconoclastic they grow. One of the old friends fed me a particularly stunning bite of soul food recently. She is a beautiful woman. She is smart, generous, talented. That said, she struggles with the nature of intimate, committed relationships, as do most. In some lives it is costlier. She recently broke up with a man she had deeply loved and been with for several years. She had every reason to be broken, resentful, thrashed. Instead, she’s arrived at a farther shore. “You know,” she said, “I could be sad and of course depressed, or angry. I go through all that, and more. But these days I’m listening to another voice. I believe it is my soul, which says, ‘I’m really grateful we loved each other. His personality and ego couldn’t love me in the way I needed, but his soul loved me enough to suffer through all we created together, and the tortured breakup. We did torture each other in our happiness, and our pain. I’ve concluded that it takes a really soulful, loving Self to agree to take on those depths with someone else, doing it for their own growth, and the other’s. Today, I’m working on letting everything else go but that. Of course I struggle with regrets on having ‘made a mistake’ once again. Yes, I lay in sleepless depression some nights. But my soul voice is growing stronger as I Practice listening… Read more »

February 5, 2010 #260 What a bizarre and curious thing is love; mis-matching partners with mis-shapen hearts; aligning the terrifying and the boring, the exacting and sloppy, the imaginary and all too real. Wowsa, sign me up for that conundrum! Indeed. If we ever knew the wild ride we were in for when we stepped up for love, I fear only the foolish would sign on the dotted line. But as the song says, “love is all there is.” We signed on when we grew a heart. Maybe we’d love more realistically if we got yearning and demands out of the away. Perhaps we’d love more intelligently if we knew who we were, never mind who they are. And there might be softer curves to the hard landing when love leaves, if we didn’t expect so much. Alas, such is not love. Love was really made for our foolish, weak, un-intelligent, ugly, boorish, fearful voices, for without its tender mercies we would not accept the odd, mis-aligned selves that show up as our lovers, friends, children, parents, and partners, those who hold up mirrors to what ails us. Love grows as weirdly vulnerable and profoundly radical as our own mis-shapen heart allows. How else can we be brave/foolish enough to offer them to another? Asana: Salamba Sirsasana/Head Stand, the king of poses. If you are nervous about falling, practice in a corner to help correct alignment, and offer feelings of safety, otherwise, come onto knees center floor, interlock fingers, cupping back of head in palms, with elbows under the shoulders, crown of head on floor. Straighten legs, moving hips over shoulders, and lift straight legs one at a time, or bend knees and roll up. Stretch legs strongly up, keep eyes open, and maintain weight on head, not arms. Breathing… Read more »

I have been thinking about how we tell our stories. Who lies beneath the plot-line? What is the paradigm creating each hour? day? Year? Who do I think I am? Is it legitimate? What is it I want to be? How much does my intention count toward manifestation? Is it all absurdly random? Why this life, not yours? What is my value? Am I spending my life force, my prana well? What does it depend upon? How long is my story? What is my role in the universe? Is that my Daimon or Dharma? As usual, I have no answers, and in fact, would appreciate some from you. How are you approaching your story? If you were to sit with me, spinning a fantastic yarn of your life, would I hear of you ‘becoming magical?’ Or did you already become ‘it?’ Would your plot reveal your essence? Or, if you are a poor spinner of yarns, am I confused, and do not see you for who you are? Perhaps it’s not you, it’s me. My ears are wax-clogged from our past, and old ideas about you. Does this hinder, or help you? Blind me, or expose your truth? The Sanskrit word for scripture is Shruti, which means what has been heard at the level of the spiritual heart, not merely what has been read in a book. Shruti reveals the essence of truth, and includes not just speaking or telling, but listening. Perhaps we cannot tell our stories, only listen to them? Perhaps our secrets, our essence, our daimon and our dharma can only be revealed from the spiritual heart, that space of non-judgment, non-ego, non result. Perhaps my greedy author desires her story told so she knows she has importance, she matters, she exists….”ME ME ME!” She could have… Read more »

We recently saw the most magical film, “Lars And The Real Girl.” Film-making at its finest, if you ask me; tremendous ensemble work, psychologically on the money, not one misstep over the top, when going over would have been so easy. It was ripe with pathos, that wonderful rich, true pathos so difficult to create without corn. This ‘pathos’ was indeed from the Greek; ‘a suffering passion, imbued with that quality of human, or animal experience, or its artistic representative, which awakens feeling of pity, sympathy, or tender sorrow.’ My dictionary writes of pathos as emotions, traits, or experiences that are evanescent, transitory and idiosyncratic, emotions that are often melancholy but excite feelings, at times with a detached pleasure. The truth of pathos grows throughout the story, worn beautifully by each character from their own view, their particular story. And as difficult as their lives become, they never lose their evanescent, idiosyncratic warmth, their pathos, nor their ability to connect. The story and acting are enough to enchant, but what most beguiles is the tremendous sense of connection. This is a community that honors its crazies. It felt like a mythical place where we do not disdain bizarre, disowned selves taking mortal form, where the simplicity of kindness blooms and grows, proffering hope. This was not the gaummy, sticky goo of too sweet ick. This was practical, no nonsense love; “I’ll pick you up and take you. Don’t be late.” This was a network of confused, fearful people willing to support someone doing things they did not in the slightest understand. I yearn for community reaching out in care, no matter what. I am not alone. We are a nation, perhaps an earth, longing to come together in simple gifts, to accept and open ourselves to one another through these… Read more »