Inspirations: POV

What is fate!  Does it exist?  Do thoughts create a fate? Just how much control is there to plan the life we wish?  Does synchronicity rely on our point of view?  And if our point of view changes the outcome of an event, does that make the science of life more a form of divination? Is the placebo effect a true healing?  Do some of our desires and prayers not fit the soul we inhabit? Is it therefore fundamental to find the right suit to fit our form? How can we know which dreams are the ‘right dreams?’  Which are to be the magic of un-answered prayers? If we could enter life backward, with 20-20 hindsight, none of the above would be of concern.  But we have been asking some form of these questions since the beginning, and we still have no answers. This is scintillating in itself.  Perhaps the only important part of the equation is that we ask the questions, that we struggle with the whang of a world constantly re-bounding through unseen connective tissue.  If there is a living unity, a World Soul, the Anima Mundi of Plato, Pythagoras, Plotinus, Ficino and others, then our energy-syntax, our patterns, and grid have to affect others.  If a thought jiggles a tiny web, twanging another by synchronicity, then do we get the ‘perfect storm’? The birth of computers? women’s rights? Penicillin? Six inch platform heels and skinny jeans? Life remains a mystery tour, despite constant discovery and feedback. Just when we think we know, we are surprised again… how truly wonderful. What?  You didn’t think I was going to answer these questions?  No, for I am like you, an alchemical, archetypal Oroboros, (Uroboros,) twisting in winds of change, trying to find my tail, and swallow it so I might… Read more »

For some strange reason- the world decided to begin a new year in winter’s thickness, when natures turns in, and the north wind summons silence and long sleep.  Perhaps winter’s slow and quiet offers needed space to review and consider how best to begin again?  It takes fortitude, desire, and generosity to forgive and surrender the past, to liberate a new journey, to expand ‘right relationships.’ When young, we don’t think about these things.  We jump in, shouting “Ole!”  But older-wiser faces a New Year heavier with regrets, and lack of exuberance.  The gift of older-wiser is consciousness has expanded to at least make different mistakes, to hopefully have fewer regrets from connecting to greater compassion and understanding.  We come to see that being in ‘right relationship’ is coming into safe harbor after a storm. Right relationship is to steward ourselves with mastery and maturity and therefore stand more confidently from deep within.  The compass we’re using guides us to share, rather than dominate, to allow long-held beliefs to morph, and float off when no longer viable.  We walk our talk more and more, or perhaps we walk in the flow, able to listen to the watery nature of our bodies, relishing what we see about Self, and other, and honoring all the relationships we enter into, as though entering into  sacred marriages. We perceive that our relationship with Self is reflected and danced in partnership, as well as friendships, groups, and society.  We understand that the right relationship with our work is reflected in that of our relationship to abundance.  We are growing the ability to be present to un-expected relationships, able to shape-shift and allow more generously than we ever thought possible.  Our Practice in standing the mat is to grow a profound relationship to Yoga, that ‘Yoga’-… Read more »

This time of year takes us into the dark, our inner core of sustenance, which does not have to be mysterious, but when given half a chance-is.  As explored in last week’s Breath, we are in that straddling time of endings and beginnings, of work and celebration, of fall into winter, of questioning past results in order to produce a better new year.  To survive 2012, we’d best learn to go into the mystery in order to grow mastery. We have become a fast facebook nation of tweeters who disgorge and cannot dis-engage.  We are plugged in from every pore recycling other’s ideas, and appeasing our friends by liking them.  Our appetite for the mundane is voracious, leaving little room for the numinous.  Like anything that is not black and white, going into mystery takes time.  It is a practice of silent intention and repetition.  It is a sacred, solo practice away from errands, kids, work, friends, chores- and yet it must hold all that and more. We do not live in a cave on a mountaintop. Whatever mystery is, whatever the numinous holds, and however we go there, it is not achieved by the instantaneous. How do we master what is unknown?  How do we make space for the grey areas, the non-defined, and non-denominational?  I fear the growth of my own trigger-happy habits, of fitting in too many things, making over-quick decisions based on too little information.  I fear for my creativity that has to produce something, anything in order to be heard, to be seen, never mind to be ‘excellent.’  I wonder who’s really listening to all these bodies so insistent to be heard and seen. Perhaps Daily Breath shall take a vacation-a great exhale of surrendering in order to beckon what is numinous, and more compelling…. Read more »

We can choose to perceive the mundane as a grand, and weird mystery, or a boring dump.  We can, and do, edit our viewpoints from multiple perspectives in every moment: spiritual, self-absorbed, short-sighted, hopeful, angry, in awe, confident, un-knowing, detached, add-on ad-nausea.  As Buddha said, if you are sad, wait until the next breath.   In last week’s Breath, my viewpoint struggled with personal boundaries, and short-sighted-crankyness. Buddha was not at hand, but you were.  Many took time to remind me what is important, and how to cross over old thresholds.  You held the vision until I could pick it up again for myself. I am grateful to all of you who wrote.  It helped turn the corner toward the mystery, and magical thinking held in this week’s Full Moon, or perhaps I needed to simply wait until Buddha, with my friends, came forth. Last week, another far more mysterious and seemingly difficult boundary was crossed by Steve Jobs. But since he said with his last breath, “Oh wow.  Oh wow.  Oh wow.” We might assume impossible shifts of perspective and consciousness come when we need them, and come when least expected. They come as we live.  By that, I mean, they are highly personal views and expressions.  Steve Jobs’ life was extremely passionate and full of wonder.  “Oh wow.”  Is just what his personal ‘practice’ said time and again.  When George Harrison died, his last words were, “Love one another.”  That was the sound of his life, those were the songs he put into the world year after year. Last words are the most powerful because who has time to re-think death with half truth’s and correct syntax?  The breath can only hold the core of the soul at that point.  What will you say on dying?  Where is the… Read more »

This hour is holy.  Why?  Because I choose to be wholly in it.  No pun, please.  Summer in New England is precious because there is never enough except when we stop to be it, to match our spirit to its own. Part of summer’s sacred-Self is that it removes longing for an unknown future.  My prayer is that a minute from now, two days from now, it will still be now.  That indeed is a holy indictment, one where I remain alive and present only to being in this now.  I’ve noted that when future circumstances, or a sense of anticipation, or anxiety rise up that ‘the now’ freezes and disappears.  It’s like a film, running across the eyes obliterating the present repast.  What was an exquisite moment of ‘being’ becomes ‘what does my ego want?’ What will these unknown circumstances require? What will I compare them to? How shall they affect the coming days? Time brings me nothing.  To wait for something creates an energy of not having.  Time is not continuous.  That view is only superimposed by looking back.  Time is deceptive, as we think there is something more than ‘now.’ Only by comparison do we think we had a happy time or a sad time.  When we compare, the ego lives loudly, not a bad thing, just a smaller point of view.  When we compare, we are not peaceful.  There is always that sense of this is better than that.  I like her more than him.  I wish I were back there, not here.  Anticipating a future moment assumes that time will stop when it arrives.  My plans will be served.  I will be happy then. We cannot make time work.  We can only be so fully present that past and future are holy within us, opening… Read more »