love not fear

I inhale and exhale. Or, at least, I do my best through this head cold. I will be calm, I remind myself, I will be steady.

I was just on the phone with my father, who along with my step sister, is in the hospital in the Philippines. They have been admitted for Dengue Fever and are now being re-hydrated--the only real recourse for the viral infection transmitted by mosquito bite.

"Pray for me. I'm afraid," my father shared with me.

Again with fear. I know it well. We all do.

So, I sit here now, observing yet another internal battle, waging war in my head and in my heart. All the way here in India, I can't help but feel afraid and helpless and of no use at all to my family. I've asked whether I need to fly home, a strange concept for one who has been desperate to extend her stay here in Mysore. But I've been assured that this action is not warranted. But what to do now? How can I help?

I could continue to be afraid, to make myself frantic, and more sick myself...

Or I could not be afraid--but can it be that simple?

I cannot banish the fear in total, but what I can do is embrace the feeling of love and healing over thoughts that are less positive. As I fill my heart with lightness and hopefulness, the fear I know will subside. And if love can heal the heart, then surely it has the power to heal the body too.

love without limits

Love. When all is well, it flows with ease. It is fluid and constant. There is no resistance. In such cases, we are elated and fulfilled. We love and are loved. The exchange is steady and supportive. Everything smells like roses.

But when it doesn't flow, is that love too? When you feel that stuttering quality in the emotion, that sense of resistance and inconstancy, there one moment, gone another--what is that?

In a recent philosophy class on the Dvaita school of Vedanta, my teacher Gandhanara Bhat spoke about how the darshana views "Truth" as something that doesn't change. That idea resonates with me. And for me, Love is a quality of the Absolute. It should not change; it should be eternal.

And yet, many times, it doesn't seem so. Again, what is that?!

Last year was an interesting one for me (um, just as this one continues to be so...). I was blessed enough to feel that steady flow and ease in love. It was amazing. Then, things changed and I became caught in a whirlwind of crazy emotions. For a while, I blamed love. I felt betrayed by it. I mourned its loss and felt its inconstancy. It was a storm.

Sometimes, I think: phew, glad that has passed! But what I'm realizing, however, is that the whirlwind continues. The storm still rages. I'm just more centered, less swept up. From this vantage point I think I am starting to see things more clearly.

And what I'm seeing now is this: that love, the real thing anyway--sans all the other crazy stuff that we mistake it for--is really easy. It's just that the other things that are not. We are fallible, changeable creatures, moved by our own human conditions: hurt, desire, fear, jealousy, anger, doubt, Ego...And these create challenges to our dear hearts. They create obstacles. They interfere with the flow. The confuse us. And we think, sadly: oh, this is love too.

So, what to do? The storm of emotions continue to whirl around me. Maybe it's abated some, but it's definitely there. I can still feel it rattling my windows. In the past (that includes the recent past as well), I have run from love, because I associate it with fear and loss and hurt. And yet, the results are unsatisfactory. It just garners more fear and more loss and more hurt.

We embrace love when its easy; and we shun it when it is not so. Why do we do this? I think when we love at times of adversity, then love is truly strong, anchoring us to what really matters, giving us shelter throughout each storm.

light & love

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

A good day to remember all his good messages.
Though this is one particularly resonates with me today:

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

--Martin Luther King, Jr.
from "A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches"

2012, giving love

Love, like water, flows.
Telluride, Colorado. Summer, 2011

Love, as usual, has been on my mind a lot. Maybe more so than usual. What with this crossroad between one year to the next, from one phase of life to another. So much is shifting within me personally. Lots and lots of changes.

Despite all the twists and turns of the last year, end of the year, start of the new year, love has been omnipresent. Mostly in abundance. But there have been times that it seemed absent, though I'm coming to recognize that it was there too, present in its absence.

When I was in Los Angeles early last fall, I attended a workshop at the Universal Shaiva Fellowship in Culver City. I remember one of the afternoons. We were listening to the late-yet-ever-present Swami Lakshmanjoo, who was talking about God Consciousness. At the time, I was in turmoil. My heart was breaking and it was taking a lot of strength to hide it--I thought, successfully. Before I left for the day, however, the beautiful Denise Hughes pulled me aside to say that God Consciousness is present at all times, even in the times of despair and chaos. With that, she gave me a hug and sent me off...crying--I was so moved by her magnanimity and the support that came just when I needed it.

I've been thinking a lot about that moment, of how love is like God--or rather, how Love is God. How it is in all things, all feelings, all actions. Some variation of it exists. We live in this world of duality and when we feel something quite the opposite of love, then love must be there too, somewhere.

This past year, I asked for love. And in 2011, love came in so many wonder-full ways. In my yoga practice and the community that supports it, in familial relations, in friendship, and in deep miraculous connections. I have felt so incredibly blessed, so very grateful to receive so much.

But I've also struggled with what seemed like the fickleness of love. I was baffled by its transitory nature. (In fact, I continue to be baffled by this.) How feelings can change like seasons. How affection and attention can be transferred from one object to another.

At these moments, I try to remind myself that it is not love that changes but people. Love, flexible and open, shifts according to our needs and wants. It is giving and nourishing. That love is like water, it responds to its environment, flowing one moment, solid another. Sometimes, it falls so generously on us, we are soaked with it. Other times, it just drizzles. Often, it it is difficult to grasp, but it's in the air, we just don't see it. Love may change forms but it also remains constant, it stays true to its nature.

As I struggle with change, I've been asking myself how do I stay in the constancy of love? How do I override the sensations of loss and fear and sadness as love transforms around me?

I cannot stop my loved ones from changing. I can't even stop myself. Change is inevitable. But I can at least try my very best to trust in the enduring steadiness of Love itself.

Like last year, I continue to invite love in; and I will be grateful to receive. But this year, 2012, I choose to give love, to be open and generous, to let love be true to its nature in my actions and in my words. Though it will be difficult, I will have faith in the love of others, but I will try not to be dependent on them. Though I expect there will be challenges, I will do my utmost to live in the constancy of the love that is in my heart.

the open road

I was on my scooter last Sunday morning, riding down High Tension Road here in Mysore, India. I was all on my own, searching for a place to have breakfast. Nothing extraordinary, other than this bright little feeling, a lightness in my chest: I felt so very free.

Truth be told, as independent as I make myself out to be, I'm not on my own much. Or haven't been in a long while. I've been in a string of long term committed relationships and, to top it off, I'm a people person. I know that I can take socializing to extremes; I always want to be in the thick of it. I used to have this insane fear: I never wanted to miss anything. And often this meant I was hardly ever alone.

Since June, I've sort of been on the road. Up till October, I was visiting with friends and family between the US and the Philippines. I arrived in India with roommates and have since had a brief but beautiful romance. These companions have gone, however, and I've found myself in a unique position of being quite on my own.

This new solitude is a little frightening but also incredibly exciting. There have been a lot of shifts in 2011, which started here in Mysore over a year ago, where I first realized that I had been burying my own needs and dreams. It has been hard for a "people-pleaser" like myself to distinguish between the wants of others and what I really want for myself.

Though a little lonely, this new space--vastly undefined, full of the unknowable, paved with possibility--is like an open road. I am coming to realize that I can go anywhere, do anything. I am free to want and do whatever suits me, whether its the small things like taking a drive to satiate my desire for Indian breakfast or the bigger things in life--which is coming ever so slowly.

inner dance, india

Pi facilitating my inner dance last March
at Bahay Kalipay, Puerto Princessa, Philippines.

I can barely call it dancing, my right hand slowly grazing air above my brow line until the constant barrage of thoughts (the usual mental assault we get used to day to day) melt away. When my mind quiets, my hand floats downwards, swirling the dark matter hovering subtly over my heart center. My left arm eventually joins in, both hands conducting invisible energy.

I am conscious and at the same time totally unconscious. With my eyes closed, I am observing the strange willfulness of my own extremities, my arms, hands, legs seem to be working--quite coordinated I might add--all on their own.

And I? Somehow, I understand what they are doing. They are intent on healing my subtle body, they want to hush my mind, they want to unclog my heart, they want to ease the seat of my feminine power, which has, out of stress, somehow gone into hiding.

(Does this sound totally weird to you?! To be honest, all this is strange for me too. Its something I have learned to accept because despite its peculiarity, it really works.)

Today is 11-11-11. I wish I could say it was 11:11pm as well, but I should well be fast asleep before then considering my alarm is on for 3am--led class at the shala tomorrow is at 4:30am. Its an auspicious date, regardless of the time. My roommates (Claudia and Chit) and I have done our little part to observe it by having an Inner Dance session here in our apartment in Gokulam, Mysore.

Inner Dance is hard to explain. Its best experienced. Its main exponent is our friend and inner dance teacher Pi Villaraza who is based in Bahay Kalipay in Puerto Princessa, Palawan, Philippines. Last March, he introduced us to this amazing moving meditation that is all about the movement of energy. Its special to be practicing it tonight in India--which, one might say, is one of the oldest sources of this energy. In yogic terms, it can be identified as kundalini energy.

Claudia, Chit and I were last in Bahay Kalipay again just this June, where Pi worked with each of us individually. Inner Dance is different for everyone, so I can only speak for myself. For me, it is extraordinary process for self-exploration and healing. My experiences have mostly been deeply emotional. Like yoga, to dance is to discover, to dig deeper, to remove things that are in the way--which is why I've been frustrated with it recently because I have been so caught up in my own stories that I couldn't get any results from the last couple of times I tried inner dancing. Things would not move. I was emotionally constipated.

Tonight was a breakthrough, however. I would not give up on myself. At least my hands would not as they worked relentlessly shaking (literally too, I must have looked a sight!) what might seem like an unseen energy force field connecting my head, heart, and root chakras. My entire body rattled until I exhaled deeply, sobbing. I purged negative energy from deep within myself. After this release, just as the last song came on, I lay down embracing my own shoulders, my inner voice saying--rather loudly, I might add: "I love you. I will never abandon you. I love you unconditionally. You are perfect for me. I am your true love."

I have often written about surrendering to love, but this particular one is the hardest to accept. Its so difficult to grasp this inconceivable notion of loving ourselves. And I have to admit--quite ashamedly--that I still don't entirely buy it. Part of me wants to roll my eyes and go, "Seriously, dear inner voice, you are so cheesy!" But then there's a part of me--wiser, more open minded--that's ready to invest my life-savings on it, because I know, in the end, this is the love that will unite all loves, this is the love that will save my life.


For more information on Inner Dance/Pi/Bahay Kalipay, check out: http://www.bahaykalipay.com/

paying attention

Bird Sanctuary, outside Mysore City, Karnataka.

"Writing about attention, I see that I have written a good deal about pain. This is no coincidence. It may be different for others, but pain is what it took me to pay attention. In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to the right now." --Julia Cameron, Artist's Way.

I marked the passage above last week when reading Artist's Way. It resonated then I moved on from it. Now I understand why.

On the weekend I received a Tui Na massage from my friend Joycee. I'd expected it to be intense as so many of my fellow yoga practitioners around Gokulam who have signed up quite willingly to be kneaded by Joycee's deft fingers, knuckles, elbows and rather small but effectively lethal massage stick have come out with serious bruises--along with glowing success stories of alleviated aches, of course. So I was prepared for discomfort, bruising, and soreness.

Joycee identified right away the culprits to my neck troubles and went to work on my lower back and shoulders. She poked and prodded, "tightness is there," as she pointed out where I was having difficulty in my asana practice. Then she got to he underside of my left leg, where she laid it down: this was where I had stored my emotions. She asked me to think, what have I been running away from that my defenses would try to bury it deep within my own body? What hurt and pain had I trapped within myself so adeptly that I did not notice it?

After my massage, Joycee tucked me into bed to rest, as she worked her rolling pin of a massage on Claudia, where I fell into a deep rest. I was exhausted. Physically relieved, but emotionally restless. Something deep within was stirred up. When I came to, I was instructed to shower then to sit and have tea, chocolate and hugs from Joycee and Claudia. Somewhere in between, I uncovered a well of sadness and hurt which then overflowed for the next few hours.

Hmph, I thought I was over all this. In many ways I am. I've moved on, literally, half way across the planet.

All things considered, the drama that caused all this was not so long ago. And in truth, I am still dealing with the fall out. A loss is a loss, no matter whether it makes sense or not. An injury is an injury even when you didn't do anything to deserve it. It shook me, it shook my belief in others, it shook my belief in myself.

So here I am in India, working on my yoga practice, my key tool being my physical body. And yet, here I am using it as a repository for my sad little story. Joycee reminds me of what I am doing here in Mysore and that I need to remove this blockage. She can get my blood circulating again, she can point out this thing that is stuck, but only I can exorcise my own demons. All I can do is feel it, feel the hurt and the pain that is so beyond my physical body but hurts a great deal more than the grinding roll of knuckles against connective tissue.

And the moment I do, I start to feel better because I'm unblocking the flow of my emotional body. I mean, the hurt doesn't go away exactly, but I feel more myself. Everything feels clearer. I see how much I've been avoiding things, whether its sitting still with myself or writing this blog. I sadly realize how I've been dodging myself for the last couple of weeks, I've not been myself, I've not been wholly present, which brings me back to what Julia Cameron wrote. Now, being honest about the pain, accepting it for what it is, and how certain things are not, in fact, ok, I can be more present. Veils are being lifted. My vision clears.

Hopefully, I can now get to the crucial work of releasing, of letting go.

Thank you, dear Deva. Again, you seem to be behind many of my crucial discoveries here in Mysore. And thank you, Joycee, you have a gift!