Hallelujah

Apparently if you want to get people’s attention just quote Leonard Cohen. I have a facebook account, I use it mainly for yoga promotion but I do keep up with friends and play a lot of Scrabble as well but the main thing is the yoga. So a while back I promised myself that I would post nothing negative in my status updates, only uplifting, yoga related or positive one liners to the virtual world. So yesterday was a hard day, in fact it been a hard few days but it was a struggle I need to go through because I learned some pretty amazing lessons. And yesterday I was wading through a sea of emotions after a serious heart to heart I found myself staring at my facebook page. There was so much inside of me that I wanted to express but I could find a way to say that didn’t seem like self pity or a desperate cry for attention and then Hallelujah came on. And after weeping my way through the entire song I thought about the line “love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah…” and that was it, that was exactly what I felt like. I think love is amazing, I think loving someone as a lover or friend or family is a wonderful way to feel love but that’s not the kind of love I had to express yesterday. The kind of love of I had to express was the kind for love you find while searching blindly at the end of a dark tunnel and looking for the light. It’s the kind of love I found way down at the bottom of myself when all the other pieces felt broken. It’s the kind of love you find when you ask for forgiveness and compassion. When the whole world feels like its falling in on you but you can sit among the rubble love that rubble because it is all the pieces of you. The cold and broken Hallelujah to me it the tattered rope that I use to pull myself up with, it is hope. Like a lotus flower growing from the muck it is like reaching out into all that is broken and touching the divine.

momentary bliss

It could have been the closing scene of any romantic comedy where after struggling with hardship and heart ache the heroine finally succeeds and realizes how full her life really is. Yes, it could have been and it happened at Second Star and it actually wasn’t that big of a deal and at the same time it was the biggest deal of all. There was a gallery night at the studio last night, the opening of a new artist showcase. It was all very laid back; a few bottles of wine, a decent turnout, a few passersby drawn in by the open doors. And while during the night I was pleased and enjoyed myself it wasn’t until after everyone left that it hit me. (This is where the movie reference comes in) The last few hugs here exchanged, the artist packed up and left me there with Billie Holiday crooning on the cd player and I put the studio to bed; blowing out candles and unplugging mood lighting and as the studio grew darker I found myself in the middle of the room with just a few stands of lights left on and feeling what i can only imagine as bliss. Suddenly I looked around and saw everything I have worked for right there in front of me, I had opened my heart and people showed up. In fact people appreciated the offering. As I stood there letting the letting the emotion and music seeping into my bones I wept. I wept because I was in one of those moments of pure consciousness that the great yogis talk about and I was not only in it but fully aware and present in it. I felt like my body had dissolved into the floor and the walls and the strip lights and the beautiful paintings on the wall I felt like a part of it all, I was one with everything around me. Being one, that is the concept at the heart of yoga and I never got it until last night. I could rationally assume that the idea of being connected to everything and being one with divinity was a valid one and something obtainable with enough discipline. But I didn’t think I’d ever actually believe in it, which is something I have long struggled with as a yoga teacher and as a person in general. I live so much of my life from my gut letting my reason catch up in time. And my gut usually does pretty well and even though it may take my logical brain some time to get there eventually one day the light switches on and I think “yeah, all that stuff I’ve been saying I get that.” Not just that I feel it but that I get it. But when it comes down to the concept of oneness I was completely turned around. The only explanation I could come up with is that the concept of oneness is so closely related to the ideas of religion which is something I just don’t feel. Now I respect religion but for as much of religion that I could rationalize I just never “felt” it. And yoga is not a religion. Yoga is not a religion. It is however a way of life with the understanding that there is something greater than ourselves and you can put whatever name on that something that you like. And furthermore that that greater something is not outside of you but it is inside of you just like it is inside of everyone else as well and that something in us all binds us together as well. We are all one and we are all one with divinity. Every day I get up in front of a yoga class I try to express a tiny fraction of that concept and now I will come to class with a new understanding and a renewed passion for this way of life I have chosen. Because last night for one moment I felt it, I knew it in my heart and in my gut and I that I want to share.

simply happy

the more i simplify my life the more beauty i find in simplicity. and sometimes that simplicity can be taken for naivety or foolishness, but that bothers me less and less these days. i will expand upon this is a later blog but i for now i wanted to share this, it's an ad so you can follow through and look at the web site or you can simply take it as a practice in contented simplicity.

the daily hug...