Rolf Gates: Thoughts on Yoga

The Important Thing

2007-09-15T23:51:00.000-04:00

Defending an idea or a position is not important. Justifying or explaining the way things are is not important. Feeling more or feeling less is not important. T he movement of the mind to an imagined past or an imagined future and the feelings we feel when we follow the mind’s wanderings are not important. All of the reasons we can only be a little of who we are, and all of the ways we try to prove them to be true, are not important.

The important thing is to be awake now, to feel the transparency, to feel the universal shining through the individual, and then to allow life to express itself though us.

Our Center

2007-07-26T22:05:00.000-04:00

“The larger quantum field-the universe- is your extended body. Not only is the human nervous system capable of becoming aware of the information and energy of it’s own quantum field, but because human consciousness is infinitely flexible through this wonderful nervous system, you are able to consciously change the informational content that gives rise to your physical body. You can consciously change the energy and informational content of your own quantum mechanical body, and therefore influence the energy and informational content of your extended body-your environment your world-and cause things to manifest in it.” Deepak Chopra

In one of the most remarkable passages of a remarkable book “The seven spiritual laws of Success”, Deepak Chopra defines the means by which we are able to effect deliberate creation. The mechanics of creation are an aspect of the nature of the universe. Creation happens; things arise out of non-existence into existence. What is needed to guide that process, to make that process deliberate, is to become self aware.

Jesus’ last words are reported to be “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” This teaching is reflected in the yogic concept of Avidya, or spiritual ignorance. In Buddhism it’s described as Samsara or a veil of delusion. The great teachers of Buddhism, Christianity, and Yoga believe that we live as one lost in a dream. In this dream we have forgotten who we are. The aim of spiritual practice is to experience the truth of who we are, to become self aware.

This is a remarkable understanding of the role of traditional spiritual practice in the evolution of human potential. Techniques like Meditation and Asana train us to be able to steady the mind and thereby access its profound powers of discernment. We are able to experience ourselves not as an idea, a story, a past, a future, but directly, as form, energy, and consciousness. We become self observant and are able to receive guidance from the fullness of our being. The moment this process begins the duality we have taken for granted begins to unravel. Initially we believe we are feeling into the fabric of our being, but as we hold our attention on the inner dimensions of ourselves we discover that there is no point at which “in here” stops and “out there” begins. Eckhart Tolle defines enlightenment as “felt oneness with being”.

We are the at once the individual and the universal. The duality with which we have seen the world is a feature of a moment in the evolution of human consciousness. Einstein famously described it as an “a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.” The assumption of a dualistic perspective is that there is a part that is somehow separate from the whole is and there is a whole that is not made up of its parts. Or that an aspect of infinity can be separate from infinity. Accordingly our conscious will, or intention, is contained within our separate self and has no power or influence on the universe in which we find ourselves. The teachers of deliberate creation challenge this view. They say that the universe is an unbroken wholeness of which we are all a part and that our consciousness communicates with that wholeness. What is needed is a change of perspective.

A great teacher wrote “We see the world not as it is but as we are.” In a state of disconnection we see a disconnected world. In state of felt oneness with life we see oneness. Meditation and Asana are a means for seeing oneness. Like a mountain climber whose view changes as she climbs higher what we see has everything to do with where we are seeing from. The dualistic perspective views the world from the outside in. This view is deconstructed through meditation and asana so that we come to see the world from the inside out. Our perspective is grounded in our inner experience, our center.

Our center is the intersection between the individual and the universal. It is the alive, vibrant, experience of the truth of who we are. At this metaphysical crossroads we do not grasp the truth so much as embody it. Like the pilot who flies a plane from intuition and feel, we find we are able to extend our consciousness into a larger field of consciousness. Here existence and non-existence communicate and fulfill one another. Plugged into this larger understanding we do not loose our sense of self rather we experience it in the fullness of its potential. Our heart’s desire moves from a vague sense that fills us with longing to a clear vision the fills us with inspiration. This vision at once inspires the individual to right action and enlists the universe’s infinite organizing power. Creation, evolution, love in action flow. On earth as it is in heaven.

Center of Gravity

2007-07-06T10:36:00.000-04:00

In May my son and my daughter celebrated their birthdays, his first her fourth. My wife and I celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary. I also celebrated 17 years of sobriety. All in all it was a wonderful month. In June we went to Mexico where Mariam and I led a week long intensive. Both of Mariam’s parents were there as well as one of her sisters. Two of the staff members brought their husband’s and children along so the whole event had a dreamy pinch me quality as family and friends spent a week at the beach under the palm trees. My daughter Jasmine and I swam with dolphins and some students spent a starry night in a sweat lodge. When we got back the summer weather was in full swing and life has felt very precious.

My meditation practice has taken on a life of its own. There was the initial work to make it a consistent part of my life but that time past very quickly and now it has become the center of gravity in my life. As I surrender to it everything flows into and out of that center.

Being a Student

2007-05-01T14:24:00.000-04:00

It’s been three weeks since I completed a nine day meditation retreat. On the last night someone asked how long we should meditate each day to continue the work we had started during the retreat. The answer came from a teacher who I had come to trust and admire during the course of the retreat. He said that rule of thumb was that in order to avoid the build up of “tensions” between now and the next retreat the figure was two hours a day. It was a silent retreat so we all took that in quietly. Mine was the silence of incomprehension.

Once I got back to family and work I made my first forays into home practice. Although I could not really wrap my mind around two hours I could not bring myself to rule it out either. The teachers at the retreat had been exceptional and it seemed foolhardy to think I knew better. I began with one hour and was happy to find out that I could now sit quietly and fairly comfortably for an hour. The training I had received was fresh on my mind and I found myself able to pick up where we had left off. The hour meditation period combined well with an hour Asana practice. I just needed to go to bed a little earlier and get up a little earlier for it not to interfere with the “rest of my life”. As the days turned into weeks I began to find opportunities for a second meditation period. By eliminating periods of emptiness in online or in front of the TV., I found that I had just enough time to meditate for an hour every day and meditate for two hours every other day.

This organizing/experimenting period went on for a couple of weeks and I am now in a pretty proactive routine. Having dealt with the logistics of my new life I began to feel it’s effects. There was the matter of the “tensions” at the time I really had no idea what my teacher was talking about. As my practice has settled into my life I began to observe the compulsivity with which I and everybody around me seeks to get the world to satisfy their demands. This compulsivity is a tension within us born from a disconnection from our true nature. What we have come to call normal is a profound alienation from the day to day moment to moment experience of our true nature. It is as though we have a vibrant sun within us that we no longer can feel because our mind is in perpetual agitation. Meditation and asana quiet the mind and train us to bring our attention inward. Initially we just get glimpses of the sun which we experience as peace and well being. Committed practice has the ability to invert “normal” perception so that we come to experience ourselves from the inside out rather than the outside in. We begin to be able to abide calmly in this profound sense of who we are. As we experience the difficulties of life, the wanting, the not wanting the self-centeredness, we are less likely to get lost in them because we have been slowly releasing our resistance to life as we have been getting to know who we are.

As I embark on my fourth week I have noticed an enthusiasm for life building within me.

9 Days in Barre, MA

2007-04-16T00:12:00.000-04:00

The essence of Deliberate Creation is faith that our true nature is unlimited. The Yoga Sutras and the teachings of the Buddha lead one from a limited sense of self to an unlimited one.

When I sit in meditation and bring my attention to the consciousness/energy light within me all of the other “understandings” that I have held about who I am fade like shadows before the rising sun.

Peace is what happens when we stop fighting

JFK

2007-04-16T00:09:00.000-04:00

A Zen teacher was asked what the benefit of long term practice is, and his answer was, “An appropriate response." I came across a photo of JFK with Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal. It is 1948, three years after the end of World War II. They are young, glamorous, happy and in Rome. The joy and vitality of that picture says it all.
Life is short
Things change
Have fun

The Indigo Girls

2007-03-27T00:40:00.000-04:00

For my birthday this year my sister in-law offered to buy me and my wife tickets to a number of shows. The offer came with a a free night of baby-sitting, so last night my wife and I kissed the kids goodnight and hoped on a train into the city to see the Indigo Girls and their opening act Kaki King, a freakishly gifted guitar player who appears destined to make endless Oscars creating sound tracks for movies. I chose the Indigo Girls because they have been teachers and role models for me and my wife for the last twenty years. Their music has reflected the joys and sorrows of my adult life. Here are five reasons I love the Indigo Girls:

1) They are unambivalently committed to being good at what they do.
2) They wear their hearts on their sleeves
3) They are able to both challenge us to wake up and hold us in their hearts
with great love at the same time.
4) They have stood the test of time. Despite all of the ups and downs of the last
couple of decades they have continued to show up and burn brightly.
5) They are able to give voice to the sadness and fear in the human heart and in
so doing make clear that it is in our connection to our darkness, not
repression or denial, that our capacity for light is realized.

The night was full of tears, singing and laughter. Amy and Emily played without a band behind them. Two women on a stage playing their guitars and singing the songs they wrote to express how they feel.

Victories

2007-03-27T00:39:00.000-04:00

We cannot achieve victories over one another. The only victories available to us are the ones we achieve over our own fear.

Minding your own business

2007-03-02T11:44:00.000-05:00

“You are here to create the world around you that you choose, while you allow the world-as others choose it to be- to exist also. And while their choices in no way hinder your own choices, your attention to what they are choosing does affect your vibration, and therefore your point of attraction.” The Teacher Abraham

Growing up I often encountered a scolding suggestion “to mind my own business.” Sometimes it was directed at me and other times it was directed elsewhere. Either way it did not sound like a good thing. The “business” I was minding was interesting to me and I was being told that I should not want to be interested. This just did not add up. As I grew up and developed more autonomy, it became possible for me to mind as much “business” as I wanted. I could gossip, I could read newspapers, I could watch 24 hour news broadcasts, I could even fill up the spare moments at work going on-line to read about the mostly unfortunate “business” of others. Now that I am all grown up I am free to mind other people’s business as much as I want. In fact I am free to place my attention anywhere I please.

This freedom however is being encroached upon by the effects of my Yoga practice. Over the years I have begun to feel and to take note of how and what I feel, which is to say I am becoming one who notices. For example if I am embellishing a story to be funny or make myself look good I am now noticing that I am lying. If I silently judge someone I am now noticing that I have the sinking feeling that I am probably just accusing someone of behaving the way I do. If I leave trash on a train or in a cab I am aware that I am doing harm. Similarly I have started to notice that there is a profound difference between the way I feel when I put my attention on what I want as opposed to placing my attention on what I don’t want.

I am coming to believe that there is in fact my business and not my business. For example every time I reflect on the 200 million dollars Paul Newman’s company has donated to charities I feel so proud of him, and happy for him, and inspired by him. The same goes for Jimmy Carter whose organization is preventing 10 million people a year from going blind from disease. Just writing this makes me happy and excited. I feel genuinely connected to the beauty of life and the innate dignity of humanity. This is my business. When I think about gun lobbies and tobacco lobbies I feel sad, frustrated, alone, powerless; I feel like a victim. This is none of my business.

Having established what is and is not my business has not prevented me from falling into the pitfall of believing that others’ choices had the capacity to hinder my own. I have spent what feels like many lifetimes in this lifetime worrying about how others choices effected me only to discover that it was the vibration of worry that was the problem. What I am learning is that I cannot be against something and for something at the same time. What I am learning is that when I take my attention away from what I am for I lose touch with the vision that lights my way. What I am learning is that it is my business to make my dreams come true.

Time in the Classroom

2007-02-23T10:05:00.000-05:00

My wife and I share a workspace and over the desk we have each placed a vision board that holds images of the future we wish to create for ourselves. At the center of mine there is a drawing that depicts the synergizing of the various areas of my life. In the picture there is a flower coming out of the earth and a blue sky over it. The earth represents the essentials in my life like family, learning, and yoga practice. Time in the classroom is also an element of the soil of life. All of the good I wish to do in this lifetime is directly affected by the skill and heart I can bring to a classroom.

Time in the classroom means many things for me. It means the willingness to accept a discipline, the willingness to take part in a process that has no finish line, the willingness affirm my belief in the essential goodness of humanity everyday, every class. Above all, time in the classroom comes down to two things: Honoring my intuition, and honoring the individuals who pass through my classes. Honoring my intuition is essentially listening. I am learning to listen. Honoring the students that come to my class is about seeing them as they truly are. I am learning to see. I am like someone who has been asleep and a loved one is calling them awake.

LOVE

2007-02-14T10:24:00.000-05:00

For Valentine’s Day I thought I would take the plunge and share what I know about love:

1) After my first date with Mariam, I went home and told my roommate that I would ask her to marry me. This places me firmly in the camp of when he or she is the one you know.

2) On May 21st 1990, I prayed without any sense of who or what I was praying to for help with my alcoholism. I immediately felt better and knew that everything was going to be ok. I have been sober every moment since then and the desire to drink has never come back. At about the same time an overwhelming desire to express my thanks took root in my heart and this desire has proven to be two or three times the strength of any negativity I can muster. Day after day year after year I have found that love is stronger than fear. Much stronger.

3) Over the last few years I have watched my son and my daughter come into the world. I have looked into their eyes countless times. Their eyes are always filled with love for me a love that I have not earned, they just shine their love on me
because they know of no other way to be. Love is what we are born with.

Habits of Mind

2007-02-05T22:46:00.000-05:00

In the pantheon of the parenting Olympics taking young children to Disney World is definitely in the running for best time, worst food, and most physically demanding. It is also a time in my family when I and several generations gather around and try to make decisions. It’s as if Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini, were all living in the same retirement home forming the old alliances, airing the same grievances. Hitler would invade everybody’s space, Churchill would make speeches about fighting him in the hallways, the anterooms, the bathrooms. Mussolini would be trounced by a maid while coming to Hitler’s aid, Stalin would do all of the real fighting, and Roosevelt would jump in at the last minute and make it possible for them all to get to lunch on time. Only in my family they would do it day after day year after year.

The great saint Ramana maharshi was once asked what causes human suffering, his reply was short and to the point, “Habits of the mind.” The Buddha described suffering as being stuck in our point of view like a wheel stuck in mud. Some of this stuckness gets externalized in the form of addictive behavior like smoking or drinking which makes it readily identifiable and treatable but most of it is seen “as just the way things are.” There is a famous scene in “Archie Bunker” in which Archie argues with “Meathead” about whether or not you put on both socks then your shoes, or you put on one sock one shoe then the other sock then the other shoe; neither Archie nor “Meathead” can imagine that there could possibly be another way of seeing things. As someone who worked for years as an addictions counselor and now for years as a Yoga teacher I honestly believe that we are far too identified with the mental habits that cause suffering to be able to effectively deconstruct them intellectually. The habits of mind that cause our suffering are embedded in the logic with which we make sense of our world.

Then we go to Yoga class or sit in meditation and for a time we suspend compulsive thought. Compulsive thinking is like the scroll of “News” at the bottom of a “News” broadcast repeating the same stories over and over again coming to the same unhappy ending over and over again. Time on the mat or the meditation cushion wakes us from the spell. We start to spend moments out of the trance, out of the matrix. It may be barely perceptible, we may only know that our day is better if we get to yoga or if we spend a few minutes in prayer and meditation. But it is better. We find that we are able to get unstuck. We find that we are able to see our life with new eyes. Over time we learn to distrust the stories, the beliefs, the fears that make us unhappy. If we find ourselves in a conversation about socks and shoes we are open to new information and, once in a while, are able to refrain from defending our point of view. We have this new freedom because we are coming to understand that the love and peace we seek has nothing to do with intellectual positions or external circumstances.

I grew up going to Disney World because we have family in the area. One day it rained and everybody left. We came back a couple hours later and had the Magic Kingdom to ourselves. That night we watched the fireworks. It was a warm summer evening after a perfect day. Thirty years later there are many more “Kingdoms.” Dino Land is in Animal Kingdom and was a big hit. They have a play ground there designed like an archeological dig complete with bones to be dug up. My daughter showed me how she can climb up a rope bridge all by herself. At the top there was a rubber pad as long as she is tall. It gave her no traction and as she paused to negotiate it I was afraid for her. She hesitated for only a second then scrambled across it with the same skill she displayed climbing across the ropes. She is three and a half and could almost fit into a detergent bottle. I am now forty three and will never forget that moment. Thank you Disney World and thank you Jasmine for reminding me that life is too beautiful to be afraid to change your mind.

Eddie Vedder

2007-01-22T11:40:00.000-05:00

I recently discovered Youtube and have spent the last few days watching live footage of my favorite singer songwriters. It is an authentically enjoyable thing to do. On September 30th 2004, David Letterman had Pearl Jam on his show to sing their rendition of Bob Dylan’s song “Masters of War”. The context of Bob Dylan’s song was the Vietnam War but it resonated perfectly with the second year of our second war in Iraq. Eddie Vedder’s performance is extraordinary, he is Bob Dylan and he is himself; the song he sings is from another time and it is from his heart now. David Letterman put’s a lifetime of work behind sharing this moment with the world. All in all, anyone associated with this performance, in the weeks before to the 2004 presidential election, has to have felt that they were making a difference. The spiritual power and political relevance of Pearl Jam’s performance that night is palpable even years later on Youtube.

Reflecting on that night, I could imagine the sense of excitement and purpose, a sense of the power of truth, the power of art, the power to affect the collective consciousness in the name of love. Then the election comes and with it confusion, disappointment, disillusionment. Maybe what we felt that night was not real. We were there, we felt the power of what we did, why do I know doubt that power? We often find ourselves like someone who sows a field and a week later, looking out over an open field asks: Where’s the corn? I worked hard, I planted the seeds at the right depth, at the right time of year, time of day, just enough shade, just enough sun. I even said a prayer for each seed, I felt the power of what I was doing, where is my corn!

We feel the power of love often. What we must learn is to trust it.

MLK Day

2007-01-15T22:08:00.000-05:00

MLK day and Easter are days of reflection for me; Easter because of my own experience of resurrection from addiction and MLK day because of my own experience of American racism. As a black child being raised by white parents in the 1960’s and 1970’s the topic of racism in America could not have been more personal, more painful, or more confusing. In adulthood I have found resignation rather than peace. Martin Luther King Jr. represented a spiritual destiny beyond resignation. He embodied the possibility that the word community could extend beyond the boundaries of our personal preferences. He stood for the possibility that unconditional love could be our future. He championed the tenderness that makes our hearts jump and gives us goose bumps. He dreamed of a life worth living.

Al Gore and the New Year

2007-01-01T12:39:00.000-05:00

The New Year ended for my daughter Jasmine around 845 pm after doing a little “Bear Yoga” with dad and snuggling with mom. My son, Dylan celebrated the New Year by sleeping and eating in turns. My wife and I spent the last hour of 2006 watching “An Inconvenient Truth” which is now on pay per-view. As the year came to an end I was drawn to this documentary because I wanted to finish the year watching someone live up to his potential.

Whatever one might feel or believe about global warming or the former vice president/almost president one cannot help but be impressed by the sheer follow through of Al Gore when it comes to this issue. “An Inconvenient Truth” documents a lifetime of work whose legacy, for now at least, is a film of tremendous importance. I have watched this documentary five or six times over the last six months and I never tire of it because of its extraordinary nature. It is a film that simultaneously outlines a global crisis and depicts, in the response of an individual to that crisis, the human capacity to rise to the challenge. It never fails to stir the heart. I watched Al Gores film as the new year approached to be reminded that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Happy New Year to all of you, God bless and Namaste Rolf

Appreciation Part II

2006-12-18T23:05:00.000-05:00

A few years ago my wife and I became parents. We are, for now, to a large extent responsible for the world our children are growing into. This responsibility threw into stark relief a central question on the spiritual path: “Who creates your reality?” Were my wife and I at the mercy of the world around us? Was our job simply to teach our children how to be a savvy victim of circumstances? And if that was not the case we realized that it was not about talking the talk or even walking the walk. Our children are looking a lot more closely than that. If we were to raise empowered children we would have to be empowered.

What is empowerment? Empowerment is the experience of the truth of who we are. Empowerment is felt oneness with source energy. Empowerment is connecting to the vibrancy of our spirit before choosing how we will respond to whatever is occurring, whether it is in our world or in our mind. Empowerment is the certainty that how we are being will always be more important than what we are doing. Empowerment is a choice that we make concerning what warrants our attention.

Appreciation, Part I

2006-12-11T00:08:00.000-05:00

This week I woke up in the middle of the night and as my eyes opened a voice my head said “May you live forever in the high, fast, energy of appreciation.” It was the kind of experience you don’t forget and the kind of advice you are inclined to follow. In the ensuing days I have been an enthusiastic appreciator. What I have found is that appreciation is very fun and the people around you tend to join in.

Marianne Williamson wrote “The world we see is a reflection of the people we have become.” What we are seeing tells us more about ourselves than about our situation. Like someone climbing a mountain the view changes as you get higher. To make this concept helpful we need only take responsibility for our point of view. What we are seeing is not “how it is” what we are seeing is what we are choosing to see.

Try it out for yourself. How does it feel to ruminate on the utter lameness of another human being or situation? How does it feel to doubt your ability to be, do, or have something that you want? Can you turn that around? Can you move up the mountain a little and see the world differently? How does that feel and what happens to your world?

Peace

2006-12-01T22:56:00.000-05:00

My mother-in-law, Ilona, grew up in Germany after World War Two. As a teenager she discovered that her father had been drafted into and fought with the combat arm of the SS. Her life has been to some extent devoted to resolving for herself the implications of that knowledge. As an adult she helped found an organization that recognized the clinical similarities between the children of Nazis and the children of their victims. And for the last many years she has worked to bring together these two groups as well as similar groups from other conflicts. The aim of their work is peace.

Ten years ago the South African government created special courts where perpetrators of racial violence under apartheid could confess their acts and receive a pardon. The aim of these courts was peace.

In recognition of her work, Ilona was invited to participate in the ten year anniversary of the reconciliation courts in South Africa. It is a singular and historic honor. I was at her house the day before she left and could feel the greatness of this moment for her and for all of us. The Government of South Africa and Ilona Kuphal have learned something that often only great suffering can teach, that War and Peace are matters of the heart, and that there is no Peace without unconditional Love.

Moving Mountains

2006-11-18T09:54:00.000-05:00

“If you are to live the joyous life that you came forth to live you must allow yourself to be that which you have become.” Abraham-Hicks

My daughter Jasmine has gotten me in touch with the teacher “Barbie” who says at the end of one of her movies: “Big or small, there is a difference only you can make.” Another teacher Joseph Jaworski wrote that “One of the most important roles we can play individually and collectively is to create an opening or to ‘listen’…then to create the dreams, visions, and stories that we sense at our center want to happen.” Abraham is a “family of teachers” from another dimension, Barbie is well, Barbie, and Mr. Jaworski is a former corporate lawyer turned leadership visionary; but whether you are a plastic doll, an ethereal being from another plain or a high powered lawyer it seems that everybody is talking about the same thing. That we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

And where does this happen, this unfolding of our true self into an ever expanding realization of all of that which we are? Yoga would say, along with all of the other truly sensible entities who’ve ever said anything, that this unfolding happens in only one time and one place ever. If we are to allow ourselves to be that which we have become the time is now. This explains to a large extent why the contemplative traditions place so much emphasis on learning to bring ones attention into the present. It also explains why defending and enhancing a false self is such a self defeating proposition.

According to Yoga the second of five afflictions that humanity suffers is a habitual maintenance of a fictitious persona; a maintenance that requires all of our energy. The hallmark of our fictitious persona is that it is a mind made story that comes to us from the past. It is never about who we actually are in this moment In fact who we are now, and who anyone else is now, is irrelevant to the story that is our persona. Does anyone whose job entails potentially dropping bombs on children really go around saying I have thought this through and I am o.k. with causing the occasional innocent child’s death? Even when my job entailed killing and I had made peace with it, it never occurred me to consider my actions from someone else’s point of view; to consider the families. Wrapped up in what Eckhart Tolle calls the “story of me” we are to a large extent divorced from reality.

An aspect of reality is our emerging self that is constantly being born. To be in the story of me is to be stuck, like a wheel in mud, in a lifeless static dimension. Present moment awareness has the capacity to free us immediately from this condition. The consciousness freed from propping up our persona is now available to experience directly the deeper aspects of our existence. That which we have become vibrates powerfully within us and is encountered immediately upon becoming still. Getting still is the beginning and it is experienced as grace. Allowing takes faith, courage, and love; the faith, courage, and love that moves mountains. Big or small there are mountains only you can move and the time is now.

The gentlest thing

2006-11-11T13:29:00.000-05:00

The weather today in Tarrytown, New York is perfect. The fall leaves and the blue sky combine with gentle breezes to create a sort of heaven. I am sitting on a sweet little bench in the middle of a sweet little town remembering what happiness is. For the previous 48 hours I felt that happiness was winning an election. It certainly felt that way. For a while unhappiness and doom was losing an election and then later happiness was gloating over winning an election. There was a moment there when I gave heartfelt thanks to all of the millions of people who gave of themselves to make their country a better place and that was real, and that gratitude will stay with me . The rest of it was like a snow storm in April melting away the morning after.

I am already free, I am already at peace, I am already happy. Nothing can alter that in any way not birth, not death. The deepest peace, the most moving sense of connectedness, the contentment of all questions having been answered with a yes, this is source energy which is who we are. And occasionally we get distracted, we start to think something could enhance or diminish who we are.

I knew this had happened because as I sat on my bench I could feel the emptiness of the last couple days. Once it was actually election day I began living in a world of Ideas. This idea could bring fulfillment, this idea could bring sorrow, and then there was all of the ideas I had about my ideas, positions, opinions, accusations, observations, even a few stipulations. I stayed in my head checking websites, reading papers, telling everybody I knew about my thoughts about everyone else’s thoughts. And each thought generating and emotion, and each emotion obscuring my connection to source.

The sky, the clouds, the leaves are all brilliant, and feel like love. The bench underneath me, the movement of breath through my body, the feeling of the air on my skin brings me back and I begin again. I am happy as I get up and walk into the morning sunlight as though I have come home from a journey. “The gentlest thing in the world overcomes the hardest thing in the world.” Lao-Tzu

The beginning of freedom...

2006-11-04T10:55:00.000-05:00

“When you recognize that there is a voice in your head that pretends to be you and never stops speaking, you are awakening out of your unconscious identification with the stream of thinking. When you notice that voice, you realize that who you are is not the voice-the thinker- but the one who is aware of it.

Knowing yourself as the awareness behind the voice is freedom.”--Eckhart Tolle

At approximately five o’clock this morning my three and a half year-old daughter Jasmine was up and making a concerted effort to convince my wife to move my five month old son Dylan from his spot on our bed and let her sleep there. This was not a problem for Dylan, but my wife and I could not agree with Jasmine as to the merits of the plan. The voice in my head-the thinker-commented to me-the groggy awareness-that “she has no concern for the needs of others.” There was a time not so long ago when I would have experienced that comment as an astute observation that simply had to be shared ensuring that my daughter, my wife, and possibly Dylan had the sort of unpleasant experience that gives rise to egos in the first place. Steady effort in my yoga practice and the teachings of people like Eckhart Tolle have lead me to a different understanding of that comment.

Today I experience a comment like that as a classic egoic statement. The ego in its permanent state of poverty consciousness feels constantly threatened and justifies its desire to “defend” itself by projecting its own negativity onto those it would attack. In fact, if you really want to know what the ego is up to just listen very closely to what -the thinker-is accusing others of doing, saying, or being. We can therefore accurately assess who was “having no concern for the needs of others” at five this morning.

This awareness that we are not our thoughts is freedom. In that moment I was able to observe the compulsive reaction of the thinker and make a choice; a choice that was not driven by past conditioning, but rather a drawing in to my core values and beliefs, an evaluation of my wife’s needs, my daughters needs, and the decision to act accordingly. In this case I kept my mouth shut which at the very least did not make my wife’s job harder and provided my daughter and me with one less regrettable incident to resolve through arduous spiritual practice and therapy. Silence also provides the space for people to find there own way.

Growth in Yoga can be charted by our relationship to the thinker. Initially I thought I was the thinker. Then, once I became aware that there was thinker and a me who was observing it, I felt at the mercy of its untamed ways. Meditation was often an exhausting exposure to the thinker in all its glory. As I have deepened my relationship with myself as consciousness, energy, and form existing in a timeless now I have felt less and less threatened, controlled, and defined, by the content of my mind, and I have felt more and more free.

Second Blog

2006-10-27T23:08:00.000-04:00

Last Friday I found myself on a plane to Cleveland reading the paper. In the editorial section there was a story about the “string theory” which claims that the smallest constituents of the physical universe are tiny filaments whose vibrations give rise to the different kinds of particles that make up our world. This is to say that energetic vibration precedes manifestation. Yoga would take that one step further and say that consciousness gives rise to energetic vibration and energetic vibration gives rise to form. Still it is heartening that state of the art physics is verifying that if we want our outsides to change we have to change our insides. That life works from the inside out.

I was in Cleveland to teach a workshop at a beautiful studio called Evolution Yoga which was a powerful example of this theory in action. Sandy Gross, the founder of this studio, has held the intention to provide a certain kind of space for her community, the students had all held an intention for their own growth, and I had held an intention to be of service, and there we all were living out the fullness of our dreams.

This principle that, as Deepak Chopra wrote, “What we put our attention on grows in our lives,” is an extremely strong argument for having an asana and meditation practice. At a level we can not see we are creating constantly. Our attention is creating energy and that energy is giving rise to form. Unfortunately most of us believe we are at the mercy of a mind lost in compulsive thinking which croaks endlessly about things we do not want, like, or have and then about the fact that we keep on getting what we don’t want, experiencing what we don’t like, and lacking what we really want. Asana and meditation are a world class means for turning this around.

Steady effort in our Yoga practice reveals to us that we have the ability to bear witness to our own thoughts, that we are not our thoughts, rather the witness to them. As we come to know ourselves as the witness a freedom from our thoughts develops. We can experience the same egoic trains of thought, “sure the rich get to live in those kinds of houses”, “she only has that career because of her looks”, “the driver is #%*!” and on and on without them becoming who we are. Over time we begin to smile at the absurdity of the ego, we begin to pay less and less attention to it, to give its arguments less and less weight.

As less and less of our conscious attention is being absorbed by our compulsive negativity we become capable of experiencing what is true for us. Steady effort in our Yoga practice brings us in touch with the truth of who we are. As once we lived in the din of compulsive thinking we begin to live in the vibrant presence of well being. As we spend more and more time giving our attention to the sweetness, beauty, and sacredness of life, more and more time feeling the presence of grace in our lives, this becomes our reality; a reality which possess its own momentum.

Many of us have created a world of lack, but the same ability that creates lack can create abundance.

First Blog

2006-10-12T00:32:00.000-04:00

A feature of my new life here in New York is that I often find myself walking through crowds, crowds that are talking. If you close your eyes it is as though you were in a sea of conversations. A sea that is at once painfully fleeting and eternal. Walking through Grand Central I imagine the people hurrying through twenty years ago, thirty years ago, busy in their busyness talking urgently about the same things people are talking urgently about now; friends, lovers, family, work, sports, nothing, everything. Five years from now there will be other crowds walking urgently, talking urgently, embodying for a moment the timeless momentary now of rush hour in New York.

Recently as I emerged from a train onto a platform somewhere underneath Manhattan, a woman behind me told her friend "So I said to myself..." I did not catch the rest but I pondered what I had heard as I moved through New York City at 5pm. We really think we have a "my" self like we have a my car or a my handbag. That somehow we have been able to detach a separate self out of the fabric of the universe which now owns itself. What are the implications of this? With a tree is there a myself that is the wood part and a separate myself that is the leaf part? And what about the sunlight that is photosynthesized by the leaf to feed the leaf, and the tree--how does that go down? Is there a stock exchange within the tree to facilitate the myriad of tree to leaf transactions? And what about the relationship between the sunlight and the sun?

My walk to work is about twenty-five blocks and I miss the traffic light at about half of them, this is always the case but I still feel triumphant and savvy each time I don't have to wait at the curb. The other half of the time I am usually waiting at the curb beside someone smoking whose using their cell phone. On that particular day the cell phone conversations felt more urgent then usual. I could hear in them a separate self trying to get the world to cooperate. It was like listening to a bunch of leaves on their cell phones complaining about their lack of autonomy. What's wrong with just enjoying the magnificent reality of being a leaf?

Having a myself means that we have a "My pain", "My past", "My future", "My children", "My wealth", "My disease", "My girlfriend", "My boyfriend", "My victory", "My failure", "My country", "My religion", "My race", "My people", in total we have a separate self; we have a yours and a mine, and we have a lot of reasons to be angry, sad, and afraid. What I am learning is that we are consciousness the way a wave is water. Consciousness does not have rain it just experiences rain and there's a big difference.