Serve, Love, Meditate, Realize

"Serve, love, meditate, realize."  This phrase came to me after my meditation.  One thing I realized this morning was that I haven't meditated in 4 days, which is very unusual for me.  I love to meditate.   I have since I started the practice 25 years ago.  I like having that time to just sit and watch my thoughts without acting on any of them.  I like to watch them float by and disappear.  I like that I don't have to speak, or move or do anything.  I just get to sit and be, truly be with myself.  I feel as if this is my time to connect, to unplug from the world and plug into spirit.  It is like taking time to recharge from that never ending source of of universal energy, like the way we charge up our cell phones.

I haven't mediated in 4 days because I have been too preoccupied with too many details and too many tasks at hand.  I hate moving, but I sit here this morning in my friend's lovely home in a beach-side community in Jacksonville, Florida on a warm, balmy November day with that all that moving behind me now.  I am happily homeless with everything I own now stuffed in the corner of a friend's garage.  I don't think the totality of my freedom has sunk in yet.  After all the planning, selling, packing, moving and storing over the last month, yesterday with no obligations, no to-do list, I didn't really know what to do with myself.  Today, I am drinking in the beginnings of a new life.  

Like a cat, I feel in that within this particular physical incarnation, I have had more than one life... Perhaps, I am on about number 6 by now.  I've never been the one to count on to stay in the same place, doing the same thing with the same people.  I am fully involved, fully devoted and fully present to whatever life I am in, but when the winds change, I may fly with them.  I have had the honor and am most grateful though, that I have made life long, loving, compassionate, supportive friends regardless of my gypsy nature.  

I am truly blessed with these amazing souls in my life.  Everywhere I go, they are there mirroring back to me the essence of who we all are, Spirit.  This morning these questions came to me, "What's it all about? Why do we do what we do?   Why are we here?"  The answer came, "Serve, love, meditate, realize."  That's it.  That's is what it's all about.  It doesn't matter where we go, where we live or what we do for a living.  Life is simply a mirror showing us our own reflection.  We are not our obligations, our tasks, our details, our jobs or our things, we are Spirit.  And our only purpose is to serve, love, meditate and realize.  Too bad we can't write that on the inside of our eyelids so we won't forget it.

Understanding Truth

Difficulty about understanding truth is that we have to be in the frame of mind to understand it, and we cannot force ourselves into that frame of mind. We cannot understand it with our intellect. This is the difficulty. Once we try to compartmentalize it, we've lost it. Once we believe we can do anything to understand it, we've lost it. All philosophy and spiritual concepts are to help the mind to understand, and that is helpful to integrate the mind. However, Truth is in awareness,not thinking or understanding. Truth is awareness. But how to be aware of awareness? This is where the realization of Non-doing comes in. If we could we go back to that infancy stage when were babies unable to do anything, we could understand Non-doing better. All we could do was be aware. We did not know who we were or why we were here, nor did we care. We were just simply aware. If we were unhappy we would cry. If we were happy we would laugh, etc. Our challenge now is to find the purity of our infant mind we had before we were filled with all these concepts. To do this we must be able to drop back behind the mind and watch all thoughts and desires without conceptualizing and compartmentalizing them. And the really crazy thing is we can't make this happen. We can, however, practice truthfulness and live authentic lives. The aliveness of our authenticity will bring us to the awareness of Truth.

Three Laws of Spiritual Communication

In this new age of global, multicultural, social/spiritual internet communication there needs to be a code of ethics.  In my 3-4 years of interacting with like minded folks through Facebook, I have seen the best of intentions blow up into the worst of scenarios.  The internet medium of communication lacks the ability to read one's body language.  There are many clues we unconsciously pick up about a person when interacting with them in person.  The tone of their voice, the light in their eyes, their ability to focus, their ability to listen and their overall physical presentation which gives us a reading of their energy is hard to determine online.  It is even more important to be conscious of how we interact with others online, because it is so challenging to connect in a multidimensional way with such a one-dimensional medium.

Communication is often challenging but easier when done in person.  What is easier to do on Facebook is to be untruthful or to present an edited version of ourselves, whether intentionally or unintentionally.  I find that often people are overly polished, overly diplomatic and just too perfect in their edited version of themselves, or perhaps they are just over-the-top, too aggressive, too argumentative or disclose too much information because they don't have to interact with folks in a more intimate way.  In this new day and age, a new code of ethics should be considered.  I propose these three.

1.  Discernment
 Consciously deciding what to share and with whom is most important.  There are certain things that cannot be understood or appreciated by everyone.  We should use discernment when, what, where and to whom we communicate what.  

2.  Courtesy
In the principles of the Yoga Yamas it is suggested to ask oneself before speaking... "Is it true?  Is it kind?  Is it necessary?"   Showing courtesy in how we speak and what speak creates more connection.  Showing courtesy sometimes means being silent.  Some things are better left unsaid.  

3.  Respect
Listening is showing respect.  Imposing our ideas on others is disrespectful.  Communication is a two way street.  We give, and we receive.  One cannot happen without the other or there is no point to it.  Accusing, berating and being arrogant serves no purpose and has no place in spiritual dialogue.

Balance

Goofed off again. I missed 3 days in a row of my 30-day writing challenge. I have lots of excuses, but the main one is I just didn't feel like writing. I couldn't think of anything to write about, and it just wasn't important enough for me to discipline myself to do something I didn't feel like doing. So there you have it. The truth is what the truth is.

I've been selling, packing, storing,

hauling, having car problems, being stressed and just generally overwhelmed. I couldn't imagine how writing about that would be helpful in anyway, but that was the only thing going on in my head. And I still don't know what to write about. Sometimes we just find ourselves in limbo, neither here nor there. If it were easy to stay in the moment, more of us would be there more often. It's just not easy. Life is distracting, and it's challenging to stay present when we are always being pulled this way and that way. Nonetheless, we try.

Discipline is how we try. We get up. We fall down. We get up again. My grandmother had a rare disease that was kin to Parkinson's Disease. It took a long time for the doctors to understand her condition and diagnose her disease. We became aware of the problem after she fell many times. In fact, we took her to the emergency room so many times, that they actually started to question us in suspicion of possible elderly abuse. The main dysfunction of the disease is that it slowly deteriorates the part of the brain that registers balance. They explained to us that all of us are constantly loosing our balance and regaining our balance. This part of the brain realizes we are loosing balance and sends the message through the nervous system to correct the imbalance so we do not fall. Apparently, this part of her brain was no longer functional so when she would loose her balance, she would just fall right smack down wherever she was.

I've often wondered, or perhaps feared, if I don't have some rare kin to this disease. Where instead of affecting my physical balance, it effects my emotional balance. My friend describes me as a tornado. My teacher describes me as a hurricane. I feel a bit like a cyclone. I have always felt that I might be missing an emotional regulator, that part of the psyche that registers when you are loosing your emotional balance. I don't seem to get a warning. I just seem to fall completely out of balance, right smack down wherever I am.

We all have issues to deal with. We all some form of disease or dysfunction. Human beings are far from being perfect. We have doctors to fix our ailments, like we have mechanics to fix our cars. A metaphorically interesting thing happened with my car loosing it's balance this morning. I just spent $800 having it repaired the day before yesterday. I took a short trip for a little R&R before the big moving crunch that will happen this week. About 45 minutes away from home, my car makes such a racket that I think the the engine may be about to fall out of it. Turns out some bolt was not put back on properly and caused other things to loosen which caused the horrible noise. The smallest of things, a simple bolt, threw the entire car off balance. And in turn, threw me off balance. Bolt has been tightened. Car is back in balance. A little yoga, some loving support from my teacher, some french fries, a glass of good wine, and I am back in balance.

Storms come and go. Life is an ebb and flow. Sometimes we are ebbing. Sometimes we are flowing. Sometimes we are in limbo. We are always loosing our balance and regaining it. The moment happens in the middle of it all.

Wisdom

"Everything has to do with loving and not loving." --Rumi

Today, there was no room for worthlessness.  There was too much to be done.  Feeling as worthless as they come, I struggled through the demands of my day, as life did not allow me the time waller in it.  A revelation is a brief experience when we understand something we have not understood before.  Wisdom is when that reveleation comes to us in a time of need. 

I've pulled up my own bootstraps, put my big girl panties on and tackled seemingly insurmountable tasks  over the last month far more times than I care to remember.  It seems no matter how much I do or how well I do it, still nothing I do seems ever enough.  It left my well dry.  I was left with no more enthusiasm, no more inspiration and no more energy, and I felt unloved.

Being loved, feeling loved and sharing love is the force that motivates me.  Without it, I soon dry up.  Wisdom finally came to me today.  I remembered a vision of my father I had a few months after his death about 14 years ago.  He came to me during a most challenging and difficult time, a time when I did not know what to do, how to do it and how my life got into such a mess.  In his natural way of being brief and to the point, he simply said to me, "It's not worth it, baby."  My father gave me very little advice during my life but after his death, he gave me the best advice he ever gave me.  It was not only the words of the message that impacted me so greatly but the loving way they were shared with me.  

This Wisdom comes to me from time to time.  Today it came from a loving voice inside me that said, "It's not worth it, Uma... not one single thing is worth what you are doing to yourself."  Today it meant to me love yourself, be kind to yourself.  The love I needed to feel today did not come to me in the way I wanted it to, but it came in the form of Wisdom... the Wisdom inside of me, a much more reliable source.

Goodbye Halloween

I used to always claim Halloween as my favorite holiday.  It is a holiday with no pressure to celebrate it or not.  There is no obligation to visit family, buy gifts, send cards or cook food.  Yes, there is a deeper meaning to it than trick or treating and dressing in costume, but mostly it just about having fun.  No one seems to really mind that it's deeper meaning of honoring the dead has gotten lost in all the hoopla of costumes and candy.  Most people don't know why it is celebrated and most don't really care.  I don't think I care either.

It's just fun.  Dressing up in a costume and playing a different character is a chance to escape from the normal, everyday routine.  I love fall.  The moon in October is usually spectacular.  The weather is usually perfect.  What better time to celebrate than before the "real" holidays come, the cold sets in and the year is over?  

I used to look forward to Halloween every year and would love to dress up, decorate my house and hand out candy to kids.  Many milestones in my life have passed on October 31st.  I sort of considered it my special day.  The last 2 years, my heart just hasn't been in it, though.  Today seems like it will make 3 years I have not celebrated my special day or even really enjoyed it.  No trick or treaters will come here where I live, no party to go to, no pumpkin to carve.  Today I realized I have been living alone, really alone, the last 3 years and when no one is around to share things with, it makes things dull.  Halloween has become just another day for me.  Nothing special has happened on Halloween for me the last few years.  I guess it's no longer my special day.  I think from now on, it will pass me without much notice.  Seems just another opportunity to detach.   I suppose it's goodbye, Halloween.

In the wee hours of the morning Hurricane Sandy shut down New York and DC.  Pictures of subway stations flooded, waterfalls at Ground Zero and the Statue of Liberty standing strong as the ocean waves tried to engulf her are images so bizarre that my mind does not know where to file them.    The majestic, pirate ship that used to sail the waters of the Mantanzas River in St. Augustine, Florida (my hometown) ever since I can remember was taken by the sea along with it's Captain and one of it's crew.  A hurricane in New England on October's full moon, could it be more spooky? I'm sure creative writers, imaginative producers and hungry movie studios have their juices flowing, and it won't be long for the onslaught of disaster movies to  infiltrate our lives.  Even after the storm has died, the relief has come and the cities reconstructed, we will capitalize on it's terror and glory of many, many years to come.

I experienced my own storm yesterday and tried my damnedest not to sink.  I am still here, so I assume I was successful.  Damn moon!  She was quite a temperamental bitch this month.  If we ever begin to feel we are in control, Nature has a way of letting us know differently.  In the aftermath of the storm, I am humble, quiet and feel quite raw.  Vulnerability is not something I enjoy, but here I am exposed.

I really don't know anything and feel somewhat helpless in my plight.  I don't have much faith in words and stories and processes.  I feel a lot of what is said and done in the name of spirituality is no more than a spiritual facade being placed over a holy mess and if that's the case, I prefer my holy mess.  I saw this picture of a sign from the "The Church of the Latter-Day Dude" posted today on Facebook.... "Dance. Grow Things. Try Not to be a Dick" (or in my case, bitch).  I feel if I could just focus on these three things, that would be enough .