This Moment To Be Free

6 minutes …

loved breathing

“…it’s not a smart idea to waste too much energy on play if there is still work to do. Hurry through your chores so you can enjoy the rest of the day.”

That was my horoscope for today. I don’t know what is going on with me…I need to clean the house and have been putting it off. I also feel the urge to go do yoga and meditate, but my body stays here in the bed and reads the paper online…my mind thinks about breakfast and my mouth is thirsty…I think of beverages…

The thing that bothers me is that I don’t act on a desire that is a good one – to go into the living room and do yoga and meditate. Why not?

I wonder if is simply that I am lazy and need more discipline? Or maybe I am so used to controlling and disciplining myself to do things I do not want to do, and even things I do, that when I am really free, all I want to do is nothing…

I hate to make myself do things. But I may just have to start treating myself with more force…like a child with a system of rewards…but what is discipline really? is it forcing myself to do things, or is it a routine, or some other thing? Maybe this is why people have always needed a guru to do yoga?

I am starting yoga teacher training in a week and a half – then there will be community and structure, and…discipline…though it saddens me that I need any outside force to discipline me…i want to do this out of sheer joy like I was doing during my sabbatical time…

On the other hand, maybe I am resting up before a time of great exertion? I do feel great joy, but right now it is joy in doing nothing – I was very joyful yesterday when I lay on the couch for hours reading a wonderful book and napping with my cats. Maybe it is just timing and I need to relax and go with the flow…

…but I DO still need to end this day with a spotlessly clean house!!

Well, now it is 3 hours later – and I have…cleaned out the bathroom and fridge of outdated stuff and stuff we don’t use, painted a nice wood-brown area behind the bed to look like a “headboard” and … done a bit of yoga, and meditated for 5 minutes! Yay…

and during my meditation I felt myself to be a beautiful lotus flower, with roots in the earth…I could feel the heat of the center of the earth dissipate, and become cool and wet towards the surface, and go into me, the flower, and rise through each of my chakra centers to bloom out the top of my head in a beautiful, large pink lotus blossom…and then god’s love rained down on me as golden light and refreshing energy and reached through me into the earth again, and I asked god if i am lazy and he said i need to love myself and accept myself where I am and to recognize that I was sitting there meditation, and that I did some yoga…

so, the point is, even if I am lazy, I need to move from where I am right now…

and now I can have lunch! (and then clean the house!!)

om shanti, bodhi svaha

I did mediate for 7 minutes this morning…maybe it was 6…but it felt really good!

om shanti…

…i totally did not want to do ANYTHING today other than read my delightful new book…but I did – I got up, went in the living room, laid out my mat and give myself a little “yoga level 1″ class — pretending that I was teaching a level 1 class, and giving it in order, with all the instructions, etc. I did not do the pranayama, though…

but I DID meditate — for 8 minutes, it turns out – - and I do feel more energized. I realized that the point really IS just to show up and do it every day, that this consistency is very important.

I am also being shown my own fear and laziness…ack.

When I was working in the store on Saturday, and older man, a self-dubbed ‘old hippie’ began, out of the blue, teaching me how to meditate. Not how to sit, or how to do it — but literally how — he said he teaches meditation and the way to become a person who meditates is to make sure you sit down to do it every day, consistently, over time – just 5 minutes a day is all you need to commit to, but you do need to commit. He said that the experience of meditation is universal, the process being the same for everyone, and all that is needed is consistent commitment over time. He said the secret he learned is to deny himself something he needs until after he has meditated — for him, he may not eat lunch until after he has meditated each day.

In anticipation of starting yoga teacher training in September, and for the sake of my body and soul feeling good, I have been wishing to start up my regular yoga and meditation practice again – I had stopped when I got the job and it became so consuming – and I took this man’s spontaneous teaching as direct help and advice from the Universe…and decided to begin today — to return to my daily practice that I had established during the time of my sabbatical in the winter and spring.

This blog will now be resurrected, to follow my process and progress through the process of committing to meditate 5 minutes everyday and to doing some yoga each morning before breakfast, before computer, before any other thing…this will be 5 days a week — the 5 days that I am home alone in the mornings. Saturday morning I will be getting up very early and listening to Speaking of Faith on NPR before going to yoga tt class where we will all meditate, and Sunday is my day with R, my do nothing I don’t feel like doing day… so if I feel like it that day, fine, if not – that is fine too…we will see how this goes…I will write about it.

So this morning I practiced my back stretches on the floor, 2 sun salutations – once with bow pose, 1 moon salutation (both sides once) and shoulder stand. I did a short yoga nidra, and then mediation (sitting, eyes closed, with hands in upward facing chin mudra for a few minutes – did not count the exact number of minutes, b/c I had my eyes closed and did not want to interrupt my flow and peace).

The most significant experience I had during mediation was a feeling of my body falling away – or, gently splitting open from the top of my head and the feeling that the only barrier between the inside of me and the outside was the outline of my body – it was a very amazing and good feeling but also scary, and i jolted out of it for a moment – then, eyes closed again, I realized that we are all on “life support” in the sense that we are all breathing – that this is life support by god and the earth – that we are hooked up to the same respirator and breathing the same air, so how can we be separate? Just by our individual bodies and by our individual consciousnesses – or egos? – or whatever this thinking part of ourselves is – and the question arose – does that function come with the body? I mean, does the spirit go into the body and then start thinking individual thoughts?

I thought a little bit about inflammation – how too much is damaging, but some is necessary and a very good thing because otherwise, there would be no boundaries or barriers between our bodies and the rest of everything.

amen, om shanti, bodhi svaha.

it does not matter what i do, and as long as it is of love, and heart, and i can afford it, i can do whatever i want during my time/experience here on earth.

is this of love, is this of heart? is a question i can ask myself of all words and actions coming in to and going out of my body

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