Attachment

So, I've been practicing yoga for a long time, almost 15 years, and the idea of attachment came up when I first started it. It, of course, hadn't been a concept I'd ever given any thought but once I heard about it I immediately looked into it and realized that I had it! lol, we all do, we're in bodies, we convince ourselves the bodies are going to last forever, our first attachment, and then decide that everything else must last just as long or we'd be upset for losing something.

Just yesterday I put five boxes of books and two tubs of comics into a garage sale my sister is having at my grandma's house and once we loaded the stuff and she left I felt a pang of loss, but was like, oh that's good. I need to unload some more stuff. Not sure what else that would mean.

This morning I get a text that one guy came and bought all of my comics in one fell swoop! And I felt the worst icky feeling in my tummy and realized how attached I had been to those things.

I started collecting comics in 1975 when my grandpa bought me a $.35 issue of Spider-Woman and from then on I was obsessed. Especially with the X-Men and anything related to that franchise. The X-Men being outcasts because they were mutants and I always felt like I never fit in, so identified with them immediately. I continued collecting regularly until say 1989 and then until a few years ago would buy the occasional issue here and there. But it was a big part of my life for a long time and I've now got none of it physically anymore.

Does that really matter? Probably not. I have the lessons learned from the storylines, I have the memories of the stories and characters that will live with me forever. I had some original issues of many things but really, does it matter? Nah.

So, even though right now, today (maybe even tomorrow) I've got this empty sensation in my gut, even in my heart, I'll be fine. I'd not looked at some of them for decades until recently when I got them to my place from storage at my moms house and I'd lived just fine without them all those years, I'll live just fine without them in the future as well.

Yogis in India typically own nothing, and the things that they do have will give away at the drop of a hat. Staying so unattached that they don't even have a place they live in but are always traveling, forcing detachment.

I'm not quite there and may never be, and don't know if I aspire to be that way, but I love the idea of the freedom it seems to give you. So, I'll just work toward that feeling of freedom and not worry about letting go of the things until it comes up and deal with it then. I've let go of lots of stuff since beginning yoga and the things I have right now I may let go of in the future, I'm okay with where I am and not in a hurry to push things out the door though, but to just allow the need for them to leave when it does.

What are you attached to?

Happy people

So, this is my outlet. My outlet for allowing a deeper, more personal side of me out and showing people that I am human and still have a lot of work to do.

I was contemplating putting a Facebook post out there, as a good friend of mine does and he gets a lot of support and comes across very elegantly, but I've done that a couple times and it backfires on me and I get a lot of resistance. I have my own inner resistance to deal with daily, so I don't need it manifesting in external sources like that, not anymore. For some reason when I write a blog, people love it, so here it is.

I have a lot of friends, well maybe not a lot, but a bunch of them who are naturally happy people. They think, they feel emotional and all but their go to place is one of light and joy. I see them and am jealous but also grateful for them as well, because it shows me it is a possible place to live in. I love them and if you are reading this you will know I am speaking of you, I love you and appreciate you in my life, more than you'll ever know.

I, however, am not one of those people. I have to work and work at being happy. My go to place is the dark side of the force. I know that in even typing this I'm reinforcing it but that's okay, I've made peace with it and will go further so as to undo any "bad" stuff it could draw to me.

When I discovered yoga in late 1999 it was the first time it was made known to me that finding the light within was a possibility, but when I discovered the teachings of Abraham in 2006-2007 it was really made known that my being in a dark place was one of a choice, not one out of my control. I remember lamenting then that I was always drawn to the hardest paths on the planet, why me, that sort of thing. I mean Ashtanga Yoga is the hardest asana practice on the planet, yes it is, but goddamn it, I love it with all of my heart. Kundalini Yoga, another of my paths that was a part of my life from 2000 until last year, is also one of the hardest things on the planet. Each kriya, or sequence, was more challening than the one before it and the place it took you was so deep and raw and yet powerful that you couldn't not do it again the next day, and it did help me get to where I am with understanding energy flow and being able to use that in my eventual return to the Ashtanga Yoga practice.

But even worse, the teachings of Abraham is the hardest thing on the planet, more so than either of the other two. Not because there is anything hard physically to do, but the mental work is the most difficult part and the emotional work, omg I can't even talk about it. Then the dawning in my mind that yoga, is really about the mental work but using the body as a tool to get it under control first, then the mind can flow more easily.

The teachings were hard at first because they ask you to notice how you feel, all the fucking time, but noticing that is just the beginning. You have to know what you were thinking about as you notice how you feel, because the emotion was brought up by the thought and the direction of the emotion, whether it be "bad" or "good" shows where you are in relation to the thing you were thinking about. AASARRRahghhhbh!!! lol

So, when you've done it for a while, it does get easier and you are able to catch yourself more quickly or sooner than you used to, so that you don't go down that dark path too far and it is more simple to work your way back to better feeling thoughts, and eventually that gets easier and easier and your "bad" days get fewer and fewer between but even better is that the thing you're calling "bad" gets less and less so, so that bad may be feeling indifferent whereas a year ago it meant anger so strong you wanted to strangle someone.

So, why am I drawn to all the hardest paths possible? I don't know. But I do believe we, when still not in a body, choose our path and choose it based on who we'll be born to and such, so that we can have an experience different than one we've lived in another life, maybe. So our physicality will be a certain way, or our upbringing a certain way. Or whatever, just so that being in a body is a new experience that we come here to grow and expand in, in new ways. So I chose this and therefore I have to make peace with it, because only after I've made peace with it can I begin to appreciate the contrast that is brought to me by me and grow and expand even further.

It all makes sense to me, I get it, I believe in it and how I've discovered it works, so am therefore more easily able to find peace with things.

All of this to say, today, I'm having one of those dark days of the soul. Not dark like they were when I was in my teens, twenties or even part of my thirties after I'd begun yoga, but one of those days where being a little down is just the easier place to go than to be a being full of light and love. Also, on these days where I feel like I need to be around people and feel their love and light (maybe those Happy People I so named this article after) I cannot manifest them in my existence, at all, it's impossible. I did one today though and we spent a few hours together, and a couple others texted with me. So there is my new point of attraction. I am progressing further forward and feeling lighter and lighter, so now the dark days are even more so like at dusk than at night, they still have a little light in them, or a medium amount of light in them. My last one about a month ago I couldn't even raze one of the light people.

See there, I've made myself feel even better than I did at the beginning of this article, good job!

If none of this makes any sense to you, that's okay, its really for me to release this stuff that I write these blogs and if by chance it benefits someone else as well, then that's the bonus.

Love you, happy holiday, see you soon!