India

Ok, it's been a while since I've written, but I didn't have a computer after Seabrook left so I'm home now, and I'm starting to feel "normal" again, unfortunately lol, so I'm writing now.

I think I've mostly kept you all updated on many fronts, on here a bit, on Facebook a lot and since I've been back I filled some of you in, a bit.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to just sit down and talk about what the experience was like, because it's something that sticks with you and slowly integrates, but integrates in a way (so far anyway) that is very personal and private and not something there may even be words to share it with. So I'll do my best to tell a story, or share an anecdote as they come up in normal conversation and just in life in general.

I've decided that I'll be going back to Mysore in November/December to study with Sharath some more. There are no authorized or certified teachers in our area, I'm pretty much one of the only two who've been over there to do the deeper work in this system, in St. Louis anyway, there are a few in Chicago and maybe some other areas semi close, but not here. Since I don't have a teacher I really absorbed everything Sharath told me or shared with me and do my best to utilize it in my practice and have decided that I'll be the authorized teacher in the area, eventually, and so need to travel over there at least once a season to stay fresh in his mind as a practitioner, but also to keep the learning fresh in my being. As I learn, you all benefit from it as well. I'm not sure how it'll all come out tomorrow at my first class since I've returned but we'll see, it'll be a surprise for us all!

I did finish the primary series over there, under his tutelage and have actually been having amazing practices since I've been home. When you finish primary series in India you start to work on deep back bending before the closing sequence, to balance out the forward bending, and that is what I'm working on at home. If you come to my classes you know we do three or so back bends before a deep forward bend and then the inversions of the closing sequence, well when you're there you learn the stand up from your third back bend and and then drop back, then you do that a couple more times, then someone is meant to be helping you do half drop backs to open up the spine more and then you work towards grabbing or "catching" as Sharath calls it, your ankles and yes from the drop back...

Since I've been home I've been able to stand up and drop back but today I practiced with a friend who just did a teaching immersion with Kino MacGregor and she was able to help me do the half drop backs, which was awesome.

Before I left I had a meeting with Sharath about my practice and how to proceed, he asked me when I was coming back I said I hoped to in the fall and he said just do primary and work on the back bending all summer, to get my spine opened up and the energy flowing, the nervous system good and toned, then when I come back he'll start me on the intermediate series, if I was coming back later he said maybe he would have me work on Pashasana, the first posture of intermediate series. So that is what I'm doing. When you have as talented a teacher as he is as your teacher you listen to them. He knows my stuff and where it is in my body and mind, so I trust him.

I'm missing aspects of India but am feeling more at home again here, although I will say this. People here are scattered, all caught up in their head and act frazzled all the time, but folks, life here is fairly simple and easy flowing, so get over that shit! In India life is crazy, there is everything, yes literally everything, happening all at once and yet the people stay calm, focused and present. They are resolved to their karma and believe there is nothing they can do about it so just stay focused on the task at hand, in the present, not worrying about things they can't do anything about until they get to them, like we do, but present, right where they are at that very moment.

So we need to work on this. Come to yoga class, but for gods sake start studying the deeper aspects of the philosophy and put it into play in your life, learn how to be present and observing of what's in front of you at that time and deal with that and only that then, then the next thing, then the next...etc...

Well, that's enough for now. I have to go catch up on RuPaul's Drag Races' newest season and watch the first episode of Game of Thrones before the new episodes of each in the next few days, but I'm also tired and ready to chill before teaching at the farmers market tomorrow and teacher training all afternoon.

So take care, and be present!

Supta Kurmasana

So, I think that finally, after 14 years of practicing this system of Ashtanga Yoga, minus 4 years in there, coming back to it and, again, finally making my way to its source in Mysore, India, I may be understanding this yoga path.

So when I arrived after I'd had so much trouble getting here, 52.5 hours worth of travel specifically, my back wasn't happy and had seized up in the lumbar region, sacrum as well, or so it seemed.

I did my first class, which was on a Sunday and on Sundays here all classes are led ones, not my favorite, but I got to Marichasana D and Sharath attempted to get me into it and couldn't. Maybe a little close, but no, not really lol...

So the next day in the typical Mysore style class I came in last person of the day and went into the practice with great focus and made it through Marichasana D on my own, he even came by and asked me if I got it and one of his assistants had seen me, so I referred him to the assistant for confirmation that I in fact had. So he went into his office and I continued onward through the series. He stopped me at supta kurmasana, which was fine. I wasn't used to the heat and it was killing me, my body wasn't opening up so much just yet and I was fine with it. And I since restarting the system I hadn't been able to bind in said posture yet anyway, so technically I wasn't supposed to move past it.

So for the next two and a half weeks I've been stuck at that posture. I decided when I arrived here I was going to surrender to Sharath and embrace him as my teacher and so I was, and in that room you can't go past where he tells you to stop anyway, it's just not allowed. But I was doing fine with it the first week, then the second week I began to get frustrated. This week Monday and Tuesday (today is Wednesday) I was so close, so close.

One day Nnadi, one of Sharath's assistants helped me get into it but I couldn't hold it, too sweaty, then yesterday he helped me again and put my hand towel in my palm so that I could get the traction to maintain it, and I was able to. Felt amazing too! Then I came out, all happy with myself and started backbending, leading into the closing sequence. Sharath saw me at my first lift up, and when I lowered down he caught my eye and said "you did supta kurma?" "Yes," I said. "Do it again now, so I can see." So I promptly went into kurmasana and then started transitioning into supta kurmasana where his assistant Ganapati came and started getting me into it, then quickly I saw brown feet move into what little vision I had and realized Sharath had come and moved him out of the way and was doing the surgery himself...lol.

He got me there, he's very skillful and better at adjusting than anyone I've ever seen or felt, but again, I was too sweaty and couldnt' hold it. He last week had admitted his frustration with me not getting this pose and even said he wanted me to get it, so was personally going to help me with it, and so it became a mission with him. But I digress.

Yesterday afternoon I went and had trigger point therapy where I found out my right QL was tigher and shorter than my left and so the guy proceeded to use the technique to release my right one and gave me exercises to do that would correct the problem in two weeks. So that in mind I went to practice this morning and found much more space in my torso, front and back, which was nice, so I made my way through the series of postures as I know them and realized that I was going to get into the pose today, maybe even by myself.

Now Sharath, whether by design or not, positioned me right in front of the dais he sits on when not moving around the room and so when I was in navasana I realized he was there, and he was reading the paper, but never to let that fool you, he still knows everything going on in that room. So I made my way into kurmasana, ahhh, it felt nice with all that space, then I began the transition, and got to a point and off the stage he comes and gets behind me to move my bones into place. He got my shoulders deeply under my legs and then made me move my arm back on my own, not the normal way, but he obviously wanted to see how far I could get them, then bound my fingers, and yes I was holding them tightly, then moved my legs behind my head with his leg in between them so I could squeeze it with mine and make the bind tighter (very nice adjustment trick) and I held it and he yelled "Pass!" " go onto Garbha Pindasana after vinyasa." So I did, he stopped me at supta padangusthasana so that I didn't do too much with the new space, telling me "slowly, slowly... we open you."

But the elation and release I felt is really what this was all about. I had been stuck at that posture and was dealing with physical feelings, emotional feeling and energetic blocks that I had never even realized were there, but this process showed me a lot about that, and now I state I think I actually understand why this system is taught the way it is, amazing!

>So when I come back and teach, know that if I stop you in your practice, it's not at all because I'm being mean, it's completely so that you can get into that space and work through the issue, mental or energetic, that is causing that tightness or that block and release it, let it go, get rid of it and move on in life!

Saturday, our day off..

So, in the Ashtanga tradition we take Saturdays off, to rub ourselves down with oil which helps to relieve tension in our muscles and our mind as well, to have a full day of integration of the insights that come from our practice. I believe also to have the day to practice feeling okay without doing the physical practice, which can be a crutch to our well being. If you practice yoga you know that it makes you feel better, it does. But you also may never take a day off from the asana practice to be able to practice those good feelings just by using the power of your mind, which all said is what yoga is anyway, right? Yogas Citta Vrtti Nirodhah=yoga is the cessation of fluctuations of the mind. So we're using the asana practice to calm the nervous system down so that we can enact the practice of the yamas and niyamas, google them, I may write about them some day but their interpretation is neverending through the eyes of many different individuals, so I'll save my opinion for another time. So today, I slowly woke up, or rather my bowels which move very quickly and frequently here, woke me up and I lay down for a bit longer after answering their call. The sun was just coming up, which by our standards in Missouri is late at almost 7am, but it was lovely. The women were just starting to sweep their front stoops, the birds were calling their neverending call, a sound I can't explain as we just have nothing to compare it to (but it's lovley), and so I finally got up, did a neti pot, put oil in my mouth to pull with, got on Facebook, answered some messages, meditated, did pranayama, chanted to Lakshmi for abundance,did my castor oil bath, showered, washed a few shirts while I was in there chilled for a bit then left to meet a friend for breakfast at Khushi, thinking I would get a chai beforehand. I was sitting on the steps at Khushi waiting for him and decided to write in my journal. What I realized while writing there was that everyone here seems to be so distraught and dealing with all of their shit, so quickly, almost as soon as you get here. Here, we are so outside our comfort zone that our emotions, thoughts, our very inner being is so close to the surface and we're just not used to that. At home we sit very deeply in our comfort zone and when you're there your emotions allow themselves to get buried, sometimes fairly deeply and so we have to postulate, or take a few days to see how we feel about things as they come up. Here, very much outside our comfort zone, they sit near the surface and when something comes up, out the words and feelings come very much before we've given anything a second thought, so we feel odd because in the west we just aren't used to dealing with them like this. So now I'm thinking of how to maintain this closeness and intouchness with my emotions and even with my body when I get home. Do I move? Somewhere new in St. Louis, or completely away from St. Louis? Do I shave my head and become a monk, or maybe never cut my hair again and become a monk? Do I get lots of tattoos and peircings? Get my point? It's about taking myself outside my comfort zone, daily, not just sporadically as we tend to do in the midwest, if at all, but daily. This too can be part of my yoga practice and should be as far as I'm concerned. I make my students uncomfortable daily, so I have to do this with myself as well. One person suggested I start a Sanskrit study group once I'm back, to keep my studies of this lovely, ancient language going, but to spark the beginnings of their interest in it. One thing I'll probable also do is change all or most of classes to the Ashtanga practice, which is something I can't not teach, even though I'm not authorized or certified (yet), what else can I do? What makes you uncomfortable? Do you avoid it completely, or embrace it and dive in? One thing I love about the Lululemon company is their manifesto, which consists of many one liners about embracing life more fully, but the one I've always resonated with the most is Do Something Once A Day That Scares You... Do you?

India, so far...

So I've been here for two weeks, having taken four days to get here because of flight delays and new flights arranged, overnight hotel stays in Germany, then flying backwards to the UK, sitting at Heathrow for 6 hours then finally flying to Bangalore, only to take the cruelest 4 hour cab ride of any humans life...lol.

At first I was so overwhelmed by all the noise, all the smells, but more than anything all the people that I almost thought I would turn around and go home. But thankfully I didn't. I went in to register for classes the first day I got here and Sharath graciously let me start early, which helped. The yoga integrated me into the place more than I would even have guessed.

Everything here is cheap, dirt cheap by Americans standards because our penny is worth about 60 cents, depending on who's changing the money for you it can even be more than that, or less if you're at the airport! So, eating out, taking rickshaws and just about everything else is very affordable and it becomes easy to overdo it, especially eating in my case.

Sharath first day noticed how much eating I'd been doing and said "only one meal a day." Now, anyone who knows me knows this is a virtual impossibility because I love eating more even than yoga. But I got his point, mindlessly eating wasn't going to serve my practice, so I started paying attention to when I was really hungry and when it was just I'm bored so let's eat, or I'm overwhelmed by this place, let's pacify ourself by eating, or even what the hell else is there to do other than eat?!? lol

My waist is actually quite a bit thinner in those two weeks, most likely due to the intensity of the yoga practice in this place where it originates from and the shear amount of people practicing with me, when I'm used to being alone at home all the time, but even more so probably because of the heat. I sweat like I may never sweat at home, or ever have. But really the energy in that room is just intense and can really pull some shit out of you.

Speaking of that, Seabrook and I, who are sharing a space while here, are both having our shit coming out, a lot. Which is fine, this is what we're here for, to transform ourselves. And boy is it ever deeper than anything at home. Westerners have been coming here since the 70's to do this work with this particular practice and so the energetic intention of self-healing and transformation is just in the place, not just the shala, but damn in the whole area. We've had a few disagreements, but for the most part we know this is what's going to happen and have to embrace it and need to quit saying sorry since it's going to keep happening until we go home, maybe even after we get home, who knows!

On Tuesday I started taking classes with Jayashree and her husband, chanting the Yoga Sutras and then discussing philosophy. It's amazing, I love it. Her energy just radiates, and today he started the class and she walked in a bit later and I could just feel her as she walked by, I have a lot of love for her. This trip I am taking the Sanskrit classes at the shala that also include disseminating the Hatha Yoga Pradapika, but I know that the next trip will be about just sucking up the knowledge these people have in them and going with it, not that I don't love the shala classes, but I know she's my teacher on this subject, much as Sharath is my teacher in the yoga.

Speaking of that, so when I got here I'd spent about 52.5 hours traveling here, miserable. And my body had locked up with that, especially my sacrum and lumbar spine, so in my first class he stopped me at Marichasana D because I couldn't even get close to realizing it in my body. The next day though I opened up enough to get it and he stopped me at supta kurmasana, which I am still being stopped at on my second week. Today I held the bind in it, having gotten there with help of one of his assistants but he didn't see. He had been personally helping me until today and said when I could hold it, even with help, I'd be able to move on. So, tomorrow being a led class I don't know if I'll get it or not, I'm much better in the Mysore style classes where I can move at my own pace with my own breath, so we'll see how it goes. My goal is to at least get through the primary series and working on standing up and dropping back at the end before closing sequence.

I say that and at the same time I know that I am not overly concerned with that goal. I am here to realize this practice as a sadhana, a spiritual practice, that I can take with me for life and use as a way to connect to source on those days when my mind isn't necessarily able to get there on it's own. I think it's happening, I feel closer and closer each day to source. But then again maybe that is part of being here, maybe it's just having had that intention for this journey, who knows, but the work is working and I'm loving it more and more.

There is so much more to tell, kirtan with Mark Robberds, Abhyanga (Ayurvedic oil massage) with two men working on me at once, all of the lovely people I've met, either who I already knew from Facebook or just met here because there are so many awesome people here, just tons more stuff. And maybe I will write them as they come to me, probably more after I get home and start integrating this experience, but not now. This is a good start...see you all soon.

Surrender

Surrender, or as Abraham would name it, allow...

Sounds awful to most of us thinkers out there. Surrender, letting go, allowing, all sounds like complacency to us, right?

I'm coming to find out that it's where the real juice is. So you focus on what you what so hard and then it doesn't come, doesn't come, doesn't come. Then you're like this visualizing shit doesn't work, it's a bunch of crap.

Ever think you've thought about it so much that you've gone into the feeling place of not having it rather than the feeling place of having it? The feeling place is where you want to be, and when it feels good that's the direction you want to move in in your life, when it doesn't feel so good, maybe not.

I'm told by my therapist I'm an INTJ, the T standing for thinking. And you can't be a thinker and a feeler. But lately I'm moving into a place of feeling. Abraham teaches to notice how you feel and when you get that, what were you thinking about? If you were feeling good and thinking about something you're looking forward to, then great. If you were feeling bad and thinking about it, you're in the place of lack of it and it ain't coming your way, period. So think a thought that makes you feel better, and then another one and another one...and so on.

So how does this all apply to surrender? I have no fucking clue, other than that allowing, letting go of your attachment to the outcome of a situation, or surrendering to whatever the universe has in store for you is the way Abraham says to manifest those things.

I'm talking almost daily to my friend who is already in India, practicing at the shala, having experiences that I'm excited to start having myself and it seems the whole theme of Mysore, maybe of all of India, is surrender. I'm like what?!? I have to deal with this there too, wtf!!! lol, of course I'm being a bit dramatic for the humour of it. Yes I like to spell humour the British way, they spoke English first I figure they got it down.

So, surrender. India will take you and give you all the experiences you long for, BUT they will never be in the way you're attached to them happening. Sounds awful right? Nah, I'm getting used to this, since fall I've been getting good at allowing the universe to deliver things to me as it will, rather than being upset because it happened to come some other way, that maybe caused me a little extra growth and expansion as a spiritual being having a human experience. Maybe even more than a little.

Wow, so chilling out, allowing things the way they are and even making peace with it is the way to go? Yeah, it would seem so, sorry if you're attached to having things the way you would have them. Me, I'd rather have them come whatever way they get here and see how the contrast of their delivery affects me. I think of it as a fine tuning of self, or Self.

Now, I say all this and sound like I'm so well adjusted and blah, blah, blah, but it will happen and I'll act like someone shot me in the heart with an arrow and whine and moan about it. Or not, lately anyway, not so much.

How do you deal with stuff?

Me...

Yes, I am the focus of all of my blogs, of course. The only thing I have to do is think my own thoughts about life is affecting me and use that to teach the yoga I believe in so much to teach others to notice their thoughts about how life is affecting them, and to shift it when necessary.

So today I read on a Facebook friend of mine's account his recent blog about his getting into Kundalini Yoga and taking Amrit to become Sikh and how he came away from it when he began studying Ashtanga Yoga in 2000.

Oddly enough this made me think about my own journey into the study of yoga, whatever style you like. So, here it goes...

In late 1999 I had a wreck, the wreck hurt my arm and I was not able to do my normal, tiny little workout where if I started to sweat I stopped because I hated to sweat. Of course, I smoked 2 packs a day and drank 5 days a week and ate mostly fried foods, that sweat would NOT smell good, duh.

Anyhow, so I for some reason remembered years before that a friend trying to get me to take yoga with him at his college thinking that I would love it, I never did, although it never left my mind. So on that day I decided, maybe I'll call around and see if there are any yoga classes that I could try, never having the thought that I may need to bear weight on my arms in this sort of "work out" as well.

I found a place that your first class was free, the Solar Yoga Center, if you're in St. Louis you may have seen it as you drive down Forest Park parkway. So I went, I didn't tell my partner whom I was living with at the time, I just went and boy, it shook me to my bones. I wasn't even able to walk properly for the the next four days. This style of yoga they taught there was very odd and involved some things called psychophysicals, much like Kundalini Yoga exercises, then a cold shower, much like a Kundalini Yoga practice, then savasana wearing white, then 12 or so postures and then you went home with no ending savasana.

Even though I couldn't walk, I recognized that something had happened to me and I was awake in my body in a way I'd never experiences or new was possible, so I went back on Saturday with partner in tow. It was $30 for a whole month back then, the teachers taught as volunteer work so didn't receive pay, so the money went toward running the building.

Anyhow, during that week I was curious about this yoga stuff, so I decided to find a magazine or something to read more about it, and I'd heard of the Golden Grocer in the CWE, which was a hippie-ish store, so I drove there and found what I was looking for in the Yoga Journal in their turnstile. It had tons of articles and stuff, including one about Madonna playing a yoga teacher in her new movie about to come out The Next Best Thing, and it went on to explain how Madonna in her own life was practicing Ashtanga Yoga and how it was transforming her.

Upon reading the word Ashtanga I knew that was something that I had to find, the word just resonated with me deep inside. So I looked in the yellow pages (yes, that's what we did back then, most things weren't on the internet so doing a google search wasn't an option LOL) and called each place listed of which there were only five, and the last one Experience Yoga! listed an Intro to Ashtanga class and a regular Ashtanga class, but you were required to come to the Intro one until the teacher cleared you to go to the other one, they were sold in 8 week sessions. So, the new session was starting in a couple weeks, I called, left a message, she called me back and we talked for an hour and then I went two weeks later, going to the Solar Yoga Center every day I could in the interim.

I went, that story is for another time, but when in about my third class I was sweating in down dog and crying and felt as if I was dying, I felt this clarity of thought and this knowledge that I was going to be in this for the rest of my life, so I bought a book. I kept going to that class, then the session ended and she cleared me to go on to the full class because for some reason it was like dropping a fish into water, I got it.

I took that and ran with it and decided to do as much research as I could, using my partners computer I searched around for Ashtanga Yoga everywhere I could, called every teacher I could and asked as many questions as they would answer, probably annoyed everyone under the sun more than they would ever admit, but I was hungry and starving for the information I was seeking. I even heard that you'd come to yoga in this lifetime only if you'd done it in a past life, and for the first time believed in reincarnation because nothing could've explained why this was the most important thing to me on the planet, suddenly, other than that adage.

So, I discovered my teacher was teaching me a different version of the practice, not the traditional, authentic version, but not far off. And this man K. Pattabhi Jois was teaching it the traditional way, and happened to be on tour, so I looked at where he was going and thought about if I'd be brave enough to go and try this thing out. This coming from the shyest person on the planet who had to get really drunk to be able to talk to people lol. I decided on Boulder and called the studio that was hosting him, which happened to be Richard Freeman's studio, his wife called me back. We hashed out the details and she gave me some options on places to stay and had me mail her a check, which I did. She then called me back a week or so later and found one of her students who would put me up in their place for free, so of course I saw it as a sign that yes, I had to do this thing and fully embrace it!

So, anyhow all these other things happened which I've blogged about before, but one thing I may never have is this. In the back of that same Yoga Journal was an add for these VHS videos of Pattabhi teaching, one primary series and one intermediate series, so I ordered them. But also across from them was this video of this most heavenly glowing angel in a turban called Gurmukh who was touting her Kundalini Yoga video, of course I had to order it too.

Over the years 2000-2008 I would practice primary series, intermediate series, even up into the third series of Ashtanga Yoga and on my days off I would do this crazy Kundalini Yoga with Gurmukh.

Eventually in 2006 I began studying Anusara yoga after a weekend with Mitchel Bleier, just to learn alignment and would still practice my Ashtanga Yoga with this alignment info but in 2008 that slowly began to slide away and I was just practicing Kundalini and Anusara, coming only to KUndalini Yoga sometime that year. Having found a local teacher and was doing different Kriyas and having all sorts of experiences.

Then slowly I began following the Sikh path, as Yogi Bhajan taught it, not as it was practiced in India. More about the energy of why we were doing things, than the dogma of why. Slowly went to a couple solstice events and decided to go all the way and become Sikh and wear the turban and all of that and teach Kundalini Yoga mostly. (This is how I got my name, Sat Inder Singh Khalsa, Sat Inder being my first name. And even though I've left this lifestyle somewhat, going back to being called Keith didn't resonate, I had left behind much of what he was about and forged ahead into a new place within myself, so Sat Inder still resonates.)

In late 2011 a friend was bugging me to learn Ashtanga Yoga having heard I used to study and teach it, and eventually I gave in and decided to teach him by practicing with him, but only once a week because it was too hard on my body to endure anymore. The Kundalini had healed me, so I wanted it to stay my focus.

The problem being that I was having more back issues again and discovered that the Kundalini Yoga wasn't enough for my body to stay happy and healthy, the Ashtanga having healed my degenerative spine, completely, well along with a little chiropractic work. So upon taking on this practice, which had formally been my friend, I noticed that it again was waking me up to a new level of awareness in my physical body, but this time not only that, but also my energetic body. Something the Kundalini had awakened in me and I figured only it would keep that alive, the Ashtanga was affecting as well, curious.

So another friend who was taking my Kundalini classes heard I was practicing with our mutual friend, and asked if I'd want to do it another day a week with him, so he in turn could learn it as well. I gave in reluctantly, not wanting to do such a challenging practice again. (I'm inherently lazy and was glad to not to have to work so hard anymore). And so it began. Two days a week led to three, which led to four, then eventually to six!

And here I was, one morning getting up to do my Kundalini before my friend came over to practice and finding that I had no desire to do it and just waited until he got there and did our practice together, then I felt amazing, just like I had while I was only practicing the Kundalini. Craziness, could this be where I started and now I'm coming back around to it with a fuller and more complete experience of the yoga and could I be having this revelation, that yes indeed, I'd come back home.

So, here I am, last year having studied with Kino MacGregor twice, gone to the Ashtanga Yoga Confluence and seen my old teacher Nancy Gilgoff and had Eddie Stern get me back into Marichasana D again after four years! Then studying with Mark Robberds, another certified teacher whom I will be seeing in Mysore in one month.

Oh, and yes, I'm going to Mysore! Finally. I wanted to back in 2002 when I retired from my corporate job, but Guruji was traveling, so I went to see him on Maui and met Nancy there. But yes, coming full circle, indeed!

It reminds me of a T.S. Eliot quote that David Swenson mentions at the end of his Advanced A and B series videos, and I'll close with that...

"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

T.S. Eliot

Magic...

A friend of mine just told me the song Magic Man by Heart goes through her head sometimes when I'm talking to her, or typing to her on Facebook while she's at work (and should be working) rather. I asked why, she says because a lot of the things I say sound more like magic to her than what she's used to knowing.

I thought about it for minute, another friend had a thing on Facebook I commented on and she said my car is magic. And now I'm thinking about this too.

So, if many around me seem to think I live a magic filled life, why do I feel it's mundane-ness so often?

So that makes me think of Abraham. Abraham introduced the idea of an emotional scale, different emotions equal different vibrations. So I'm feeling anger but this dude over here, he's feeling anger way beyond anything I'd even be comfortable feeling in my body. Okay, so at the last workshop I went to with Abraham they talked about levels of emotion, so anger even has a scale, say like 1-10. Where are you on that scale? Evaluate and recalibrate to support the direction you want to head in in your life. Good stuff, lots of thinking but apparently thinking is serving me today! lol

So the level of magic I live at feels mundane to me because it's my norm. But apparently not the norm of those around me, ok, I'm okay with that. I'm even happy about that. I don't want to live with any less magic in my life than I do. In fact I would love more, so remember what my new years sankalpa is? Embrace!

So now to embrace the magic and allow it to completely engulf my life! Somehow I feel India will play a large part in this. Going there is a dream I've had for a very long time and the yoga I'll get deeper into there has been in my life for a very long time. India itself as a completely different culture will shock me out of myself while I'm there and when I come back am I going to allow myself to slink back down into the mire I very often find myself getting stuck in? Hell no...

Once I embrace this new level of magic, it's only going to keep growing and growing and expanding and make me look seem like those they call saints in India, people who seems to think a thing and it manifests before them. Beings with no attachments and allow their lives to happen, keeping their vibration at such a level that there is no way the universe couldn't deliver every part and parcel of everything they wish to manifest.

Getting ahead of myself you think? Maybe so, but who gives a shit? I can be excited and amazed at life and in wonderment at the way my life is turning out and enjoy it and love it and love you and everyone who I meet and heal myself and help others heal themselves, maybe even heal themselves myself, and find more ways to love and live and be amazing and happy and peaceful and see others for their amazing and wonderful selves and see the potential in myself and others that maybe I would never have before but know now that it is the truth and the only way any of ever can be. Manifesting the god, the divine, the energy within that truly is us.

To end this tirade I quote Yoda from Empire Strikes Back:

“Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.”

Truly, luminous beings are we, not this crude matter! When we embrace this we will be living the most amazing lives possible!