Let go . . . Trust...

So periodically I just pick up a seemingly random book and open it and read the page that pops up and see how it's relevant to my life at that moment. I really do this a lot, not the same book all the time, but once a day at least.

Tonight, just before I meditated I picked up the Yamas and the Niyamas by Deborah Adele, really one of the most accessible accounts of these ancient yogic principles I've ever read. Opened it to a passage on Aparigraha, which many would translate as non-attachment, but R. Sharath Jois, the current guru of the Ashtanga Yoga Method puts it this way: Pari means around, Graha means to grasp, a A means not. Aparigraha means non-grasping of things around you. When expectations are high, one becomes greedy, and ocne you allow the greed to grow, it is difficult to get rid of it.

So, the passage was about how as a trapeze artist one must trust completely in the process by letting go of the first trapeze trusting the the other will be there, hanging in mid-air for a moment, then taking the next one as it comes to you. If you grasp for it it will offset the timing and the flow of the performance will be thrown off. If you hold onto the first bar until you can get a hold of the second bar, it will throw both bars, and you, off balance and the performance will be thrown off. These are my words summarizing the point she is making, not hers.

Here is a quote from the text though..."I'm not a trapeze artist, but my experience of letting go feels very much like being suspended in mid-air with nothing to hold on to. It is raw, naked, vulnerable, and uncomfortable. I would much prefer to let go when I know for sure what is coming. And when I have let go, I want to somehow stay connected, just in case I want it back. To let go completely feels like a suspension in the void."

"The practice of nonclinging is as free as swinging from bar to bar effortlessly, in perfect trust and perfect timing. Any kind of holding too long or grasping too far forward in an effor to maintain a sense of security is deadly to our spiritual growth and the natural unfolding of our lives."

This is where I am in life, learning to let go, and not in anticipation of the next thing, but in complete trust that the next thing will be there and it will be the next stage of my journey. It will most likely be bigger and better as well as long as I'm not attached to it being so.

Abraham (who I'll be visiting with on August 31, yay!) would say that I've filled my vibrational escrow (even thought they're calling it our vortex now) account with things put in there out of my experience of contrast within my life, this one and many others as well, and so as long I am able to allow it in, read let go and trust, then the next thing will come and it will be closer to what I want, if not exactly what I want. But we are built to keep refining and keep refining, until what we want changes again and again, so even in the receiving of it we are meant to let go so that the more refined version can step into our lives.

Lots to think about, for me, hopefully for you too.

Let go...

Allow...

Trust...

Change...

So, the ideal goal of yoga, in my mind, has always been to be able to weather the changes that life throws your way with ease. At least that's always been one of them that makes me want to keep going on this path. I never realized what it meant until recently though.

I might have had some idea, in an abstract way, but I've never actually allowed any of the major changes that have wanted to come up to happen. Now, what does that mean?

That means that when I was younger I had the idea to move to Chicago, I came home from a trip there, checked on branches of the company I was then working for to see if they had openings so I could transfer, they didn't, so I gave up on it. Rather than going a different route which could have taken me there, which was what I wanted. So instead, I stayed here, drank even more than I did before and told myself this was what I got, so deal with it.

Then Hawaii, I was on sabbatical there studying Ashtanga with Nancy Gilgoff, it WAS the right place for me to be at that time, so I call my mom to see if she'd help me sell my stuff and make it easier for me to just stay there and keep studying, find work and whatever. She, knowing me very well, refused to do so because she knew I'd never come back, which was probably true but rather than use the resources I had at my disposal, I let that make me feel defeated and went home, gave up again and and just stayed there, drank even more and kept practicing.

Then during my time digging deep into the Kundalini yoga practice, when I decided to become Sikh, change my name, take the vows, stop drinking, stop eating meat, stop a lot of things. All the while practicing Kundalini Yoga, which clears out your energy channels, got myself all opened up. I noticed a change, I was more resolute in my decisions, more committed. But yet again, I got an offer to move to LA and teach Kundalini Yoga in the West Hollywood area, live with a friend very cheaply and go for it in California (which if you know it has always been a big dream of mine). What happened? I did the same thing, I squelched it down and got stuck here.

This time the difference was that I didn't start drinking more and resolve myself to that dark fate of being stuck here, as I'd always done before. I felt that that opportunity was not necessarily the right one for me at the time, and it wasn't. Very soon after that I began practicing Ashtanga again and started shifting and becoming what I like to think of as more me than I'd ever been before.

So now, you may say, okay, so you're ready to move again. Yes, of course I am, but more so I'm ready for whatever comes up. So, I've met someone, someone who I believe I'm falling for, fully, not just on the surface, but with all of my being.

He doesn't live here, so I'm traveling to visit him this Thursday and am going with whatever come from it from there. Now, does this mean I'll move, maybe, but the point is that I would normally be blocking myself from experiencing whatever it is that comes from this, and not allowing the fullest express of the experience to be realized. I'm opening myself up to receiving this experience and going wherever life takes me, be it to becoming amazing friends or to be lovers who teach yoga together around the globe (I'm rooting for that one lol), but to be fully there whatever comes up, becoming a fully realized version of me.

So dive into your experiences, have them fully. Or, as I read the other day and have decided I love, lean into your life. Lean into it, become it and express yourself fully!