What if by refining our taste, we ended up satiating our hunger rather than feeding our fear or our depression or our boredom? What if by refining our listening we strengthened our relationships because we were able to hear beyond words and into hearts? What if by refining our sight we began to see real life smiles instead of social media?
Read MoreOn average we take about 20,000 breaths in one day. If we do not breathe, we die. So we could say that our breath equals our aliveness and our aliveness could also be called our Prana. Perhaps there is more to Prana, but certainly the breath is part of it. I often equate my aliveness to my presence, my smile, my connection with other humans, with nature or source, and with whatever I am creating with my hands, but rarely do I stop and choose to get to know my breath intimately as part of my aliveness. Do you know how you breathe? From your chest or your belly or both? Through your nose, through your mouth, or both? What about your inhalations and exhalations and the intersections in between? What about when you are sad or frustrated or excited?
Read MoreTaking an impartial or dispassionate stance towards the ill-will of yourself or others does not equal uncaring, unconcern, or apathy. What it does equal is the radical responsibility to uphold your inner peace even when you witness the ugly, the gruesome, and the hurtful behavior that you cannot avoid as a human being. By refusing to react to anger with anger, you defuse the bomb rather than implode it.
Read MoreToday we arrive at the virtuous and we are being guided to meet virtue with delight. Seems as natural as rainbow sprinkles on vanilla ice cream, but is it? How often do we question the goodness of others, the why or the why not behind what they did or didn’t do? How often do we disbelieve in our own goodness, by constantly comparing our doings to the doings of others and subscribing to a made up hierarchy of those doings, probably published by Big Pharma anyway. Because if we all knew how incredibly good we are, boom goes their business of bastardizing our souls.
Read MoreWhat this sutra is asking us not to do: is to judge that hurt and pain, or compare it, or belittle it, or diminish it, or perpetuate it. So when we feel held hostage by our sadness or depression, perhaps, the spoonful of sugar we actually need, is a moment in our own embrace, the allowance for an ugly cry, or the permission to feel without justifying having the feeling in the first place.
Read MoreHow do you feel about you when you are happy, do you allow yourself to be so or do you tend to tame it, time it, or try to top it? How do you feel about others when you witness their happy? Do you want it for yourself, wish it would go away, or welcome it with open arms?
Read MoreOur ability to experience our experience, absolutely depends on how proficient we are at attending to and consciously directing our own attention. The depth at which we can experience anything, a conversation, the magic that lights up the nights sky, a home cooked meal, the heartbeat of another that can be felt when wrapped in their embrace, is the direct result of how fully we get to be alive.
Read MoreThese symptoms are like last call at the bar, we’ve already been told several times that the bar is closing, yet we spin around on our bar stool, shouting inaudibly to our neighbor who also does not want to go home and face his own stupor while holding out in hopes for just one more drink.
Read MoreSometimes it feels like what could be compared to as the yo-yo dieter, he/she has figured out how to reach that goal weight for a brief moment in time, yet fails to live life with that weight as his or her constant. To be constant means to be consistent. Yoga is clear from the very beginning, the level of your peace is dependent upon your willingness to practice, participate, and be present for your own life daily. This means that our achievements are required to become our baseline so that we get to have a grand opportunity to experience the massive amount of love and grace and extra ordinaries always available to us.
Read MoreThe obstacle is non-achievement, so the question is, what is it that I meant to achieve that I am not? This requires us to define what it means to achieve. I could acquire all kinds of “achievements” based off of what society has told me I’m meant to achieve wether that be collecting zero’s in an account or letters behind my name or degrees plaquered on the wall or square footage of a house and so on for eternity and you can totally do all that, proudly, and it will still not solve the type of achievement we are actually meant for, which is that of the spiritual kind. The achievement we are speaking of is how connected we are to our spirit in this current reality, the achievement of your spiritual reality or spirituality.
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