I’ll be continuing the silence here on the blog through January while I am in Costa Rica. I’ll still be writing to the letter weekly and to other non public spaces like my journals. And I’ll be reading. And teaching a lot of yoga. May your January be as bright.
I went to an Intimacy workshop that a colleague of mine was leading this weekend. It was for lovers, friends and individuals who wish to connect more deeply with the people around them.
During one of the meditations I stood face to face with a stranger, a man with dark skin and a white beard. We looked into one another’s left eyes and pressed our palms- left on right, right on left- into one another’s. We breathed simultaneously and drew energy from the other’s body. Recycling it through our bodies, we returned it to the sender on each exhale.
Tantra teaches us that there is an energy that connects us. This energy is a creating and connecting force. It is an intelligent energy and a powerful one. It can be shared with or without arousal with any human being and when it is it can destroy or it can heal.
Do you recycling the energy you receive? Or do you absorb and hoard it?
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One of the more frustrating practices I experience is the practice of shopping. Sitting across from a beautiful and precisely (though casually) adorned friend last night, I realized that my dislike of shopping is actually an avoidance of some much needed work in my practice of alignment. She said, it is important to me to know what I like. When she said it, it illuminated that it is not important for me to know what I like, and that causes suffering for me.
This suffering manifests in situations when I do shop and purchase items that seem likable in the moment and often prove unlikeable as they sit in my closet unworn for months. It manifests when I go home and look with envy at the ease of my sister’s dressing and how much I am drawn to her wardrobe over my own.
I have practiced knowing what I like in some areas (tea, for instance. Most oolongs are my favorite. Sencha is a runner up). In music, this knowing has always come naturally. Food is tricky because what I like becomes entangled with what is good and while practicing what is good has directed what I like, when faced with several good options I have deep trouble knowing which option will satisfy my liking. I know what yoga leggings I like and I will pay out the ass for them.
The practice of daily style as it aligns with my personal liking has almost all together alluded me.
In all practices, knowing what I do not like is always easier. This is the first step. But I am ready for more refinement.
In my wardrobe there is a black cotton tank dress with a cinched waste line that I would wear every day, but don’t and a pair of skinny jeans that have lasted me for several years and always make me feel super sexy when I wear them. I also have a certain brand of shirt (of varying sleeve lengths and necklines, all in black and gray) that never fail to satisfy. Currently I am exploring, where do I believe in scarcity and therefore horde my options?
In other words, if I like a black shirt or dress with the ocassional jacket over top, why do I ever wear anything else?
How do you know what you like to wear? Trial and error? Mimicking examples? I would love to know.
In the letter last week I wrote intimately about having a sense of vocation. Someone who reads the letter asked a question. I thought I would address it here so that you have an idea of what arises from the letter. He asked,
Can a call be crafted?
There is a certain kind of work that I feel called to. Part of that work right now is walking into the Mysore room (nearly) every morning. Part of that work is writing. But the call is not the work itself. In fact, if a vocation feels like a magnetic pull toward a certain kind of work, then the work itself feels like forcing the same poles of two magnets together. The vocation is the pull, it is the call. And, “as powerful as is our soul’s call to realization, so potent are the forces of Resistance arrayed against it.”* That is where the work comes. The work comes with the Resistance.
So does vocation move, as the poet Ruth Stone suggested, like a thunderous train of air, barreling over the landscape and plowing through our bodies whether we are ready to capture it or not? Or does vocation merely hint at itself, casting a shadow of suggestion across our vision with hopes we have the dedication and resource to nurture and beg it’s embodiment?
*Stephen Pressfield, The War of Art
I have a mentor who embodies my image of success. Due to her practice of personal evolution, that image of success is a moving target.
The other day she told me that she has stopped doing consulting work and that she no longer accepts public speaking engagements. This unnerved me because those two things (consulting and public speaking) define success for me. As in, once I have consulting and public speaking gigs I will be successful. Now that she has dropped that, everything is in conflict.
It has me asking the question, am I working toward an image of success, or am I doing the work?
The last two weeks were a blur of 16 hour days and back to back (to back) yoga classes, let downs, rejections, discoveries and friendship. I saw the sun rise and set each day, but the moments in between were soggy and gray. On Saturday evening someone asked, “will you lead a two week boot camp again?” I said, yes, but that next time I will be much more intentional about the boundaries I set during those two weeks. For instance, if I teach at 6am and 6pm, I do not have to work every hour in between. And it’s worth the gas money to drive home for lunch and nap if I know I’m starting early and ending late.
At the start of a new week, I am examining my pace and rhythms and observing my habits when I get overwhelmed or exhausted. I’m asking a few questions:
Where am I putting my energy right now? Is it serving me and my dreams?
What is the first to go when I get overwhelmed?
Am I willing to meet the needs of others before I meet my own?
The third question is especially edgy for me. It bumps me up against the belief I hold that if everyone around me is happy, I will be happy. If I can satisfy the needs of others, my needs will be satisfied.
What I realized these last two weeks is that if I cannot meet (or even identify) my own needs, the place from which I am meeting others is shallow and desolate. I only have the dregs to offer. There is no faking vibrance and abundance. People pick up when I’m scraping bottom. And when I am scraping bottom I am usually desperate for someone to serve my needs. This is when people run away and hide.
Today I am starting tender with myself. And so far, the interactions I have had with others have been far more graceful.
