Bloom Where You Are Planted

Last night I participated in a lovely Full Moon Ceremony presented by my lovely teacher, Christie Jane Cairo of the https://www.momoyoga.com/the-christie-cairo-project/ . It was a dynamic practice of clearing all the weeds from your karmic garden to allow your inner lotus space to bloom. We started out by setting our intentions, creating a circle of protection and then bravely severing all the attachments holding us back from becoming the best versions of ourselves. 

We did an exercise where we wrote a letter to ourselves from our fears. Historically, I usually have trouble finding words when prompted in a class environment. I'm more of a secret writer. I usually like to hide in my office and clack away at the keyboard and let the words flow from my inner inspiration. But last night, I don't know if it was the protective circle, the presence of my lovely teacher, the friends and family that joined me in my space or just the combination of all of the previously listed inspo combined with this transformational energy that I have been manifesting, but man did the words come flowing!

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Here is my letter from Fear:

Dearest Michele,

I am your fear and I want to tell you this - I will ALWAYS raise the alarm when I think something might hurt us. It is the only job I have and I take it seriously. But as I see you getting stronger, and wiser, and braver, I understand that you will no longer be taking my feelings into consideration when making decisions. I want you to know that I am OK with this. I choose US even when I am standing in the middle of the rooming screaming at the top of my lungs, "STOP! DON'T GO THERE! DON'T DO THAT! IT'S NOT SAFE!" Please go boldly toward our best self. That's all I've ever wanted for us. 

Love,

FEAR

And here is my reply:

My dear friend Fear,

You have served us well over the years, my friend. You have saved us from so much pain and kept us from being hurt many times. But darling, you have also kept us from so much joy as well. 

Although I will never leave you behind, I think it's time for you to set down your gongs, your pots and pans, your klaxon alarms and bells and whistles. I've got this. You have taught us well. Our discernment is developing greatly. 

Now, my friend, is time for you to sit down, take a load off. Enjoy the ride. And if you can't enjoy the ride, take a nap, take your mind off things. I'll let you know when we get there!

Love, 

Me, gloriously radiant ME!

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There has been this theme running through the mindfulness circles this season. I have seen it repeated in the tv shows I watch, the movies, and books, even the music I'm attracted to. I've been listening to lectures from all the masters and gurus and it's the same message:

When will you get tired of trying to be the person you think you are supposed to be and become the person you always were meant to be?

I was watching one of my favorite shows, This Is Us. In the 5 or 6 seasons it has been airing, I think I've only made it thru 2 or 3 episodes without sobbing from the great messages of reconciliation the writers offer each week. This past episode, one of the main characters finally hit that point. Here's the scene, he's in a hospital room with a fellow recovering alcoholic. She's unconscious so he's just sitting with her and he starts to think out loud. 

"Do you ever feel like you're performing in a movie that no one else is watching?...Like you're always trying to do the right thing. You're trying to be the right kind of person instead of just, being that person...I wanna be the kind of man that does the right thing because it's the right thing to do."

Man, I really felt that. For some time now I have struggled with repeating the same old scene and ending up with the same results and I get so frustrated with myself for seemingly being unable to stop myself from ending up in these same toxic behaviors. I've been discovering a lot about my biological father, and unironically, he has repeated this same pattern throughout his life. Well, there you go, generational karmas? Nature over nurture? Just learning this about him made me feel so much better about my own struggle. Like, seeing that mirror made me feel so much less shitty about not being able to see every time that I was falling back into those patterns. 

The other day I shared a comic with my yoga tribe, it's from @dinosandcomics on IG. In the first panel, the raptor tells the T-Rex, "you just need to be yourself." and the dino replies, "I can do that." Then the raptor clarifies, "not your actual self, of course," he tells the T-Rex. "The self you would be if you weren't so shitty." Oh, how we let the world convince us that we are anything but radiant! 

For me, I have this tendency to view any attempt that falls short of perfection as a sign of what a failure I truly am. I tend to see these failures as an indication that enlightenment is unattainable and "not for people like me." It's terribly frustrating. I just sabotage any progress with my wrong belief that not being perfect means I can't be better. These pitfalls are so common that the masters all have written about them, but somehow I never identified with that message before this season. My teacher posted a lovely quote from Pema Chodron that really put me in my place!

"When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they're going to improve, which is sort of a subtle aggression against who they really are. But lovingkindness, or maitri, toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all those years. We can still be timid, or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and becoming something better. It is about be-friending who we already are. 

Who will you bloom into if you stop ripping up the sprouts with the weeds?

Namaste!

 

Love Everyone, Tell the Truth

Boy, oh, boy! When you make the conscious choice to step into your dharma, the speed with which the universe brings you the messages you need to hear is beyond measure. 

So here I was doing my daily ablutions this morning, just minding my own business. I was listening to a yoga lesson on Dharma. Ram Dass was talking about how after many days in retreat you start to finally let go of your distracting habits and feel that connectedness that only comes from getting still enough to hear your inner voice. He describes how the universe he lives in only has two beings left in. There is who he still thinks he is, the illusion, and there is "Sam," who you can call God, or the universe, or the Guru. He goes on to say that the universe he lives in exists only to bring him to the Guru. 

I was brushing my teeth at the time and I just burst into tears. This is becoming a common theme since I started my transformation. But here I was, choking and trying not to drown in my own delight and sorrow at this revelation. Now, I've heard this message several times. I TEACH this stuff all the time. I had literally said as much the night before during a Karma Conversation with a fellow traveller on the path. 

But here I am realizing the grace of the Guru, being washed in this loving wisdom and I continue getting dressed and ready for my day just awed at how simple, yet how complex this message is. 

Okay, so I'm thinking faster than I'm typing so maybe you aren't able to keep up with the transmission I am receiving but the only thing you need to know is, everything you are experiencing is bringing you to love you deserve. Don't sweat the small stuff, and it's ALL small stuff. The suffering you are experiencing can be remedied. The function of an incarnation is to end suffering. The method of ending suffering for each being is their dharma. 

Stay tuned for awesomeness!

Origin Stories

For a while now, I've been sitting on the knowledge that the man on my birth certificate was not my father. I can't say I wasn't relieved to discover that my    sister's narcissistic schizophrenic sperm donor was NOT related to me, but it did leave a pretty big empty space in my world view. At the time, I only knew that this father of mine was named Harry and that he had blonde hair.

Fast forward to 2006 when my son got his driving permit, we took a ride up to the thumb to visit my mother's high school bestie. Her and her husband were very close to my mom and knew all her dark secrets. They asked me at that time if I had any interest in finding out who my father was. I told them that I was honestly very trepidatious about the whole thing for so many reasons I won't go into at this time. But the seed was planted.  

In 2014, I reconnected with a man I had dated when I was stationed in Chicago. He was adopted so we had some strong trauma bonding over not knowing our parents. He had since then connected with his bio family and was encouraging me to do so as well. I thought about it for a long time before finally reaching back out and asking my mom's friends for any details they remembered. I recall I was a little scared they might reveal they still knew him. Alas, they had only his name, spelled incorrectly, and a few memories about the night I was conceived.

I started casually looking for him at that time. I still had all my trepidations so I wasn't pressing too hard on the search button, if you know what I mean? Still, the urge to know one's origins is as strong sometimes as the need to breathe! Years went by and I became less and less interested as the leads dried up in every direction.   

Then I lost my good friend this past December. He had reached out to me about 15 months prior to his death and we spent the last year plus on a roller coaster of emotions as we navigated the last little bits of his life. He once again pressed me to renew my search for my biological father. So, the week of his memorial, I took the plunge and ordered an ancestry DNA kit. The wait began.  

It takes the company anywhere from 3 to 6 weeks to return results, depending on their volume, I suppose. The price always drops at the holidays so I suspect there where a LOT of kits being processed. Shortly after new year, I discovered my daughter had also purchased a kit, but had never processed it, so I encouraged her to do so, and boy was that the right little ball of energy to engage!  

When I received my results, I discovered a first cousin right away. We connected through social media and tried in vain to find our way to our mutual family, me armed with the wrong spelling, and her armed with the wrong family tree (her dad, like me, was raised with a different last name than his siblings). So, we were at a dead end once again. Enter the ever-curious Emily!   

Emily had taken some time off from work and once she received her results went on a mission to uncover even the smallest clues and hints. Within days she discovered not only the correct spelling of my bio family's name, but all of my ancestors, including my father and most of his siblings. With that info, it was pretty easy for me to find a current address. This was the sum of all the info I could find on him. From what we could find, it appears my father and his brothers all remained unmarried, without any sign of children. He had 2 sisters who both married and had kids, and these were the only family members we could find on social media.   

So, I decided to write him a letter. Introduce him to me and send along photos of my mom, myself, and my children. I would leave it up to him to decide if he wanted to walk into that destiny or remain alone. I sent it by certified mail so that I would know he actually received it. And I sat back and waited. And waited. And waited. 

Turns out, he had recently vacated his apartment due to an increase in the rent and was staying a few miles down the road with his brother, the only other address we were able to find!   

I have been meditating and exercising and writing and painting and drawing and shopping and doing everything I can to keep busy as I waited to see what he would do with this information. I was doing my level best to avoid attachment to the outcome. I reread "Polishing the Mirror" by Ram Dass and I was rotating through a few of my favorite karma talks on YouTube. For my yoga class that week I had prepared a slow flow to help open hearts and planned to do the guided visual meditation in the early chapters of the book. I only had one student make it to class, but as she is one of my best friend cousins, I didn't mind at all. We chatted, and eventually decided to just do the meditation.   

I always find this meditation to be particularly moving. I would love to record it to be able to listen to it back to my self instead of always being the one reciting it, however, I've never been able to get through it without sobbing. About 3/4 of the way through, my phone began to rang. I barely glanced at my phone screen as I scrambled to send it to voicemail so as not to disturb the meditation vibes, when I realize the screen says Harry. Well, that sent my resolve straight out the door and I recited that last part of the meditation is total sobs. When I finished, we looked at each other and I said, "Oh my gosh! That was Harry, I think he just left me a voice mail!"  

My cousin asked if I needed a hug and we laughed at the absurdity of all of this! Even though she was planning on leaving right after the meditation, she offered to stay while I called him back. I was shaking throughout the whole of myself. I played his voicemail, noting his old man voice and chuckling that he sounded like an aging hippie who led a pretty wild life. Turns out I was not far off the mark.   

I always marveled at how much nature plays a part in informing who we become just as much as nurture. I was so amazed at each turn as I got to know my adult daughter and discovered which traits and personality quirks she inherited from me. Talking with Harry, it was equally as affirming to discover how many characteristics I had gotten from him. I'll save the details until I can tell you all about our first face to face meeting. We agreed to get together for lunch when the weather breaks, (he wants to be able to ride his bike,) so for now I will just revel in the knowledge that according to him, I laugh just like my great grama Lucille.

I Am

Here's something I've been working on since my violent ejection from the corporate world: releasing attachments. 

Currently I am re-reading Ram Das, Polishing the Mirror. I am remembering the advantages of living a life free of attachments. How quickly we can become complacent when we are miserable in our own skin. The Rat Race cultivates a culture of "do more" and "be less". I didn't fit in it when I was younger and less aware. And I definitely do not fit in it now, as I have lived a liberated life, and the amount of anesthetic it takes to forget that truth is toxic. Not only to your physical and emotional wellbeing, but you mental health as well, which mine vascilates from healthy to unhealthy pretty quickly these days. Eventually, your spiritual well-being is tossed into the pit and you just become a little less human with each passing week. 

Bleek, eh? I have a dark, edgy side that is usually just waiting for a biorhythmically low day to rear her ugly head. I haven't been sleeping well since I discovered the identity of my biological father, so my defenses are limited. I've barely had the bandwidth for self care these days. Thank Ganesha for my yoga classes so I am at least socializing a few times a week!

Anyways, the reason I popped in here tonight, as I said earlier, I'm re-reading Ram Das and I just love the line, 

    "I am" includes the fact that I do beautiful things and I do crappy things. And I am." 

The next section is titled, "I'd Rather Be Than Be Right." where he explains that by judging others, you are ranking yourself among others to see where you stand relative to them. This creates separation, which closes off your heart. This creates a perpetuation of their suffering and yours. Only by shifting away from the judging to a place where you can appreciate yours and their predicament open hearted can this open heartedness allow you to just be, without separatedness.

I know, deep, right? The Maharaj-ji tought that we should "love everyone, there is only one." I am you and you are me. We are everyone else. There is only one. That's a hard pill to swallow when you have endured a life time of trauma. Even if you've had years of therapy, councelling, teaching, meditation and self-awareness training to help you move past the trauma and function in society. Perhaps it's just that for some of us, completeness is not possible in this lifetime. For now the best we can hope for is to surround ourselves with the best support system and focus on the things in our lives that we DO want to expand!

Where intention goes, energy flows~~

Namaste

She's back!

Wow! I have been hankering to get back on here and pour out some relative wisdom. So many things have changed, contracted or expanded, in my life since my last post. I'm going to skip the catch up, because as the Bhagavan Das would say, "Don't think about the past; just be here now," or "Don't think about the future; just be here now."

When I look at the when of my last post, to the now of this post, I notice that they bookmark a rather dark period of my life. Well, to be fair, the entire world experienced a lot of that darkness as a pandemic. But I'm talking of a deeper darkness. This darkness has followed me around my entire life, always there, just over my shoulder, sometimes overwhelming my spirit, and other times just casting a shadow over anything that would be shiny and bright. It was as oppressive as I allowed it to be. 

I remember when I was going through my initial yoga teacher training, with the divine Christie Cairo, how struck I was at how easily some of the women in that circle understood and acknowledged the wisdom Christie was illuminating for us. I felt so priviledged to learn amongst these wise women. I also remember being slightly jealous that they had had this information for most of their lives and had benefited from these truths, where I, having only stumbled upon this path, had not. I lamented the suffering I had endured over my lifetime and I just wanted to, first, rage that I hadn't had this path to peace available to me when it was so evidently necessary, but also, I wanted to run out and share it with all of my family and friends.

Looking back, how silly it was of me to believe I would have had the bandwidth to have downloaded so much truth. My psyche was only just getting to a point of exhaustion from doing things the same way, always with the same outcomes, (the definition of insanity, right?) These last few years of misery were the final nails in the coffin of my former self. I am thusly ready to be the architect of my own joy. 

So thank you for coming back to indulge me in my vanglory! I can't promise my ego won't emerge and push her way around this forum, but I will make every attempt to be as aware of this as possible. For now, I invite you to enjoy this talk from Ram Dass, Polishing the Mirror. Around the 12 minute mark is a lovely affirmation mantra:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbm8iqXXxq0