Today's Joyful Affirmation

Good things are everywhere I look.

Today's Joyful Affirmation

I accept joy into my life.

Today's Joyful Affirmation

I have an abundance of love to give and to receive.

Thank You

As we prepare for our Thanksgiving holiday, we are reminded of those things for which we are grateful.  Of course, its important to remember and show gratitude for all of those things and all of those people every day, not just around the holidays.  A simple gesture, kind word, or smile has enough positive energy behind it to change the mood or outlook of someone you come across.  Try it today and see what happens.  

When you are playing bumper carts at the grocery store as you stock up on all of your Thanksgiving dinner needs, smile, and be thankful that you have the means to have food on your table.  When you catch yourself grumbling about having to park on the far end of the parking lot to do your holiday shopping, smile, and be thankful that you have a car to get you there and legs to carry you across the parking lot.  When you moan and groan about shoveling your driveway and sidewalk, smile, and be thankful that you have the strength to clear that path.  When you become irritated with travel delays on your way to visit family and friends, smile, and be thankful that you have family and friends to visit. And when you find yourself overwhelmed, tired, and stressed, smile, and be thankful that you have permission to sit down a take 5 minutes to practice this gratefulness meditation...

Sit comfortably, in a quiet spot, eyes closed.  Inhale slowly, letting your lungs fill completely with air.

Exhale slowly.

Continue breathing this way for several breaths, quieting your mind, relaxing your body.

With each exhale, let your bellybutton fall towards your spine, releasing any toxins or impurities that do not serve you.

Release attachment to thoughts and emotions, focusing on your breath.

Continue as you allow your body to relax and your mind to be still.

Inhale and draw a column of light in through your body in front of your spine.

Exhale, and see yourself surrounded by the light.

Continue to hold this image for 5 slow and steady breaths.

Now, with each inhalation bring your awareness to your heart center.

See light emanate from this sacred space.

As you exhale, allow the light to cleanse you and remove impurities, physical, mental, emotional.

Feel yourself glowing with the pure light that both fills you and surrounds you.

See the light flow effortlessly from your heart center.

Bathe in the light, feel it cleanse and renew you.

SAY TO YOURSELF SOMETHING FOR WHICH YOU ARE GRATEFUL

Bring that thing or that person into your mind’s eye, let it into your heart center. See…feel…hear…smell…that for which you are grateful.

Continue to hold it in your heart. As you inhale, breathe in these strong feelings of gratitude. With a strong exhale, send those feelings to that thing or that person. Do this for several breaths.

Continue to bathe in the light. Feel the warm embrace of peace and light.

Begin to bring your awareness back to this space. 

Slowly allow your eyes to open.

No matter how you say it, giving thanks and showing your gratitude is a positive emotion that unlocks the fullness of your energy.

Think gratitude, give gratitude, receive thanks and love.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Cultivating Compassion

“If you want to be happy, practice compassion”

~Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama teaches that compassion is recognizing that someone else is just like you.  We may look different, speak different, like different things, come from different backgrounds, but none of this matters.  What matters is that all any of us really want is to be happy and safe. The moment we realize that all other people are just like us, compassion has room to be cultivated.

Yoga means ‘union’ – the union of the material self and the Divine Spirit that is within each of us. I also see it as the union among every one of us.  A Course in Miracles teaches that “If you are grateful to your brother, you are grateful to God for what He created…one moment of real recognition makes everyone your brother because each of them is of your Father. Love does not conquer all things, but it does set all things right.” Regardless of where you are in your own spirituality, I find this a beautiful way to make peace with everyone who you perceive as having wronged you, irritated you, hurt you, or upset you in any way.

It’s a reminder that we are all connected and we are all the same. We all suffer, face conflicts, have doubts, and experience fear.  When we truly realize that connection, we experience what Buddhists call bodhichitta, a state of awakened consciousness in which the barriers we set up between ourselves and others are removed and we experience a deep and profound inner connection. Our egos fade, and our true selves shine. Having compassion and love toward others in turn means we have compassion and love for ourselves. When you withhold love from others, you withhold it from yourself as well.

Feeling compassion brings one tremendous joy. But it can also bring great pain. To feel another’s suffering is to feel your own, and this frightens us. We so often fear our own pain, our own vulnerability.  But when, as yoga teaches us, we recognize and honor the Divine Spirit within us, we know we have nothing to fear because fear cannot reach the Divine and therefore it cannot reach us.

Sometimes that pain comes from trying to feel compassion towards someone with whom we have had a difficult time. Hatred is a powerful emotion but it’s not real. It’s merely something the ego created to protect itself. Hatred allows us to blame others for our life situations. When the ego has been hurt, insulted, or threatened, it points a finger at the culprit. Placing blame on others relieves the ego of its responsibility, making the ego “right.” Blame and hatred can do nothing to cultivate compassion. It can only destroy it. Non-compassion does not lead to happiness. It prevents it. And why would we ever choose to be unhappy?  It is not for our own egos to judge who is deserving of compassion and who is not.  This is simply a battle of one ego against another. When we bring yoga into our life and accept that we are ALL united, that we are not our egos, then we will have and demonstrate love and compassion for everyone.  

“The truly helpful are invulnerable, because they are not protecting their egos and so nothing can hurt them.”

~A Course in Miracles, Ch. 4, VII.8.3

Waking up

I love the idea of the healing energy of yoga.  At the beginning of practice, you may be invited to make a dedication to someone or some people who could benefit from the healing powers of your practice. Every time we practice yoga, we are releasing a very special, healing energy that can literally be felt by others depending on its strength.  We are constantly giving off energy that can be felt by others. Sometimes its a negative energy- get a group of people in the room who don't get along well and you can feel the tension without the need for words.  Walk into a room of people who are feeling happy, excited, or moved by something, and you can feel the higher intensity vibrations, giving off a positive energy.  Its because of those vibrations that I know that there is something much more to us than what we see on the exterior (the body) and what we often listen to and follow (the ego.)

Its the ego that gives us our problems.  A Course in Miracles, which I'm studying right now, says that problems don't exist - worry, sadness, evil, pain, suffering, illness, are all things that we've created in our minds.  These things are illusions because they only exist in a world that is itself an illusion. What we perceive as reality is really a dream in which we are in a deep, deep, sleep, blind to what is underneath.  Truth, love, joy, eternal happiness.

This is overwhelming sometimes.  Other times, its very comforting.  As I've been reading and discussing all of this with others, I can't help but keep coming back to the movie The Matrix. I have to laugh at myself because it seems so odd that that would be a movie that resonates with me on a spiritual level, but I'm going to run with it.  What is REAL?  And how can we say there is no pain, suffering, sickness, and evil in the world when we can "see" it and "feel" it and "experience" it?

Because we choose to suffer. Our definition of good and bad comes from the ego. In truth, there is no good or bad. There just IS.  When asked why bad things happen - disastrous, unfair, unjust, just plain evil - what comes to me is this: most of us are in such a deep state of sleep that only something of significant proportions is going to wake us up.  Its often not until after a disaster of sorts that people seek out spiritual guidance.  And what about the people who are already waking up or who already See?  Perhaps those situations aren't for them, but for someone close to them who needs, not only to wake up, but to be brought into connection with someone already on that path who will serve as a teacher.  I don't know. I'm not there yet. But I am determined to see...

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could spare them from all suffering? No, it wouldn't. They would not evolve as human beings and would remain shallow, identified with the external form of things. Suffering drives you deeper. The paradox is that suffering is caused by identification with form and erodes identification with form. A lot of it is caused by the ego, although eventually suffering destroys the ego--but not until you suffer consciously.



Humanity is destined to go beyond suffering, but not in the way the ego thinks. One of the ego's many erroneous assumptions, one of its many deluded thoughts is "I should not have to suffer." Sometimes the thought gets transferred to someone close to you: "My child should not have to suffer." That thought itself lies at the root of suffering. Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego. The man on the cross is an archetypal image. He is every man and every woman. As long as you resist suffering, it is a slow process because the resistance creates more ego to burn up. When you accept suffering, however, there is an acceleration of that process which is brought about by the fact that you suffer consciously. You can accept suffering for yourself, or you can accept it for someone else, such as your child or parent. In the midst of conscious suffering there is already the transmutation. The fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness."

Eckhart Tolle

Turkey Crossing

When I picked up my daughter from daycare on Friday she gave me a picture of two turkeys she had painted using her handprints.  My eyes filled with tears and a chill ran through me, not because I thought they were so adorable and perfect (which I did), but because earlier that day I'd had quite a profound run in with these very creatures. My friend and business partner, Chrissy, and I were going to a meeting. As we were getting out of the car, 4 huge wild turkeys, who were as startled to see us as we were to see them, crossed in front of us on the street. "Oh my gosh! Turkeys!" were the words that I think flew out of my mouth. There was a moment's pause where I looked directly into each of their eyes, gathering exactly what I was looking at. That moment, while fleeting, seemed to at the same time last for quite awhile. Then they took flight and were gone. Finding this too amazing to ignore, I inquired about the symbolic meaning of turkeys. It turns out that turkeys are thought to be a symbol of awareness, fertility, harvest, abundance, tenacity, gratitude and new beginnings.

New beginnings are most certainly on the forefront of my career right now, with yoga instruction and meditation taking the reins, and if you look back a few posts, you'll notice one of my recent topics was gratitude. It's funny, though not surprising, how everything comes full circle and is, in some way (or perhaps in quite a profound way) linked together. I wrote about gratitude because I had been reading an article in a regional yoga publication which inspired my daughter and husband and I to start a list "I am thankful for..." where we write down something everyday through Thanksgiving. It serves as a great reminder for how much we really do have to be grateful.

Getting back to the turkeys, some also believe the turkey is linked to your third eye and intuition. I had to smile to myself when I read this because in the last few months I've started noticing that that little voice in the back of my head that I've always been a bit skeptical of, already has it figured out. I've even started listening to that little voice and not surprisingly, it has been serving me quite well.  If you're in a state of mind to accept ideas of mysticism, or whatever word you'd like to apply, you might even say that those turkeys were a sign of my third eye opening...ever so slightly anyway. On the way to the store later that night, the thought crossed my mind that I was going to run into someone from the art community in my town. And sure enough...

This brings a smile to my face for a couple of reasons but mainly out of comfort. It's not that it was a glimpse of the future but of what has already happened. It's a little reminder that everything will be ok because we've done all this before. Every experience has been laid out for us in the exact way that it needs to happen to us, regardless of whether we understand it yet. Whether or not you're ready to accept that idea, at least ponder over it.  Haven't you ever had something happen that was a "weird" coincidence? Maybe it wasn't a coincidence at all but a sign, a "God-wink," a nudge from a higher power encouraging you to wake up. Listen to that little voice. Open your third eye.

Don't think too hard on this though. It will make sense when it's supposed to.

Che cera cera

Why do we dwell so much on others thoughts or actions?  Is all the worry and anxiety really worth your time and energy?  Why would we do anything other than let it go?  Move along.  People will tell you that your situation is good or bad, and at first, it may appear that way.  But there is so much more that is yet to happen and every experience that we encounter in our lives is part of our journey.  

“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need?  Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.”

This is one of my favorite quotes from Eckhart Tolle.  Interestingly, it was in the midst of a particularly unpleasant situation in my life that I came across Tolle’s quote.  It was almost as if the Universe was speaking directly to me “Holly, here’s what you need to know!”  If you’ve ever had something like that happen, you know what I mean.  It’s like an “Aha” moment.  Some might call this coincidence or serendipity.  I've also heard it referred to as a “God-wink.”  However you want to refer to it, this idea resonated with me.  Something bigger than what I could comprehend was winking at me.  While on some level I knew this to be true, this was not, at the time, an easy concept to embrace.  Anger, frustration, and disappointment are strong emotions.  The mind just loves to grab hold of these emotions and take you on a real trip.  Here is where the Ego rears its ugly head. It loves this stuff – feeds off of it in fact.  Conflict, drama, dwelling on our situations and driving ourselves into a deep hole of worry is what the mind and the Ego do best.  You are not creating those conflicts, those tense situations – your mind is.  You are not your mind and therefore you are not your problems.  There is no one who can tell you how to feel about the events or situations that arise in your life.  Except for you.  You alone have the choice to decide how to react to and deal with the experiences that come across your path.  Its as simple as taking a moment to step outside of your whirling thought-filled mind and just watch. Watch your mind, watch your thoughts.  Its like a parent watching his or her child complain about the drama on the playground at recess or the mean girls at school.  As the parent, you know these melodramas seem like the end of the world, but that in the long run, they don’t matter.  They are part of our life experiences.  For the most part, we look back on these things and laugh. From this view, you may even find yourself smiling at your “problems” now.  Observe how the other people involved are acting and reacting.  Are you worrying about their thoughts?  This is even more unnecessary than worrying about your own thoughts because their thoughts have nothing to do with you.  They've been made up in the minds of others!  Stepping outside of yourself so to speak, and observing all of this, gives you the insight of a third party.  Interestingly, that third party is you. The real you. 

Consider a time when you were faced with a difficult, unpleasant, or downright painful experience. How much sleep did you lose?  How weighted down did you feel?  How much ice cream did you feel you deserved?  We always talk about the mental and physical exhaustion that these situations cause.  So why not free yourself from that wasteful use of energy?  Che cera cera.  Allow whatever will be, to be.  Choose your happiness.