What difference does a day make?

The weather forecast for today, September 09, 2011:

Today (Sunday): What a difference a day makes! After yesterday’s intense storms, we’re looking at our skies turning mostly sunny. All that hot and humid air is long gone as well. It’s near perfect out there and we could use it. Highs end up around 75-80 with a bit of a breeze from the northwest. Confidence: High

I wake on the one year anniversary of my father’s passing and I wonder if after today, the Grand Canyon his absence left on my heart-scape will find some resolution as a result of this milestone in grief.

I intuit it will be so, but instead find that this morning I am especially aware of the canyon’s depth and snaking arms as I reflect back on the events as they occurred one sun cycle ago.

In relation to the sun, today is where the planet was when he left it.

This is why today’s forecast (above) is so hopeful. Apparently, today will make all the difference. After the intense storms (of this past year) “we’re looking at our skies turning mostly sunny… It’s near perfect out there and we could use it.” That is the truth. I certainly could use it.

Yet, the sun has yet to rise on what, according to the weatherman, promises to be a beautiful day. In these tender pre-dawn hours the darkness seems to shine its shadow on my sense of loss and absorb it into its own black. The crickets amplify its space with their song. I’m impelled to reach into my well of experience and fill this space with memories. Inevitably, this brings me face to face with regret as I relive moments when I didn’t make the most of our time together. There are few things more painful then realizing, once it is too late, that you ever even once took someone for granted.

But even as I express these dark, dramatic, and lets face-it, pretty universal experiences of being human, I look up and see patches of lavender grey emerging in the negative space between the vegetation outside my window. With the promise of light comes the promise of differentiation, of “This, not that,” “Here, not there,” (thank you to Douglas Brooks for this) and one which is especially healing to me today, of “Then, not now.”

Strangely enough, it is through this process of differentiation that I feel the promise of relief. It is as if in abiding by boundaries of separateness that dissolution has something to dissolve FROM. There is always something to dissolve INTO. I think it is the dissolving FROM that is the tricky part. It is tricky in that there has to be difference first before there can be dissolution. In order for there to be difference there has to be creation. Creation seems to me, a much more complicated business than dissolution, which like entropy, is the natural order of things.

The dawn now is unstoppable, like a persistent invitation to let go, to dissolve the grief, to just stop with the regret and to live. With more light comes more detail and I start to understand the wisdom in the weather report, “What a difference a day makes!” By this point I can even make out the veins in the Dogwood leaves outside.

I get it now and I understand why this will be a beautiful day– because this day marks an important boundary. It marks a mythic and meaningful moment of measure from which I am invited to let my grief of the past year dissolve FROM my heart INTO the sun cycle that can hold it. I am invited to let my sense of regret dissolve INTO the foolish person I was then, not now. I am invited to look forward into the possibility of the coming year and all it may hold. I am invited to embrace my new sense of self, forever changed by the events of this past year.

I will be forever marked by father’s absence, but I also can perceive the possibility of a less painful way of relating to that absence, one which illuminates the canyon with gratitude, with love, with pride, and with promise.

Update: My gifted and beloved Tía María Rosa Crespo wrote the beautiful piece below in remembrance of her brother

UN AÑO

María Rosa Crespo

La noche está quieta y callada tras la ventana, en el cielo quisiera en vez de estrellas pintar una  palabra recuerdo, recuerdo de mi hermano Alfredo quien partió demasiado pronto, un nueve de septiembre como hoy, estaba escrito en  el libro de su vida como la tempestad del verano sin motivo. Estamos hechos apenas de sumas de presentes, un pasado que ya no es y un mañana incierto, no  existen más razones al reflexionar en nuestro abismo de la penas. Quienes aún quedamos a lo mejor nos parece escuchar sus pasos que se pierden entre  las  notas de  la música preferida, los vocablos que fueron pronunciados, atisbar la silueta que se esfuma, sentir el palmoteo del abrazo fraternal, su generosidad  a toda prueba con propios y extraños, degustar sus almuerzos en los Chillos al pie del Cotopaxi, las tortillas de maíz, los múltiples bocadillos, los largos paseos para aspirar el inconfundible olor de las magnolias, las hierbas aromáticas, las hortalizas  y legumbres mientras dialogábamos sobre tantos asuntos entretejidos con añoranzas compartidas: la familia, los amigos, la antigua  hacienda de Charcay y sus senderos recorridos en la lejana infancia. Porque si  anhelamos buscar el secreto de la muerte hay que buscarlo en el corazón mismo de la vida ya que  todos juntos lo cruzamos en un barco estrecho, al llegar a la orilla surgen las preguntas ¿Volveremos a encontrarnos? ¿O cada cual irá a su propio mundo?

My Prayer for This Equinox

May this midpoint be the moment when …

ignire concludes its work: to set on fire

and instead serves: to set alight

may gnasci begin: to be born into being

I see it in the buds, and I wish it for my community.

 

The Tipping Point

This is not my post that starts “With a heavy heart, after much consideration…” but one instead to acknowledge this unique moment in the history of my beloved Anusara Yoga. I feel the urge to name it, to identify it, to for some reason etch it into the permanence of cyberspace lest some day I forget the intensity of these times we have shared together.

Tipping Point:

In sociology: the event of a previously rare phenomenon becoming rapidly and dramatically more common.

In physics: the point at which an object is displaced from a state of stable equilibrium into a new equilibrium state qualitatively dissimilar from the first.

Here we stand, in this pose we have held for an impossibly long time (10 days now). Some of us are still waiting. But now we know things will never be as they once were. With Amy’s elegant articulation of her experience and with Douglas’ thoughtful and transparent arguments I believe I now have the perspective I was longing for. I eat it, I hold what feels like poison it in my blue throat, and I wait for Ross’ announcement coming at 10 AM, less than an hour. (Present tense an homage to Maryl Baldrige’s artful account of the past three days.)

As a community, I feel we have crowned. Our heads have passed through Kali’s ring of fire and our eyes are shocked by the light beyond the cozy womb of our previous existence. We are exhausted and bloody from the whole ordeal, confused and disoriented.

I presume within the hour we will receive information shedding light on what could lie ahead, but I feel that possibility vague and distant.

One thing I do know for sure, once you are out of that belly, there’s no going back in.

I am reminded of my daughter’s birth, of yelling “Om Namah Shivaya” at the peak of the worst of it, to at least with my voice assert my belief in intrinsic goodness even as I was engulfed by the pain of being turned inside out. Let me be clear, birth was more painful than our present situation, but there are some similarities.

Here is me sending more blessings of love to my brothers and sisters now dispersed like fertile seeds in the ground of their own possibilities. I have to be honest. You feel far, far away, but I feel your love nonetheless.

Grace Paid Me a Little Visit This Morning – or – Kali is No Joke, Even Though She Can be Very Funny

Kali has a sense of humor

I left my house early for work this morning in a struggle to stay steady and pause in the painful uncertainty surrounding the future of Anusara and my Anusara family.  Left raw from the recent resignations, I only hesitatingly engaged in polite conversation with a familiar face on Silver Spring Metro platform.

Polite engagement was not on my radar.  Checking the latest 60+ email notifications of the conversation was, even though this painful communication was deepening my sadness even more.  Luckily, my manners won out and I approached Cheri (name changed to honor her confidentiality) who apparently had been a former student of mine at Willow Street Yoga Center.

This morning’s cold was sharp and unexpected.  When the metro finally came it was a huge relief, representing escape from the cold and the end of my polite obligation to engage.  Soon I could hunker down in my seat and get caught up on email.  My plan was foiled when a gallant man offered up his seat so we could sit together.  “Thank you,” I said with a smile, partly touched by his consideration but more disappointed than not.

Cheri and I caught up with one another. “I was in your first class at Willow Street,” she said, my grace-sensors now heightened at the serendipity of this encounter.  “You made it so fun.”  That felt good to hear… Ok, maybe this conversation wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

Then she dropped the grace-bomb on me.  “I remember when Willow Street opened (the Silver Spring studio) there was a big serious hurricane the day of the open house, and yet it was open anyway.  That’s when I met you and signed up for your class.”  Seriously grace?  You place me next to one of the few people who were there the day my home studio opened 10 + years ago? Ok, I hear you!   Yoga happens despite adversity.

Without going into details, I shared with her what a relief it was to be reminded of this memory since things are a bit tumultuous in our community right now.  I think she could feel my pain, but instead of saying, “Really, what happened?” she asked, “Well, have you gotten to that place on the hump yet where you can tell what the lesson is going to be yet?”  Still floored by the power of this encounter I decided to be honest and say, “No.”

I don’t know what is going to happen with my friends, my yoga, my teacher, my profession, my students, my income.  Each time I learn of another teacher’s departure, it deepens this uncertainty even more.  I can respect their decisions, but I do not like them for many reasons.  I won’t go into those reasons in this post, except for the most selfish one, the ones that affects me personally.  When they go it deepens the uncertainty, it rocks a boat that is already struggling to stay afloat.  I wish as a community we could pause to properly assess the problem, design a solution, and then be given the chance to implement it before abandoning ship. (Sorry, couldn’t help the overuse of the cliché).

Anyway, back to Cheri.  For some reason my gloomy response made us both laugh.  The next words out of her mouth were something to the effect of, “Well, then I think a miracle is going to happen.”  I couldn’t take it anymore.  Without even thinking I said, “Who are you?!  Are you an angel?  Are you real?”  Again, we cracked up and I was graced with the movement of more energy between Union Station and Farragut North than had moved all week.  (Did you catch that– “Union” Station?)  What a relief!  Our conversation then drifted to a play she had recently seen where family secrets had come to light.  I asked her if there were any lessons or themes that emerged from the play.  Without missing a beat she responded, “No one is above forgiveness.”

I still don’t know what is going to happen with our community.  For now, it feels best  for me to pause and observe.  What became clear to me from this encounter is that we cannot let our emotions, our decisions, our behavior, and especially our facebook posts distance us from our dharma to serve each other, our students, and overall Shri.

We are here to serve.  Let us not loose sight of that even as we accompany one another through this painful time.

Two more vignettes…  Still on this morning’s commute, now walking West on L street, I saw the grim reaper.  Seriously, not just metaphorically, but for realsies.  A man dressed in a long black cloak billowing in the wind was walking toward me with his white grim-reaper mask propped on his forehead and his massive grim reaper blade (what is that called?) resting over his shoulder.   I was astounded.  Grace was dishing it out, full force, and with a sense of humor.  In the darkness of the earth (metro tunnel) she shows me light, in the light of day she shows me darkness.  As we passed shoulders I turned back to get a better look.  My eyes were pulled to the blade resting on his back where I saw that something will have to be cut, dissolved, carried back to Kali’s black for life to continue.  But what is that something?  It remains to be seen.

It was a lot scarier than this

Forgive me in advance for quoting Wikipedia, and please feel free to chime in to confirm or dispel these assertions, but a quick search on Grim Reaper reveals that “In Hindu scriptures, the lord of death is called Yama…also known as Dharmaraj, or king of Dharma or justice…”  Death, duty, justice.  Pretty relevant right now, no?  I am going to give these karmas a chance to play out.  Though I am in pain, I can hold space for the process.  I am in good company, and even when things totally suck, I can find reasons to laugh.  I believe BJ Galvan when she says things will be all right, no matter what. (I don’t know if she said the “no matter what” part, but nevertheless.)

Lastly, right before entering my building on 21^st street, a car backing out of the parking lot paused to let us pass, and yes, WITH a bumper sticker.

“Choose Compassion.”

OK ok I GOT it.  She works in threes, and this morning her messages to me were these:

1. Yoga is fuelled by shree’s persistence, her willingness to exist.  On some level, we are held by a proclivity towards order and expansion despite the obstacles. Hurricane?  No problem.  We have come through adversity before.  Sure, it is hard, but let us not forget the reason we are here, and that is to serve.
2. Kali is no joke, even though she can be very funny.  Death, dissolution, and justice are not only a good idea but essential for a thriving community.  There is no going back to the way things were, only forward.
3. Choose compassion.  Things are already difficult enough, let us not make them harder.  Though it is my opinion that a little more discernment, patience and wisdom in our expressions would benefit our community, I can keep my heart spacious to the possibility that everyone is responding in the best way they know how.  Above all, we must work to keep our hearts moist for each other lest we retreat in painful isolation from this chosen family we all love.

Riding the Waves of Grace

Solstice

It was dark this morning. And quiet.

With the family in Montana, the persistant presence of my father’s memory was even more palpable.

This week I’ve been reflecting on the dark’s many gifts, on her generosity, absolute receptivity, her velvety texture, and canvas of possibility, onto which any glimmer of light is exaulted.

Thanks to Douglas for this imagery – the darker the night, the more stars emerge.  Here is another one from Douglas, different but related – the Goddess Kali, so at home in her dark domain, expands the seam where darkness meets dark, thereby making more.

This is interesting to me as I look for ways to digest my grief, to eat it and have it serve me, grow me, and expand my heart at its seams. To be fully present with loss is a meditation in itself.  It makes mindfulness inescapable.

I’ve found it is in that tender state where I feel the most love. The object of my love may have passed, but the love remains alive – so alive it both cuts and nourishes me. Thanks to Bill Mahoney for the teaching that love never dies, and to Hafiz for inspiring me with bravery not to run away from the painful parts of harboring this love. He writes:

Absolutely Clear
Don’t surrender your loneliness
So quickly,
Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,

My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.

Solstice blessings to my community on this darkest day. May we expand at the seams of our hearts, in darkness as well as in light.

“What I Learned in Nursery School,” or “How to Make Butter”

On Saturday’s we take our daughter to Acorn Hill, a nursery school free of plastic, loud noises, and unnecessary parental intervention. Instead, we are surrounded by wooden toys, fuzzy woolen paintings, and hand-made toy animals in a womb of a room. Soft rose light fills the volume of space capped by high ceilings which appear even higher, thanks to the large windows and small furniture. Yes, it’s a Waldorf school.

As if it didn’t have me at “hello,” the beginning of every class starts with the parents on the periphery sitting in tiny chairs prepping snack and get this– making butter. Though I’ve witnessed the miraculous transformation of heavy cream to its firmer, fattier form several times now, actually executing the butter making task from start to finish gave me deep insight into my mind’s tendency toward disbelief and desperation.

If these tendencies surface during such an innocuous activity as making butter, it makes me wonder the extent to which limiting beliefs infiltrate other activities, especially ones of deeper yearning and consequence. So you, too can repeat my experiment I’ve outlined the steps below:

Step #1 Pour heavy cream into a well-lidded jar

Steps # 2,3,4,5,6….Shake the jar, use both hands, pass to another parent when you get tired, conveniently receive the jar from another parent just before the butter “happens”, or just hoard the jar for the whole process, lest you miss the magic moment. Meanwhile, casually observing your child from the peripheral parent table, refrain from intervening in your child’s play, conflicts, or clumsy signs of affection directed toward the other babies. I find this part of letting go the most difficult and most delicious. Focus on the cream and let go– shake shake shake.

For the longest time, if feels like nothing is happening. It is difficult to believe that by mere agitation the contents of the jar are going to transform into our snack (to later be eaten with freshly baked goodies and soft pears- thanks to Liz!)

Here is where this starts to feel familiar: Though I know intellectually all the materials are present for butter to happen, I doubt it is going to work– as if somehow just because I’m holding it is not going to happen. Let me be clear. There is no skill involved. There is no way I can mess this up AND STILL I feel a familiar sense of doubt start to coalesce in my consciousness just as I’m hoping for the butter to coalesce in the jar.

With just enough Vimarsa Shakti (power of reflection / recognition) to see the humor in my mind’s ability to indulge its pattern even though it is totally without logic , I turn to my teacher, I mean, my daughter’s nursery school teacher, and say, “Liz! I just don’t think it is going to happen for me,” my voice embodying the desperate drama of a woman on the cover of a romance novel, buxom, dress in tatters, yearning for love.

She smiles from deep inside and stands up. Then, with the firm but gentle presence of a Waldorf teacher, she walks back to my side and without a word, places the receptacle, a hand- turned wooden bowl intended to hold the butter I would surely achieve, down on the table in front me. Liz believes in me. My tempo picks up… I shake with more vigor and start to link the fulfillment of my dreams with the outcome of the contents of this milky white jar. “Please, please, please,” my mind whispers as I sit in my child size chair…Churning the ocean of milk, I shake with yearning, but I can’t MAKE it happen.

There is a mysterious stage in the process where you can no longer see or feel the contents of the jar because the cream has thickened enough to cling to and veil the entire inner edge of the jar. Even the now-familiar sound of the jar’s contents sloshing around dissolves into silence, also known as the sound of, “Nothing is happening!”

Then, translucent buttermilk begins to emerge and wash away fatty peepholes on the inside of the glass. A soft blob starts to take form and respond to the rhythm of my churning. Every shake produces exponentially more results than the last.

In their mutual separation from one another, the buttermilk and emergent butter find new identities. It is such a joyful becoming to behold! Witness to this ugulent birth out of a literal ocean of milk, I have forgotten about my child and become immersed in a deep play of my own.

A piece of ecstasy– all I did was show up, shake, and watch. Grace, cleverly disguised as the chemical properties of butter, swept me away in wonder. From the shores of Abhuta I got swept up in a current of Abhisara (Douglas–I hope I’m using those correctly.) My thoughts went from,”This isn’t going to happen for me'” to, “I can’t believe this is happening!!”

“Yes! Believe it!” Grace says, and to drill home the point even more, she says, “And you aren’t just getting butter, but buttermilk too!”

In anticipation of Grace’s extra gift, Liz brought me a ceramic receptacle for the buttermilk as well. I separated the two that came from the one by draining the buttermilk in the ceramic bowl, then plopping my roundish ball of perfect, grass-fed, Shanendoah-raised fat into the wooden one. With a wooden knife I fashioned a wet dome of butter, it’s edges still glistening with micro-droplets of buttermilk.

Proudly, but silently, handing the finished product to Liz I beamed with the confidence and contentment that comes from remembrance of an order infinitely more abundant than I could imagine. Once again, I was so wrong.

(See last post).

Thank goodness, thank butter, thank the goodness of butter.

Anusara Certified!

I love love LOVE being wrong.

I love being right too (ask my husband), but I really love being wrong, especially about the limited and limiting beliefs I hang on to about myself.

When I turned in my certification exam two years ago, I prayed it was good enough.  Today I got the feedback that it was great- as in REALLY well written.  I was so wrong.  Yes!  (A little too attached to praise?  Likely, but that is a different topic and work for another day.)

When I began studying Anusara yoga in earnest ten years ago I doubted I would ever be worthy of certification.  Joining that group of certified yogis with their mad skills, knowledge, dedication, and lion-hearted leader (John!) felt out of reach, as if I were to be forever relegated to being at a distance from those I so admired.  Today I got certified!  I . AM . IN .  It feels so good to have been so wrong.  There is a liberated lightness about me.  And I had a great exam too!  Did I mention that already?

The reason I share all of this is I think you (reader) are wrong too!  I think I am not alone when I underestimate my greatness, and by great, what I really mean is innate, unquestionable goodness.  I think of Douglas’ soft reassurance that we are complete in our un-finishedness, perfect in our imperfections, totally shri in that nothing need be added nor taken away for us to delight in the experience of ourselves.

I am so grateful that despite my limiting beliefs, great things happen that bring me  home to my body again.  There is a party in my heart today and you are all invited!

This party would not have been possible without the unfailing support of my family, shared wisdom from my students, and the brilliant luminosity of my teachers and mentors whose illuminated guidance graced my process with a gentle but steady encouragement.

Yoga shout-outs of thanks go out to:

• Suzie Hurley for being my first yoga teacher and the first to invite me to celebrate!
• Kate Miller for believing in me and making sure I signed up for the next Douglas workshop
• Douglas Brooks for at once being so genius in the articulation of possibility and crazy uncle heart
• John Friend for developing an ever more beautiful and elegant system that works, every time
• Rainey and Denise for their rigorous attention and feedback
• The massive Willow Street Kula for overflowing with wisdom, grace, and humor
• Moses Brown for his hugs
• Pablo for his supporting me in my heart’s fulfillment
• Julia Rose for teaching me what sustained, effervescent, effortless joy looks like

Thank you to the Kula for your warm congratulations.  I feel humbled, honored, and totally psyched to be in the company of such great souls.

Susana

Certified Anusara® Yoga Instructor