In one of the “best” private high schools in Chicago, girls are making out with each other and exposing each others’ breasts to willing boys, at parties, for the boys’ viewing pleasure. Boys record these make-out sessions on their phones. Shyer girls record them themselves for shyer boys. What luck, that kids were born at this time in history when such amazing technology exists! How clever! How convenient! No longer do boys need to find their dad’s stash of boring old still shots; they can keep live action in their pockets! And no longer do girls have to pretend that they are not sexual beings! They are! Not only are they sexual beings, but stars, emailed from boy to boy for unlimited exposure! Fifteen minutes of fame, indeed! We are living in a new age! What freedom! What clueless parents!
I’m stunned, that with all this evolution on so many other levels, we—parents of the new millennium--have allowed our kids to become live porn for each other, instead of teaching them to be heart connected. It’s not that I’m sexually naïve. If I haven’t done it myself, I’ve read about it; but years have gone by since the last time I heard of a sex act that jarred my world as much as the news that high school girls are making alcohol-fueled soft-core porn videos for boys.
What does a girl need to ignore in order to let herself be filmed at a party? How desperate to be loved and seen must she be? When did women start to disassociate like this, and create disassociated daughters? With all the evolution and awakening and access to information and technological wizardry of the last 20 years, sex is still in the dark. Disassociated from love, from a heart connection, and universally unrecognized as a union of SOULS, of spirit shared, it is passed on to kids in ways that allow them to dishonor one another. How can we teach this honoring, though, if we don’t embody it ourselves?
How on earth do we do this? How do we walk our talk, rather than leaving our own sexuality in the dark and commenting woefully on the de-generation of this generation of teenagers? Can we fully embody our own sexuality in a way that honors it as the creative force it is? Can we celebrate it in ourselves and revere it in our partner, our mirror? When will NOW be the right time to make a change?
We average everyday people have squished sex into this tiny category, moved it to the end of the day, and only if our partner deserves it; we’ve kept the energy of sex so locked up in the genitals for so long, that we have culturally forgotten what it truly is: the energy of transformation, the energy of creation. Meanwhile kids, in an effort to discover what sex is, in an effort to actually feel something in this world of digital media, have learned to use our magnificently evolved electronic technology for sex play, without an evolved spiritual perspective. Why not? What do they know? We have never known how it feels to liberate this energy from its conventional pathway and send it throughout and around our body, throughout and around our partner, throughout and around our lives. We’ve never learned how to embody it without shadow and secrecy and shame.
What if? What if instead of the “don’t do what I do, do what I say” perspective, we evolved ourselves? What if we boring old adults with mortgages experienced the way that when this supercharged energy flows through the rest of our cells we feel and look more youthful and live from a joyful, conscious place? What if?
Have you ever tried to promote a tantric sex workshop? A whole weekend, people wonder. A whole weekend, about sex? What are we gonna do? We can’t take time from soccer games and birthday parties and bar mitzvahs and our Netflix queue to be sexy!
It’s about time.
It’s easy to say there’s not enough time. Especially for that! But this creation energy, sexual energy, is the same energy that makes the world go round; it’s life force, it’s the same energy that fuels the people and situations around us; liberating it makes our lives more synchronistic and easier to navigate. That’s the biggest draw for me: tantric sex, conscious sex energy, fuels my life. I am able to create my life, able to create happiness. Plus! I can see karma coming several miles away, without needing to interact with it. I can see illness coming a mile away, rarely needing to embody it. It’s not just about sex. It’s about living life from an awakened, happy state. It’s about evolving sex at the same rate of speed that the rest of the world is evolving.
There is no reason why we all can’t be ten times happier than we are. We have everything else we need. Don’t we? Our needs are so well met, better met than at any given historical time period, and American needs are met more easily than anyone else’s on the planet. We now have plenty of time for the world’s most blissful, most misunderstood activity—but we can’t, we can’t do it in the middle of the day, or move evolved, conscious, life-affirming sex to the top of the to-do list, because it’s been so culturally repressed. Or we can’t, because our partner was irritating that morning. Or we can’t, because we don’t have a partner—the second most used reason for avoiding addressing sexual energy.
What is the point of all of this ease and comfort and abundance? So we can have more time to watch movies? Surely it’s not to evolve our perception of sex so that we can raise sexually enlightened children.
There is no known cultural or spiritual permission to have spiritual sex. It is not held within the language and comprehension of the sacred. But it is, indeed, sacred. It is ready to evolve, into the Light. And Now is the time.
The Tantra Heart beginning level workshop in Chicago October 8-10 is the place, a sacred space, to begin awakening to the light behind the darkness that has shrouded sex. It is a safe time and place to let your own inner light shine, to awaken yourself to the abundance of Universal Love that is ready to come forth on the New Earth. Imagine a world in which you were honored simply for showing up, for seeing and being seen, in the Light. This is the world—this is the community, at least—that is being created Here, Now. Join us to get a taste of the future.
Let’s be a living example for the next generation, by learning to fully embody sex-heart-consciousness, so that kids have real live role models for how to live as fully connected, enlightened sexual beings.
Tantra is where yoga was 20 years ago: edgy, unknown. So be a pioneer. The unknown frontier is so much better than what we have inherited and what we are passing on to our kids, because we have an opportunity to create it, consciously. I’m in. Are you?
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Tantra for Superheros
It's no more outrageous for the President to attend this month’s Tantra Heart workshop than it is for me to be on Oprah (April 8, 2010!). Tantra is where yoga was 20 years ago...it's being reborn. I had considered voting for Dennis Kucinich in the primary in part because I'd read he and his wife were Tantra practitioners. I was very aligned with his edgy, far left politics. But it was the Tantra piece that excited me the most. Imagining a President who practices Tantra inspires optimism for peace on earth. Admittedly, Kucinich was unelectable (in large part because, according to my friend Chuck, a politically savvy, articulate, esteemed Shakespeare professor, “He looks too much like a ferret”).
Nevertheless, we can still have a President who does Tantra! The workshop is happening in the Obama’s former neighborhood, Hyde Park, at the home of his daughter’s former schoolmate! How un-exotic, how do-able is that?
You can tell that the First Couple is already having darn good sex—have you noticed the way they look at each other? I suspect if the President did this Tantra class, we would be that much closer to world peace. Truly. You cannot do this TantraHeart weekend and go back to sleep, thinking you are not a creator, on a very high level. You cannot come out thinking we the Human Family are not One. You come out knowing that. So, yeah. That’s scary. It’s a big responsibility, to be a conscious creator, to honor all of life. Tantra introduces a new way of seeing. Since our First Couple are already fearless, highly responsible, conscious creators having really good sex…why not just formally embody that for all to see? Claim it! Register at www.ugoddesstantra.com!
They're probably registering right now. Did I mention I'm going to be on Oprah?
My daughter and I live in a wonderful single-family home in Lincoln Park, far better than my modest income would allow, due to the vision and heart of my dear friend and pelvic floor goddess Missy Lavender. (By the way, you might remember her as the perky blonde woman standing beside Oprah on Inauguration night. Missy is a right place at the right time kind of goddess.)
So. It’s a long story. But it began four years ago on the descending stairwell of a rental two-flat when, in a moment of inspiration, I set an audacious intention: "I want to live in a home that I love, a home much better than my income would allow."
Setting intentions works. But, as I explained to the group of goddesses that my dear friend Julie had assembled (she had been introduced to me by Missy, by the way) it helps to set audacious intentions.
I spoke with my goddess friend Katrina Rivers one afternoon last year and mentioned to her that I was going to speak at Julie’s gathering that evening.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Nervous,” I replied.
“Do you know nervousness is JUST energy? And that you can take that energy and turn it into something else? Such as excitement?”
Of course I knew that. I taught that to people, didn’t I? It’s just that…I had forgotten. Because I was nervous.
“Ok, hang on!” I said, “I’m going to do it right now!” And I did.
Katrina held on, talked me through the transformational moment, and I emerged, saying, “OK! I’m excited!” I thanked her profusely, and headed to my computer where I made an outline of everything I wanted to say to Julie’s guests.
Enjoying Julie’s gathering, I could not help but notice that the other speakers, including my colleague, tantra goddess Elsbeth Meuth did NOT speak from an agenda. The piece of paper quartered into my back pocket began to haunt me as I listened to Elsbeth and breathed my enlightened sexuality up into my heart, as she was instructing us to do. I was brimming with excitement, enough to ignore the thought what if I can’t do it without my typed-up, well articulated agenda?
I walked to the front of the room and looked at the open faces waiting for the NEXT words and I let it flow. I was more open than ever, the voice of the Goddess flowing, when I gleefully instructed these women to dig deep and imagine what their heart’s desire truly was.
“What’s your heart’s desire?” I asked, to a handful of women.
I revealed mine. I said, “Naming our heart’s desire can actually be stressful. For instance, I want to write a book. And I can say that, but then the thoughts creep in, thoughts like, ‘do I have time to write a book?’ or ‘what if I don’t write the book?’ so it is very, very beneficial to set an intention above and beyond that. So, yes, I want to write a book. My book will be about enhancing the spiritual connection between mothers and daughters. Now for the audacity: I want Madonna and her daughter to read it, and form a mother-daughter circle. I want Michelle Obama to read it, and I want there to be mother-daughter circles at the White House (she hadn't moved in yet, but that was beside the point)! I want mother-daughter circles to form across the country. AND I WANT TO BE ON OPRAH!” And everyone laughed, as I had expected. I laughed. Because, what an audacious intention!
“See?” I said. “When you set an audacious intention, it makes you smile.”
A few weeks later, I went through that same series of thoughts in one of my UrbanGoddess workshops. Each participant amped up her intention until it made her smile.
“I just want peace in my family,” one of them said. “I bet you can't amp that up.”
“I can,” I replied. “What if your family went to a yoga workshop together? What if at the end of the workshop, they composed a song and sang it to you, thanking you for how peaceful they all felt?”
She laughed. We all laughed. Outrageous, right? Why set an intention that’s going to stress you out, when you can set one that will make you laugh?
So I went about my life. For months. For a year. The mother-daughter book was slowly being written. One day I took a nap. When I woke up, I checked my messages.
“Hi Rachel, this is Brian from the Oprah Winfrey Show,” the message began. I put Brian’s voice on speaker, stunned and euphoric. “I know this is late notice (HA! I thought, This is happening much sooner than I had imagined!), but we’d like to come over and tape you teaching Tantra to some clients of Dr. Laura Berman.”
With deep gratitude, another goddess, my dear friend Annmarie, popped into my mind: she had introduced me to Laura Berman, based on her intuition that we should be working together. (In case you're wondering, Missy had introduced me to Annmarie too.)
I listened to Brian’s message two more times. I savored it. If you had asked me then—and maybe even if you asked me now—what the highlight of my life has been thus far, I would say, “Hello, this is Brian from the Oprah Show.” Indeed.
Audacious. Not so much because I wanted to be on tv--but because the Universe had heard my intention!
As it turned out, the Oprah show did not film at my house.
I met the couple four or five times. They kept walking in the door of Vessel Yoga, and I kept introducing myself, as if for the first time, five times. The second time, I felt somewhat insincere. By the fifth time, I was trying not to feel fraudulent. After that, they went and sat down. I approached them. “I am here for you,” I said to them, wanting to make a real connection this time. “I’m not here for the tv show. I’m here to do what I always do with couples, and I can assure you that if what you want is to be healed, you will get what you came here for." I paused, waiting for them to take that in.
But Brian, the director, respectfully took my arm and steered me aside. “We ask that you only talk to them when the cameras are rolling. It’s kind of like…reality tv.”
When I arrived home from taping that day, my beloved goddess of a daughter Lily looked at me and said, “Mom. You wore THAT? On tv?!” I had no idea what was wrong with my outfit. I was wearing what I always wore to teach yoga. She illustrated how I was supposed to dress, by pulling my yoga pants tightly around my legs.
The next day, Ann the assistant called me to say 1) we were changing studios due to the el train noise; and 2) they were running late. I was already used to the running late part by then. I canceled the rest of my appointments that day and headed to Moksha Yoga, where, coincidentally, I had spent hundreds of hours and am very comfortable. When Ann called again to say they were running even later, I headed into Moksha’s boutique and tried on the first yoga pants I saw: they looked exactly like Lily told me they were supposed to look. I felt a tad exposed. But the ease of shopping and the thrill of buying something hot at the right price…reminded me of my intention for the day--to HAVE FUN!
The tech guys were cool 30-somethings, intrigued by my job. I was equally intrigued by theirs. Harpo cameramen. I loved the camaraderie they had and how smoothly they worked together. There was a level of respect for me, in part because the day before I had been assertive enough to tell them what I would need, in order to do my job and assure success for all of us.
“You’ll get the hot footage and good sound bites that you need IF this couple gets 45 minutes’ uninterrupted yoga, and 15 minutes uninterrupted breathing,” I had said. “I need to feel like I’ve given them the same healing appointment that everybody else gets. ...No, I never take off my mala beads.” My mala beads were clicking against each other, interfering with the sound. The sound guy settled on taping them to my wrist with medical tape. A clever compromise, which worked.
“I hate to ask you this,” he said, hesitantly, “but can you take off your necklace?”
It was bumping right against my microphone. It has deep significance, was made by my partner, and I wear it every day. It has an OM on it. It worked with my top, and my lotus necklace. Of course I didn’t want to take it off. “Sure, no problem,” I said with a smile. It’s not like I’m a prima donna or anything.
“Can you say the thing about the full-body orgasm again?” my director, Brian, requested. I repeated it. About six times. Keep that in mind, reality-tv fans. I did a lot of repeating, until reality and what Brian wanted were united as One.
“Can you say that again, without using the word ‘esoteric’?” asked Brian. “That word is a little too--”
“—esoteric?” I asked.
By the end of the four hours of taping, I understood just what Brian wanted. I wished I could come back the next day, armed with ten-second descriptions of Tantra, a 4,000-year old spiritual path which takes book-chapters to describe.
Later my friends and clients asked what it had been like.
“It was like trying to get your child to do their homework…during their birthday party,” I replied.
The couple, especially the wife, was very distracted by what was going on around us. I rely about 95% on intuition and 5% on what I’ve done with other couples in the past. Imagine tuning in to your intuition, and to your clients’ body/mind/spirit, and to the clients’ relationship dynamics...while all three of us are miked, with lights in our faces, and cameras following our every move. There were eight other bodies in the room for me to NOT tune in to.
I loved every minute of it.
I loved the challenge of getting through to the couple, despite the challenges. I loved the challenge of Brian asking me to oversimplify everything I said. I loved my new, tight, yoga pants. I would do the whole thing again the next day, in a second. I would do it EVERY day.
I might have forgotten all about it—two months have gone by—when another goddess, my friend and former sister-in-law, Kathryn, emailed me with a link to Oprah’s schedule. “Is this it?” she asked. And indeed…it was.
So, I have no idea what they will show, after our four hours of taping. I am thrilled that tantric sex—spiritual sex, heart-sex-consciousness in union as taught to me by my teachers Richard and Antoinette Asimus --is going to get some valuable daytime tv exposure, even if I personally come off as a flaky, nervous, new age nymph in tight pants.
THE COUPLE: What I doubt they’ll show on TV
Dr. Berman briefed me on the couple, and because of the tv time constraints I didn’t have a leisurely introductory dialogue with them. But I did ask what I always ask. They answered that they’d met at a non-profit, where they had both volunteered.
I often use that question, “Where did you first meet?” as a point of departure. It is an easy question for nervous novices to answer. I can also see who talks first, who holds back, whether they agree, whether one defers to the other…then I often ask, "What did you first like about her?" And then I might move on to, “And when did you really focus in on them and realize, wow, he might be the one for me?” And finally, “How did your first sexual encounter go?”
We had, of course, started two hours late. I wanted this couple to DO, rather than talk, because I knew that they had already talked extensively to Dr. Berman, and lord knows how much repeating they had done for "reality's" sake.
Fortunately their non-profit initial meeting struck a chord which allowed a leap forward into their new paradigm. After they were softened up with some yoga and breathing, I offered, “You have been living as a couple who has “sex problems,” and you have come to identify yourselves as a couple with “sex problems.” I bet you’ve lost touch with that initial meeting. So let’s go back there, to the non-profit. Let’s remember that you met performing selfless service, and that by being HERE NOW you are still performing selfless service. You are showing the world—how many people watch Oprah? 16 million? 23 million? You are showing the world that sexual challenges do not need to be kept secret. You are allowing cameras into your life to help people; do you realize how many people out there will benefit from watching you on this show? Do you know that cliché about love, ‘It’s bigger than both of us!’? Let that be your new mantra. From now on, when you think about your intimate life, if you fall back into discouraging thoughts, reroute. Use your mantra. Remember that you have been presented with your unique challenge because you were meant to help others. Millions of others! How amazing that your so-called problem can be used for the benefit of millions! It is not just about you two in the bedroom. Take a moment and transform your former ‘problem’ into the gift to the world that it’s going to be! Create a new vision of yourselves, for yourselves! You are SUPERHEROS!”
It was an audacious intention for them to embody. I bet they were the least likely superheros they could imagine. But they smiled. As the cameras rolled.
And that was their pep talk. They breathed into that new reality, grateful to have let go of the old one. Superheros.
When the lights were taken down, after we were unmiked, after we had found our socks, but before they left for their next event…the wife approached me.
“Do you say that to everyone?” she asked.
“Do I say…what…to everyone?”
“You know, just, everything you said to us. Or were you saying it for…you know…the show?”
“I was absolutely saying it to you, for you,” I replied. That is exactly what I had tried to establish the day before after we’d met five times. Right then I realized that she had probably been too nervous and distracted to hear most of what I had said, but I could tell by the transformed expression on her face—and the ease and warmth between husband and wife—that even though she might not have heard it all, energetically she had “gotten” it.
And truly, beyond my lofty and audaciously met intention to be on Oprah, their recognition, their transformation, makes for major job satisfaction.
That evening, Lily and I remarkably ran into them and the crew at Whole Foods. I was still flying high. This time the husband pulled me aside. “The breathing we did,” he said. (For more on that breath virtually meet David Elliott!) “After that breathing. I felt like…like…it kind of felt like…I felt like I was...in church,” he concluded. "Do you know what I mean?"
“Yes,” I said, “I know what you mean. That’s your spirit. Feel it! Because that’s who you truly are!”
Skyrocketing job satisfaction at this point.
What more could I ask for?
PS No, I did not meet Oprah. (Everyone asks.) Why didn't I? Because it had not been part of my intention! But I do want the Obamas to come to my Tantra Heart workshop!
Nevertheless, we can still have a President who does Tantra! The workshop is happening in the Obama’s former neighborhood, Hyde Park, at the home of his daughter’s former schoolmate! How un-exotic, how do-able is that?
You can tell that the First Couple is already having darn good sex—have you noticed the way they look at each other? I suspect if the President did this Tantra class, we would be that much closer to world peace. Truly. You cannot do this TantraHeart weekend and go back to sleep, thinking you are not a creator, on a very high level. You cannot come out thinking we the Human Family are not One. You come out knowing that. So, yeah. That’s scary. It’s a big responsibility, to be a conscious creator, to honor all of life. Tantra introduces a new way of seeing. Since our First Couple are already fearless, highly responsible, conscious creators having really good sex…why not just formally embody that for all to see? Claim it! Register at www.ugoddesstantra.com!
They're probably registering right now. Did I mention I'm going to be on Oprah?
My daughter and I live in a wonderful single-family home in Lincoln Park, far better than my modest income would allow, due to the vision and heart of my dear friend and pelvic floor goddess Missy Lavender. (By the way, you might remember her as the perky blonde woman standing beside Oprah on Inauguration night. Missy is a right place at the right time kind of goddess.)
So. It’s a long story. But it began four years ago on the descending stairwell of a rental two-flat when, in a moment of inspiration, I set an audacious intention: "I want to live in a home that I love, a home much better than my income would allow."
Setting intentions works. But, as I explained to the group of goddesses that my dear friend Julie had assembled (she had been introduced to me by Missy, by the way) it helps to set audacious intentions.
I spoke with my goddess friend Katrina Rivers one afternoon last year and mentioned to her that I was going to speak at Julie’s gathering that evening.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Nervous,” I replied.
“Do you know nervousness is JUST energy? And that you can take that energy and turn it into something else? Such as excitement?”
Of course I knew that. I taught that to people, didn’t I? It’s just that…I had forgotten. Because I was nervous.
“Ok, hang on!” I said, “I’m going to do it right now!” And I did.
Katrina held on, talked me through the transformational moment, and I emerged, saying, “OK! I’m excited!” I thanked her profusely, and headed to my computer where I made an outline of everything I wanted to say to Julie’s guests.
Enjoying Julie’s gathering, I could not help but notice that the other speakers, including my colleague, tantra goddess Elsbeth Meuth did NOT speak from an agenda. The piece of paper quartered into my back pocket began to haunt me as I listened to Elsbeth and breathed my enlightened sexuality up into my heart, as she was instructing us to do. I was brimming with excitement, enough to ignore the thought what if I can’t do it without my typed-up, well articulated agenda?
I walked to the front of the room and looked at the open faces waiting for the NEXT words and I let it flow. I was more open than ever, the voice of the Goddess flowing, when I gleefully instructed these women to dig deep and imagine what their heart’s desire truly was.
“What’s your heart’s desire?” I asked, to a handful of women.
I revealed mine. I said, “Naming our heart’s desire can actually be stressful. For instance, I want to write a book. And I can say that, but then the thoughts creep in, thoughts like, ‘do I have time to write a book?’ or ‘what if I don’t write the book?’ so it is very, very beneficial to set an intention above and beyond that. So, yes, I want to write a book. My book will be about enhancing the spiritual connection between mothers and daughters. Now for the audacity: I want Madonna and her daughter to read it, and form a mother-daughter circle. I want Michelle Obama to read it, and I want there to be mother-daughter circles at the White House (she hadn't moved in yet, but that was beside the point)! I want mother-daughter circles to form across the country. AND I WANT TO BE ON OPRAH!” And everyone laughed, as I had expected. I laughed. Because, what an audacious intention!
“See?” I said. “When you set an audacious intention, it makes you smile.”
A few weeks later, I went through that same series of thoughts in one of my UrbanGoddess workshops. Each participant amped up her intention until it made her smile.
“I just want peace in my family,” one of them said. “I bet you can't amp that up.”
“I can,” I replied. “What if your family went to a yoga workshop together? What if at the end of the workshop, they composed a song and sang it to you, thanking you for how peaceful they all felt?”
She laughed. We all laughed. Outrageous, right? Why set an intention that’s going to stress you out, when you can set one that will make you laugh?
So I went about my life. For months. For a year. The mother-daughter book was slowly being written. One day I took a nap. When I woke up, I checked my messages.
“Hi Rachel, this is Brian from the Oprah Winfrey Show,” the message began. I put Brian’s voice on speaker, stunned and euphoric. “I know this is late notice (HA! I thought, This is happening much sooner than I had imagined!), but we’d like to come over and tape you teaching Tantra to some clients of Dr. Laura Berman.”
With deep gratitude, another goddess, my dear friend Annmarie, popped into my mind: she had introduced me to Laura Berman, based on her intuition that we should be working together. (In case you're wondering, Missy had introduced me to Annmarie too.)
I listened to Brian’s message two more times. I savored it. If you had asked me then—and maybe even if you asked me now—what the highlight of my life has been thus far, I would say, “Hello, this is Brian from the Oprah Show.” Indeed.
Audacious. Not so much because I wanted to be on tv--but because the Universe had heard my intention!
As it turned out, the Oprah show did not film at my house.
I met the couple four or five times. They kept walking in the door of Vessel Yoga, and I kept introducing myself, as if for the first time, five times. The second time, I felt somewhat insincere. By the fifth time, I was trying not to feel fraudulent. After that, they went and sat down. I approached them. “I am here for you,” I said to them, wanting to make a real connection this time. “I’m not here for the tv show. I’m here to do what I always do with couples, and I can assure you that if what you want is to be healed, you will get what you came here for." I paused, waiting for them to take that in.
But Brian, the director, respectfully took my arm and steered me aside. “We ask that you only talk to them when the cameras are rolling. It’s kind of like…reality tv.”
When I arrived home from taping that day, my beloved goddess of a daughter Lily looked at me and said, “Mom. You wore THAT? On tv?!” I had no idea what was wrong with my outfit. I was wearing what I always wore to teach yoga. She illustrated how I was supposed to dress, by pulling my yoga pants tightly around my legs.
The next day, Ann the assistant called me to say 1) we were changing studios due to the el train noise; and 2) they were running late. I was already used to the running late part by then. I canceled the rest of my appointments that day and headed to Moksha Yoga, where, coincidentally, I had spent hundreds of hours and am very comfortable. When Ann called again to say they were running even later, I headed into Moksha’s boutique and tried on the first yoga pants I saw: they looked exactly like Lily told me they were supposed to look. I felt a tad exposed. But the ease of shopping and the thrill of buying something hot at the right price…reminded me of my intention for the day--to HAVE FUN!
The tech guys were cool 30-somethings, intrigued by my job. I was equally intrigued by theirs. Harpo cameramen. I loved the camaraderie they had and how smoothly they worked together. There was a level of respect for me, in part because the day before I had been assertive enough to tell them what I would need, in order to do my job and assure success for all of us.
“You’ll get the hot footage and good sound bites that you need IF this couple gets 45 minutes’ uninterrupted yoga, and 15 minutes uninterrupted breathing,” I had said. “I need to feel like I’ve given them the same healing appointment that everybody else gets. ...No, I never take off my mala beads.” My mala beads were clicking against each other, interfering with the sound. The sound guy settled on taping them to my wrist with medical tape. A clever compromise, which worked.
“I hate to ask you this,” he said, hesitantly, “but can you take off your necklace?”
It was bumping right against my microphone. It has deep significance, was made by my partner, and I wear it every day. It has an OM on it. It worked with my top, and my lotus necklace. Of course I didn’t want to take it off. “Sure, no problem,” I said with a smile. It’s not like I’m a prima donna or anything.
“Can you say the thing about the full-body orgasm again?” my director, Brian, requested. I repeated it. About six times. Keep that in mind, reality-tv fans. I did a lot of repeating, until reality and what Brian wanted were united as One.
“Can you say that again, without using the word ‘esoteric’?” asked Brian. “That word is a little too--”
“—esoteric?” I asked.
By the end of the four hours of taping, I understood just what Brian wanted. I wished I could come back the next day, armed with ten-second descriptions of Tantra, a 4,000-year old spiritual path which takes book-chapters to describe.
Later my friends and clients asked what it had been like.
“It was like trying to get your child to do their homework…during their birthday party,” I replied.
The couple, especially the wife, was very distracted by what was going on around us. I rely about 95% on intuition and 5% on what I’ve done with other couples in the past. Imagine tuning in to your intuition, and to your clients’ body/mind/spirit, and to the clients’ relationship dynamics...while all three of us are miked, with lights in our faces, and cameras following our every move. There were eight other bodies in the room for me to NOT tune in to.
I loved every minute of it.
I loved the challenge of getting through to the couple, despite the challenges. I loved the challenge of Brian asking me to oversimplify everything I said. I loved my new, tight, yoga pants. I would do the whole thing again the next day, in a second. I would do it EVERY day.
I might have forgotten all about it—two months have gone by—when another goddess, my friend and former sister-in-law, Kathryn, emailed me with a link to Oprah’s schedule. “Is this it?” she asked. And indeed…it was.
So, I have no idea what they will show, after our four hours of taping. I am thrilled that tantric sex—spiritual sex, heart-sex-consciousness in union as taught to me by my teachers Richard and Antoinette Asimus --is going to get some valuable daytime tv exposure, even if I personally come off as a flaky, nervous, new age nymph in tight pants.
THE COUPLE: What I doubt they’ll show on TV
Dr. Berman briefed me on the couple, and because of the tv time constraints I didn’t have a leisurely introductory dialogue with them. But I did ask what I always ask. They answered that they’d met at a non-profit, where they had both volunteered.
I often use that question, “Where did you first meet?” as a point of departure. It is an easy question for nervous novices to answer. I can also see who talks first, who holds back, whether they agree, whether one defers to the other…then I often ask, "What did you first like about her?" And then I might move on to, “And when did you really focus in on them and realize, wow, he might be the one for me?” And finally, “How did your first sexual encounter go?”
We had, of course, started two hours late. I wanted this couple to DO, rather than talk, because I knew that they had already talked extensively to Dr. Berman, and lord knows how much repeating they had done for "reality's" sake.
Fortunately their non-profit initial meeting struck a chord which allowed a leap forward into their new paradigm. After they were softened up with some yoga and breathing, I offered, “You have been living as a couple who has “sex problems,” and you have come to identify yourselves as a couple with “sex problems.” I bet you’ve lost touch with that initial meeting. So let’s go back there, to the non-profit. Let’s remember that you met performing selfless service, and that by being HERE NOW you are still performing selfless service. You are showing the world—how many people watch Oprah? 16 million? 23 million? You are showing the world that sexual challenges do not need to be kept secret. You are allowing cameras into your life to help people; do you realize how many people out there will benefit from watching you on this show? Do you know that cliché about love, ‘It’s bigger than both of us!’? Let that be your new mantra. From now on, when you think about your intimate life, if you fall back into discouraging thoughts, reroute. Use your mantra. Remember that you have been presented with your unique challenge because you were meant to help others. Millions of others! How amazing that your so-called problem can be used for the benefit of millions! It is not just about you two in the bedroom. Take a moment and transform your former ‘problem’ into the gift to the world that it’s going to be! Create a new vision of yourselves, for yourselves! You are SUPERHEROS!”
It was an audacious intention for them to embody. I bet they were the least likely superheros they could imagine. But they smiled. As the cameras rolled.
And that was their pep talk. They breathed into that new reality, grateful to have let go of the old one. Superheros.
When the lights were taken down, after we were unmiked, after we had found our socks, but before they left for their next event…the wife approached me.
“Do you say that to everyone?” she asked.
“Do I say…what…to everyone?”
“You know, just, everything you said to us. Or were you saying it for…you know…the show?”
“I was absolutely saying it to you, for you,” I replied. That is exactly what I had tried to establish the day before after we’d met five times. Right then I realized that she had probably been too nervous and distracted to hear most of what I had said, but I could tell by the transformed expression on her face—and the ease and warmth between husband and wife—that even though she might not have heard it all, energetically she had “gotten” it.
And truly, beyond my lofty and audaciously met intention to be on Oprah, their recognition, their transformation, makes for major job satisfaction.
That evening, Lily and I remarkably ran into them and the crew at Whole Foods. I was still flying high. This time the husband pulled me aside. “The breathing we did,” he said. (For more on that breath virtually meet David Elliott!) “After that breathing. I felt like…like…it kind of felt like…I felt like I was...in church,” he concluded. "Do you know what I mean?"
“Yes,” I said, “I know what you mean. That’s your spirit. Feel it! Because that’s who you truly are!”
Skyrocketing job satisfaction at this point.
What more could I ask for?
PS No, I did not meet Oprah. (Everyone asks.) Why didn't I? Because it had not been part of my intention! But I do want the Obamas to come to my Tantra Heart workshop!
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Haiti, Avatar, and Pat Robertson
I don’t know who Pat Robertson is, really. So it doesn’t seem at all fair or balanced for me to react to something he said, as though I’m a Fox TV reporter…not that I’ve actually seen one of those, either, before writing this sentence. So I'm not going to react. There are a lot of different beliefs and assumptions out there in the world, aren’t there? I just assume Pat Robertson is wrong and FOX TV is biased. There is a part of me that is tempted to do some research on Pat Roberson, because in my mind when I picture him, I see Pat Boone, and really, how dare I mention him in a blog if I have no idea who he is and can’t even picture him?
Nevertheless, this week I have gazed from afar, while Pat Robertson, from a place of old-style ignorance, dug an even deeper hole for his credibility with sentient beings by declaring that Haitians have created their own reality and are being punished. Daily, I tell my yoga students, and my kid, that we humans are merely different embodiments of the same Universal Energy, that we are all mini-manifestations of God, or Source, or Spirit, flowing through us. No other “religion” necessary. Honor yourself, others, and the planet. We are One.
And then Pat Robertson comes along and proves me wrong! No possible way is HE ME! I am so not One with a tv evangelist. -–Is that what he is? I can’t bear to look him up.
But for the sake of spiritual exercise, for the sake of putting my money where my mouth is, for the sake of walking the talk, I’m gonna go there: I am One with Pat Robertson. Furthermore I agree with him that we create our own reality, which is what, as I understand it, Pat Robertson is “accusing” Haitians of doing.
That would appear to be where our agreement ends. He does appear to say we create reality, but from a confused, xenophobic, victim-based perspective. Taking a step back, or a step up, to a higher level, a global or even Universal perspective, I believe we do and did--We human beings, through thought and word, DO create our reality, all humans, all at once, not just Haitian-humans.
So many current texts say: Remember Who You Are. Take a big step back and up. We are all microcosms. We embody the same Universal energy of life. I See You.
Personal experience and a level of mirroring from my spiritual community leads me to see that Earth is a network of Life Force, a forum where Divine Intention is manifest. Shadow, as well, is manifest here: our biggest fears, and our most victimy perspectives, are also manifest here on earth. It's quite a responsibility, being a Creator. Dare I accept it?
We human beings come from a long tradition of being victims! It is only very recently that a non-victimy perspective has been embraced, finally. For ages, God has sent down plagues. Satan has punished. Whatever your religion. Most of us have been conditioned—and from looking out around us, we have led ourselves to “empirically” believe--that things happen to us.
Only recently has quantum physics begun to illustrate that thought actually creates the physical, that the external originates internally. In the meantime, for ages, we as a human conglomerate have unconsciously been offering disharmonic, victimy, fear-filled thoughts, sending these fear-seeds out to manifest. Our conscious, Divine, prayerful intentions have manifest as well. Thanks be to God. And to the Goddess, working in tandem.
There is one Earth. We, the living energy of humanity, are One On Earth. These boundaries called countries are invisible from that perspective; they are un-real, man-made constructions. Thoughts and beliefs don’t know these boundaries. ALL of us, thorough the Divine Power of being human, create an eruption on earth. All of the ways in which we have abused earth and each other come crashing back to us karmically, in exchange for what we the people have offered, just doing the best we can, and in this week’s case Haiti is left picking up the pieces. And where crisis has struck a chord in our hearts, we non-Haitian humans are responding with aid, care, love, and light that know no national boundaries.
We come together so well in crisis. What if it didn’t take crisis? What if we were always empathetic to each other and the earth? Have you seen Avatar?
I checked the map. Isn’t Haiti so close to home? This crisis hits close enough to home to cause me to ask: where am I not clear about life on Earth? Where am I in denial of the concept that my thoughts and actions can actually manifest and do damage—or the opposite: create heaven on earth? Am I creating it right now?
How can I help in this time of crisis? By honoring the life that is potent in my thoughts, and in my very breath. By opening up to embody true gratitude that I am alive, that the pulse of life flows through the people I love. And the ones I don’t even know. By embodying gratitude that this square foot of land that I inhabit right this second is solidly supporting me. By honoring the energy of creation that wishes to express itself through me through teaching and writing. By navigating life with a renewed sense of gratitude every day, sending it down into the earth every time I eat from the earth’s goodness, every time I pump gas! By teaching that it matters. On a daily basis, I will be grateful that the unfixed pothole on North Avenue is really not that huge after all.
What can I really do to help keep the planet in harmony? Tonight it came to mean that I not wash my sheets. They’re clean. It’s not that I’m a compulsive washer; it’s that I want them to be really really soft. Right now. My friend who gave me these sheets for Christmas promised, “They’ll get softer and softer every time you wash them.” So I want to wash them! A lot!
For two weeks I have left my newly washed and dried espresso-shade sheets downstairs beside the washer. I've known temptation. I love them and am grateful, and I want them to be super-soft. Now. But tonight I finally made the commitment—for the sake of writing this blog, perhaps, but that’s as good a reason as any—that to wash clean sheets is not sustainable when there are people who don’t have clean drinking water. It feels wrong to wash them for the sake of a having an obscene level of comfort, NOW. It feels like...a lot of water. I do admit that it bums me out that it feels wrong, because I want really soft sheets. Now.
Isn’t that the privilege and the curse of living in the U.S? So many of us have gotten used to being ridiculously comfortable, that it's hard let it go.
Is there a part of you that can buy into the possibility that our founding fathers GOT this Oneness, somehow, as well as the potential for the Land of Plenty, on some level; that these initials US are intended to remind us of the melting pot that this land was meant to be? Maybe this land wasn't meant to be a strip mall. Can we be global leaders--not in the military-industrial sense?
Now is the time to gather the forces and energy of capitalism and turn it back to creating an Earth that thrives with abundance and is honored as our Source. Let's create an awareness, within ourselves and others, that our thoughts and feelings are most comfortable on Earth when they are at a Divine level. Until we alter our awareness, I am convinced that our Earth Mother will continue to find another opportunity to take in a deep breath and ROAR. It's all...just...energy.
For me to think I live in some kind of world where the literal vibrations of being human don’t register, and aren’t felt by the earth and its inhabitants around me, is to live an unconscious existence. The movie Avatar graphically illustrates how blind humanity still is (particularly America, its military, and its acquisitionist-Capitalist far-reaching arms). Avatar is a reminder of how many people are still sleeping, still asleep on the un-conscious hamster wheel of unsustainable, addictive growth. Still in denial that We Are One. That the Earth is alive and sacred.
My friends and I haven't waited for the scientists and powers-that-be to ordain this empowered point of view. It is a cutting-edge, revolutionary act to NOT be a victim. It is also a very rewarding act; the effects become more and more clear the longer we ground ourselves in this sense of responsibility for holding the Light of Love and using that Light not just as a beacon, saying,“rescue me!”--but as a Divine tool for cocreation. As a cocreator, I must honor the highest part in everyone around me, even if I judge their actions or beliefs to be wrong or hurtful. So yes, at that level, We Are One. Whoever you are. Even if you're a FoxTV reporter or a tv evangelist. I honor the energy that unites us. I See You.
So, yes, Pat Robertson, my shadow ancestor, I honor you as a teacher--a teacher who illustrates so clearly the unevolved reality from which I have awakened; for me there’s no more falling back to sleep.
Nevertheless, this week I have gazed from afar, while Pat Robertson, from a place of old-style ignorance, dug an even deeper hole for his credibility with sentient beings by declaring that Haitians have created their own reality and are being punished. Daily, I tell my yoga students, and my kid, that we humans are merely different embodiments of the same Universal Energy, that we are all mini-manifestations of God, or Source, or Spirit, flowing through us. No other “religion” necessary. Honor yourself, others, and the planet. We are One.
And then Pat Robertson comes along and proves me wrong! No possible way is HE ME! I am so not One with a tv evangelist. -–Is that what he is? I can’t bear to look him up.
But for the sake of spiritual exercise, for the sake of putting my money where my mouth is, for the sake of walking the talk, I’m gonna go there: I am One with Pat Robertson. Furthermore I agree with him that we create our own reality, which is what, as I understand it, Pat Robertson is “accusing” Haitians of doing.
That would appear to be where our agreement ends. He does appear to say we create reality, but from a confused, xenophobic, victim-based perspective. Taking a step back, or a step up, to a higher level, a global or even Universal perspective, I believe we do and did--We human beings, through thought and word, DO create our reality, all humans, all at once, not just Haitian-humans.
So many current texts say: Remember Who You Are. Take a big step back and up. We are all microcosms. We embody the same Universal energy of life. I See You.
Personal experience and a level of mirroring from my spiritual community leads me to see that Earth is a network of Life Force, a forum where Divine Intention is manifest. Shadow, as well, is manifest here: our biggest fears, and our most victimy perspectives, are also manifest here on earth. It's quite a responsibility, being a Creator. Dare I accept it?
We human beings come from a long tradition of being victims! It is only very recently that a non-victimy perspective has been embraced, finally. For ages, God has sent down plagues. Satan has punished. Whatever your religion. Most of us have been conditioned—and from looking out around us, we have led ourselves to “empirically” believe--that things happen to us.
Only recently has quantum physics begun to illustrate that thought actually creates the physical, that the external originates internally. In the meantime, for ages, we as a human conglomerate have unconsciously been offering disharmonic, victimy, fear-filled thoughts, sending these fear-seeds out to manifest. Our conscious, Divine, prayerful intentions have manifest as well. Thanks be to God. And to the Goddess, working in tandem.
There is one Earth. We, the living energy of humanity, are One On Earth. These boundaries called countries are invisible from that perspective; they are un-real, man-made constructions. Thoughts and beliefs don’t know these boundaries. ALL of us, thorough the Divine Power of being human, create an eruption on earth. All of the ways in which we have abused earth and each other come crashing back to us karmically, in exchange for what we the people have offered, just doing the best we can, and in this week’s case Haiti is left picking up the pieces. And where crisis has struck a chord in our hearts, we non-Haitian humans are responding with aid, care, love, and light that know no national boundaries.
We come together so well in crisis. What if it didn’t take crisis? What if we were always empathetic to each other and the earth? Have you seen Avatar?
I checked the map. Isn’t Haiti so close to home? This crisis hits close enough to home to cause me to ask: where am I not clear about life on Earth? Where am I in denial of the concept that my thoughts and actions can actually manifest and do damage—or the opposite: create heaven on earth? Am I creating it right now?
How can I help in this time of crisis? By honoring the life that is potent in my thoughts, and in my very breath. By opening up to embody true gratitude that I am alive, that the pulse of life flows through the people I love. And the ones I don’t even know. By embodying gratitude that this square foot of land that I inhabit right this second is solidly supporting me. By honoring the energy of creation that wishes to express itself through me through teaching and writing. By navigating life with a renewed sense of gratitude every day, sending it down into the earth every time I eat from the earth’s goodness, every time I pump gas! By teaching that it matters. On a daily basis, I will be grateful that the unfixed pothole on North Avenue is really not that huge after all.
What can I really do to help keep the planet in harmony? Tonight it came to mean that I not wash my sheets. They’re clean. It’s not that I’m a compulsive washer; it’s that I want them to be really really soft. Right now. My friend who gave me these sheets for Christmas promised, “They’ll get softer and softer every time you wash them.” So I want to wash them! A lot!
For two weeks I have left my newly washed and dried espresso-shade sheets downstairs beside the washer. I've known temptation. I love them and am grateful, and I want them to be super-soft. Now. But tonight I finally made the commitment—for the sake of writing this blog, perhaps, but that’s as good a reason as any—that to wash clean sheets is not sustainable when there are people who don’t have clean drinking water. It feels wrong to wash them for the sake of a having an obscene level of comfort, NOW. It feels like...a lot of water. I do admit that it bums me out that it feels wrong, because I want really soft sheets. Now.
Isn’t that the privilege and the curse of living in the U.S? So many of us have gotten used to being ridiculously comfortable, that it's hard let it go.
Is there a part of you that can buy into the possibility that our founding fathers GOT this Oneness, somehow, as well as the potential for the Land of Plenty, on some level; that these initials US are intended to remind us of the melting pot that this land was meant to be?
Now is the time to gather the forces and energy of capitalism and turn it back to creating an Earth that thrives with abundance and is honored as our Source. Let's create an awareness, within ourselves and others, that our thoughts and feelings are most comfortable on Earth when they are at a Divine level. Until we alter our awareness, I am convinced that our Earth Mother will continue to find another opportunity to take in a deep breath and ROAR. It's all...just...energy.
For me to think I live in some kind of world where the literal vibrations of being human don’t register, and aren’t felt by the earth and its inhabitants around me, is to live an unconscious existence. The movie Avatar graphically illustrates how blind humanity still is (particularly America, its military, and its acquisitionist-Capitalist far-reaching arms). Avatar is a reminder of how many people are still sleeping, still asleep on the un-conscious hamster wheel of unsustainable, addictive growth. Still in denial that We Are One. That the Earth is alive and sacred.
My friends and I haven't waited for the scientists and powers-that-be to ordain this empowered point of view. It is a cutting-edge, revolutionary act to NOT be a victim. It is also a very rewarding act; the effects become more and more clear the longer we ground ourselves in this sense of responsibility for holding the Light of Love and using that Light not just as a beacon, saying,“rescue me!”--but as a Divine tool for cocreation. As a cocreator, I must honor the highest part in everyone around me, even if I judge their actions or beliefs to be wrong or hurtful. So yes, at that level, We Are One. Whoever you are. Even if you're a FoxTV reporter or a tv evangelist. I honor the energy that unites us. I See You.
So, yes, Pat Robertson, my shadow ancestor, I honor you as a teacher--a teacher who illustrates so clearly the unevolved reality from which I have awakened; for me there’s no more falling back to sleep.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Can I Get You a Cart?
This morning I detoured to make a quick trip to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Knowing that all I needed was a lingeree bag (needed, yes, needed!), I didn’t take a cart. I headed straight toward the lingeree bag section (I knew just where it would be, having bought one for a friend a couple weeks ago) stopping only to grab a duo pack of longneck lighters—which I need—I mean need!—because I light a lot of longneck votive candles, and the price was right.
Have you been to B,B,B lately? I have been there a few times in the last year and noticed that the employees have been instructed to greet the heck out of people. Every employee is also a greeter, and they do well—more than once I have looked up because I thought someone I actually knew was saying hi to me. Today they took it a step further. Three employees—this store seems fabulously overstaffed—asked me if they could get me a cart, or a basket. Clearly, hanging on to my lighter and lingeree bag gave me no hands free to buy a big-ticket bulky item, like a down comforter. I was torn between being offended and flattered by how much these folks wanted to help me buy more stuff. It was like being in another world, a world where these people don’t realize that we don’t need all this crap!
Sometimes I get mixed messages--buy!-don’t buy!--but I am leaning toward not buying. I am leaning toward getting more gratification from the few things I do buy, and not looking at all the things I don’t have (B,B,B is full of them! Chock full! It is the most stocked store I’ve been to in a long time!). On one hand, I have heard that, supposedly, buying things keeps our economy going, but I believe that is WAY short-sighted. The lingeree bag and the lighters were packaged in both cardboard and plastic. Those lighters are destined to make some pretty crappy landfill. And buying more stuff may stimulate the economy temporarily but from a more expanded perspective, it is UNsustainable; all this trash has to go somewhere. But I digress.
I look around at the world in its present state and see the nightmarish state of the US economy not as an economic crisis but as a personal call to create abundance INTERNALLY. To feed my spirit, not my desire for stuff. I ask: What is this situation telling me? Whenever some minor crisis happens in my own life, I ask the question why…from an expanded perspective, why is this happening? From a metaphoric perspective, what does it mean? I always receive an answer, and it's never the one western medicine or newspaper editorials offer. For this major crisis we are sharing as a nation…this awakening to the fact that our economy is a house of cards, that our capitalist indoctrination to buy more stuff has become unsustainable…I also ask the question why. Why?
Because it is time! It is time for us as a planet, us as humanity-- not We the People of the U.S., though including US--to wake up! Wake up, internally, wake up out of the daily grind of working on a “job” that is not entirely fulfilling but which allows an ample number of flat-screen tv’s and cars and cell phones—the necessities of life that we all "need." Wake up out of a treadmill-like sleepwalk. The economy is telling me to rebalance, or it will rebalance FOR me...and it won't be pleasant.
Really? What if? What if we woke up out of the sleepwalk, woke to a higher calling within. If you had a higher calling, what would it be? If money were no object, and the lack thereof wouldn’t keep you from enjoying a high standard of living, what would that calling be? What would feed your spirit and contribute to the highest good of all concerned, even if, in this "real" world, it might be impractical? Dream ON! Dream a conscious dream! Help rebuild, resuscitate the planet, in a conscious way.
I didn’t really need the lighter…yet. The duo-pack are backup. I have a lighter in my bedroom and two lighters in the kitchen, and in truth with a bit of planning I could make do with one. I could, with some level of creativity, or safety pins, fix the broken zipper on my old lingeree bag, or have one of my clever friends rescue it from uselessness. But I like buying stuff! So it’s not an easy choice for, to buy less, to fix more, to walk up and down my stairs so I can use the same lighter, the one I left upstairs. It’s not an easy choice, but it’s a conscious one. And it may not infuse the economy with glee, but in the longer run, the stakes are getting high, for us, for the Earth. To buy or not to buy? that is the question.
Have you been to B,B,B lately? I have been there a few times in the last year and noticed that the employees have been instructed to greet the heck out of people. Every employee is also a greeter, and they do well—more than once I have looked up because I thought someone I actually knew was saying hi to me. Today they took it a step further. Three employees—this store seems fabulously overstaffed—asked me if they could get me a cart, or a basket. Clearly, hanging on to my lighter and lingeree bag gave me no hands free to buy a big-ticket bulky item, like a down comforter. I was torn between being offended and flattered by how much these folks wanted to help me buy more stuff. It was like being in another world, a world where these people don’t realize that we don’t need all this crap!
Sometimes I get mixed messages--buy!-don’t buy!--but I am leaning toward not buying. I am leaning toward getting more gratification from the few things I do buy, and not looking at all the things I don’t have (B,B,B is full of them! Chock full! It is the most stocked store I’ve been to in a long time!). On one hand, I have heard that, supposedly, buying things keeps our economy going, but I believe that is WAY short-sighted. The lingeree bag and the lighters were packaged in both cardboard and plastic. Those lighters are destined to make some pretty crappy landfill. And buying more stuff may stimulate the economy temporarily but from a more expanded perspective, it is UNsustainable; all this trash has to go somewhere. But I digress.
I look around at the world in its present state and see the nightmarish state of the US economy not as an economic crisis but as a personal call to create abundance INTERNALLY. To feed my spirit, not my desire for stuff. I ask: What is this situation telling me? Whenever some minor crisis happens in my own life, I ask the question why…from an expanded perspective, why is this happening? From a metaphoric perspective, what does it mean? I always receive an answer, and it's never the one western medicine or newspaper editorials offer. For this major crisis we are sharing as a nation…this awakening to the fact that our economy is a house of cards, that our capitalist indoctrination to buy more stuff has become unsustainable…I also ask the question why. Why?
Because it is time! It is time for us as a planet, us as humanity-- not We the People of the U.S., though including US--to wake up! Wake up, internally, wake up out of the daily grind of working on a “job” that is not entirely fulfilling but which allows an ample number of flat-screen tv’s and cars and cell phones—the necessities of life that we all "need." Wake up out of a treadmill-like sleepwalk. The economy is telling me to rebalance, or it will rebalance FOR me...and it won't be pleasant.
Really? What if? What if we woke up out of the sleepwalk, woke to a higher calling within. If you had a higher calling, what would it be? If money were no object, and the lack thereof wouldn’t keep you from enjoying a high standard of living, what would that calling be? What would feed your spirit and contribute to the highest good of all concerned, even if, in this "real" world, it might be impractical? Dream ON! Dream a conscious dream! Help rebuild, resuscitate the planet, in a conscious way.
I didn’t really need the lighter…yet. The duo-pack are backup. I have a lighter in my bedroom and two lighters in the kitchen, and in truth with a bit of planning I could make do with one. I could, with some level of creativity, or safety pins, fix the broken zipper on my old lingeree bag, or have one of my clever friends rescue it from uselessness. But I like buying stuff! So it’s not an easy choice for, to buy less, to fix more, to walk up and down my stairs so I can use the same lighter, the one I left upstairs. It’s not an easy choice, but it’s a conscious one. And it may not infuse the economy with glee, but in the longer run, the stakes are getting high, for us, for the Earth. To buy or not to buy? that is the question.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Michael Jackson
A few years ago, my daughter and I were out to dinner, when she was distracted by the television behind the bar. “Mom, what’s…that?” she asked, and I turned around to see a news clip of Michael Jackson, whom she had never previously laid eyes on, being ushered through a crowd. She was about ten.
“Well,” I answered, “he’s a man...he's a famous pop star. He has some…issues…he’s had quite a bit of surgery…"
“But Mom, he doesn’t even look human !”
It didn’t seem fair or right that her first opinion was that he was, well, more than eccentric (although to be fair to her, in recent days I read two newspaper accounts that described him as looking like an alien). So I took her home and found that famous timeline made up of MJ’s changing visage, which I assume is being televised at this very moment.
After I showed her the transformation of MJ’s face online, we watched some music videos from Thriller, but she was still shaken up by her initial glimpse, and she never was able to absorb who he had been. (What she did do, though, was to ask me if I had a glove I no longer wanted.)
My own thoughts that evening centered on the King of Pop, too, having not seen Thriller videos in ages--they ignited memories--and I concluded, sadly, that he embodied all of our dysfunctions, writ large. All of our…baby boomer…dysfunctions. There WE were! His mtv-generation, a generation of relatively privileged, hip, savvy 40-somethings who had seen it all and who, with some help from the media, were focused on appearance and aging and comparisons and buying stuff…and potential cosmetic surgery. We have all the tools to help us look like we want to look. (Quite the topic among women: would you or wouldn’t you? I have been asked numerous times: will I color my hair when it begins to make me look…old? I have never been asked if I will get “work” done on my face because there is an assumption that a yoga teacher would never go there…but the hair! “I’d sooner shave it off,” has been the answer, knowing that there is a tantric breath…yes!…so I hear!…that has renewed at least one practitioner’s hair color. So I will see if my professed purity extends to my hair, once it, um, alters. Meanwhile, I do the breath.)
But Michael! All of our dysfunctions, insecurities, writ large! Our unwillingness to be seen! Our belief that we are not good enough! Our belief that we NEED MORE STUFF. Our compulsion to spend more money than we have. He is a caricature of how far we could go, both the highs and the lows. (How on earth can a person be $800 million in debt--or whatever it is? A part of me imagines that I could do that! If my handlers let me!) I know there is that part of me, as a baby boomer with credit cards, that would unwilling to give up my good stuff, to take a lifestyle cut…but fortunately I live from another part of myself, the part that knows that all of the stuff, and all the desire for the stuff, is truly an illusion. A part that trusts that I AM is enough. I am willing to live on nuts and berries, if need be, thank GOD! My yogic side knows that we are all One, and that everyone out there is a Divine Mirror. So look at Michael.
The evening of Lily's first MJ sighting, I thought, “What he needs is a good breathing session, daily yoga, a circle of friends who truly see him and honor him, friends who tell him that he is enough. A healing circle! An awakening!" I've never seen this NOT help someone get back in touch, in deep and profound ways. Most likely—I don’t know—but most likely his friends did tell him he was great, but he doubted their intentions, doubted they truly saw him. Most likely his level of trust was low, because what was its foundation? Most likely his level of belief that he could ever be great again was low. Most likely he thought that his best years were behind him. Most likely he thought that no one ever really saw him—that they saw an icon. And then…most likely, the wounds of his childhood remained active. And I don't underestimate their depth.
So much of that is true about all of us, until we find some roots in a spiritual path, until we experience and know Spirit, active in our lives. With all that he had, how can this man never have found that kind of healing? How can he never have known who he truly was?
So can we look at him--as a mirror--and learn? Can we see how being outwardly fabulous, how being famous, how sculpting our faces, how having babies to love, how having the best house money can buy, how taking fabulous trips to exotic places, how spending loads and loads of money…will never fill us up?
I am noticing people talk about the untimely nature and tragedy of his death--and I am never happy when someone dies--but in his case, I am relieved. His death is sad, but his life was sad. A big exhale, albeit the final exhale, for Michael Jackson. Finally, Michael is united with the vastness and eternal nature of Spirit, All That Is, which is what I imagine he had been seeking all these years anyway, and which, I believe, is what most of us seek when we embark on a yogic path. Union with the Divine,that is, LOVE...is all we need.
“Well,” I answered, “he’s a man...he's a famous pop star. He has some…issues…he’s had quite a bit of surgery…"
“But Mom, he doesn’t even look human !”
It didn’t seem fair or right that her first opinion was that he was, well, more than eccentric (although to be fair to her, in recent days I read two newspaper accounts that described him as looking like an alien). So I took her home and found that famous timeline made up of MJ’s changing visage, which I assume is being televised at this very moment.
After I showed her the transformation of MJ’s face online, we watched some music videos from Thriller, but she was still shaken up by her initial glimpse, and she never was able to absorb who he had been. (What she did do, though, was to ask me if I had a glove I no longer wanted.)
My own thoughts that evening centered on the King of Pop, too, having not seen Thriller videos in ages--they ignited memories--and I concluded, sadly, that he embodied all of our dysfunctions, writ large. All of our…baby boomer…dysfunctions. There WE were! His mtv-generation, a generation of relatively privileged, hip, savvy 40-somethings who had seen it all and who, with some help from the media, were focused on appearance and aging and comparisons and buying stuff…and potential cosmetic surgery. We have all the tools to help us look like we want to look. (Quite the topic among women: would you or wouldn’t you? I have been asked numerous times: will I color my hair when it begins to make me look…old? I have never been asked if I will get “work” done on my face because there is an assumption that a yoga teacher would never go there…but the hair! “I’d sooner shave it off,” has been the answer, knowing that there is a tantric breath…yes!…so I hear!…that has renewed at least one practitioner’s hair color. So I will see if my professed purity extends to my hair, once it, um, alters. Meanwhile, I do the breath.)
But Michael! All of our dysfunctions, insecurities, writ large! Our unwillingness to be seen! Our belief that we are not good enough! Our belief that we NEED MORE STUFF. Our compulsion to spend more money than we have. He is a caricature of how far we could go, both the highs and the lows. (How on earth can a person be $800 million in debt--or whatever it is? A part of me imagines that I could do that! If my handlers let me!) I know there is that part of me, as a baby boomer with credit cards, that would unwilling to give up my good stuff, to take a lifestyle cut…but fortunately I live from another part of myself, the part that knows that all of the stuff, and all the desire for the stuff, is truly an illusion. A part that trusts that I AM is enough. I am willing to live on nuts and berries, if need be, thank GOD! My yogic side knows that we are all One, and that everyone out there is a Divine Mirror. So look at Michael.
The evening of Lily's first MJ sighting, I thought, “What he needs is a good breathing session, daily yoga, a circle of friends who truly see him and honor him, friends who tell him that he is enough. A healing circle! An awakening!" I've never seen this NOT help someone get back in touch, in deep and profound ways. Most likely—I don’t know—but most likely his friends did tell him he was great, but he doubted their intentions, doubted they truly saw him. Most likely his level of trust was low, because what was its foundation? Most likely his level of belief that he could ever be great again was low. Most likely he thought that his best years were behind him. Most likely he thought that no one ever really saw him—that they saw an icon. And then…most likely, the wounds of his childhood remained active. And I don't underestimate their depth.
So much of that is true about all of us, until we find some roots in a spiritual path, until we experience and know Spirit, active in our lives. With all that he had, how can this man never have found that kind of healing? How can he never have known who he truly was?
So can we look at him--as a mirror--and learn? Can we see how being outwardly fabulous, how being famous, how sculpting our faces, how having babies to love, how having the best house money can buy, how taking fabulous trips to exotic places, how spending loads and loads of money…will never fill us up?
I am noticing people talk about the untimely nature and tragedy of his death--and I am never happy when someone dies--but in his case, I am relieved. His death is sad, but his life was sad. A big exhale, albeit the final exhale, for Michael Jackson. Finally, Michael is united with the vastness and eternal nature of Spirit, All That Is, which is what I imagine he had been seeking all these years anyway, and which, I believe, is what most of us seek when we embark on a yogic path. Union with the Divine,that is, LOVE...is all we need.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Swine Thoughts
The other day I received an email, from the very alternative Transcendental Meditation people, with Swine Flu in the subject line…and thought, "Even the TM people!" It’s a marketing opportunity! And, for my money, they do have the best answer I’ve heard: bolster your immune system the ayurvedic way. Go for it! But that’s not what this blog is about. Fear! is what this blog is about. Fear and the transformation thereof.
I was sitting in church today (yeah! freaked me out too! but my friends’ daughter’s first communion was an irresistible draw) pondering how much of a germ incubator the church was—didn’t the vice president say not to congregate in enclosed spaces?--when I recalled having asked my mom (as a child, in church—get the connection?) why our town’s doctor never got sick; there he was, every Sunday, sitting in the same place. And my mom whispered (because we were in church), “He washes his hands a lot. See how white they are?” thus beginning my lifelong habit of—thank god not compulsive, but certainly vigilant--hand-washing.
Anyway. He probably did wash his hands between patients. But I don’t think my mom completely nailed it. In retrospect, I bet it was also the doctor’s sense of personal immunity, his sense of responsibility for, and imagined immunological superiority to, the sick public. What I’m saying is, I believe it was his state of mind.
During times when I haven't gotten enough sleep, and haven't eaten much, or at all, because I was falling in... !LOVE! ...I didn't come down with a cold. And in truth I was in radiant GOOD health, despite the no-eating, no-sleeping. But during the times in my life when I didn't get enough sleep or eat well because I was overworking (granted, not often), or experiencing frustrating travel delays, I came down with a cold. At some point I read statistics that support my experience: people who are falling in love have enhanced immunity. You can break all the other rules, because: you’re falling in love! If you are inclined to research, look it up! With my yogic perspective I now know that I can create my own inner state; there doesn't have to be an external object of my affection.
So in this time of fear—an epidemic! Google it!—what if…yes, another "what if"…but WHAT IF we decided, as individuals and as a collective One Love, to super-enhance our immune systems by Living in Love, living fearlessly? By expanding into a greater sense of ourselves as the Divine Creators that we all are. Let’s enhance our immune systems, definitely. Do an intestinal cleanse. Take a pro-biotic. Let’s enhance our physical immune systems, but let’s also enhance our BELIEF that we are immune, that we don’t need to succumb to fear, that we are FREE people, empowered people, not potential victims.
Communion: people are lining up, and I can't help but think, “These folks sure don’t seem to be afraid of swine flu!” as hundreds of people sip wine out of the same cup, the chalice being wiped "clean" by a cloth that is surely becoming germier by the minute. And I imagined that for God’s people, taking communion outweighed any fear of epidemics. It was a Saturday morning celebration OF communion, so you could hardly sit this one out—I mean, I did, but not due to germs. However I feel about communion, I’ve gotta love that their FAITH in a Divine Presence outweighed fear of an epidemic, and I do like to imagine that it’s that kind of inner faith that is what we are meant to summon during this time of panic, that the point of Swine Flu is to urge us to WAKE UP! Wake up to the idea that we are not potential victims. Wake up to the Divine Presence. Can we?
Some people get sick, and some don’t. I have reason to believe that people who Live in Love, people who are not afraid of INVISIBLE threats, people who have a heightened sense of responsibility to humankind, will thrive. A clean and healthy digestive tract is more effective than a controversial, hurriedly mass-produced, vaccine. And clean and healthy thoughts are more effective for immunity than toxic, mass-disseminated, fear-based ones.
I was sitting in church today (yeah! freaked me out too! but my friends’ daughter’s first communion was an irresistible draw) pondering how much of a germ incubator the church was—didn’t the vice president say not to congregate in enclosed spaces?--when I recalled having asked my mom (as a child, in church—get the connection?) why our town’s doctor never got sick; there he was, every Sunday, sitting in the same place. And my mom whispered (because we were in church), “He washes his hands a lot. See how white they are?” thus beginning my lifelong habit of—thank god not compulsive, but certainly vigilant--hand-washing.
Anyway. He probably did wash his hands between patients. But I don’t think my mom completely nailed it. In retrospect, I bet it was also the doctor’s sense of personal immunity, his sense of responsibility for, and imagined immunological superiority to, the sick public. What I’m saying is, I believe it was his state of mind.
During times when I haven't gotten enough sleep, and haven't eaten much, or at all, because I was falling in... !LOVE! ...I didn't come down with a cold. And in truth I was in radiant GOOD health, despite the no-eating, no-sleeping. But during the times in my life when I didn't get enough sleep or eat well because I was overworking (granted, not often), or experiencing frustrating travel delays, I came down with a cold. At some point I read statistics that support my experience: people who are falling in love have enhanced immunity. You can break all the other rules, because: you’re falling in love! If you are inclined to research, look it up! With my yogic perspective I now know that I can create my own inner state; there doesn't have to be an external object of my affection.
So in this time of fear—an epidemic! Google it!—what if…yes, another "what if"…but WHAT IF we decided, as individuals and as a collective One Love, to super-enhance our immune systems by Living in Love, living fearlessly? By expanding into a greater sense of ourselves as the Divine Creators that we all are. Let’s enhance our immune systems, definitely. Do an intestinal cleanse. Take a pro-biotic. Let’s enhance our physical immune systems, but let’s also enhance our BELIEF that we are immune, that we don’t need to succumb to fear, that we are FREE people, empowered people, not potential victims.
Communion: people are lining up, and I can't help but think, “These folks sure don’t seem to be afraid of swine flu!” as hundreds of people sip wine out of the same cup, the chalice being wiped "clean" by a cloth that is surely becoming germier by the minute. And I imagined that for God’s people, taking communion outweighed any fear of epidemics. It was a Saturday morning celebration OF communion, so you could hardly sit this one out—I mean, I did, but not due to germs. However I feel about communion, I’ve gotta love that their FAITH in a Divine Presence outweighed fear of an epidemic, and I do like to imagine that it’s that kind of inner faith that is what we are meant to summon during this time of panic, that the point of Swine Flu is to urge us to WAKE UP! Wake up to the idea that we are not potential victims. Wake up to the Divine Presence. Can we?
Some people get sick, and some don’t. I have reason to believe that people who Live in Love, people who are not afraid of INVISIBLE threats, people who have a heightened sense of responsibility to humankind, will thrive. A clean and healthy digestive tract is more effective than a controversial, hurriedly mass-produced, vaccine. And clean and healthy thoughts are more effective for immunity than toxic, mass-disseminated, fear-based ones.
Friday, March 27, 2009
I Knew It !
This just in:
“Did Twin's 'Sixth Sense' Save Sister's Life?
(March 26) -- Do twins share a psychic bond? There's no scientific proof, but Gemma Houghton, 15, said such a tie enabled her to save her sister's life.
In an interview with London's Daily Mirror Gemma said she prevented her twin, Leanne, from drowning in a bathtub after getting a "feeling" something was wrong with her sister….”
First I ask, why, right away, in the second sentence, do they disclaim, “There’s no scientific proof…”? Never mind, that’s a rhetorical question. (To fill you in, the rest of the story describes how connected the sisters are, and at the end there is a doctor quoted saying that probably they just know each other extremely well and can anticipate each other’s actions. WhatEV, as my daughter used to say, until I started saying it.)
The headline popped onto AOL and it caught my attention, because it seemed like positive, inspiring news. For a change. So I followed the link. For a change. They are not usually enticing enough.
Of course the twins are psychically connected, and why would we need scientific proof to document that? Why are we as a culture putting science over our intuitions? And has that brought us to a better place, as a planet? Might this not be a good time to wonder this?
I have psychic moments all day and night. The challenge is in heeding them. The big headline above should be that HEEDING her intuition saved her sister’s life. For as many psychic flashes as I get…there’s still a percentage that get reasoned away. Even though I know better.
“Statistically, she can’t possibly have shingles,” said my daughter’s father, when I told him she had shingles. “But I know she has shingles,” I said. “Hear me out,” he said, and told me the statistics, which to him proved she couldn’t possibly have shingles. Which I knew she had. Because I just "knew." He and I often personify the classic chasm between reason and intuition, which needn’t be so chasm-ic. But it is.
Anyway…I have psychic moments all the time. So do all my friends. Don't we all? Isn’t that normal? Heeding them is the challenge. And why is science prized above intuition? Science changes its mind all the time, as new information is revealed. Plenty of us on this planet have evolved enough to help turn it into a place in which inner Knowing is valued, even prized. How? Maybe just supporting each other’s intuitions and encouraging each other to follow our inner Voice. Maybe by going within before asking the "experts."
How much do we really need the external authorities we were taught to heed? The RULES from on high. But the Universal rules...we already embody them, don’t we? The institutions are not changing as fast as we are, so they insist that our evolution is bad, or undermining. So far, my evolution has only led me to a brighter, happier place on all levels.
If people want to follow institutionally sanctioned higher rules, I don’t have a problem with that, if it makes them compassionate and connected and happy…and as long as those rules don’t say I’m wrong for not embracing those rules.
Why does science need to validate our intuition, but not the existence of God, which so far cannot be validated by science? What if intuition as a reality were as accepted as the concept of God? Maybe even accepted as an...extension...of God, of the Universal Life Force? Without needing scientific "proof." What IF?
“Did Twin's 'Sixth Sense' Save Sister's Life?
(March 26) -- Do twins share a psychic bond? There's no scientific proof, but Gemma Houghton, 15, said such a tie enabled her to save her sister's life.
In an interview with London's Daily Mirror Gemma said she prevented her twin, Leanne, from drowning in a bathtub after getting a "feeling" something was wrong with her sister….”
First I ask, why, right away, in the second sentence, do they disclaim, “There’s no scientific proof…”? Never mind, that’s a rhetorical question. (To fill you in, the rest of the story describes how connected the sisters are, and at the end there is a doctor quoted saying that probably they just know each other extremely well and can anticipate each other’s actions. WhatEV, as my daughter used to say, until I started saying it.)
The headline popped onto AOL and it caught my attention, because it seemed like positive, inspiring news. For a change. So I followed the link. For a change. They are not usually enticing enough.
Of course the twins are psychically connected, and why would we need scientific proof to document that? Why are we as a culture putting science over our intuitions? And has that brought us to a better place, as a planet? Might this not be a good time to wonder this?
I have psychic moments all day and night. The challenge is in heeding them. The big headline above should be that HEEDING her intuition saved her sister’s life. For as many psychic flashes as I get…there’s still a percentage that get reasoned away. Even though I know better.
“Statistically, she can’t possibly have shingles,” said my daughter’s father, when I told him she had shingles. “But I know she has shingles,” I said. “Hear me out,” he said, and told me the statistics, which to him proved she couldn’t possibly have shingles. Which I knew she had. Because I just "knew." He and I often personify the classic chasm between reason and intuition, which needn’t be so chasm-ic. But it is.
Anyway…I have psychic moments all the time. So do all my friends. Don't we all? Isn’t that normal? Heeding them is the challenge. And why is science prized above intuition? Science changes its mind all the time, as new information is revealed. Plenty of us on this planet have evolved enough to help turn it into a place in which inner Knowing is valued, even prized. How? Maybe just supporting each other’s intuitions and encouraging each other to follow our inner Voice. Maybe by going within before asking the "experts."
How much do we really need the external authorities we were taught to heed? The RULES from on high. But the Universal rules...we already embody them, don’t we? The institutions are not changing as fast as we are, so they insist that our evolution is bad, or undermining. So far, my evolution has only led me to a brighter, happier place on all levels.
If people want to follow institutionally sanctioned higher rules, I don’t have a problem with that, if it makes them compassionate and connected and happy…and as long as those rules don’t say I’m wrong for not embracing those rules.
Why does science need to validate our intuition, but not the existence of God, which so far cannot be validated by science? What if intuition as a reality were as accepted as the concept of God? Maybe even accepted as an...extension...of God, of the Universal Life Force? Without needing scientific "proof." What IF?
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