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Authenticity

1/24/2016

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Life is sometimes lonely.

At the point of human connection we share experience.  Sometimes we learn from, are entertained or inspired by another's experience and their sharing of it.  Other times we connect over having had the same one......and we are less lonely.

Other times life is confusing or disappointing or painful.....

At these times we often look to our fellow beings to help clear things up; to learn some strategies or practices to help us out.  There are people and teachers I have looked to throughout my life and the ones that stick the most in my mind are the ones who personally moved through and walked the path they teach about.  They are the ones who speak from personal experience rather than theory.  

Knowing that my teacher or friend has actually lived through the process of waking up into a mindful existence or has practiced on her mat daily for many years is the most powerful inspiration for me to continue my own practice.

Jarvis Masters is living an awakened life and wrote an amazingly inspirational book from death row in San Quentin.  He cultivates and inspires peace and community in a place with all the cards stacked against him.

......maybe

You cannot really guide someone down a path that you have not walked.  And maybe everyone can be a guide to someone.

Some of us are comfortable teaching groups of people so we get up in front and do it.  I think that all of us can serve as a guide to someone who needs support.  We all have our real expereinces and triumphs in life and can share them with someone else.  

Just to know that your friend has made it through or is living with an experience that you are currently having creates support and hope that can weave back and forth between you resulting in a fabric that holds us up.

The one requirement is our authentic representation of ourselves.

Lets be open about who we are and how we are...

know we have something to offer and something to gain....

and life will be less lonely.



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chaos....

1/17/2016

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"Nothing in the world can change from one reality into another unless it first turns into nothing.......  The moment when the egg is no more but the chick is not yet is nothingness.  This is the primal state which no one can grasp because it is a force which preceeded creation; it is called chaos."
---Martin Buber

This morning I posted about my current mood... the gloomy feeling and sense of futility etc...  An hour later I had a class to teach (yoga).  As I drove myself there I knew I wasn't going to be able to just go in and pretend everything was ok.  I'm currently on the verge of tears most of the time.....  

I always give a theme for the class so when I walked in I explained about the waiting that I'm doing ..... remembering that behind the clouds is the warm sun and remembering that no matter how im feeling now, my basic goodness and wholeness resides within.  

We practiced with this in mind and I felt better while we did.

Tonight I was reminded of the Buber quote.  It came to me that maybe this mood is part of chaos?  I had been thinking to myself yesterday about feeling so disconnected when I'm usually so grounded....  it's strange to me to feel so sad when I'm usually so happy.....

Maybe these clouds belong the storms of change and I'm experiencing chaos?

​Yeah, Ill go with that......

 











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cloudy days

1/14/2016

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Some days the cloud cover is sufficient to cover the sun but the sun actually IS shining....It never stops.....ever.  Today I'm wondering if that matters.  If the sun's rays are not reaching the earth; not reaching me, does it matter that they are still back there.  Does it matter that there are rays coming through and bringing warmth a few hundred miles away, in another state, when there are none shining here?

Is it helpful to know that the sun is there even if I cannot see or feel it?
Is it helpful to know that the clouds always pass...eventually?

I think it is ....

Some days there isn't enough hope shining within me to feel the warmth of life.  It seems like over night my feeling of wholeness and basic goodness leaves.  There is a life to be attended to.....work to do and schedules to keep but everything is shadowed with a suspicion that I'm not enough and that I'm only fooling myself into thinking anything matters.  There is doubt and fear about the future and I cannot stay in the present moment because the present moment is this cold and gloomy hopeless state.

I try to know that hope, optomism and wholeness are here even if I cannot feel it.  

I tell myself that this darkness always passes .... eventually.....

I know all about alternating states of suffering and happiness and expansion and contraction.  But every time I fall into the gloomy, scared, apathetic place it feels so real.....like it is here to stay.

I know about practice and I keep it up.  I show up for class and I get to my mat.  I sit here with my computer and write it out.  

​and wait for the clouds to clear

 







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.....or die trying

1/11/2016

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A particular kind of contraction is personal shut down.....  This is a thing we do in relationship to others.  So much of the time we are wide open to everyone around us.  We smile at passers by; we greet the people we usually see at the gym, coffee shop, school, etc.  This wide open way of being is natural to us; it is our natural way of being as humans.

Because we don't live with any of these people; because they rarely get in our way; we stay open in their presence. 

From time to time, however, we feel the need to shut down our natural, open way of being.  Occasionally, something that another person is doing or saying has the potential to sting if allowed to enter our person.... in reaction we recoil in self protection.

We shut down to survive

It may seem dramatic to make it a  matter of survival but I do believe that there must be a pretty good reason to make the shift of shutting down our openness.

When we are young and have very little power it's easy to see lots of situations as potentially dangerous so we learn to shut down early and do it often...... hence, our other seemingly natural way of being...

........disconnected

So, how do we sort all this out?

It follows the same pattern of expansion and contraction.  

Once, I made a vow to myself to never ever cry over my partner  again.  I wrote the vow to myself to document the decision.... some time later I wrote this:
            now, i feel stuck...so stuck and bottled up.  
            yes, i am not crying over xxxxxx as i keep the vow,
            but i feel stuck about everything.....
            this is a high price.  the price for keeping my tears in is becoming too high
            oh xxxx it.  
             i cry.  
             i  will cry over xxxxxx.
             i'll cry over xxxxxx for who i am and not for who he is
            as i cry my tears for me, not for him

I learned that the energy of shut down is highly destructive to me.  I learned that as I tried to remain closed to my partner I was closing myself off from my own expression.  In trying to withhold my acceptance and unconditional love toward him, I was unable to feel it for myself and I was literally starving myself of life force.  I was affecting myself far more than I could ever affect him!

I recognize that there are moments when I lack the strength to remain open sometimes.  But it would be a fatal error for me to think  that this shut down should be my new way of being.  To try to live long term in shut down would be like trying to live without water.  Human connection and the exchange of lovingkindness is the stuff of life..... without it we will surely feel dead.

At times we may be worn down from the continual cycle of relationship...it is long, very long and we all have our growing up to do.  

Being willing to repeatedly re-open to life just as the sun continues to rise each day can sometimes feel like it may kill me.....  but then I remind myself about the time I tried to close down and wait for the end.  It really wasn't better.  It was way worse.  

There is so much sweetness in life that is here for the taking and I have such a love for life really.

So here's to staying in the game....
understanding that
​to play is to win....




                




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    Lucy Facer Bernstein

    I am a committed yogi and community member. I believe in the goodness of humankind and that as we discover our ultimate connectedness we can all find peace....within and without.  

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