I connect to the way she elaborates on feeling other people’s emotions so intensely… and how at the times in my life when I’m most receptive to what others are feeling has also been when I’ve had very little invested in what happens to be my current version of ‘myself’.

Winners and losers? …really they’re all just people who showed up and played the game.  They showed up when so many of us just watch them…waiting on the sidelines telling ourselves we couldn’t do it, aren’t cut out for it, don’t have time for it…we all have a game to play and we’re not playing against each other.  Every moment is a chance to play the game together - WE CANNOT PLAY IT ALONE - at the very least it took two other people to bring us into this world. 

Keep it real. 

GiveLove. 

Imagine the very best things that you possibly can. 

Things that make you truly, madly, deeply in love. 

And then work towards those things every second of your day- that it is! - to build toward what we really want most in life. 

So yeah, that seems like a good enough life philosophy, right?  But how do I actualize any of it.  I loose track of myself sometimes, I react, I judge, I doubt…so how?

I’m not capable of keeping one thought all day without getting distracted.  Even if it’s just for a moment I get caught up in someone cutting me off it traffic, a seemingly disapproving look, the idea of the gorgeous and mysterious man I met at the pizza shop at 3am last week…

So thinking doesn’t work. 

Here’s what’s worked best in allowing me to carry the dream with me. 

Mood.  Mood is the vibration that I cloak myself in.  Its not who I am, but it is what I wear.  It colors everything I experience, its the lens through which I see and its what I project to others - attracting those to whom my vibration most resignates. 

I’ve found tremendous power when I cloak myself in the mood of love.  And not the generic ‘one love’-‘love is all you need’ - talked about as if it were a noun - kind of love.  I’m talking about love the verb, when every moment is dedicated to the very best things we can imagine for ourselves and our world.  Every action and thought is in pursuit of what our truest desires are.  Only the very best…As a seeker of truth, for me, the game is figuring out what those are…

I’m pretty obsessive about the yoga stuff. 

I memorize ancient texts in sanskrit. 

When I read autobiography of a yogi I cry. 

I practice asana and meditate at least 5 days a week - usually 7. 

I’m vegetarian, I eat alot of sprouts, and I own a juicer.

Everyone I know describes me as a free spirit.

I enjoy marijuana.

I’m super picky about who I spend my time with.

I’m also single.

This means I don’t get laid much.

The times in my life I’ve tried to have casual sex I’ve always been a little disappointed.  For me it’s only good when there’s feelings involved.

Whoever said ‘sex and pizza are still good, even when they’re bad’ has evidently never had the really-good-toe-curling-fucking until both your bodies melt together kind of sex.  It takes alot of feelings to get me there and anything else really isn’t so much worth bothering with.

I don’t act my age. 

I try not to act at all.

49 days out of 50 I love mirrors.

I really do believe that love will save the world.

I take myself WAY too seriously.

I believe I’m starting to get more figured out about how to really ‘do’ this human life thing.

I vacillate between annoyed and grateful that on my best days I feel like I’m still in Kindergarten with the spiritual stuff. 

I can be VERY egotistical. 

Sometimes I don’t just think -I actually believe that I am special that I am somehow different than everybody else.  I don’t have much patience for myself when I find myself thinking/ behaving this way.

Somewhere along the path to where I am in life I misplaced my once extraordinary capacity to listen, my belief in true love and my drive to chase down a dream.

I talk too much.

The only love I want is true love.  And I truly want to love and be loved.  This means I’d be helpful if I started believing in love again.

I dream alot, but I haven’t chased a dream requiring perseverance and commitment for a very long time now. 

Great things happen in my life effortlessly.

If I can harness the great things that happen to me, I think it could expedite this process.

It’s really not about the yoga, it’s about whats happening in the rest of my life…the quality of the people, conversations, and situations manifest in my life.

I’m frequently finding that the teachers who are most influential in my growth aren’t yogis.

I want to ask the question ‘does all or any of this mean I’m doing it right or wrong’?  But cognitively I know better than to buy into that old system - that old story in my head about everything being good or bad, right or wrong. 

If I were a computer, In the last year I’ve updated the hardware, and totally cleaned the hard drive, this is the part where I’m working on updating all of the software so that I can enjoy the perks of working with updated hardware and clean harddrives.  (and yes, i know that the order of rebuilding a computer is off a bit, but just go with me on the analogy…It’s difficult to uninstall software when the program you’re trying to delete has life-preservation instincts.

Yesterday morning I attended a drop in art class with my friend and art instructor, Daphne.  I was obviously distracted and having a hard time sinking into the moment.  Generally a teacher that points out options rather than dictating action, she laughs and insists I spend the day drawing with my left hand… (years of studying art and never this assignment, technique, or discussion.  she has no idea that the previous night I began experimenting with writing left handed).  Her suggestion did the trick.  Mellowed out, sunk comfortably into myself, and produced a few sketches that unabashedly and imperfectly captured the essence of my subject.

Later that night I took a man to my bed.  He was genuine, kind, shiny on the inside and just the right amount of crazy on the outside.  I knew he’d be coming home with me when 5 minutes after we met he heard my point of view and had no qualms expressing his differing opinion and truth, opening up about the experiences in his life that had led him to it.  It was very natural to be near him.  His unspoken soulful insistence was connection and presence.  We lit a candle and made love until it was light outside.  He lives hundreds of miles away, I don’t foresee us meeting again.  A blessing and an honor to share a strand of time with him. 

“The Siddha Siddhanta Paddhati is a very early extant Hatha Yoga Sanskrit text attributed to Gorakshanath by the indigenous tradition, as Feuerstein (1991: p.105) relates:

“One of the earliest hatha yoga scriptures, the Siddha Siddhanta Paddhati, contains many verses that describe the avadhuta. One stanza (VI.20) in particular refers to his chameleon-like capacity to animate any character or role. At times, it is said, he behaves like a worldling or even a king, at other times like an ascetic or naked renunciant.”^[12]

On the mat tonight it became obnoxiously apparent that I haven’t been equally developing the left and right sides of my body.  In the beginning, I took it as natural and inevitable that one side would be stronger, more open, more graceful… Floating into handstand is easy on the right side, the left side looks like i’m practicing in the bed of a truck cruising down a dirt road. 

I took two identical pens and began experimenting with writing with both hands at the same time, then just the left, then just the right (and really paying attention)… Doesn’t it seem backwards that we can do something as complex as writing very efficiently with one side of our body but not the other… shouldn’t such simple bi-lateral control be pre-requisite to the intellectual where-how necessary in developing the ability to write?  It is my body.  Why is it sometimes so difficult to control?

Tonight when I was practicing I had the thought, “I’m going to gently move into the part of me that is god.”  So, theoretically, one of the things that is not true about that statement is that only a ‘part’ of me is god… what does that make the other parts? 

I am here to accept responsibility for my own desires, irrespective of the judgment that even I place on them.

My goal in life is to feel connected, be authentic, be totally receptive to the wildest gifts of the universe and experiences on earth.  I strive to live a life that is meaningful to me -a life that doesn’t procrastinate or deny the desires in my heart.   No exceptions.  No excuses.  

I am my best answer and, like any seeker, ultimately my only question.  Nobody knows better than me what I need and what truly makes me alive in this world.

The goal is to be true to myself.  The compass is deep listening and receptivity to grace.  For now, the path is yoga.  The goal of this path is freedom.  I’m seeking the freedom to be true to myself.  I’m discovering to an ever greater degree that I am the only thing that shackles me.  I continue on this path because it has enabled me to morph iron shackles into cheap fuzzy hand cuffs - the kind that are really easy to get out of when you want to.  Silly as it is, I still wear the cuffs sometimes.  Honestly, in some areas it’s simply more comfortable not accepting accountability for my life. I want to feel differently about that, but just don’t entirely yet.

I enjoy my path immensely.  I practice, read, and discuss it obsessively.  On this path I’m told abhyasa (constant and determined practice) with absolute faith is necessary to achieve the goal.  This is the first place where I wonder if I can achieve the goal of this path.  If this stuff stops working for me I will leave it.  I’m not going to force something that isn’t natural.  I’ve been at it for 5 years now.  So far my life has substantially and consistently improved.  The deeper and more committed I become the deeper and richer the rewards have been.  I anticipate more of the same, but if that’s not the case I lack the faith to trudge a path that stops being rewarding.