To be fully present, awake and in appreciation without fear

Its so divinely beautiful.  That's why it is so hard to let go... These moments of rest, of ease, time spent with family in peace.  What is more beautiful than being here now knowing the impermanence.  Only with death in the picture do I truly not take for granted all of this, all of you.

I'm not going to lie and say that I am not scared.  It's intense at moments, overwhelming my ability to act skillfully, and remain connected.  I've been meditating on death for the last month and a half, since I had this dream about my father.  I woke up and knew that my resistance to my father's mortality I was storing in my low back.  As I practiced morning asana I could feel the weight of resistance.  I don't want my dad to die.  With practice, drishti awareness and breath I found that I could release him in meditation, though resistance comes in waves through out daily awareness.

What seemed like emotional yoga, a hypothetical practice has taken on new light since I saw this video.  And this one.  The Karma of what we have done to our earth could off us.  Over whelmed by the sense that the nuclear threat is unprecedented, my practice has become that of releasing my wife, twin 3 year old daughters and new born son.  Whether the threat is real or not, who can say.  To my emotional body it is real, which like all intensity is an opportunity to open to teacher in all experience.

Things are changing fast.

Personally in my life, and for all of us world wide.  Two of the elders in our family are suffering from unknown genetic disease.  What is it?  Would a diagnosis in the form of a recognizable word make it easier?  It's transformation, and it's really hard.

Globally, politically, whether anything has changed or not, I am now aware of the nuclear situation.  While I personally feel empowered that I have the knowledge and will to thrive through this new unfolding realty, living in a radioactive world, I have been disappointed that we as a larger community are not dialoguing about this.

I guess the most shocking part of Fukishima, for me, was that the plant didn't have back up power.  It wouldn't even have taken a tsunami.  The electricity going out would have had the same effect.  Learning that there are over 200 nuclear power plants in the United States, with more radioactive waste then Fukishima, is overwhelming.  I see 2 possible outcomes, be they soon or in the distant future... 1. We do something about nuclear waste now, be it browns gas, zeolites, or some other solution unknown to me.  2.  When the grid inevitably does fall at some point (like Rome or the Soviet Union) those who remain will experience the effects of our nuclear waste in their food, water, rain, and air.


So.... With this knowledge, arguably true or false, but emotionally real none the less, the practice is to let go.  To be fully present, awake and in appreciation without fear.  To be receptive to the call; if there is anyway that I may serve my family and all of you.  Connected and in appreciation.  That my energy be available to focus as skillful intention.

Mainly this has been a deepened relationship with right now.  Dissolving into ThankYou.

I have hope though.

I have a strong suspicion that the answers are right in front of us, in the natural systems, in the weeds that thrive in our parking lots and yards.  This information unfolds little by little though, as greater strength, balance and wisdom.



So for now, I practice everyday, love my family with all my heart, and feel the weight of my 3 year daughter when she lays on my chest during shavasana.  There is nothing better.

On Yoga, Fukishima and Waking Up

To all yoga practitioners, whether you call it yoga practice, or by it's more common name "Life”

You are a master of Prakrti (everything manifest), you’ve just forgotten.  In the face of adversity you have only to remember your being-ness more intrinsic than the dis-ease of the mental plane, and from this connectedness radiate healing and unconditional love from your source.  It's that simple.

For most of us maintaining this awareness as a constant waking state is challenging.  It is easy to slip into identification with ego, body, mind.  This false identification is not without cost.  Identification with ego, body, mind has a specific "medicinal" affect on our body and bodies (physical, mental, emotional and subtle). In the physical body it is oxidizing, experienced as tight muscles, injury or disease.  The corresponding subtle aspects can be harder to describe.  For a practitioner however the greatest cost is that false identification with perceived limitations lulls us deeper to sleep.

Most of us remain in a profound waking sleep even as we move through our daily lives.  Though our physical body is located right here right now, we experience not what this is, but what the mind thinks it is; the dream of past, future, judgement and preference.  If we have a daily practice of awareness we may catch glimpses of right now, not as we think it is, but as direct perception.

I have sensed much discomfort/resistance to the relatively new consciousness arising about nuclear power, waste, radiation and its affect on us... that is every-body.   I have heard in our discourse, a sense of helplessness, seen in our actions a desire to bury our heads in the sand, to not know.  It can be easy to not want to look at what this is and instead focus on things that are more "relevant".  It could be though that how we collectively choose to address this situation is the most relevant.  As scary and confusing as what we face may seem, as practitioners what is at stake here is bigger than radiation, health, life or death.

Every choice we make has the effect of expanding our awareness or contracting it.  This phenomenon is commonly called Karma.  Karma is neither "good" or "bad".  All Karma leads eventually to liberation once we finally release resistance to "what it is" and become receptive to the experiential knowledge that is shared alike through joy and pain, sunshine, rain, this and that.

When we face adversity or joy, this or that, we have 2 choices.  We can accept it or we can resist it.  We can embrace it in unconditional acceptance, or fear it and  and try to resist.  Of coarse we can only resist for so long.  One day soon we all will surrender.  Knowing that acceptance and resistance each have a "medicinal" effect, the conscious practitioner chooses acceptance. 

There is debate in yoga circles about the correct practice in the face of "Wickedness" (Sutra I.33).  The Yoga Sutras recommend “Indifference”.  This is not to be confused with "ignoring" or “inaction”, which it is sometimes mistakenly thought to mean.

While it can be tempting to ignore or try to dull the intensity of daily life, whether that be tight hamstrings in paschimottanasana or Nuclear Meltdown, as practitioners, the medicinal affect of resistance in the form of dulling carries to great a cost.  Fear is the opposite of expansion.  Preference is the domain of ego and mind.  Mind might not “like” what it thinks it sees, but our practice of being awakened invites us to step back into unconditional love for everything and everybody.  Fear clenches and dulls awareness while acceptance and surrender open us to greater understanding, deeper appreciation.

The practitioner responds to Nuclear Meltdown, with breath and awareness, that the intensity purify and dissolve all obstacles to conscious awareness.  From our connectedness to source we the act skillfully. 

Yoga a practice of inaction.  Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita defines Yoga as Skill in action.  It is the invitation to awake from the dream of preference and be fully awake now; That our actions may be the expression of our highest intention, that our thoughts words and deeds be the outpouring of the ferocious and incomprehensible beauty of who and what we really are.  This is most challenging, relevant and medicinal in the face of great intensity like that which we are offered here today.

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