Tag: self love

The Yoga of Navigating a Mad World

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I wonder why we hold back tears, the shame of showing emotions?

The world of ‘hold it together’, don’t let ‘them’ see your brokenness; men are expected to be strong, don’t be a wimp, all that stuff written by buffoons, those people who value worthless things. It may be that tenderness is sacred, and is something that needs to be treated with the utmost respect, in our private cave of transformation.
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Weakness is something that is misinterpreted; the big, the bold, the haughty, the emotionless types, they often go for places of power; they can have them, by raising themselves up high, their foundations get weaker, their fall from (a lack of) grace is too common to mention. History only remembers the tyrants, and the wise men and women, each one of them brings a feeling of ‘who they were’ into the present and future. In them is a teaching on how to live our lives with dignity, to leave something sublime for our descendants, to add something of value to the kaleidoscope of humanity.
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Out of Time with the Hustle and Bustlers
About two years ago, I was walking down a busy street in Melbourne. My version of walking, generally involves an invisible path about two metres wide, and the propulsion of my body in a forward direction oscillates plus or minus 27% from whatever I set as the average tempo. This sort of meandering I will admit can be annoying to others, particularly those who are in a hurry at peak hour. A guy flew past me, I think he had an invisible ute, a dog in the back, tonight’s grog in his work bag, a half eaten corned beef samich with tomata-sauce and a bit of yesterdays dinner on his shirt. Among the expletives were the words “surely it’s not too hard, can’t you walk straight.” A bit slow in my response, I will answer that now. “Well, NO?” It is virtually impossible, in the same way that a child or a puppy heads off in all directions, it is not one of my superpowers, I am busy with life, I am a dreamer, a wanderer of the stars in my head.  Musicians may hold a solid tempo in a song, but it’s the relationship to the beat that gives it the beauty; a poet may create pictures in the mind-space by placing ice-cream in the sky instead of clouds, an artist may omit lines but still be able to tell the story. If I become an android, please someone give me a heart transplant, my life needs feeling, swing, glitches and twitches, asymmetry, bumps and mysterious flavours. My clothes need wrinkles, my face the odd whisker that the razor missed, and sand in my bed is a necessity after I go for swim in the ocean, I love the salt stinging my skin; my tribe of monks dress in non uniform colours.
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Lao Tsu, My Invisible Friend
The old sage Lao Tzu says, “Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.” I like this guy Lao, I walk through the busy city streets with him, no one ever knocks him over, he is too alert. I have invisible friends.
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The constant straightening of the world around us may make the journey faster, the excavating of the rolling hills to run a ‘quick track’ through for the hordes to get to and from the cities, we lose the beauty of the curves of nature, we create a backdrop to move in, it resembles anorexic models who are showpieces of a form of still-framed beauty for those who suffer from extreme narcism who are hypnotised by an illusory image of self; flattening out what is enticingly voluptuous in nature, to rush to and from a designer box full of gadgets, to work places where many spend their days on automatic, watching the clock for any exit moments.
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Comfortable Uncomfortable
The creating of a ‘contrived’ world and our addiction to its ingredients is deeply related to our failure to feel, to avoid a sense of realness and honesty. And the creation of a ‘spiritual fabricated Utopia’ is just a ‘virtual’ extension of this mania or dis-ease that hypnotises humanity. It is all about ‘running’, being ‘away’. And I am not confusing ’emotional indulgence’ with feeling, the former is an addiction, being caught in a loop of wanting a hit of the same ‘feeling drug’ because it’s comfortable.  Getting a little uncomfortable is what this is about; when we are in that vulnerable space, we allow what needs to arise release itself, those things that are calling for our attention. On the screen of life, the scenarios take centre stage and present themselves; our choice is always to face them when we are ready or have them arrive at some other time, maybe with more potency and baggage.
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The Blessing
May there always be wiggles, may there always be women with curves and some naturally without, may there always be rolling hills, waterways shaped by nature without man orchestrating their pathway, may the wind blow our hair and there be little bits of leftover food on our face, the smell of a wood-fire stove cross our pathway, cracks in the pavement with weeds growing through. May we weep for what has gone before and move graciously detached into forever.

Tilopa 2.0

I found this article among my hundreds of articles and not sure if I have posted before, I am currently working on two longish articles, “will the Revolution Be Televised?”, and Music 

The Beauty of Vulnerabilty

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Vulnerability is something the community doesn’t ‘do’ well.  In a society where men are expected to be ‘tough’ sporty and youth are directed into that ‘model’ by those who have gone before or are still lurking in the background, or maybe strategically placed in the subconscious thought of the unsuspected voyager of life; the idea of feeling vulnerable, is perceived as a weakness. Cliches like ‘cracks in the armour’,  hold yourself together, be strong are constantly pointing away from the virtues and glorious attributes of my friend ‘vulnerable’.

I do ‘vulnerable’ pretty well, like most things, i taught myself and didn’t know it had happened, and it is often not till i hit the depths of despair, that the wisdom of what is going on is extracted, which mind you happens about every second Friday but is usually not a problem.

We humans (and part aliens) 🙂 have a knack of ‘coming apart’, and coming apart is usually considered to be about the worst thing that can happen.  But if we look carefully at things, we will see that every moment we are ‘coming apart’, it is just the order of the molecules being in a particular shape that troubles us.  But look at it, a tree drops a seed or is kidnapped by the wind, breaks apart, a little bit of water adds to it; it grows into a sprouty thing, then gradually unfolds towards the stars and moves into its next phase as a new being, spits out a tasty fruit,  grows a few prickles just to annoy humans, flaunts its beauty with flowers and moves ceremoniously in the breeze, it may even be broken apart with the help of another and in the hands of the finest craftsman become part of a beautiful instrument…. or be part of a bushfire and smoke itself into forever with its atoms unseen going on to new worlds……. coming apart has its advantages

So we humans as a rule struggle with apartness.  I always like to come back to ‘nothing’, inside me is an unpainted canvas, a beautiful empty space awaiting experience, sounds, shapes, and unknown and familiar textures.  When i come back to nothing … (and i don’t mean the ‘all i want is nothing, give me your credit card i want the lot’ of the rogue gurus and cults),  it is ‘safe’; in that nothingness there is nowhere to go, nothing to do, only the beautiful silence of being, like sitting by the ocean and being oblivious to oneself, lost in the spaciousness of the water the sky and the horizon, no tomorrow, no past, no agenda, the NOW in its true sense before it became new age piffle.

Being vulnerable is quite ok, it’s just that we need to be a little patient and have the understanding that the tide comes in and out, there are storms and the seas rage, before you ‘no’ it the sun’s out, and a whole new world is there and life returns to the sea shore.  And life is like that, people come and go, we love them, they pass us by one day as if we are strangers, and we do the same sometimes.

Freedom, absolute freedom is in letting go, letting go of what was never really ours to hold, and was just a gift to caress for a while.  And in the understanding that when we look at the stars, we see and stand at different points, one person wishes, another one sees aliens, another sees a child coming, another sees a world being born, and another sees one passing away, a friend long gone, and another sees it as part of him or herself.  But everyone sees the star, and in looking up and out into forever, it can be daunting, and the night passes and a new day is born, and we are sometimes left shaking,  we awake to a new potential and our vulnerability passes by, knowing the dream goes on and not to tarry long.

Tilopa 2.0