Love from Paradise

I have always held ambitious goals of myself to travel as voraciously and as often as the pocketbook and seemingly perpetually inadequate time-off work allows.  Every once in a great while, I am pulled to escape.  To unplug from the grid.  To not have to make my bed and wash my towels and prepare dinners.

Vacations are precious to me because it allows me to meet that person that I want to be.  Separated from the turmoil in my head and tossed into the unfamiliar and unknown, ironically, I regain my balance.  When I am anonymous to myself - the robotic one I become in the grind - I am in my element.  Grappling with a language I can only speak like a stuttering three year-old, I am humbled.  Out here, I know nothing.  I am no one.

Even to myself.
And it's delirious.

I am staring at the rushing waves, the wind tousling my hair about.  The water is a stunning aquamarine.  It was disconcerting in the beginning, but every night since, I am lulled to sleep by the immense sound of thunderous waves.  I bask in all this magic and express my gratitude that out here, there is none but the moment.  And in this space, I connect with what might potentially the best version of myself yet.  

Namaste and Love to you from Paradise. 

Rebirth

It's 3AM on the first day of the New Year. I've counted down, guzzled the champagne, watched the fireworks with friends and strangers alike. But the new year started days ago for me. My year ended and begun at the same time days before today.

Since the trip, I have felt the quietness of someone who has just been through an unspeakable and profound sacred experience. I am someone unrecognizable, even to myself.

I know my place under the sun. I embrace my place in the world.

Who I am today is you.
You are me.
I am you.
What I have seen
Who's been here
It's all contained here.
Strong yet weak..
Vulnerable.
Tender.
Human.
Beautiful beyond words.

Gyrations on Gratitude

There is scientific evidence that gratefulness practices have the power to change the bleak outlook and glum disposition of the grim. I have written about neuroplasticity before, which is the ability of our mind to alter the brain by cultivating mini-patterns so that they eventually get entrenched in who we are. It’s practicing baby cartwheels to eventually get us ready for pole vaulting. Well, that’s a little extreme, but you get the idea.

Here is one particular case study. This is a video of a Buddhist meditation/Yoga teacher’s mother who supposedly was a sour miser who was “ruined” forever after her son “trained“ her to find something to be grateful about, no matter how teeny. It's a funny video. Oprah and her propaganda for gratitude diaries was on to something after all.

Since it is Thanksgiving week, I thought I myself would pronounce my gratefulness and thankfulness for the daily miracles in my own life. Because my life has been going at lightning speeds lately, it would be nice to memorialize these “little things”. It would be good practice to step away from the buzz of everyday life and create a little space for counting blessings, if not as a sustained practice, at least this week. Don’t you think it would be nice to look back at them again one day in the future, say five years from now?

But here is something you perhaps would not find in ten-steps-to-gratefulness-or-other books (not that I have checked).

Embodiment.

Contemplative and meditative traditions of Buddhism, Zen and Yoga could talk your ears off on this one. Simply put, it’s being in your body, ideally, at all times. What that means is watching your breath (a tiny bit of semi-useless piece of information: did you know that in a single breath, a quadrillion signals are fired by neurons? A quadrillion is a thousand million million. Lots of zeros!). Feeling your heartbeat. Feeling your hands and feet. When was the last time you felt your pinky finger? Exactly the point.

So they say that one shouldn’t just stop at gratefulness. One should feel what it is like to be grateful at the same time. After saying thanks, pause for a moment (closing your eyes help) and soak in the feeling, as if you’re a sommelier having intimate moment with wine.

Oh my goodness. How delicious.

The Chinese are superstitious about Mondays. They say that you should be careful about what you do at the start of the week, because chances are, you would tend to recreate these all week. Hmmm… did a neuropsychologist come up with that? Well, it’s a Monday and I guess there’s no better day for igniting a habit than today!

Today, I am grateful for:

• The gift of remembrance, of memory. I found myself remembering my Dad and the gift of memory allows me to reconnect to that part of me that is him, too. It makes the missing another person a little less lonely if you think that although they have passed on, they are still alive in you. My sleeping patterns have been so wildly off lately and I remembered how my Dad had the most abnormal sleeping habits I’ve seen in anyone. And sometimes I wonder if he was an enlightened being of some sort who has kept this secret all along until he left this plane. And if reincarnations were true, is he back in another human form somewhere and will we meet?
• Living a life that I want to live. It’s really unimaginably larger than life, when I really think about it. It’s amazing how reality is really very farfetched from what our minds can conceive. When I say unimaginably, nothing about where I am has been even remotely close to what my limited mind was capable of imagining and churning. There is stillness where I want stillness. There is tremendous activity where I direct it. It’s a delicate tightrope balance act on your hands, and I acknowledge that not everything is in my control. But for even that humbling truth, I am grateful.
• The internal mysterious rhythms that allow music and its inception to be possible. Making something phenomenal and jaw dropping from practically out of nothing - where does musical genius come from?
• Silence
• Malleable realities :)(a phrase stolen from Jason Mraz)
• Mondays. If it weren’t for them, there would be no Fridays.
• Friends and family who make time to nurture themselves and are proactive at owning their happiness and destinies. Yay!!!!
• Pretty little pink things for dainty wrists. Michael Kors and his designer who had the genius of designing a pink-faced chrono stainless steel oversized wear-to-the-shower watch
• Snow blanketing mountains. Gorgeous.
• Gavin DeGraw, wailing “I’m gonna love you more thank anyoneeeeeeeeeee….”
• Eyeglasses. Yeah, yeah. Gone were the days of 20-20. And just the gift of vision in general!
• Salsa. Oh MY GOD. Thank you, Billy Bob.
• Short workweeks
• Thanksgiving :)
• And all the turkeys who have died and are going to die yet. :(

What are YOU grateful for?

Namaste!

The Moment of Truth

It did it! I have trained myself to run. And today's ultimate frisbee game was testament to that glorious achievement.

I caught up with Minnesota earlier in the week. It is rare that we find both ourselves in town for the weekend and we decided to meet at the Saturday morning pickup game. I haven't been back in the field since my first game. Schedules just haven't yet aligned until this morning.

I was so frustrated with myself on that first day that I vowed to myself that a game of disc will never kick my ass again. It only took four months of training of running about 4-5 miles a week, but the day of reckoning is here. I CAN RUN! Oh, the taste of sweet, hard-earned success...

I had a late night last night, which unabashedly consisted of hours of dancing on three inch heels and shamefully a couple of colorful alcoholic concoctions, and yeah, a shot of Petron. I had a splendid time, so no regrets.

I woke up to a bleak and cold morning (hangover-free, thank you very much) and blisters on the ball of my feet (one day, I will find the perfect dancing shoes that performs 10 on function and 10 on form - hard to find!). I dragged myself out of the covers and made it to pickup half an hour after it had started. To warm up, I decided to run a couple of laps and instantly, I felt my body punishing me for everything that transpired the night before. I had to keep going, I keep telling myself. The Colonel said there's something useful about training your body to perform under duress, so I kept my legs moving, pleading my lungs to please, please cooperate. At the second lap, my hands were getting clammy. My warm-up run didn't quite feel right. I feel out of breath and my foot hurts. Am I going to be a disappointment to myself again? Am I going to run like a freaking girl again today?

I got in the game and was matched up with a skinny 11-year old boy (it was a mismatch, I tell you - he was quick and quite a catcher). The first few sprints up and down the field felt... right. I was waiting for the big collapse from breathlessness which I got plenty of in my first game.. But it never came. It started hitting me -

Oh my God. I CAN FREAKING RUN.

We'll talk about the work I need to do on my throws and catches, but hey, I'm not where I was the first time and I'm beyond happy. I missed a couple of catches, but scored one (pity) goal, so I don't think I came out in the red in the end.

When I wasn't in the game, I was practicing throws and catches with Minnesota and/or the 11-year old. It was such a beautiful day to be out. The views of the mountains were beautiful. The sun came out for a little bit. The people are so easygoing and casual. Although it's a competitive sport, there's hardly any ego involved. The grass was green and Marley (a German Sheperd-pitbull mix) was running around engaging himself in the hippie energy of it all. I thought to myself - this is why I live here. This is why I'm not in a major metropolis right now. I had that pretty much all my life and that is not the lifestyle that appeals to me right now. The quality of my life right now is pretty up the charts and that is precisely the life I want to live. I don't have to deal with the unnecessary stress of long commutes, overpopulation, and all the excessives found in larger cities. I have time (which doesn't have to be a luxury, but sadly, for some people it is) for the more important, nourishing things in life than the rat race that I a

lways thought was the only life for me.

I am at a beautiful place in my life. This feels a lot like the way it did a year ago - with one major difference. A year ago, I was Superwoman. Today, I'm just human, no different from you. After my admission of my Personal Four Noble Truths, I found myself in an entirely more honest place. It might have been one of the most difficult things about myself to face and admit (publicly, no less!), but honest work IS meant to be difficult and painful sometimes. I am teaching myself not to deny my shadow, my ego, but instead integrate it into Me.

And although this place is a lot familiar, there is one staggering difference. I am feeling the tenderness. I am tasting the sweetness.

Namaste and Love to everyone.

Photo of downtown taken almost exactly a year ago

Where Am I?

Maybe it’s this weather compounded with my exhaustion from my recurring patterns with people in the past year that led me to brooding. The overcast skies and the sudden onslaught of cold and moisture yet again remind us that the sun cannot shine all the time. Perhaps we don’t even want it to. At least I don’t, personally. Among other things, life is about cycles. There’s time to roll in the grass and frolic in the sand barefoot. And now, we have to give way to hibernation and not to be brutal, but a little death. There was time for play and refusal to grow up, and now it’s time for a little honest contemplation and reflection.

The last few weeks, anger has made an appearance a few times and you would not believe how proud I am of myself for getting angry. I really am. For somebody who has, for the longest time, denied any emotion – both good and bad – it is a milestone to be finally letting all these emotions run through. In the last year of my marriage, I was getting hives every other day. No doctor could explain what was going on so I was left to carrying anti-histamines with me wherever I went. Coincidentally, that year was a year of profound denial for me. I had so much bottled up. I had anger, grief, bitterness, and shame, but I did not allow any of these emotions any expression. Why? Because I’ve gotten used to holding it together for the sake of other people. I allowed people to project perfection and strength on me and I had to keep carrying that burden at my own expense. It wasn’t martyrdom or pride in being the sacrificial lamb. I just honestly did not know how to deal with it any other way then. The last year, I have been trying to get healthier and happier. Has it worked? Tremendously. Is there more work to be done? Absolutely!

As a result of the intense reflection I have found myself in lately, here is what I am owning up to:

• I am not perfect. I am far from it. Although ultimately, I still believe that enlightenment is my raison d’etre, maybe my idea of getting there is too rigid, too boxed up, too idealized. I am human and I need to forgive myself for making mistakes. People tend to put me in this pedestal but I need to be wise and brave enough to realize when I am the receiver of such a projection and decline that crown of thorns. I don’t want it.
• I have feelings and yes, those feelings do not make sense to me a lot of times, just as they probably don’t to a large majority of the human population, but I am slowly understanding that maybe they don’t have to make sense. Feeling is not a cerebral function. There is no yardstick for how people should feel. My own experiences are teaching me that first, feelings ARE okay, and second, feelings don’t equate to drama. Emotions release themselves on their own once they are given the liberty of expression. We feel what we feel when we feel it for whatever reason we need to feel it.
• I have an ego (as evidenced by the few hundred I spent on shopping a couple weeks ago). I’m learning to accept my ego and not deny it. Maybe the point is not to be completely egoless at all times, but to not identify with it as who we truly are at the core. The key is to remember is that I have an ego; ego does not have me. It’s a delicate tightrope act, but that’s why we’re here.
• And most of all, I have NEEDS, just like any other person. I used to have an attitude about people and love that I am now realizing was quite righteous. I have tendency to give away the farm without expecting anything back. If it comes back, good. If it doesn't, that's the other person's prerogative. But since I have been slowing down, I realize that this might be expecting a little too much from myself. Maybe I'm prematurely trying to emulate pure unconditionality when I'm not completely ready for it. While unconditionality remains the goal, I have to be okay with the fact that I cannot stomach being loving to assholes right now. It doesn’t mean that I have given up on it, but this is really the time where my love for myself has to overpower my willingness and capacity to love others. Maybe one day, I will be loving regardless of whether they are total opportunists and extortionists or not, or maybe I will just need to find a different trail to get to that summit, but right now, I need to be honest about where I am. I need to be treated with dignity and respect. I honestly believe that every single human being in the planet deserves that but for some time, I believed that I was the exception. How arrogant! This must stop!
• It kills me to say this that is why I'm going to say it, but I have to say it again for my benefit and for emphasis. I have needs. I have to be okay to be on the receiving end. I have to be okay with the vulnerability. I have to be okay with admitting to wanting a solid, grounded, honest and loving relationship.

Why do I write about this shizzazz? Why do I write about my process? Primarily, I do it for me. It forces me to be honest about where I am because knowing my Self gives me more horsepower to keep on marching to where I’m supposed to go. I also draw so much inspiration from other people who do the work on themselves (the likes of The Italian and Abdi Assadi). So if in the same way, sharing my process helps out someone, then why wouldn’t I?

The sun broke free yesterday afternoon and it was exactly how I felt. I felt like I have a lot of grounding and centeredness back. I’m back to spending quality time being in my body on the Yoga mat. I have two solo international trips lined up (one of which is still in my head). I found myself at a jazz show by myself last night, just like the good old days, doing touristy things in my own town. This place is so familiar and it so very refreshing at the same time. It feels so damn good it really feels a lot like a gazillion sunshines suddenly burst from the clouds.

Namaste!

Hello, Anger.

The past week, I have watched myself go through sadness, frustration and the last couple days, anger. I don’t get angry very often so the feeling is a little foreign to me. Relative to some people I know, I’d like to think I have cultivated the gift of acceptance and serenity. It’s easy to be placid when you have a self-contained life as mine. Everything is pretty much under control. But in the last few weeks, I have consciously opened the door to two things that could shake up my life and my sense of perceived control – a potential romance and a roommate.

To put it rather bluntly, The Danish dumped my ass almost a week ago. His planned trip to Reno in October is not materializing as he had hoped so he decided to not pursue the whole thing anymore. I really do not blame him. An intercontinental relationship, while romantic, is not realistic. In his mind, the only way this was going to work was if he moved his life to America, at least for a couple of years, since I don’t speak Danish and would have a difficult time finding employment in Denmark. A couple of weeks after we met in Vegas, the guy was job-hunting online for opportunities in Reno, which I thought was sweet. But part of me was scared since I did not want to be responsible for someone giving up roots, family, friends, sustainable living, for Reno, NV. If he ended up moving, I will essentially be responsible for this person’s happiness. In my mind, if there was someone who would move, it would have to be me because I don’t have deep roots where I am. And maybe on a deeper level, I want to be the onus on someone else.

Being blindsided and having the rug pulled from underneath required a lot of letting go and acceptance. I think I did pretty well on this. I did not see myself grasping and constricting. People are where they are and one thing that I constantly learn is we cannot punish people for how they feel. There is sadness, though, and I allow it to come and go as it pleases. If I can be accepting of how other people feel, I cannot disallow my own feelings to render expression either. A week later, and anger paid a visit. I am not angry at the person. I am angry at a situation that I cannot control and wield. How controlling and obsessive of me.

To compound to this, I was on the verge of kicking out my roommate after she has only spent three nights at the house. I don’t think I’m being overly reactive. I have reasonable grounds. She has a little pug and while the dog’s cute and well-behaved, I have seen her take the dog out to the yard with the slider AJAR, as if beckoning all the critters and crawlers to come in. This would be okay at any other given circumstance. But I live in the desert and I back into open land. You do not leave the doors open. That’s an open seduction for wildlife to come in and have a party.

Last Saturday, while watching a movie in the living room with a few friends, I saw a scorpion scuttle about on the floor. A scorpion! It’s a good thing that my friend’s boyfriend was there to take care of the poor guy. I know it’s a violation of ahimsa (non-harming), but between me and the scorpion dying, I had to make a choice. Then Monday morning came and that’s when I just about lost it. In the year and a half that I have lived in the house, I never had pests or mice. I had a bag of chips and a package of granola on the counter. Apparently, Mighty Mouse made it inside the house (perhaps via the gaping open door left for longer than it should!!!) and had himself a little feast. Ugh. My privacy and my rodent-free house have been compromised and it is driving me nuts. I called a pro to take care of it, but it’s been two days and the culprit is still at large.

I went to Yoga asana class at Gold’s Gym the other night. Yes, some parts of the class were horrific, but sometimes, you just have to take Yoga where you can. Authenticity lives in you; it is not external to you. On several occasions in the past, asana practice has been helpful to me in bringing up repressed, dark emotions to the surface. The pigeon pose opens the hips and someone told me once that the hips/pelvis region is the seat of emotions in our subtle bodies. So when we do hip opening asanas, we invite those emotions to release. Since that yoga class, I’ve watched my anger surface. I have been upset, frustrated, and just mad. I am crabby and irritated. I don’t want to talk to people. It does not take much to bring my blood to boiling levels.

And I accept that I am angry. In fact, I honor it by giving it space. I own the anger. No drama about it, no finger pointing. I cannot allow myself to build stories around my anger which can exponentially enlarge it the more I invest in it. I cannot allow myself to dwell in anger either, because neuroscience tells us that nerves that fire together, wire together. We can’t make that a permanent habitat. I deal with it the only way I have learned how.

I sit with it.

I don’t try to reason myself out of it. I don’t convince myself to think positive crap. I try to seclude myself from people until it passes. And if my hunch about this is right, it will slowly dissipate and release itself. It will go and pass the same way it came….

Namaste.

Beautiful Mediocrity

I was at the University today, the last day of registration, to enroll myself in a graduate class in Counseling Psychology. I cannot say that I did not feel a sense of relief when I was told I lack one immunization shot of MMR (mumps, measles, and rubella, I believe) to be allowed to take a graduate class. I now need to defer my enrollment until spring, until I can get the required shot. But by then, I probably would be well on my way to a GRE if I have not taken it yet, and would be ready for full admission in Fall 2011 anyway.

I admit it. Part of me feels like kicking myself because I started the process late and showed up on the last day of registration. I guess that demonstrates my lack of enthusiasm in spending $1,000 that I have but could think of spending on something else more instantly gratifying like a round trip ticket to Arhus. I have so many questions in my head about moving forward and I don’t fully comprehend why. Is it the money thing? Or am I just scared? Did the Universe decide this for me or did I manifest it?

Life lately has been so full and rich, and when I say that, I don’t necessarily mean extremely joyful and pleasant. I haven’t travelled in a while or done any crazy partying lately, and I’m glad that I am still able to utter “la dolce vita” despite that. I have noticed that even in moments of recent vulnerability that I really have grown and transformed. I process things a lot differently now than how I used to. I’m a lot more objective, a lot less dramatic. There’s a lot more serenity in my life than ever before, and a newfound passionate dispassion. Something in me has shifted (again) because what has been unbearably mediocre for so many months have gotten quite purposeful lately (again). Running has become a good friend. I'm on the third week of salsa class and I’m back on a semi-regular Yoga asana practice. I just turned in my renewal application as a reading tutor for 1st graders at a local elementary schools and I'm excited. Summer is drawing to a sweet close, but even that is something I embrace because I know well that I lived summer like it was my last.

Have I mentioned that life is kicking ass right now?

Have a gorgeous weekend! I know I will! Namaste, beautiful people!