Something Doesn't Always Have to Give

In the last week, I have probably danced at least ten hours. I have been recruited to Salsa Reno's Bachata Dance Troupe which entails weekly rehearsals leading up to the International Bachata Festival in January 2011. Considering that I have a full-time job, friends outside of dancing, and an endless stack of books, it is a lot of time away from other things in my life. There's ultimate frisbee and running that I have to add in to that mix. In the backburner, there's rock climbing (the most immediate one since I intend to rock climb in Koh Laoliang, Thailand in a month), GRE for Grad School, and a foreign language class before Europe next summer.

I was supposed to play frisbee at 10:30AM today, but I had to cave in to more time resuscitating and reenergizing. I was up until 3AM this morning and was dancing from pretty much 9PM onwards. My feet hate me right now. I am sorry, frisbee. My bed takes precedence. I think I might have to give you up for now.

I have been running like a madwoman at 100 miles per hour last week and my one constant fear is that I will lose time for probably one of the most important things in my life which is nurturing my spirit. I think I will absolutely loathe myself if I give that part of my life up. I checked my email today and I came across a series of lectures on "Art Sutra - Buddhism, Yoga and the Search for Selfless Expression". I missed kirtan last night, but I could still manage to go to "Art, Music and Spiritual Practice" if I so desired. And so I crawled out of bed telling myself if I can dance for 15 hours, I could do something meditative for 1.5 hours.

I walked in the room and I immediately felt embraced by the potent energy of the room, the people. I sat on the floor and dropped in. I got goosebumps. The collective energy of the room was wildly, palpably, overwhelming. I needed this.

The talk was given by Darin McFadyen, a lively person with his soul right in his laughing eyes, for everyone to take. He had long, thick hair in dreadlocks, I was curious what how they would feel like between my fingers. He had a very endearing English accent and I suspect he's from London. He sat in front of the room, on a cushion, cross-legged. He had a very lean body frame which tells me he could be at the very least vegetarian (if he's Buddhist, he very well must be), or a raw foodist, and maybe does Yoga. He had a white t-shirt on and jeans. He is a DJ. A regular guy. Nothing about him would say "spiritual" except if you picked up on the red string (is it a kalava?) tied on his right wrist.

I went to this place without any expectations. I didn't know what he was going to talk about. It turns out, it was about making your art (be it music, dance, visual) your Yoga. Making it your meditation. Making it your spiritual practice. How? Simple. By offering your art for the goodness of the world. Can you imagine this kind of loving consciousness? It's insanely radical.

I already see my dancing as a meditation. Outside of class, I get absorbed by the dance. It is a transcendental experience for me. I am lost. There is no dancer. There is no dance. One melts in the other. And I believe in the inspiring power of art in whatever shape or form. It can lift you up. It can take you to higher consciousness sometimes. It is a medium for people to come together and meet in the unitive space of the oneness. I remember a few weeks ago at a social dance party, someone approached me after I had finished dancing the merengue. She said, "It was so beautiful watching you dance." I have only been dancing a couple months then and I was so honored to touch something in a complete stranger without doing anything extra-special or world-churning. I just danced.

But to offer dancing for the love of humanity? That is just totally radical. I have never heard of such a thing. But I see the unseen in this DJ and I touch it. The genuineness. I intuitively see that this is what he does. This is his truth. This is reality. He believes in it with every strand of his wild dreadlocks. If he can do it, why in the world can't I?

I am deeply attached to my spiritual practice. I often say that it saved my life. And my belief is, all beings, at some point in their lives, have to find it. It is an inevitability. To even fathom that I could lose it because I am pouring myself into other things kills me. But today, I realized that something doesn't always have to give. There can be a merger of these two passions. They are not delineated. They are different expressions that can lead to the same place.

And it blows my mind that until noon today, I did not know that I would be meeting such a soul today with such a message. There are no accidents.

When the talk was over, Darrin and I chatted for a little bit. He grasped my hands and held me tight and we were crown-to-crown. We were not talking - it's not necessary. We held each other and was lost in the pure love of it.

True unconditional love, baby.

Unconditional love from me to you and Namaste,

Trish

A Quagmire (Rather, one of a Series!)

Thirteen flights in fourteen days - overkill or doable?

In about ten weeks, I am traveling solo to the other side of the world. It's been a little over a year since I did something like this, so I feel giddy all over as if I'm doing it again for the first time. I have about three weeks to get everything booked and when I cannot find answers, I resort to writing my thoughts down in the hopes that the answers will come.

The first leg of my trip is pretty much organized and booked. I will be in Hong Kong for two nights, cross over to Macau for half a day. Last night I was talking to Anthony (a magnificent soul who I just love to bits and pieces and who has remained anonymous until this time, but sometimes, sacred things, like mantras, need to remain a secret...) who steered the conversation to traveling to Hong Kong. His jaw dropped when I told him I am going to HK in a few weeks. It turns out, he has been cherishing an extremely strong desire to learn Yoga asanas from this Master who I have not heard of before. If you have been practicing Yoga asanas for a while now, you probably have seen his picture somewhere. Yogananth Andiappan, son of a(n) (Indian) Yoga guru, has been doing asanas since he was two and now teaches Ashtanga and a style I've never practiced before, Anahata (heart chakra) Yoga, at this studio at a high-rise in Hong Kong. The first leg of my trip suddenly became purposeful! I promised Anthony I will take a class or two while I'm there, absorb this guy's energy, and maybe bring some of his soul back to Anthony when I return to the U.S.

So this is where planning the trip gets difficult. I only have five nights to spend somewhere else in Asia before I fly to Motherland. I have decided that all those five nights will be in Thailand. It's perfect for what I would like to get out of this trip. I'm at a point in my life where the usual mundane things don't impress me anymore. I want to experience something different. Something deeper and more meaningful.

Here is what I am clear about:

• I have always wanted my travels to be pilgrimages back to my soul instead of hedonistic trysts.
• I would like to see and know how other cultures experience God.
• And I would love to travel with as little guilt as possible by giving my business to establishments who give a sh*t about carbon footprint reduction.
• I would really love to experience the beach like I've never experienced it before.

And here is where I'm screwed:

• I really do not want to take a garish backpack that will be half my size. You know, the ghastly, manly "backpacker" kind. If I could get away with it, I really, really, really would like to take, at the very least, a mid-size roller with me, with all my toiletries and pretty shoes. Oh my trivial concerns.
• My desire is to spend time two nights in Chiang Mai, two in Koh Laoliang, and a night in Bangkok. For this to be possible though, I could not afford a single delayed flight. Yeah. Sure. That's something I'm totally in control of. And if I do this, I obviously need to trash the mid-size roller idea.
• I worry that I will be in such a frenetic frenzy getting from place to place that I totally miss out on savoring and absorbing anything. What's the need to grab and grasp?
• I am traveling solo, but for the life of me, I cannot ditch the Koh Laoliang idea. I just cannot. And I'm just going to have to do it even if I have to go alone. I cannot be in the sidelines of my own life waiting for that perfect travel companion. I just cannot do that. While I can come up with a handful of names who I can invite and who will most likely say yes, the nagging question in my head of "How much are you going to bargain your soul for it?" will not leave me. I am here and I need to live how I want to. And I'm going to. :)

And just like that, I think I figured out a game plan.

Talking is a cure. Hmmm. Imagine that.

Puer Aeternus

I have to say. I am impressed with my salsa dancing.

I know, I know. It sounds mighty egotistical, but I am just being honest. It’s amazing how quickly I’m picking up on Latin dancing. I have completed my beginner’s class in August and have now graduated on to intermediate. I have been to three Latin social dance parties so far and I find it flattering that I have been asked to dance by a few men who are regulars in the circuit (that means they have gotten really good at the genre and they think I put up a good act of pretending to know what I’m doing). I really appreciate that because I get to practice being docile and submissive, for once, yet at the same time, practice rapid footwork while being spun around. What Billy Bob said would take a year has only taken me a month.

Life’s been quiet lately. In the last week, I’ve counted one big synchronicity, which gives me a controlled sense of delight because it tells me that I’m in that flowing place which is supposedly our natural state where inside and outside is one. Remember the blog post about the volleyball game? I was driving to a party on Friday night and it occurred to me that I dreamt about that volleyball game a couple of weeks ago. August 23rd to be exact (I have lucid dreams, you see, and because of them, I was propelled to journal my dreams). Ain’t that something?

Speaking of life being quiet, I have been more introspective than usual which is probably because of The Danish. One truth that I am coming to accept is how afraid I still am of intimate (read: stifling) relationships. I knew that I have a very obvious pattern of building “relationships” with men who live far away, but I always chalked that up to my wandering nature. I travel so much, so of course the men I would connect with would be in the city that I happen to be spending my weekend in. Well, this weekend, I was not travelling but still managed to draw in two out-of-towners. One from New Zealand, one from Manhattan, none from Nevada. What are the odds?

Oh, so much work to be done!

On the surface, it looks like I’m just having a lot of fun in my life. To some, it may appear reckless and flighty. I have been called “boy crazy” and even that is alright. People judge my actions based on how they would act or react to the same situation. And that is understandable because we can only perceive the world with our own eyes and no one else’s. What people don’t see that only a select few are privy to (or what a limited number of people are capable of seeing), is that I work a lot on myself. My decisions are most often very conscious and deliberate instead of haphazard and scatterbrained as some people deem them to be. I put a lot of emphasis on empirical knowledge and experience. My intention is to work on myself, grow some fierce fearlessness, and ultimately learn to trust life.

I do admit that I often wish that people loved themselves enough to work on themselves, that people would own their shit instead of projecting it on to people. But I remind myself that ultimately, all I can do is work on my own crap and get it out of people's way. Hopefully, if they are sensitive and open enough, something in me touches something in them and inspire them to ask themselves the important questions. Is that too much to ask?

Thursdays are the New Saturdays

I went on my usual 2 mile run around the Marina, as is my ritual on Thursday nights when I'm not hanging out with friends. I never ran to Tiesto before and I think I can get in a space more suitable for running when I'm not trying to run, sing and dance at the same time as is usually the case when I listen to hiphop.

Funny how sometimes you just absolutely have no idea about how some days are going to turn out. I was hoping to just run some angst off today, then have a quiet dinner at home, maybe stop for some Black Bear lava cake before I head home. Instead I ended up making new friends, hanging out in the sun and laughing at silly stuff.

After my run, I noticed a couple of guys playing beach volleyball. I played a little bit in high school and if I see a group playing, I could not resist asking if I can play (I did this in Cabo and Lake Tahoe once). So I played with these guys. After a while, more and more people were joining in. We ended up playing six on six, one woman on each team, sideout, race to 15, server point. Some of the guys are obviously already good friends and their joshing and bickering was hilarious to watch. It was infectious, I forgot all about my anger. :) We played through the beautiful crimson mountain sunset until it got dark and made it impossible to see.

This is interesting because an email at work went out early this week about an indoor, no-spike volleyball league and I emailed them that I'm interested, just don't know enough people to form a team with. If you believe in synchronicities at all, I think this counts as one.

Guess what I'm doing next Thursday night? :)