Intention Setting for 2011
Frank (the tank) painted by Rita.
On New Years’ Eve I peeled myself away from my friends and took some quiet time to do some reflecting on the year past and intention setting for the year to come. I was wracking my mind with what I have experienced and learned from 2010 and what I hope to achieve, who I hope to become in 2011. Here’s what I wrote:
- Open heart to keep evolving: Study my Self (svadhyaya in Sanskrit) in order to keep growing.
- Be honest, always and without exception. Clean up all the little cracks where I allow myself to be untruthful.
- Be kind towards others: don’t be judgmental.
- Experience mutual love: cherish and respect each other. Remain grateful, enthusiastic and caring.
- Follow yamas and niyamas: tighten personal discipline to help focus.
- Deepen study and dedication to apprenticeship as a way of honoring my teachers.
- Daily meditation practice.
- Intention: Evolve and purify my Self. Create and celebrate happiness for others.
I look back at this torn out sheet of paper a couple of times a week just to stay on track. Already having problems meditating everyday (Why is this so challenging for me? What am I so afraid of? Why do I resist this?) but at least I am trying. Hopefully my list can help you organize your own thoughts for this year. It’s never a bad idea to sit down, be introspective and set some intentions for the future. Everything we experience in our lives is first a thought, so start thinking about what you want.
More of Rita's dogs.
New Year… What to do first?
We'll get to this, first things first though!
This month the focus at Jivamukti is on 3 simple steps that a profound and magical teacher taught our beloved, holy Sharon Gannon. He told her that before she could reach enlightenment, she must master 3 things:
- 1. Cooking-You have to learn how to become a good cook;
- 2. Cleaning-You have to learn how to keep the place where you live clean and organized; and
- 3. Gardening-You have to know how to grow, nurture and care for plants.
How does this relate to yoga? Why is this important as part of our spiritual practice. After resisting this advice at first as mundane, Sharon finally realized that these three steps were essential to her spiritual growth. She writes, “Without mastering the seemingly ordinary basics of living, no spiritual maturity, much less real spiritual evolution, is possible. One has to first grasp the magic in the ordinary before the extraordinary dawns, and once it does the everyday is the same as it was before-only sweeter.” We have to up our consciousness level so that doing the mundane and everyday of our lives can become our spiritual practice, then washing the dishes can be as magical as taking the best yoga class.
For me, cleaning and cooking are everything (need to work on gardening). Making food for others is the sweetest offering you can give so why not learn how to do it. Cleaning, and I know this might sound insane, can be the most rewarding activity. When you are feeling out of control, immobilized, or stuck, cleaning your living space feels like a million bucks. Whenever I need a fresh start, I organize and clean, and it helps to settle the whirling thoughts racing through my mind. These are those basic steps that make travelling further on the path towards enlightenment (bliss!! joy!! happiness!!) possible. So get to it, clean up your room and try making a fresh salad for dinner and sharing it with the people you love. Enlightenment to follow…
Do You Know What Buddhism Is?
Gorgeous Narayani! You see why I am obsessed with this woman, rt?
From my incredible teachers (thank you, Narayani + Rima!), I have been exposed to the teachings of Buddhism (this is why you “sit near” [upa (near), ni (down) and sad (to sit)] teachers, because then you are always learning). So far, this is my understanding of Buddhism:
- Buddhism first and foremost recognizes that everyone is suffering in the world, and this suffering is because things end and will be torn from us; our relationships will end, our body will end, this dinner we are enjoying so much, will end.
- The buddha tell us that there is a way out of suffering, a method to be free from mental affliction.
- This method is about recognizing the true nature of the world, and coming to understand that all things are empty from their own side, and are merely our own projections.
- Buddhists believe in purifying the mind and one’s actions, so that we can create our own worldview and literally create the world that we see.
- The laws of Karma are abided by, meaning that Buddhists only want to plant karmic seeds that will produce the kind of life they want. i.e. if you want wealth, you are generous and never greedy; if you want to be in love, take care of a lonely person and celebrate the love of others; if you want to be treated with respect, respect others.
- Meditation is used to help the mind stay grounded and focused and is essential for the continued spiritual development of the Buddhist, as is continuing to learn the wisdom of the teachings.
As Narayani so beautifully said in class at Jivamukti, “Our lives are like a ripple in a pond, meaning our actions, our presence expand out and affect the world. We have a choice what kind of ripple to be. Don’t you want to be a kind ripple?”.
These concepts are radical, especially the idea of emptiness, but as you start to refine your thoughts and actions, you will notice a shift in how you affect others and how the world is reflected back to you. If you want to read more, Lama Christie McNally’s The Tibetan Book of Meditation is amazing. It’s very practical advice given in a straightforward and kind manner that clearly illuminates the core teachings of the Buddha.
Yoga is Everywhere!
Playlist for my friends this week.
I am the luckiest girl in the world… All of my friends are getting into yoga and they want me to teach them! Everyone is reaching that point where they want to do something that provides relief from their daily lives, something that detoxifies their bodies and makes their minds stronger and clearer. Truly a blessing to be able to share this practice I love so much, that has enriched my life so much, with all of the people who I am usually hanging out with on the weekends.
While I was teaching my friends this week, I couldn’t help but think how we were creating our own satsang. Satsang is the coming together of like-minded individuals to hang-out in a non-mundane way. It’s like hanging out with friends with a higher intention than just passing the time away like we always do. It’s hanging out with the purpose of experiencing yoga and it’s an essential practice for staying on the path and deepening your understanding of everything that yoga can embody. As my 5 friends’ mats were lined up (at 9:30am, no less), I was so excited to get to share in their practice and all come together as a class. I made this playlist for them, and I hope you like it, too.
Why Have a Spiritual Practice?
"civilizations come and go like autumn leaves and rain"... awesomeness from paris earlier this month.
I was just hanging with a girlfriend talking about another of our friends who just returned from a 10-day silence retreat (my amazing, life changing hypnotist, Ilan) and we came to the subject of meditation. She asked me what the point of meditation is? Why someone would want to do it and consider it a productive use of their time. Meditation, like any spiritual practice, like yoga, studying spiritual texts, living according to the yamas and niyamas, like kirtan, satsang, and self-study (svadhyaya), is undertaken for one reason: to overcome suffering. Suffering is universal, and our minds are our captors. The whirling cycle of unproductive thinking (chitta vritti in Sanskrit) that keeps us awake, makes us feel insecure, fearful, angry, jealous and depressed is the suffering we want to alleviate through spiritual practice.
With meditation specifically, we try to sit quietly with ourselves and clear the mind from thinking, even if just for a few minutes of empty spaciousness. We try to carry that openness with us throughout the day, so that we can stay level and calm amidst the ever-changing ups and downs of the world. We want to learn through our spiritual practices, how to control the mind so that we can find lasting happiness, be totally free from suffering and in control of the world we experience.
On fire.
Bhagavad Gita and the Fountainhead
Just finished reading the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and I absolutely loved it. The Objectivism she writes about, that Howard Roark idealizes, kept reminding me of Krishna’s words of advice to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita explains the yoga of action, of perfection of action as a means of attaining peace. And a perfect act is one done for the action itself, without thought of the result, without attachment to the outcome. If you can detach yourself from preferences, from expectation, you free your mind from depending on things outside yourself for happiness and you take yourself out of the ups and downs the exterior world causes. To act for the action’s sake, is a means to remain constant and steady, despite the changing nature of the world.
In The Fountainhead, Ayn writes, “You must love the doing, not the secondary consequences.” This is the message of the Bhagavad Gita, act for the action’s sake. The Gita takes it a step further than The Fountainhead, by suggesting that each act be made into an offering to God. ”If you want to be truly free, perform all actions as worship” (3.9). In this way you allow yourself to dissolve away from dualistic possibilities of the results towards a mind that is unified, constant, peaceful and steady regardless of the ups and downs of the world outside the Self.
As my roommate Clancy said to me, once you read The Fountainhead, "you'll never look at our city's skyline the same."
New Focus of the Month
It must have been a Chinese holiday because I found this offering in front of my building earlier this week.
Happy September, beautiful holy beings. To practice yoga is such a gift! It has given my life direction and meaning and teaches me how to become my true Self each and every day (can you tell I’ve already taken class today?). Every new month, there is a new focus at Jivamukti and this month it’s “Daily Asana Practice.” What a perfect focus as we transition away from laxidasical Summer into steady Fall. Thinking of going to yoga as a practice helped me really accept it into my daily life. You don’t do yoga for anyone but yourself; as a means to vibrant health, clear thinking, and spiritual activation, and in this way, yoga is the ultimate you-time. It is the practice of working on yourself and creating who you want to be, every single day. At the end of this month’s focus, after explaining the myriad benefits of practicing, Sharon challenges us to try taking class 30 days in a row. Why not? You have nothing to gain but your Self.
Seek Safe Haven in Sharon Gannon’s New CD Sharanam
Beautiful Sharon in the forrest.
Sharon Gannon, the cofounder of Jivamukti Yoga and my beloved teacher, recently released a new cd that is like a breath of fresh air. If you have practiced at Jivamukti at all this month, you have probably heard her music. All of the teachers, her beloved students, dutifully play her songs throughout their incredible classes. Every time I hear one of her songs while in class, I feel relief. Sharanam means refuge in Sanskrit and she delivers. The music is peaceful and devotional. It feels good to hear her sing blessings while practicing yoga. This is definitely yoga music to elevate the mood, to lift you out of the mundane, and to remind you of the spirituality that is inherent to the practice. Check her out on iTunes, or come to class at Jivamukti and listen to her songs while you practice.
The back of her gorgeous cd.
Yoga Sutra of the Day
Teaching my friends in the Hampton's! Big thank you to Vanessa, Emmett, Tim, Danielle, and Bort!!!
“Vitrka badhane pratpaksa bhavanam. When disturbed by negative thinking, think the opposite.” -Yoga Sutra II:33
This sutra is a very basic, very practical way of dealing with negative thoughts. Those creeping feelings of jealousy, hatred, anger and pessimism that inevitably rise up within our minds can be dealt with through the age-old, ancient wisdom of this sutra. Think the opposite. If you are feeling sorry for yourself transform it into feelings of gratitude for everything you have. If you are feeling jealous of someone, transform it into delight at their situation. If you are being judgmental, see if you can temper it with compassion and sympathy.
In the everyday battle to control our minds and stay on the path of yoga, there are days when it is easy to feel the bliss that is our true nature and there are days when that sense of joy is completely buried and on the verge of suffocation. We have to deal with the darkness by focusing more intently on the light, in the most practical and effective ways. Change your thinking and you change everything.
Stretch your shoulders down, spread the collar bones, draw the navel deep into the spine...
Unbelievable Yoga Class Reccommendation
Dechen Rules!
I love taking Dechen’s class. It is always deep and spiritual and completely unexpected. I go to his class at Jivamukti on Sunday at 4pm, knowing that I will be taken on a journey and that anything can happen within the magical 95 minutes. If you want a break from your regular routine or if you never practice and want to take a chance, come to Dechen’s class on Sunday, and escape the ordinary. Last week he played whale sounds and he’s done entire Jimmy Hendrix classes, too. He is such an amazing teacher and has so much knowledge to pour over his students. I always leave his classes feeling transformed and light. A million thanks to this incredible teacher.
