New Life

In Ottawa, recycling goes out every other week, so if one week you put out plastic and metal, the next week you put out paper. And although I'd done a bunch of clearing out before last week's garbage, the stacks of paper had been waiting for many days patiently on the back step for me to put them out.

I came home after yoga last night and began the process of putting the garbage out and then I was face to face with my resistance. Even though I had already decided that my old Who songbooks and magazine articles were ready to go, when the time came to actually put that stuff out on the curb I still wanted to hang on. I considered retrieving some of the notes of great ideas I've had that were in the pile.

Fortunately I have some company around this stuff right now and I was able to have a short conversation about the kind of life I want. I am so ready to have things change. Holding on to this old stuff is the old ways trying to survive.

As I get older I get even more sentimental as each item reminds me of another time and place or brings back memories of people I used to know. As sweet as those moments of memory are, I feel loaded down by the storing of the stuff. I feel faster with less stuff. I feel clearer. Healthier even.

Patanjali's yoga sutras talk about reincarnation. I'm not sure what I believe about life after death but I live like it doesn't matter. So the way I use the yoga sutras is to view reincarnation as happening within this very lifetime. Old ways of being dropping as new ways arise. I've experienced it myself. This conscious letting go of old material stuff is in a way walking into a new life with my eyes open, my arms outstretched (when they're not folded against my chest), saying yes.

(And in less lofty terms I'm just cleaning up after myself :) God forbid I get into an accident and you guys have to come and make sense of my stuff and try and figure out what was important to me versus what I just hadn't gotten around to throwing away...)

Oh, Those Chitta Vrittis!

You just gotta love those chitta vrittis, don't you? They're adorable. They even sound adorable. Just try and say it - "chit-ta vrit-tis." Sometimes they get treated like the enemy though like, "we gotta get rid of those chitta vrittis at any cost - let's blast 'em."

Some of you are wondering what a chitta vritti is. Let me briefly explain. Chitta is like the field of your mind where all kinds of thoughts can happen and the vrittis are like the thoughts or the waves that show up. Some of those vrittis are disturbing and some of them aren't. So yogis want to regulate the thoughtwaves or the vrittis so they don't disturb us, so we can do what we want to do and think what we want to think, which for a lot of yogis is nothing itself.

Or we want to concentrate on something or see the truth or experience ourselves, and if there are a bunch of disturbing vrittis in the way or even if they're not that disturbing but they're blocking the view, then we want them toned down or moved aside or even blasted away.

One of the things with the mind is that has a lot in common with the breath, for instance we don't have to think about breathing at all and we can let it do its own thing and we'll get by, however, we can also adjust our breath and enhance certain states (like health - but really I meant states of mind). Same thing with the mind - it will go on and on by itself, but we can also watch it and guide it on purpose, never really getting rid of it, but guiding it. Sometimes we can suspend the breath for periods - we can do that with the mind too - just suspend the thoughts or the vrittis. So the mind and the breath have a lot in common. Both can be monitored and adjusted consciously or they can be left on their own and will function unconsciously.

So if you're in a state where you've noticed your thoughts or your vrittis and they're bothering you or even their existence annoys you, one of the first things you can do is find them adorable rather than objectionable. Just don't be so against them.

The second yoga sutra in Patanjali's yoga sutras is "yoga chitta vritti nirodhaha." Swami J's definition goes like this,

1.2 Yoga is the control (nirodhah, regulation, channeling, mastery, integration, coordination, stilling, quieting, setting aside) of the modifications (gross and subtle thought patterns) of the mind field.
(yogash chitta vritti nirodhah)

and he's got a lot more to say about it all on his website, which I recommend you check out over and over again!

Swami J

I spent a couple of days with Swami J, and by couple of days I mean a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the evening for a couple of days. I'm going to go back in a couple more days and spend a couple of days as I just described :)

It was refreshing to be with a teacher who obviously knows his stuff, but it is able to impart it in a way that is soothing rather than jarring. Sometime I hear new stuff and I have to filter it and convert it to my internal language, but for most of the time I was with him, it was easy to listen to and fit in with what I already understand. I learned new things as well, but mainly it was new ways of describing things I've learned before, like Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, for instance.

He's really low-key and the ashram is his townhouse, which is a small place near a small mall in a small town in northern Florida, also known as LA (Lower Alabama). He's also all about yoga is not just asana, which is something I appreciate, and that without meditation, we're really not practising. And trying to separate them is untrue, as the term yoga includes meditation, but the way it gets practised in the West at a lot of places, people are basically doing asana classes without the other aspects of yoga.

He offers online classes/conversations to anyone who wants to join in. I haven't tuned in yet, but I plan to when I'm back in Ottawa.

Thought Powered Computers

I've been saying for awhile it's going happen. The energy of the future. It's our thoughts! Maybe not the energy but the director. Like this new thing that will assess the brainwaves and direct lights for an installation at the Olympics. I like to think one day we'll be able to start our cars with our searing gaze of concentration. Maybe if we can sustain the concentration, the dharana, we'll be able to keep the car moving. Let's begin with just starting the car up though.

Here's the link.

We had some great lessons this past weekend in the YTT with presentations of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras and some car analogies came up. Like our body is like a car and when we die, moving to another body is like getting out of our old car and getting into a new car. I went with the visualization. I like it. I don't "feel" that yet, but I'm trying it on.

This weekend coming up I'm going to visit Swami J of www.swamij.com in Florida. Too bad, eh? I know. Bummer. Florida. So far. Away. From the cold. And by the time I get back, winter will almost be over!

Anyway, I'm heading down to Florida for some more yoga studies and some visits and videoing and relaxing, eating and studying, and I'll see you when I get back! I may send thoughts and reports as I find internet connections, but if I'm sporadic, that's why.

Reincarnation

I don't know what happens after we die. I'd love to know, but I don't figure I'm going to know and that's okay. It does make it awkward when we're talking about the yoga sutras though. My thing about the sutras is that they are applicable to modern life, they aren't some archaic weird thing. And then it gets to the parts about past lives and reincarnation and it goes wild and then it seems to be an old text that's hard to relate to.

Unless I consider that the reincarnation is something that happens in this life on an ongoing basis. That works for me and is in fact, how I experience my life more and more, now that I've got more and more life in my past!

I've been talking to a couple of people about this recently and it seems that it does fit when it comes to past relationships. Sometimes it is like they happened in another life. One person told me she bumped into her ex-husband on the street. It wasn't long before she got that odd feeling like she'd known him in another life because she certainly didn't know him in her current life. Someone else said she'd like it if her recent ex would get out of town so he'd be out of her way and his ghost would leave too. I get it.

The way I've always operated is to be integrated so there aren't past lives in my current life, but of course, I can't help it. There are ways I've been in the past that no longer continue. There are people I've known in a former life. But for the most part, if allowed, I don't like to have ghosts haunting me. I want to be clear and complete and free to be wherever I want to be without being afraid I'm going to run into someone who's going to change my day.

I've also been working with the idea that if I want something in my life, the thing is to give it. Like an apology for instance. I heard again today that "you can't get carrots at Canadian Tire," and I know me wanting an apology is definitely not going to get me one. However, I can give an apology and then an apology would be present. It was hard and I could see where I'd been really not at all willing to apologize for something I did just about two months ago. I'm right, the other person deserved it, why on earth should I be the one to apologize, that's crazy, blah blah blah.

Well, I sat down and typed an email and apologized for what I did, for my reaction to the news, for how I behaved. I gave what I wanted to receive. Not in order for me to get an apology back - I don't expect one (I did get a response though). However, I wanted a proper apology to be present (as opposed to the kind that go, "I said I'm sorry! I messed up. I made a bad decision! I'm sorry!") and the only person who was around to give one out today was me, so I did it. When the thought hit me I totally resisted it. I did not feel sorry one little bit. But I thought about it and wondered what I could apologize for and I found more than one thing that I did that I realize had an impact and could be acknowledged. And I feel a lot better. Not back to full freedom, not the new incarnation, but I can sense I'll be born again into a new life and it's not that far off.

So if reincarnation is just me being born again every month or every few years, I get it. It makes sense. The teachings are something I can use in this lifetime, in all of these incarnations of me.

Answers from the Past

I know the news is telling us that these are new times and it's like we have new problems now or something, but when I think about what the yoga sutras tell us, we've been having the same old problems for thousands of years. There's really nothing new about it all. There are going to be circumstances that we like and circumstances that we don't like. Everything's changing - all the time.

What's not changing is that still, quiet place inside. It's always there. And the breath is always there to lead you to it. To lead me to it.

What's happening around is does not have to impact our happiness. We let it and then we can realize that that's not real happiness we had. We thought we were happy, but if it can be busted up by numbers on a screen changing, or people coming and going, it wasn't really happiness in the first place. So we can be directed to where real happiness is located - anyplace, anytime, doing anything. It's not specific.

The yogis have been saying it for thousands of years. It's not outside - it's inside. Go inside, find it there, and then everything else will be different. They don't say to fix everything around us, make our bodies a certain way, find the right job, partner, home. Nothing like that. Just to go inside, meditate, and stop being disturbed by our thoughts. That doesn't mean we'll be placated, passive individuals by any means. But we may stand a chance at being present and happy.

Now is the Time for Yoga

"Now is the time for yoga," is the first of the yoga sutras (teachings of yoga by Patanjali) and says so much about yoga and life. Now is the only time for anything really. It's always now but we get confused and obsessed by the past and the future, but really it's all just now. (Listen to Oprah and Eckart if you want to hear more about it.)

Another way to consider it is, "now that you've finally realized your way of doing it isn't working, it's time for yoga." Like you can't do yoga when your big ego is in the way or is guiding you. When you approach yoga with a state of mind that is curious and anticipatory, you're more open and receptive and can get on with the job. When you think you know everything, yoga's not going to happen.

But seriously, now is the time for yoga. I've got to get dressed and ready for a full day of yoga teaching. So now really is the time for yoga and I'd better hurry up!