Left and right peace agreement

I am trying to declare peace between the left and the right sides of my person.

Here is a little background on the two sides: The right is tighter, smaller and more demanding. She is like a button mushroom that wants to be in control and controlled at the same time. The left is more introspective and relaxed, like an oyster mushroom. She likes to relax and read and sleep late. She can also be a bit of a slug.

The internal war often starts first thing in the morning. Something mysterious will wake me up. The right side is the first to speak. "Out of bed with you!" she says, very similar rhythmically to "Off with your head, you!" The left side pretends not to hear her. She is still considering a dream. There is a woman with the part of her chin that is under her tongue and between the boomerang shape of her jaw and the rise of her neck, gone. Something had fallen through there, or like in a whirlpool, actually sucked through.

The right side doesn't let the left finish thinking about the lady w/ no undertongue part. She insists that she write about the lady from the dream immediately. The left side doesn't want to. She is heavy like potatoes, and besides, one arm is asleep and unable to move. That arm, the left points out silently, knowing that the right has won the fight anyway, is the right arm.

In an alternate universe the two sides of a person could react to each other in the same way that two cats living in the same studio apartment do: reluctantly. The two sides could howl at each other, and then make out all in the same breath. They are cute together. At night they unzip. Then they air out. When they come back together they are able to snuggle once more in the peace and quiet in which they live.

My universe is different. It has something to do with patterning. Faced with multiple left and right situations, they cling to each other to stay afloat but bruise each other in the process.. There is nowhere else for the two sides to be but married to each other. And like any couple that has been together for more than 30 years, they know what the other will say before they say it, even though they don't necessarily like it. They hold serious grudges. That is why this peace agreement is so important.

hope

The sun is finally peeking through the clouds and it is really dazzling my eyes.
The colors are a little brighter after you haven't seen them for a while, no?
I wonder if we need to feel sadness in order to have happiness, or hopelessness to find hope?
I don't want that to be the case. I want to feel smooth all the time, but that is probably asking too much.
From her book Writings, p. 135, Agnes Martin writes:

When we are unhappy it is because something is covering our minds and we are not able to be aware of happiness. When the difficulty has passed we find happiness again.
It is not that happiness is all around us. That is not it at all. It is not this or that or in this or that.
It is an abstract thing.
Happiness is unattached. Always the same, it does not appear or disappear. It is not sometimes more and sometimes less. It is our awareness of happiness that goes up and down.
Happiness is our real condition.
It is reality.
It is life.

In yoga-speak, the things covering our minds are veils. The veils teach us, they frustrate us, they fill us with sensation and the need to run. In order to see reality, or happiness/bliss, we must work at moving through them, to our middles.

Agnes Martin was so yogic!
Real proof that you do not need to bend your body into a shape to be a yogi.

decidedly unyogic

I haven't written in a while because I've been feeling decidedly unyogic.
I'm trying to feel differently & maybe that is the problem?, the trying?
The artist Agnes Martin wrote about how when all pride is gone, then you are truly free.
Freedom = ?

a new intent!

Big news! I am now a blogger for intent.com
I actually just posted my first one about introductions.
Its a good one!
If you would like to read it, click here: Namaste
Please know that I will not ignore this bloga! It's like my baby (if I had a baby~)
Intent is just a way for me to reach a few more peeps.
So feel free, on your yogic computer wanderings, to visit me there. I would love to have you!

Infiniti's pace?

How would it be to act as if there were no beginning and no end to whatever you were doing.
As if there were only the action itself.
I did sun salutations once for 45 minutes straight. I'm not sure if I just worked myself into a tizzy, or I really did start to feel the pulse of the universe in my bones.
The experience did feel never-ending, and my purpose felt different than usual. Pretty much no purpose.
Acting without end could be like running in a marathon, without all the people cheering. Maybe it would be quiet and your feet would make nice noises pushing off the pavement.

(this is my friend morgan's painting. her website is www.morganmckeehan.com)

the leaves are falling...

The leaves in Prospect Park finally decided to let go. Of course not all of them, but A LOT.
They've been hovering at the brink for a while, looking like small pieces of fire.
And then last night there was lots of wind, and the beautiful leaves let go of their branches.
They didn't even have to think about it.
They let go, just like that.

President Obama!!!

I just want to keep saying it over and over again,
We have a PRESIDENT OBAMA!!!!
I'm just so happy I'm not quite sure what to do with myself.

Wow, sometimes its the best thing in the world not to be equanimous~

Obama!

How yoga is like playing music

You are in a yoga asana and your body fits just right.
You are breathing and the breath is resonating through your entire person.
And you love yoga so much, because the music your body is making, both inside your mind and on the edges of your skin is so incredibly beautiful, you can't help but get really quiet to listen.

That is also why, when you are first learning yoga asana, and your body feels awkward and difficult, or when your hips are tight and won't let you get into a place of comfort, you hear the screaching and shakiness of a beginning violin student. And of course you want to run.

Taking a flowing yoga class is like playing a melody that lifts and dips and travels in spirals and ovals.
A yoga asana in the Iyengar tradition is a single note held steady for a long period of time. Its beautiful, sustained and mesmerizing.

Yoga is called sometimes meditation in motion. Its also really so much about listening. About getting super quiet and listening. Even if it sounds terrible listening, and noticing if it starts sounding goergous listening too.

Who are you?

Ancient yogis (& modern ones too!) say that we are that which does not change.
Your mind changes, your body changes, your cells all change once every 7 years!
What does not change is the witness of all this change.

That much makes sense to me, usually....
Where it gets a little more intense, interesting, and hard to understand, is that what doesn't change in me is the same thing as what doesn't change in you.

At the deepest possible level we are all one, the same thing. Same ocean of drops.








If you embody and truly believe this, then:

1. You have reached enlightenment and please start a bloga that I can read!


2. You will be always full of glee because even if someone else wins the lottery, it will feel as if you won it yourself.


3. If you squander away all your winnings after that (as most lottery winners do?) you won't be sad because the whole of life (which feels much better than dollars) will be streaming thru you.

things that are broken and fixed

Lately, electronic devices in my apartment have been breaking.
I bought a TV one year ago. I discovered 2 weeks after it's one year warranty expired that the TV had no picture. I glared at it for a month, cursing my bad luck and complaining about how I never even watched it. Finally I called the TV people. They offered to extend the warranty and fix it. I didn't even ask them to do that!
Hooray!
Then my phone line got all crackley and died. The thought of calling a technician to come and fix it filled me with dread. Verizon said they would charge me (a lot!) if it was not an "outside problem". I felt worse. I made an appointment with a mysterious robot voice. Miraculously, the technician came 15 minutes ago, and now he's gone to have a look at the pole.
Outside problem!

Ok, 2 electronic breakage yoga lessons:

1. Nothing stays the same. Things break and are fixed. I can watch this ebb and flow like I have the best seat in the house. This is VERY yogic: I am the eternal witness, that which does not change.
2. What I think an outcome is to be, is never what the outcome will be. The thinking happens in my mind, and the outcome happens on the outside. Thinking about downward facing dog is very different than being in downward facing dog.
3. (related to #2) Worrying is pretty much pointless, it just tires the brain. Better just to do.