Author: pmcrose

Life is an amazing journey of transformation, most obvious as we age, but nonetheless always present, though often more subtly.  We have a choice how we relate to these changes.

When my daughter was off to college and in the throes of transforming from a teen to a young adult, some words spilled out of my mouth that have now become a sort of mantra for me as friends, dear ones, and I change.

“What new forms may our love take?”

Remembering this and focusing on it allows more of a letting go to the moment, a willingness to support the relationship to take new forms as people grow and change.

Rather than the often more typical responses of holding on to past patterns and resisting and even trying to control change, this helps engender a genuine curiosity and openness to these new forms, thereby embracing new possibilities.

 

Even after all these years of yoga and meditation, so often it feels like I am somehow getting to know the energy of life for the very first time.

What if each moment was really a new and different opportunity for getting reacquainted?

 

 

Doing yoga is much like a giant highway infrastructure project that increases the road’s capacity to handle more traffic.

Yoga relaxes, strengthens, and creates space in the body increasing its capacity to be open to and handle a greater or stronger flow of the kundalini shakti or life force.

Isn’t it time we all invested in some ongoing capital highway improvements?

Remember, we are always a work in progress or “under construction.”

Through yoga and meditation, I tend my inner garden, as well as my physical being.

Grace is like the finishing sauce on a well-cooked rack of ribs.  It takes a lot of effort to do a good job cooking them.  But then there’s a little something that takes the ordinary and makes them extraordinary.  The super special lilt of flavor that makes us savor.

Such is grace to our life.

We try our best, but there’s something out of our control that lifts our efforts from the ordinary to the extraordinary.

I like to call this plainly “the magic of life” or grace.

Whatever you call it, thank it when it’s there; appreciate its finesse, its charm, its glow.

Smile, and bow your head to it!  Such is the power of grace!

Habits of the mind keep us cloistered.  We are, in a funny sort of way, secure or at home in these familiar patterns of the mind; we run them again and again and again.

Creative living is leaving these deeply worn grooves of thought, emotion, and action and developing new ones, pioneering new and different ways of mind and body.

Through meditation, we gradually learn to let go to and trust a thought-free state where the constant chatter of “me” dissolves.

We start to see our habits of thought as just that, and rather arbitrary–what we happened to be exposed to again and again and again conditioning our neural synapses to fire over time in certain ways.

Meditation can give us the freedom to let go of these and explore, and truly begin to change.

What can I bring to the earth to help us grow in a positive, uplifting way?

May we all find the value of our lives and live it, and share it!

Each of us is like a unique and varied tapestry being fashioned by life, both shadowed and bright, maybe tattered a bit, well-worn, with new threads and designs continuously added.  Our lives are interdependent, intricately interwoven into a gigantic and marvelous tapestry that stretches simultaneously across all time and space and yet exists now.

Who, or what, is the weaver I owe gratitude and awe?

The scent of a rose–

the stillness that vibrates

and uplifts.

 

The flutter of a leaf,

a hummingbird’s wings buzz–

 

feel the life force,

the stillness that vibrates.

 

The meditation gong dissipates

into the stillness that vibrates.

Anger and blame captivate the audience with their miserable dance.

What if we were to quit being hoodwinked by these charlatans?

The audience, entranced, is almost unaware of their clutched hands and grinding teeth and clenched jaws.  Their furrowed brows and forlorn faces grieve the loss of sweet life stolen by anger’s and blame’s phantasmagoric display.

What if we could see through this hologram of sorrow and realize it was only an illusion, like shimmers of fog that the light of the sun could evaporate into thin air?

What if there was no blame but instead contributing factors, pieces in the flow of life that nudge events along to their sometimes sad and painful conclusions?

With a grateful sigh of relief and lightened eyes, and possibly tears and freed and uplifted hearts, the audience, no longer transfixed, look to one another in love and tenderness and slightly smile with a nod of recognition.

I practice breath of fire before I meditate.  It awakens and turns up my inner fire to “cook” whatever needs digesting–food, of course, and whatever experiences I have imbibed during the day… whatever thoughts and feelings are up for me at that time, whatever I have in my gut to “process.”

I do alternate nostril breathing to balance this process of alchemy that begins in my gut.