No Mud, No Lotus

Lakshmi is still with us at Shree, this week visiting as Kamala which means “lotus dweller”, and she is closely associated with this resplendent flower which she is often depicted sitting in.  The image of the lotus is one of the most powerful in Tantric and Buddhist philosophy.  The lotus flower is unique in that it blossoms in murky swamps and ponds.  It rises from the muck at the bottom which it roots itself into, then emerges into the muddy water as a bud, reaching upwards through the sludge towards the light at the surface.   When it surfaces and hits air, the bud opens and reveals a beautiful, pure blossom, untouched by all the muddiness it had to travel through to get there.

I shared in my classes this week that my 2 older children are in the “no fair!” phase of life.  It seems to be their response to just about everything I say.  My response is always, “Well, you’re right.  But I’m not sure who told you it was going to be fair.”  Life is not fair.  It’s often challenging and mucky and muddy.  But the story of the lotus tells us that we don’t have to stay there. 

 

I had a conversation this week with a friend who brought to light some issues I have been avoiding dealing with for a while, and it forced me to have to look at them.   It definitely brought me down into the muck.  And yet, after the initial hurting wore off, I realized that facing my shadow side is what will move me forward.  I’ve been avoiding the muck and ironically that’s what got me stuck deeper in it.  Now that I can acknowledge that I am there I can make a plan to get out of it.  That’s when transformation happens.

Tantra is non-dual system of yoga and life practice.  Meaning that what we are made of, the very essence of who we are, is the same “stuff” that everything in the entire universe is made of, and that “stuff” is nothing other than God*.  There is just one endless cycle and it runs through the entire universe, that which we can see and that which we cannot.  So what does that mean in practical terms?  That whatever the form, the substance is divine.  As the song says, God is in the roses and the thorns, the mud and the lotus.  At the sub-molecular level it all looks the same.  From the perspective of the Absolute this is obvious.  From the human perspective, not always so easy.

It’s been a challenging week for me.   As I sit and write I am making plans to attend the funeral tomorrow for the 24-year old stepson of a mentor, friend and colleague who finally lost his years long, epic battle with cancer.  So incredibly not fair.  It is often so hard to see the good and the beauty.  And yet I know that it’s always my choice. Whether it’s a challenging phone call or a funeral we can always seek the light, in whatever teeny, tiny crack it might be coming through.   It may be that it’s not coming through at all, and we just have to remember it is there and we will find it again.

All this is not to say we seek out negative, challenging experiences, quite the opposite.  What it means is that we accept all aspects of our lives, including those which are muddy, inconvenient, uncomfortable, and unhappy as part of the whole, and yet always seek the light and the ways we can blossom anyway.  As Sally Kempton says: “(May we) root ourselves in life’s muddy soil and use its fertility as compost to blossom the soul.” 

*(Yes, the G word has appeared again!  I try to avoid this word, but it’s really just a word.  The creative force behind all of creation has other names too – energy, source, absolute consciousness, love, the universe – but it’s just semantics.  I am sticking with the G word for now; I hope it doesn’t offend anyone.  If it does, please email or call me so we can chat more about it!).  

 

Off the Mat:

Make this poem by Erica Leibrandt your mantra this week:

No Mud, No Lotus

No mud, no lotus.

No noise, no silence.

No silence, no song.

No bitter, no sweet.

No low, no high.

No old, no young.

No weak, no strong.

No ugly, no beautiful.

No broken, no whole.

No black, no white.

No white, no color.

No missing, no found.

No fall, no rise.

No work, no play.

No death, no birth.

No mud, no lotus.

On the Mat:

In my classes this week we worked with hip openers, towards variations of what else but padmasana, lotus pose.  We worked to externally rotate (or outer spiral in Anusara-speak) the bent knee leg (or legs), which causes the sitting bone of that leg to lengthen downwards (rooting into the muck) and “scoop” forwards towards the top of the thigh bone, allowing the knee to widen out and move towards the back plane of the body, and the front of the hip to blossom open. 

For the Anusara junkies:

Open To Grace:

Take a breath and fill up with wholehearted acceptance of your whole life, every blessing and every challenge, and know that it is all the same continuum.

Muscular Energy:

Firm your muscles and affirm with radical acceptance the muck and the blossom, the thorn and the rose.

Inner Spiral:

Widen the inner thighs back and apart to widen your perspective.

Open up a space in the hips by widening the inner thighs to let some light into the dark, muddy places.

Outer Spiral:

Scoop your (front leg or bent knee) sit-bone down and anchor yourself in the muck of life with radical acceptance.

Scoop your (front leg or bent knee) sit-bone down, rooting yourself into the swampy mire knowing that seed will blossom someday.

Organic Energy:

Rise from the mud and flourish

The Art of Giving and Receiving

As we’ve learned the last few weeks, some of the ways Laskmi’s presence is experienced is as internal abundance and gratitude. The definition of gratitude is not only to feel thankful, but also the desire to give back, to bless others, and this is also one of Lakshmi’s gifts.  She is there in our giving and receiving when they are in balance. 

 

 

 

My husband is in an industry where often different companies will offer “Incentive Programs” to the sales force as a method to drive business.  There is a well-known industry story from years back about a beloved Administrative Assistant who wanted to take her niece on a vacation.  She was patiently and diligently saving what little extra money she had each month.  Some of the upper management got wind of her ambition and decided to, unbeknownst to her, create a program to help send her on her way.  The sales force and customers felt so good about this that they all participated generously and willingly.  Within a month they had raised enough to send her, her sister and her niece on a beautiful trip.  When she was presented with the gift everyone that participated was so proud and happy. She got her vacation, the sales force and the company offering the incentive had a great month – everybody involved won on every level.

This is a perfect example of how when we give we open up channels to also receive.  If you can offer that which you want the most to someone else, it often works to bring the same to you.  Many of us are inherent givers, because honestly it is almost always easier to give than to receive.  But are we opening ourselves up to receive in the same way?

Consider this: all of us are “getting” stuff all the time, but are we really receiving?  It’s a completely different thing.  To receive requires grace, vulnerability and openness of mind and heart.  My husband is constantly frustrated with my utter inability to accept, well, pretty much anything graciously, whether it be a compliment, a gift, or an offer of help.  It is hard to open ourselves up that way!   Yet when we put ourselves in the seat of acceptance of whatever is being offered, we offer the giver the gift of allowing themselves to express their love and appreciation.  To shun that can be upsetting and hurtful to those who making a heartfelt offering.

Think of it this way – have you ever given someone a gift that they have obviously (even quietly so) been unhappy with?  Maybe they were expecting something else, maybe they just felt like they didn’t deserve it, maybe they were just being rude and ungrateful – the reason doesn’t really matter.  Do you remember what it felt like?  Kinda crappy.  That’s what I’m talking about.

As we know, balance in all things is the key to gracious and mindful living.  When we give too much we become depleted, resentful, undernourished.  When we receive too much without giving back we become narcissistic, arrogant, and entitled (this includes “getting stuff” without really receiving in a heartfelt way).   Sally Kempton: “When you can allow yourself to receive with the feeling that you deserve the gifts of life and then give with the feeling that others deserve them also, you find yourself in the “auspicious state of mind” where shree is just flowing through you.”

When you find the balance between opening up to receive what is offered, and offering back all you are able to, you connect with your family, friends, community and environment in a profound way and with that comes a feeling of deep fulfillment.  

  

 

Off the mat: 

An exercise from Awakening Shakti by Sally Kempton:

What would you like to receive more of now?  Reflect on all areas of your life – spiritual experience, love, success in your career, fun, health, money.  Focus on one thing. Ask yourself how your life would specifically benefit from receiving this?  How would others or the world benefit from it?   How are you blocking it?

Now consider what gifts you have to give, what you yourself have to offer.   How can you offer a gift or blessing as an exchange for what you want to receive?  

  

What specific thing(s) can you do today or this week to make this offering and open up the Lakshmi channels of giving and receiving?  How can you help someone else to receive the gift that you desire?   When we cultivate generosity of spirit we invite more of the same back to ourselves.  And everybody wins!

On the Mat: 

In my classes this week we worked deeply with the breath, the pulsation of which mirrors the pulsation of giving and receiving in our lives.  With each inhale we receive the gift of life, of prana, of breath.  With each exhale we can offer our unique energy, life-force and essence back to the universe.  We worked with the pulsation of Muscular Energy (receiving energy) and Organic Energy (giving energy), the balance of which is needed to work into balancing poses of all kinds. 

For the Anusara Junkies:

Open To Grace: 

Fill up with breath and fill up with what it is you wish to receive more of in your life.  Invite it in by opening up space inside to let it move into you.

Muscular Energy: (related to receiving)

Hug into what you want more of in your life – receive, receive, receive because you deserve it!

Draw in to (the focal point from the foundation) what you wish to invite more of into your life.

The more the muscles tone, the more strength and integrity the bones receive.

What is it you want for your life right now?  How much do you want what you want?  Hug in that much!

Inner Spiral: 

Move the sit bones back and apart and make space for what you want to invite in.  Everything you want is available to you, sometimes its just a matter of opening up to what is already there.

Outer Spiral:

Anchor your intention and your tailbone in whatever it is you want to receive.    

As your low belly tones and engages, solidify your resolve to manifest in your life what you want for yourself.

Organic Energy: (related to giving)

Offer, offer, offer wildly and without abandon the gifts you have to give, because everyone else deserves it too!

Offer energetically what you have to share with those in the room and beyond.

Offer blessings with every cell through the form of your pose.

How grateful are you for all that you have?  Energetically offer back out that much.

Beauty is as Beauty Does

We’ve been talking about qualities of Lakshmi, and second only to abundance, the quality she is most known for is beauty, and her beauty has “an unmistakable set of qualities.  It is sweet, ripe, symmetrical and pleasing…cultivated, nourished and polished.” (Awakening Shakti, Sally Kempton). Think Kate Middleton rather than Sophia Vergara.

We often think of beauty as external because it is experienced through the senses.  But the beauty that Lakshmi represents is a quality that arises from a state of being, the physical representation is just a “result”.  For example a beautiful flower is the result of all the forces of nature coming aligning to make it so.  When everything doesn’t come together in this exact particular way there is less fullness and radiance, and the flower is small, droopy, maybe brown around the edges. It is the same with people - we have all met people that aren’t striking physically yet exude a radiant brilliance because of who they are.   And vice versa.

In Awakening Shakti Sally Kempton writes “Lakshmi’s gift are enhanced through a certain effort and craft.” In our case, when we practice yoga with mindfulness and good alignment we invoke Lakshmi. Last week we talked about sufficiency, and beauty is one of the “effects” of feeling your own innate “enough-ness”.  When you have the inner experience of abundance and beauty you know Lakshmi is with you, expressing herself as you.

I love that line from the movie Forrest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does.” – it’s so true, as proven by teenagers throughout time (just kidding!). You can really replace pretty much any quality instead of “stupid”, and for this week’s practice I changed it to “Beauty is as beauty does”.  In an alignment based yoga practice, action is more important than form.  What we do is so much more important than how we look.  Beauty is expressed by the heart's desire to connect with our deepest essence, and when that connection is made, to radiate the light that we connect to from the core of our being and express it with every action, whether it’s a yoga pose or a corporate speech, baking a cake or paving a road.  It can be brought to every single thing we do.  

I shared a story in class this week of being in class with a wonderful teacher a few years back.  He was demonstrating Eka Pada Rajakapotasana, which he taught and showed masterfully.  When he sent us off to do the pose, a woman in the front of the class was practicing a much deeper form of the pose, which was also very beautiful.  The teacher pointed to her and called out across the room “I want you all to know that that is what I feel like in this pose.”  We all laughed, but it was such a beautiful lesson of this concept.  We work towards the pose, we do the best we can possibly do in that moment and then we just let it shine – we don’t let it be diminished by whatever else might be going on around us.  That is real beauty. 

Eka Pada Rajakapotasana

Beauty "happens" when you are most authentically yourself, when you are expressing without reservation who you really are, bringing forth the unique qualities that make you inherently, beautifully you.  When you cultivate a beautiful practice, whether it’s on the mat or the way you interact with people, or even do your job with the highest artistry, you connect with all the pleasing and graceful qualities of Lakshmi and bring her charm and brilliancy to everything you do.   

May we all let the inherent beauty inside ourselves reveal itself with every act, with every breath, in all we do.

Enough actually is enough

One of the qualities that Lakshmi invites us to explore in sufficiency.  Enough-ness.  When you live in a culture of excess how do you know you have enough?  I read a study a while back about childhood obesity and children’s eating habits.  In it, children in many different countries were asked how they knew when they were done eating.  The majority of children from Eastern cultures replied when they were full.  In Western cultures the overwhelming response was “when my plate is empty” or “when there is no more food left”.  We have become so used to over-consuming we have lost the inner compass that tells us when we are actually satisfied and we end up having to look outside ourselves and use external markers to try to figure it out.  This of course spills over from food culture into every aspect of our lives including habits of work, exercise, over-scheduling, and consuming in general. When you live in a very affluent area this becomes an even more challenging path to navigate as we are lucky to have so much available to us.

Brene Brown says “When we value our lives based on how much we produce, when exhaustion is a status symbol and busy-ness earns us recognition how can we value rest and play time?”  When is enough enough??  Life in this culture is intense and it is easy to convince ourselves through the prism of mental scarcity that we aren’t going to have enough of anything (since there is always more), so we cling and hoard and consume more and more.  It’s a vicious cycle, and one admittedly I find myself and my children in often. And yet I know that when we identify with our lack rather than our abundance we contract and we cling.  We start to see the whole world from that viewpoint and we forget that the universe is ever-expanding.  That there is always enough of all the things we seek for all beings everywhere. 

Because what is it we really need enough of?  For me: enough courage, enough inner strength, enough wisdom, enough energy, enough love, enough happiness, enough peace. The really lasting knowing of which comes from looking inside rather than outside ourselves.  At some point in our spiritual evolution hopefully we realize we don’t need more and more of anything. Instead, having just enough is plenty, and when we take a step back and look at our lives through the lens of sufficiency most of us see that we are already there.

Yoga practice re-attunes us to our inner compass.  Lakshmi's invitation is to recognize the fullness, the beauty, the wisdom, the joy, and the radiance of who we already are.  It awakens us to faith in an inner fullness that tells us that we have enough.  When we practice with self-love and self-compassion we see that we are enough.  
  

Since we live in a culture of chronic over-spenders, over-eaters, over-achievers this can be really hard to do, but sufficiency means that you don’t have to do it all.  Mostly because aren’t you tired of being perfect all the time? I am. 

Off the mat:

Choose one aspect of your life to practice recognizing sufficiency in.  Two examples are:

Eating: Chew every bite 30-40 times.  Put your fork down between bites.   Close your eyes after every few bites to notice if you feel full.  When you do, stop eating regardless of how much is left on the plate.

Work: Take a piece of paper and fold it into thirds.  At the start of every day, make three lists with the headings: Have To, Should, and Only If I Have Time.  After finishing your "Have To" list, evaluate whether you have time and energy to get to the next list with full awareness and presence.  If not, save it for the list for tomorrow.

On the Mat:

We started practice in my classes this week in a restorative pose, because one thing I know is that none of us get enough rest!  We practiced antara kumbhaka (retaining the full breath in) as a way of experiencing the fullness of our lives.  We remember that there is always enough breath, it doesn’t run out, it’s always available for us to draw on in a deeper way, just like the deep wellspring of abundance that is our true nature.

For the Anusara Junkies:

Open To Grace: Align (the foundation of the pose) to align with all that is full and abundant in your life.

Settle into the breath and allow yourself to settle into “what is”, knowing it is enough.

Muscular Energy: As your muscles embrace your bones, embrace your life just as it is, knowing we have enough wisdom, energy, love, happiness, etc., etc.

Work at 100% effort – not 99%, not 101% - let 100% be enough and stop there without over-doing.

Inner Spiral: Move the inner thighs back and apart, expanding on the fullness that already exists inside you.

Move inner thighs back and widen your experience of what is already there and full in your life.

Outer Spiral: Outer spiral balances inner spiral – the poses wouldn’t work if we just kept widening and widening – so feel inside when you’ve expanded sufficiently and anchor your tailbone to say “enough”.

Organic Energy: Let the beauty of your pose radiate from a deep feeling of sufficiency, feeling its perfection in whatever form it takes.

Whatever you have to offer is enough – let it the pose sparkle with the radiance of you just as you are.

For those who loved the poem we read in class this week:

Enough 

by Danna Faulds

It's enough to offer love, 

no matter how imperfectly 

received or given.  It's 

enough to try and fail

at a difficult task; enough 

to fall and rise, stumble, 

fall again, sigh, and start 

to walk, however slowly, 

in the direction the soul 

points.  it's enough to 

seek peace and find pain, 

to gain nothing but a 

vision of truth, and take 

the long route home.  

It's enough to feel 

temptation, the dance 

of the senses, the hot 

pull of desire; enough

to call on God, walk 

through fire, sleep and 

cry and fear or welcome 

dying.  It's enough to be 

and breathe, to feel the

touch of wind on skin.

It's enough to take the 

day as it comes, to watch 

the ripples on the lake as 

the rock sinks to the 

bottom, to see the wild

reflection of the surface

calm into a mirror once 

again.  it's enough to 

hear the voice of fear 

and hide - or seek it out 

and face the shame or 

shadows.  It's enough 

to set out to tame demons

and watch them multiply 

instead.  it's enough to 

be buffeted by the winds 

of change and not blown 

over.  I and you and 

all of us, more than enough.