Surprise!!

Today I woke up early to see my sweetie off to a Saturday gig... I mean, early: 5 a.m.! That might not seem early to you, but it's early to my body, which is generally not ready to be up until there is a hint of sunrise outside.

Sometimes when I arise that early, I feel cranky and not quite awake. But today, I woke up feeling happy and full.  I saw my sweetie off and went back to bed to meditate and dream. I love dreaming just before sunrise because the content is rich and creative for me.

Maybe two hours or so later, I made my way into my meditation space. That's when I saw it: a beautiful surprise set up by my sweet Sweetie sometime outside of my awareness, which is a tricky thing to do because I spend the majority of my time in my office where my meditation space is, and I'm in and out of that space all day long until I go to sleep, generally.

But there it was - my Anniversary surprise: a vibrant yellow Marigold; a beautiful and sentimental card; a certificate acknowledging the day we met at a car wash; a red "Love" candle; a Chinese 6 Coin Hanger for abundance; and several of my favorite chocolates!

My heart burst open at the sight of all the love that was sneaked into my day...Oh - what a feeling it was! I cannot describe how such a simple yet deeply thought out gift touched me to the point of tears.

My sweetie got me; my sweetie got me really good with that surprise. My mind was not in the space of "anniversary" because we debated and ultimately agreed that our official anniversary would be what we both considered our first date: November 9th.

But we met on March 26th at a car wash. Yep, I was waiting for my car (which conveniently got "lost" in the back some place) and there we found ourselves sitting on a bench outside engrossed in conversation for an hour. My sweetie's car came out before mine even though I'd been there for some time before...

That's when I discovered that my car was "lost." When I asked about it, the college student girl with the drying towels in her hand said, "Oh - that blue Mazda back there is yours?? We were wondering who it belonged to!" Um, yes, that blue Mazda is mine. For some reason I'll never know, my Mazda wasn't driven up to the front like the rest of the cars. It had been sitting out back for over an hour, and I had been sitting at that car wash for two hours by that time, thoroughly enjoying the visit with my new sexy and sweet friend. I'm not sure who they thought that Mazda belonged to but it was parked out back, clean, dry and ready to go.

That "delay" gave me and my sweetie plenty of time to decide we kinda liked each other, and to make a date to reconnect in a month or so after I returned from some travels I had coming up. I like to believe that it was divine intervention so we could meet, but that's just the romantic in me...

So when I discovered this beautiful gift this morning, I was completely surprised. "Anniversary" was nowhere in my brain. Until I read the card, I had no idea what the surprise was for; and even then, I was a bit confused: "Anniversary? But we decided that was in November!" It was the perfect art of surprise.

I was reminded that love is simply that: a random expression that reaches out and unconditionally touches the heart of another, just to love. How blessed I feel to be the recipient....

I love love!!

A Pain-Filled Lesson

It's been an interesting couple of days following an injury on Saturday. I'm deepening into the spiritual teachings I've been practicing for a few years now around opening to pain, particularly those of Stephen Levine: "...resistance turns pain into suffering; soften and explore the constant state of change within the sensations; watch the unfolding of sensation as a process; when we begin to respond to discomfort instead of reacting to it, an enormous change occurs. We begin to experience it not as just 'our' pain but as 'the' pain. And it becomes accessible to a level of compassion perhaps previously unknown; (and we begin to experience) the personal in its universal aspect."

The practice I'm focused on now through the Awaken series on conscious living is to reprogram the body's response to pain, including and especially the reaction of the mind to pain. Most of us grow up learning to avoid pain. It starts very young when we hurt ourselves. If you watch small children fall on a playground, they generally show a short-lived reaction to pain until or unless the adults around them react. Then it becomes a big drama! But if they are not critically hurt and the adults either don't notice or respond calmly, kids express their pain with some startled sounds and then get up within seconds and keep playing.

Usually what happens in our growing up years is we get message after message from adults to avoid pain, that pain means something is wrong, and that pain is something to be scared about. These adults are well-intended; it's their job to care for and protect us. They are responsible for our welfare and survival. Yet what we carry into adulthood from these experiences is a belief that pain is bad.

Believing that pain is bad as adults, we avoid and resist pain, which means we close our energy body around it. But what if we could stay open through pain? What if we could simply experience it as fully as we allow ourselves to experience other sensations in life? What if pain was not something bad to be avoided, but just an intense sensation instead? How might that change our experiences of it?

That is my practice. It's a practice in moving beyond the mind to open the energy body no matter what the sensations. In the realm of dying and death (as we are exploring in the Awaken series), it is a way to reprogram the body and mind to respond openly to pain rather than closing around it, so that as we die we can experience peace no matter what. When we master this,  a level of separation develops between us and 'the pain' that offers spaciousness to find joy and peace despite the sensations that may be running through the body. Since none of us know what our dying or death experiences will be, this is a great practice to master! Ultimately, it allows us to create and hold a container of bliss through the transitions of the body.

I got to practice this yesterday. I can describe how much pain I was in by saying it was tremendous! I (carefully) taught two yoga classes and interacted with people all day who had little idea what my body was experiencing (though the shiner around my left eye gave them an indication that something was different). My goal was to open my energy body so large that the pain would simply be a tiny part of my day's experiences, and to create enough space around the pain that I could bring in and hold joy.

I succeeded, mostly. I was aware of my pain yet not ruled by it; I acknowledged it instead of resisting or ignoring it; and I consciously opened beyond it to bring in joy. The pain was there and so was everything else; it didn't dominate my experiences. I shed some tears last night over the pain that felt linked to old body memory and energy that was ready to be released; it felt good to release it. In the end, I experienced a day filled with healing, joy and love instead of just pain.

Today I remember what it feels like to be in chronic pain. I remember experiencing chronic pain for two years following a serious car wreck in my thirties. Back then, I fell into a deep depression. Pain was the focus of my life as I took steps to find healing for my body. Although not the most pleasant part of my history, the experience led to a dramatic life change that I consider an awakening for me. 

Today, my body aches from my neck down to my hips and I still have a pretty nice shiner beneath my left eye. I know what to do for my body when it's healing, so I'm doing those things. And yet I notice myself leaning into the comfort of knowing that this pain is temporary. I wonder: "How might this experience be different for me if this were not a temporary condition?" I cannot answer that question, yet I do contemplate it.

Sometimes accepting what is gives us the opportunity to experience it without any temporal boundaries, since we can't know when or how what is in the present moment will change. But things in the present moment are always changing; that's the nature of energy and everything here is rooted in energy. I find comfort in that. When I attune myself to the subtleties of the pain in my body today, I notice the shifting sensations. The pain is not a static experience; it is a dynamic one in my body. As I deepen into that awareness, my body relaxes and opens, my breath softens and slows, and I find spaciousness within my being to expand around the pain and beyond it.

I could choose to view this experience as nothing more than a painful, unfortunate accident. My choice instead is to view it as a brilliant opportunity to reprogram my body and mind's experience of and response to pain. It is an opportunity to move toward mastery of opening big enough that I can find the spaciousness within my being to experience inner peace and joy no matter what... even tremendous pain and (ultimately) in the face of whatever my own dying and death may bring. Tonight I teach two classes, and I will teach them filled with joy, love and pain.

Every experience we have in life is an opportunity to grow and open. Today I am reminded of what a gift that is and my heart is full and happy despite the pain. I think that is pretty amazing...

The Garden of Life

 I've always wanted to be a gardener, mostly because I love the beauty and energy of the plants with their varied colors, shapes, textures and vibrations. On a deeper level, I realize it's because I like nourishing things into creation. Whether it's a pastry, a book or a plant doesn't matter. There's something fulfilling about starting with a few separate ingredients and mixing them together into a whole new thing that has its own purpose, design, flavor and energy. There's something magical about the alchemy of this mixing process and how it generates a new expression of being that wasn't there in the separate ingredients.

I've never had a garden of my own before. When I was a child, my parents grew strawberries, bell and chili peppers, green beans and tomatoes in a small flower bed but I've never had a whole space dedicated to a garden. It feels good to have one now, with fencing high enough to keep the local deer out. Yesterday I planted some onions, potatoes and a tomato plant in my garden. It may not look like much, but it is fabulous to me!

Each step of the way toward creating this garden has been exciting: from getting the fencing up, to gathering the dirt, to starting a compost pile, to creating a dedicated compost pile, to building the beds, to adding the worms, to mixing in fortified soil to our dirt... and finally to planting a few things.

I don't really know how to garden. I only know that I love playing in the dirt and nourishing things into bloom and fullness. I love seeing a bud grow and open into a beautiful flower. I love seeing a tiny sprout evolve into a vibrant plant. I love watching a blossom turn into a piece of fruit. I love lifting a plant from the soil and finding food down there. It's like magic!

Gardens are great metaphors for life. We nourish what we want to grow; we give it our attention and our love. Sometimes things happen and we watch what we've given our nourishment, attention and love to die before it reaches its full expression. We can't stop it or change it; it just dies. And sometimes we get to witness the full movement of what we nourish all the way to it's complete expression, it's last breath, and then it dies.

Either way - whether a thing is here only a moment or a lifetime - we get to experience its unique beauty and expression. It is sacred life force energy moving through space and time in a way we can't control. But we can give it our nourishment, attention and love if we choose to. And we can open to the full experience of it - whatever it is - if we choose to.

This year, I want to; I choose to. Each day offers me another opportunity to build and create the garden of my life.  

What will it be? What will I plant? How big and full will it get? What will die young and what will reach its complete expression? What will I nourish, give my attention to, and share my love with? What will I notice and what will I miss? How will I honor this garden of my life?

"Can I love all that is in my life ~ all that comes and goes ~ wholly and unconditionally, just like the plants in my garden?"