Day #100 - The Beginning.....

Today’s favourite poses: TBA

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: TBA

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading video

Day #99

Today’s favourite poses: Table, Dog, 3 Legged Dog, Child's Pose

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 15-20

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading/video:

Day #98

Today’s favourite poses: Warrior, Plank

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 10-15

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading/video:

Day #97

Today’s favourite poses: The usual suspects (Dog, Pigeon, Child)

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 5-10

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading/videos:

Day #96

Today’s favourite poses: Plank, Child

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 6

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading (Taken from the National Association for Christian Recovery)

Most children who have negative attachment experiences will defend against a conscious awareness that they are not loved, and will decide that the problem is with themselves – that they are not lovable. However, unconsciously they will "see" others as not loving, including God. As a result, they will unconsciously avoid true intimacy with others and with God.

Day #95

Today’s favourite poses: Child only. Only Child

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 10 total

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading videos

Day #94

Today’s favourite poses: Ch, D, P

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 3, 5, 3

Today’s interesting/thought provoking Vid

Day #93

Today’s favourite poses: Child, Dog, Bird

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 3

Today’s interesting/thought provoking video

(I really liked this video, except for the part where they sort of use fear to discourage fear…….Still worth a watch though....)

Day #92

Today’s favourite poses: Pigeon, Plank

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 5-10

Today’s interesting/thought provoking videos

Day #91

Today’s favourite poses: Pigeon, Tree, Warrior II, II, Down. Ward. Facing. Dog!

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: TBA

Today’s interesting/thought provoking videos

Day #90

Today’s favourite poses: Pigeon, Warrior, Child, Doggie

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 2

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from At Home in the Muddy Waters by Ezra Bayda)


Staying in the “what” has nothing to do with wallowing. Wallowing involves believing in our thoughts and opinions. To stay in the “what” is to experience the moment with all its uncertainty – without the ground of thoughts and concepts, with no knowledge of what is to come. This is just the place where we least want to be.

But as we continue to push the truth of the moment away – whether by attempting to figure it out or through flights into our comfortable addictions and fantasies – the heaviness, drama, distress, and dis-ease of our life will persist. As we insist on believing in our thoughts and judgements, we will continue to shut ourselves off from the depth, the genuineness, and the satisfaction available to all of us in every moment.

Day #89

Today’s favourite poses: Dawg, Cat, Child,

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 10. no more, no less

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from At Home in the Muddy Waters by Ezra Bayda)


Nonetheless, we continue to believe in our thoughts, especially those most deeply conditioned. It’s our urgent need to avoid the groundlessness , the anxious quiver of being, that drives us to embrace our concepts, our beliefs, our judgements – in order to gain some footing, a measure of security, a sense of living in a known world. And, of course, there’s the juicy gratification of “being right”.

What are we really doing when, for example, we sit in meditation allowing ourselves to get lost in planning? We’re simply living in the mental world, where we can try to make life ordered, stable, and predictable. We’re avoiding the “whatness” – the discomfort and uncertainty of the present moment. In those moments when we fall into the muddy water of uncertainty, can we just stay with the “what” of our experience without escaping into thinking, analyzing, judging, blaming or believing?

Day #88

Today’s favourite poses: Tree, Child (more like fetal)

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 20 or so


Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from At Home in the Muddy Waters by Ezra Bayda)


Nietzsche said that every word is a preconceived judgement. Consider the word ego. Using the word ego leads us to view it as an independent thing. But “ego” is just a concept describing a cluster of preconceived judgements that is definitely not one entity. This is an example of how ideas can limit us, imprison us. This individual “self” is just an idea, nothing more. To see through words and ideas is to come closer to knowing who we really are, and to understand what life is truly about.

Day #87

Today’s favourite poses: Child, Cat, Cobra

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 15?

Today’s interesting/thought provoking video

Day #86

Today’s favourite poses: Tree

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 10

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from At Home in the Muddy Waters by Ezra Bayda)


When problems arise in our life, we usually want simple answers: yes or no, this or that. But reality is a world of subtlety and paradox, a world of complexity, continuums, and change. We want to know why (is this happening?) and how (can I fix it?). We want the feeling of perceived comfort that comes when we think we’ve finally figured life out. But the truth is, we’ll never figure life out. Residing in the experiential “what” is the way we find the rock bottom security that is possible from practice.

The reason we’ll never figure out life by asking “why” and “how” is that it’s impossible to say what life is. In fact, life isn’t anything. It’s not meaningful, it’s not meaningless, it’s not a challenge, it’s not an opportunity, it’s not a process, it’s not a nonduality. Life isn’t difficult or hopeless. Nor does it correspond to any of the other colorings of mind we use to describe and explain what we think and feel. Life is what it is.

Day #85

Today’s favourite poses: Plank, Pigeon, Triangle, Warrior I, II, III, Dancing Warrior

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: (a few)

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from At Home in the Muddy Waters by Ezra Bayda)

As we practice experiencing this “what”, with fewer filters, our self-imposed boundaries dissolve, and the bubble of perception of our separate self can burst, even if only momentarily. This is far different from striving to have “enlightenment experiences”, through which we hope to achieve a permanent state of clarity and calm. This is a false pursuit; no single experience makes us permanently clear and peaceful. In fact, the pursuit of this fantasy state is often driven by the very same greed and ambition we are trying to dispel. Instead, I’m talking about the slow experiential dismantling of layer after layer of our illusions about who we are and what our life is. Experiencing, rather than trying to have special experiences, is where real freedom lies. This is how we learn that our normal way of looking at the world is only a description, and only one of many possible descriptions.

Day #84

Today’s favourite poses: Cat, Dog, Cobra, Tiger, Spider?

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: Hours and Hours

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from At Home in the Muddy Waters by Ezra Bayda)

POTATO SALAD

Everything we observe is in some way related to something else, which in turn is related to something else again. In other words, each element of our life is part of a system, and each system is a part of another system. No single theory can ever really explain or even describe the complexity of this interrelatedness, nor can it take into account the subjective filter of the person explaining.. yet we constantly try to figure out our world by categorizing, simplifying, and generalizing.

Furthermore, we think we can experience this world only through our perceptions. But as filtered pictures of a perceived reality, our perceptions are never accurate. We think we see reality, we think we sometimes even know reality, but what we see is our own bubble of perceptions, filtered through the mental constructs of time, space, and causality, as well as our associations, desires, language, and conditioning. We don’ see things as they are, we see them as we are.

On the day-to-day level, when what we perceive fails to match our ideas of how things should be, we experience emotional and physical distress. When what we experience is contrary to what we want – and what we want almost always involves being free from discomfort and pain – we experience suffering.

Suppose for example, that I expect my mate to protect me. What happens when my mate doesn’t protect me? In fact, what happens when my mate not only doesn’t protect me, but criticizes me instead? Most likely, I’ll experience some form of distress – an emotional and bodily reaction that won’t feel good. Reactions like this are frequently based on unfulfilled expectations, rooted in clouded perceptions and simplistic notions of others, ourselves, and human relationships.

Even though we know we’re living in a complex world of interconnections, we tend to focus on just one element of any given situation. Why is this happening to me? Who can I blame? How can I fix this? With a subtle arrogance, we reduce the web of interrelationships to a simplified version of an answer we can never really know. We could just as arbitrarily attribute our distress to the potato salad we ate for lunch.


When life isn’t going as we wish, practice is neither to seek explanations nor to assign blame. We can practice simply being with the “what” on as many levels as we can, rather than looking for the “why”. Once again we ask the koan, “What is this?” the answer to this question is always our experience itself. This standing lies: not in the mental world of “why”, not in intellectual description, but in experiencing directly the ambiguous perceptual complexity of the present moment.

Day #83

Today’s favourite poses: Dog, Pigeon, Child, Warrior

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 20-25

Today’s interesting/thought provoking video (with one of the sexiest voices i have ever heard!)

Day #82

Today’s favourite poses: Plank, Child, Plank, Child, Plank, Plank, Child!

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 1ish

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: Tao Te Ching verse 56, 63

Those who know don't talk.
Those who talk don't know.

Close your mouth,
block off your senses,
blunt your sharpness,
untie your knots,
soften your glare,
settle your dust.
This is the primal identity.

Be like the Tao.
It can't be approached or withdrawn from,
benefited or harmed,
honored or brought into disgrace.
It gives itself up continually.
That is why it endures.


Act without doing;
work without effort.
Think of the small as large
and the few as many.
Confront the difficult
while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task
by a series of small acts.

The Master never reaches for the great;
thus she achieves greatness.
When she runs into a difficulty,
she stops and gives herself to it.
She doesn't cling to her own comfort;
thus problems are no problem for her.

Day #81

Today’s favourite poses: Pigeon, Plank, Child, Cobra

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 5ish

Today’s interesting/thought provoking video:

Day #80

Today’s favourite poses: Plank, Pigeon, Dog, Cobra

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 5 or 10 (so far)

Today’s interesting/thought provoking videos brought to you by the guy who tells the best (most important) stories! Dr. Dyer

Day #79

Today’s favourite poses: Pigeon, Dolphin, Plank!

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 10 or 15 (there wasn't a clock in the room)

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle)

Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is complete, you lay it down. As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most peoples thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind an you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.

When you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence – your deeper self – behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.

When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream – a gap of “no mind”. At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you. This is the beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with Being, which is usually obscured by the mind. With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen. In fact, there is no end to its depth you will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being.

It is not a trancelike state. Not at all. There is no loss o consciousness here. The opposite is the case. If the price of peace were a lowering of your consciousness, and the price of stillness a lack of vitality and alertness, then they would not be worth having. In this state of inner connectedness, you are much more awake than in the mind-identified state. You are fully present.

As you go more deeply into this realm of no mind, as it is sometimes called in the East, you realize the state of pure consciousness. In that state you feel your own presence with such intensity and such joy that al thinking, all emotions, your physical body, as well as the whole external world become relatively insignificant in comparison to it. You yet this is not a selfish but a selfless state. It takes you beyond what your previously thought of as ”your self”. That presence is essentially you and at the same time inconceivably greater than you.

Instead of “watching the thinker”, you can also create a gap in the mind stream simply by directing the focus of your attention into the now. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.

Day #78

Today’s favourite poses: Child's pose, and that's all your getting

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: -56

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle)

Although this in no way affects my belief in/about God, I’m trying to be more open-minded spiritually. Just as there are aspects of Christianity that I don’t agree with, there are some new-age theories that also make me sceptical. In both instances, extremes, (fundamentalists) or completely going over the top (such as making proclamations that we are all caught in a hologram like flies in a web waiting for an alien being to come and destroy/rescue us) completely insults my sensibilities. But in the interest of expanding my horizons, I have been looking for the deeper meaning of things while trying to weed out the flakes and the fake prophets and ill-intentioned charlatans. Basically, I pick and choose what seems plausible, uplifting, inspiring, and non-harmful (steering clear of anything that denies God’s existence as that is not in line with my personal belief system). I find many of the eastern faiths/traditions usually meet these criteria.

Perhaps my biggest struggle though, has been trying to sort out how the eastern philosophers state that our “thoughts mean absolutely nothing”, while some of the new age thinkers state that our thoughts are so powerful we can “create and change the ENTIRE UNIVERSE.”??? While I’ve always believed in the power of positive thought, this contradiction seems beyond me. How can something that means “nothing”, be so pervasive and formidable?? And how can we as a species even survive if we cannot rely on our thoughts?!!

Descartes’s “Cogito ergo sum” has always made a lot of sense to me, but so far, the overthinking I do (especially on things that are completely beyond my realm/grasp, which is quite a lot), has gotten me into nothing but trouble. It certainly hasn’t added to the quality of my life (who can lead a peaceful existence when you are so sleep deprived from the anxiety developed from not being able to turn those annoying thoughts off?!)

Besides the world's greatest guru (Erik), I think Eckhart Tolle came up with the best explanation for me as to why our thoughts are so ‘unimportant/unreliable’:

Identification with your mind, which cause thought to become compulsive is the greatest obstacle to experiencing reality. Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being. It also creates a false mind-made self that casts a shadow of fear and suffering.

The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement “I think, therefore I am”. He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, live in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind. Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of being “at one” and therefore at peace. At one with life in its manifested aspect, the world, as well as with your deepest self and life unmanifested – at one with Being. Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering, and continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking. What an incredible liberation this is.

Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgements, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and GOD.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly, you don’t use it at all. It uses YOU. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken over you. ……The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity – the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize all the things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.

Day #77

Today’s favourite poses: The usual fav.s Dog, Pigeon, Child, Warrior

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 15

Today’s interesting/thought provoking videos that link quantum physics and consciousness (or GOD and SCIENCE):

Day #76

Today’s favourite poses: Tiger, Pigeon, Child, Cobra, Tiger, Pigeon, Child, Cobra.....

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 25

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading taken from my e-mail in 2010 (thanks Sagey)

Our effect on reality starts with our intuition, our thoughts, and our subconscious. We can measure our thoughts as electromagnetic energy so every thought or word exists as an energy in the universe. Energy eventually manifests into matter and becomes our daily experience, so marshal your thoughts. - G

We are divine. We are creative beings. If our thoughts and actions manipulate the reality around us, that is something. As conscious beings it becomes our duty to figure out exactly what's going on. After all, we are deciphering the course of our planet and, in turn, our solar system and entire universe. - G


Or, as Dr. Wayne Dyer puts it:

We can all draw a map of our own consciousness to show how every thought computes to either weaken or strengthen you. Authentic wisdom is the ability to monitor yourself at all times to determine your relative state of weakness or strength, and to shift out of those thoughts that weaken you. In this way you keep yourself in a higher state if consciousness and you prevent yourself from weakening every single cell in your body.

Emotion is energy in motion. When you move energy, you create effect. If you move enough energy, you create matter. Matter is energy conglomerated, moved around, shoved together If you manipulate energy long enough in a certain way, you get matter. It is the alchemy of the universe. It is the secret of all life. Thought is pure energy. Every thought you have, have ever had, and will ever have is creative. The energy of your thought never ever dies ever. It leaves your being and heads out into the universe, extending forever. A thought is forever.

You have always been, and always will be, a divine part of the divine whole. Your job on Earth, is not to learn (because you already know), but to remember WHO YOU ARE. You have come here to work out an individual plan for your own salvation.

Inquire within, rather than without, asking: What part of my Self do I wish to experience now in the face of this calamity? What aspect of being do I choose to call forth? For all life exists as a tool of our own creation, and all of its events merely present themselves as opportunities for you to decide, and be, WHO YOU ARE. This is true for every soul, and so you see there are no victims in the universe, only creators.

There is only one reason to do anything: as a statement of WHO YOU ARE. Used in this way, life becomes self-creative. You use life to create your Self as WHO YOU ARE and WHO YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO BE. There is also only one reason to un-do anything: because it does not reflect you. It does not represent you (that is, it does not re-present you). if you wish to be accurately re-presented, you must work to change anything in your life which does not fit into the picture of you that you wish to project into eternity.

You cannot change the outer event (for that that has been created by the lot of you, and you are not grown enough in your consciousness to alter individually that which has been created collectively) so you must change the inner experience.


The thought that makes most people the weakest is shame, which produces humiliation. The importance of forgiving yourself cannot be stated strongly enough. If you carry around thoughts of shame about what you've done in the past, you're weakening yourself both physically and emotionally. Removing your own thoughts of shame involves a willingness to let go, to see your past behaviours as lessons you had to learn, and to reconnect to your source through prayer and meditation.

After shame, guilt and apathy make you the weakest. They produce the emotions of blame and despair. To live in guilt is to use up your present moments being immobilized over what has already transpired. No amount of guilt will ever undo what's been done. If your past behaviour mobilizes you to learn from your mistakes, this is not guilt; its learning from the past. But to wallow in the present moment over your so-called errors is a waste of time and energy.

Releasing guilt is like removing a huge weight from your shoulders. Guilt is released through the empowering thought of love and respect for yourself. You empower yourself with love and respect, letting go of standards of perfection and refusing to use up the precious currency of your life with the thoughts that only continue to frustrate and weaken you. Instead you can vow to be better than you used to be.


(Just because you let go of guilt and shame, it doesn't mean you aren't sorry for what you have done. It also doesn't mean that you absolve someone else of their actions either. For a person to ONLY focus on what someone else has done is living in denial though. We all have to look at the mistakes we've made and whether or not we gave someone a raw deal. I guess we just have to take what we are dealt, but sometimes the cards we were shown turned out to be completely different than what we thought we had in our hands. And what we had in our hands, wasn't what we had in our hearts.)

Day #75

Today’s favourite poses: Pigeon, Dog, 3 Legged Dog, Dancing Warrior, Warrior III

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: Ten?

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from Meditations from the Mat by Rolf Gates and Katrina Kenison)

Note – I used to think that it was completely arrogant to consider us lowly humans as divine. Yes, God created us in His image, but how dare we compare our flawed, weak, and ignorant souls to the Almighty Creator?! But as per a post on my other blog, a few months ago, my friend Greg (and later Erik, Nate, Joe and Theresa) said some things to me that convinced me that when my little sister proclaimed “God made me, and God don’t make no junk”, back when we were kids, there was truth to that. I have also read/researched many spiritual/sacred texts (yes, there are MANY of them, not just the bible, although if you think that is the one and only source of divine wisdom, good for you), that reaffirmed my sister, and my friends. The next couple posts are concurring viewpoints.

“We are to think of ourselves as immortals, dwelling in the light, encompassed and sustained by spiritual powers. The steady effort to hold this thought will awaken dormant and unrealized powers, which will unveil to us the nearness of the eternal.” Charles Johnston.

There are two lessons in this beautiful statement about yoga. The first concerns our true nature, “dwelling in the light, encompassed and sustained by spiritual powers.” Either we believe in our innate goodness and beauty or we do not; it is up to each of us to decide. We may spend our entire lives believing a lie about our true nature, or we may put our trust in our own grace. Either way, most of us have to choose what we believe about ourselves each day, each hour, each moment of our lives. The Yoga Sutras suggest that we stand in our divinity, that we consciously experience ourselves as miraculous.

In the second sentence, Charles Johnston returns to us one of the central truths of the Yoga Sutras; that energy is like a muscle; it grows when we use it. We grow in our capacity to do the right thing each time we do the right thing. Steady effort to hold this thought will awaken dormant and unrealized powers within us, which will bring us closer to that which we seek. So our divinity is affirmed, and the manner in which we can make manifest this divinity is outlined. We believe and act accordingly, and as we do, this belief grows in our life. We believe in compassion, live compassion, and compassion grows in our lives. We believe in love, live lovingly, and love grows in our lives. We stand in our light, live in our light, and the light grows within us. We need only make a beginning, and that beginning will foster within us the power to move forward.

Day #74

Today’s favourite poses: Tried doing a few Down Dogs before i went out, but kept spilling my beer

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: (ask the leprechaun. then ask him where he put my shoes!)

Today’s interesting/thought provoking videos:

(Thought I'd better post this early cuz 12-24 hrs from now I'll be shitfaced on green beer. Ireland. One of God's COOLEST creations! Well, that and green beer)

Hey 6! Try the beer with green slurpie in it. Better than gummy bear slurpies. Guaranteed.

Day #73

Today’s favourite poses: Child, Cat, Tiger

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: -7

Today’s interesting/thought provoking video

Day #72

Today’s favourite poses: Tree, some Warrior stuff

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: oodles

Today’s interesting/thought provoking video:

Day #71

Today’s favourite poses: 3 Legged Dog, Sideways Dog, Down Dog, Kardasian

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 10

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from one of my fav. Zen Proverbs and YouTube)


"The obstacle is the path"

Day #70

Today’s favourite poses: Tiger, Cobra, Child, Warrior I, II

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 10-15

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from At Home in the Muddy Waters by Ezra Bayda)

We all carry with us accumulated grief – not just for people who have died, but for every situation that has ever brought about an intense emotional reaction to loss. Each time we feel loss – of a relationship, of our ideals, and dreams, of our heroes, or of our faith – we’re likely to bury the feelings and erect a layer of armour to protect us from feeling groundlessness, despair, and isolation. This is grief.

At some point, the path of practice brings us face to face with these layers of armouring that keep us constricted and protected in our narrow world. At the time we create these barriers, we might have needed them; perhaps we weren’t yet ready to open up to the intensity of our feelings. Protecting ourselves like this can be a good thing. But if we wish to walk the path of awakening, relaxing into the spaciousness of gratitude and loving-kindness, we need to be able to open fully to loss.

Day #69

Today’s favourite poses: Child's pose (the only one this hangover will handle)

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind:

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from Meditations from the Mat by Rolf Gates and Katrina Kenison)

Attachment clouds our judgement, but letting go of our attachment is an enormous challenge to those of us who wish to use the asana as means for spiritual transformation. We can practice yoga simply as a means for physical well-being. If, however, we choose to make the asana an integral aspect of our spiritual path, the stakes become very high. As we invest more of ourselves in our practice, the desire for certainty grows. We wish to enjoy the assurance that we have found the one true way. But such certainty cannot be found outside ourselves, and we are always changing. If we are not steadfastly prepared to let go of yesterday’s truths, we fall prey to the fundamentalism found in any of the major religions; we begin to believe that this way is good, that way is bad. Clear seeing must be more important to us than the comfort of certainty, the power of feeling that we know. The letting go on the mat must be absolute. We must be beyond all opposites, anchored in the real, empty and clear.

Day #68

Today’s favourite poses: Sideways Down Dog and a couple other ones

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: No......(too many Corona's, sweetheart).....obviously I didn't write this part at 5:24 a.m.

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from Meditations from the Mat by Rolf Gates and Katrina Kenison)

A Course in Miracles is a self-study program of spiritual psychotherapy contained in three books. Although the course uses traditional Christian terms, it challenges reader by using them in non-traditional ways, as it seeks to remove “the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence which is your natural inheritance.” In A Course in Miracles, we are reminded that all of humanity’s troubles began the moment we perceived ourselves to be separate from God. We all know the story of the fall of Adam and Eve; we left Eden when we lost our sense of oneness with God and each other. But at the very moment the separation occurred, God also created the solution. According to the course, the Holy Ghost came into being to heal the minds of humans who believed that they were separate from God. God gave us free will, so it is possible for us to choose to be misguided. But in God’s universe the solution to our suffering became possible the moment we created the cause of our suffering.

In yoga there is a similar relationship between the problem and the solution. The all-pervasive avidya, or ignorance, is matched with the eternal vidya, or clear seeing. The moment we become willing to believe in a power greater than ourselves, or in a reality more complex than the material world of our own imaginations, we find ourselves to be embraced as intimately by the true as we have embraced the false. The old definitions of time, power, good, and bad are turned inside out and eventually become irrelevant as we realize that our entire belief system has been predicated on false assumptions. Even a hint of the truth has awesome implications.

Day #67

Today’s favourite poses: Plank (as in hit me over the head with one)

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 6

Today’s Thought provoking question:

What did you give up for lent?? I gave up chocolate, gummy bears, slurpies and Smirnoff. Oh, and childish things and youthful lust.

Day #66 - Dedicated to my angel, RICKY

Today is your birthday. You are not ‘here’ to celebrate it with me, but I had the privilege of spending some time with your daughter, which filled my heart with a sense of peace at this beautiful continuation of our friendship. You were one of the most spiritual people I knew. You were one of the very few people on this earth that I could talk with, about God. Since you went to meet our creator, I have been going to the church we used to go to. Sometimes I go when there is no one else there so I can feel like I am alone with you. The first time I did this, I opened a hymn book and found this. (I know you like it because it is similar to the prayers we used to say together):

The Eyes and Hands of Christ
Where two or there are gathered in my name
Love will be found
Life will abound
By name we are called
From the WATER we are sent
To become the eyes and hands of Christ
One we become
No longer strangers
No longer empty or frail
Filled with the Spirit
Every hunger is satisfied

Christ is the center of our lives
One in the Spirit
One in the Lord
One in the breaking of the bread
Life giving witness of our dying
And New Life
Held by the promise in our hands
Not what we are
But what we become
Not what we say
But what we do
Living the challenge
As bearers of the light
We are the eyes and hands of Christ


(I also find comfort in your memorial card, which reads):

When dawn’s first light
Turned into day
Who knew an angel
Would soon call me away
And though I didn’t get the chance
To say goodbye,
I leave you three things
to help you get by.
I leave you Courage
That you might see
Your heart can rebuild
a world without me
I leave you Faith
That you might believe
The spirit will survive
No matter how much we grieve
And I leave you Love,
To comfort you in its healing embrace
until we meet again in another place



Don’t stand by my grave and weep
For I am not there
I do not sleep
I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamonds glint on snow
I am sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle autumn’s rain
In the soft hush of the morning light
I am the soft BIRDS in flight
Don’t stand by my grave and cry
I am not there
I did not die



RICKY
I miss you
I miss having you to talk to
I miss your smile
I miss your laugh
I miss your arms around me
when I feel small and insignificant
Like I do now
I miss loving nature with you
I miss going on spiritual journeys with you
I miss how you made time stand still
I miss sitting in the quiet with you
I just miss you

But I still see you
In the wind in the trees
The birds in the sky
The dolphins in the sea
The stallion in the field
In the Northern lights dancing
The mountains, the moon,
The oceans, and waterfalls
Though you were gone too soon
You are God’s pure light
Strength, Peace and Grace
And you will forever be,
My love, my friend


"How lucky I am to have known someone who was so hard to say goodbye to."

Day #65

Today’s favourite poses: Tree =)

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: TBA

Today’s Thought provoking quote/video:

“Trees are poetry that the Earth writes in the sky”

Day #64

Today’s favourite poses: Plank, Child's Pose, Sunrise Salutations

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 6

Today’s interesting/thought provoking vid:

Day #63

Today’s favourite poses: Plank, Pigeon, Rock the Baby, Bow and Arrow

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 6 (give or take 1 or 2)

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from ZEN)

Practice
Just detach from all sound and form, but do not dwell in detachment, and do not dwell in intellectual interpretation – this is practice.
As for reading scriptures and studying the doctrines, according to worldly conventions it is a good thing, but from the perspective of one who is aware of inner truth, it chokes people.

Inherent Nature
Inherent nature cannot be named. Originally it is not mundane, nor is it holy; it is neither defiled nor pure. It is not empty or existent either, and it is not good or bad.
When it is involved with impure things, it is called the two vehicles of divinity and humanity.
When mental involvement in purity and impurity is ended, the mind does not dwell in bondage or liberation; it has no mindfulness of striving or non-striving, or of bondage or liberation.
Then, even though it is within birth and death, the mind is free, ultimately it does not comingle with all the vanities, the empty illusions, material passions, life and death, or media of sense.
Transcendent, without abode, it is not constrained by anything at all; it comes and goes through birth and death as though an open door.
Pai-chang

Day #62

Today’s favourite poses: Pigeon, Child, Dog, Cobra, Tiger

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 6

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from the Tao Te Ching)


The Tao doesn't take sides;
it gives birth to both good and evil.
The Master doesn't take sides;
she welcomes both saints and sinners.





OMG - I LOVE THIS BAND!!!

Day #61

Today’s favourite poses: Pigeon, Tree, Child's Pose

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 25-30

Today’s interesting/thought provoking video:

Day #60

Today’s favourite poses: Warrior I, II, III, 3 Legged DOG, Double DDog .....OH! and that tantric dance thing happened again.........I must have been taken over by the DEVIL or something! LOL!

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: At least/most 3-5

Today’s not so interesting/thought:

Day #59

Today’s favourite poses: Warrior III

Minutes with a relatively racing mind: Lots

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from Zen Proverbs)

The infinite is in the finite of every instant”

Day #58

Today’s favourite poses: Warrior II

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: Absolutely less than zero

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from Zen Proverbs)


"Knock on the sky and Listen to the sound."

Day #57

Today’s favourite poses: Warrior I

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: zero

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: Zen Proverbs:

"After enlightenment, the laundry.”

Day #56

Today’s favourite poses: Plank, Dolphin, Cobra, Tiger

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 10ish

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from YouTube)

Day #55

Today’s favourite poses: DAWG, TREE (A Mother Fuckin’ Redwood Baby!)

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 10 or 15

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from The Dalai Lama’s Book of Wisdom – The Essential Teachings)

Since compassion is the wish that others should be free of suffering, it requires above all, the ability to feel connected to other beings. We know from experience that the closer we feel towards a particular person or animal, the greater our capacity to emphasize that that being. It follows, then, that an important element in the spiritual practice of developing compassion is the ability to feel empathetic and connected, and to have a sense of closeness with others. Buddhism describes this as a sense of intimacy with the object of compassion; it is also called loving kindness. The closer you feel towards another being, the more powerfully you will feel that the sight of his or her suffering is unbearable.

There are two main methods in Buddhism for cultivating this sense of closeness or intimacy. One is the method known as ‘exchanging and equalizing oneself with others’,. Although it stems from Nagarjuna, it was more fully developed by Shantideva in his Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life (Bodhicaryavatara). The other technique is known as the ‘seven-point cause and effect method’. This emphasizes the cultivation of an attitude that enables us to relate to all other beings as we would to someone very dear. The traditional example given is that we should consider all sentient beings as our mother, but some scriptures also include considering beings as our father, or as our dear friends, or as close relatives, and so on. Our mother is simply taken as an example, but the point is that we should learn to view all other sentient beings as very dear and close to our hearts.

The Seven Point Cause and Effect Method:
The seven points are: recognizing that all sentient beings have been our mother in a past life; reflecting on the kindness of all beings, meditating on repaying their kindness; meditating on love; meditating on compassion; generating the extraordinary attitude of universal responsibility; and the actual development of bodhichitta.

Before we can apply the seven-point cause and effect method to ourselves, we need to cultivate a sense of equanimity towards all sentient beings, which is expressed through the ability to relate to all others equally. To do this, we need to address the problem of having thoughts and emotions that fluctuate. Not only should we try to overcome extreme negative emotions like anger or hatred, but also, in this particular spiritual practice, we should try to work with the attachment we feel to our loved ones.

Now of course, in this attachment to loved ones there is a sense of closeness and intimacy, as well as an element of love, compassion and affection, but often these emotions are also tinged with a strong feeling of desire. The reason for that is rather obvious, because when we relate to people toward whom we feel deeply attached, our feelings are highly susceptible to emotional extremes. When such a person does something that is contrary to our expectations, for instance, it has a much greater potential to hurt us than if the same thing were done by someone to whom we do not feel that close. This indicates that in the affection we feel there is a high degree of attachment. So, in this particular spiritual practice, we try to level out the attachment we have to certain people, so that our sense of closeness to them is genuine and not tinged with desire.
The key point in this preliminary practice of equanimity is to overcome the feelings of partiality and discrimination that we normally feel towards others, based on the fluctuating emotions and thoughts associated with closeness and distance. It really seems to be true that attachment constrains our vision, so that we are not able to see things from a wider perspective.

Day #54

Today’s favourite poses: Snake, Dog, Bird

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 15

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from The Dalai Lama’s Book of Wisdom – The Essential Teachings)

We need to cultivate a compassion that is powerful enough to make us feel committed to bringing about the well-being of others, so that we are actually willing to shoulder the responsibility for making this happen. In Buddhism, such compassion is called ‘great compassion.’ The point is emphasized again and again that great compassion is the foundation of all positive qualities, the root of the entire Mahayana path, and the heart of bodhichitta. Likewise, Chandrakirti says in his Entry to the Middle Way, that compassion is such a supreme spiritual quality that it maintains its relevance at all times: it is vital at the initial stage of the spiritual path, it is just as important while we are on the path, and it is equally relevant when an individual has become fully enlightened.

Generally speaking, compassion is the wish that others should be free of suffering, but if we look into it more closely compassion has two levels. In one case it may exist simply at the level of a wish – just wishing the other to be free of suffering – but it can also exist on a higher level, where the emotion goes beyond a mere wish to include the added dimension of actually wanting to do something about the suffering of others. In this case, a sense of responsibility and personal commitment enters into the thought and emotion of altruism.

Whichever level of compassion we may have, for the development of bodhichitta to be successful it must be combined with the complimentary factor of wisdom and insight. If you lack wisdom and insight, when you are confronted with another’s suffering, genuine compassion may arise in you spontaneously, but given that your resources are limited, you may only be able to make a wish; ‘May her or she be free of that pain or suffering.’ However, over time, that kind of feeling may lead to a feeling of helplessness because you realize you cannot really do anything to change the situation. On the other hand, if you are equipped with wisdom and insight then you have a much greater resource to draw on, and the more you focus on the object of compassion, the greater the intensity of your compassion will be and the more it will increase.

Because of the way insight and wisdom affect the development of compassion, the Buddhist literature identifies three different types of compassion. First, at the initial stage, compassion is simply the wish to see other sentient beings freed from suffering; it is not reinforced by any particular insight into the nature of suffering or the nature of a sentient being. Then, at the second stage, compassion is not simply the wish to see another being free from suffering, it is strengthened by insight into the transient nature of existence, such as the realization that the being who is the object of your compassion does not exist permanently. When insight complements your compassion it greater power. Finally, at the third stage, compassion is described as ‘non objectifying compassion.’ It can be directed towards that same suffering being, but now it is reinforced by a full awareness of the ultimate nature of that being. This is a very powerful type of compassion, because it enables you to engage with the other person without objectifying him or her, and without clinging on to the idea that he or she has any absolute reality.

Day #53

Today’s favourite poses: The Dawg, Pigeon, Child's Pose, Triangle, Tree

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 15

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from The Dalai Lama’s Book of Wisdom – The Essential Teachings)


The Two Altruistic Aspirations

1. The aspiration to attain enlightenment.
The highest form of spiritual practice is the cultivation of the altruistic intention to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, known as bodhichitta. This is the most precious state of mind, the supreme source of benefit and goodness, that which fulfills both our immediate and ultimate aspirations, and the basis of altruistic activity. However, bodhichitta can only be realized through regular concerted effort, so in order to attain it we need to cultivate the discipline necessary for training and transforming our mind. This does not happen overnight, but through a gradual process. Although it is true that in some cases instantaneous spiritual experiences may be possible, they are rather unreliable and somewhat shortlived. The problem is that when sudden experiences occur, like bolts of lightning, the individual may feel profoundly moved and inspired, but if the experiences are not grounded in discipline and sustained effort they are very unpredictable, and their transformative impact will be rather limited. By contrast, a genuine transformation that results from sustained concerted effort is long-lasting because it has a firm foundation. This is why long term spiritual transformation can really only come about through a gradual process of training and discipline.

The potential for perfection, the potential for full enlightenment, actually lies within each one of us. In fact this potential is nothing other than the essential nature of the mind itself, which is said to be the mere nature of luminosity and knowing. Through the gradual process of spiritual practice, we can eliminate the obstructions that hinder us from perfecting this seed of enlightenment. As we overcome them, step by step, so the inherent quality of our consciousness begins to become more and more manifest until it reaches the highest stage of perfection, which is none other than the enlightened mind of the Buddha.

2. Working for the welfare of others
The other aspiration of the altruistic intention (bodhichitta) is the wish to bring about the welfare of other sentient beings. Welfare, in the Buddhist sense, means helping others to attain total freedom from suffering, and the term ‘other sentient beings’ refers to the infinite number of beings in the universe. This aspiration is really the key to the first, namely the intention to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. It is founded on genuine compassion towards all sentient beings equally. Compassion here means the wish that all other beings should be free of suffering. So it is said that to be at the root of altruistic activity and of the altruistic intention as a whole.

Day #52

Today’s favourite poses: Dolphin, Pigeon, Warrior III, Down Dog Baby!

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: TBA

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from The Dalai Lama’s Book of Wisdom – The Essential Teachings)

The Qualities of Bodhichitta, The Altruistic Intention

The definition of bodhichitta is given in Maitreya’s Ornament of Realization, where he states that there are two aspects to altruism. The first is the condition that produces the altruistic outlook, and this involves the compassion that a person must develop towards all sentient beings, and the aspiration he or she must cultivate to bring about the welfare of all sentient beings. This leads to the second aspect, which is the wish to attain enlightenment. It is for the sake of benefitting all beings that this wish should arise in us.

We could say that bodhichitta is the highest level of altruism and the highest form of courage, and we could also say that bodhichitta is the outcome of the highest altruistic activity. As Lama Tsongkhapa explains in his Great Exposition of the Path to Enlightenment, bodhichitta is such that while one engages in fulfilling the wishes of others, the fulfillment of one’s own self-interest comes as a by-product. This is a wise way of benefitting both oneself and others. In fact I think bodhichitta is really and truly wonderful. The more I think of helping others, and the stronger my feeling for taking care of others becomes, the more benefit I reap myself. This is quite extraordinary.

In a sense we could say that the practice of generating and cultivating the altruistic intention is so comprehensive that it contains the essential elements of all other spiritual practices. Taken alone, it can therefore replace the practice of many different techniques since all other methods are distilled into one approach. This is why we consider that bodhichitta practice lies at the root of both temporary and lasting happiness. Now the question is how we can train ourselves to develop bodhichitta. The two aspects of bodhichitta, the aspiration to be of help to others and the aspiration to attain enlightenment oneself, have to be cultivated separately through separate trainings. The aspiration to be of help to others has to be cultivated first.

Day #51

Today’s favourite poses: Down Dog, Pigeon, Cobra, Child's Pose

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 15

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from my cell phone)


I tend to keep a lot of messages on my cell phone. In fact, ever since my friend passed away, and I found out about it a few days after I had deleted a few of his texts, (which of course I now deeply regret), I am AFRAID to delete most of them now. Some I look back at and smile or laugh, and some really make me think. In fact there are quite a few I have kept for months because they seem to come in handy when I need to resurrect them for some purpose (whether that is to give me a lift, re-enforce a decision, or make me look a little closer at something).

Recently I have been reading a lot about the Buddhist practices of altruism, compassion, and bodhichitta and how it all ties into suffering, enlightenment etc. It's really interesting stuff. As I was reading it, I remembered a text that a good friend sent back to me in Sept (at 2:30 a.m. no less, I cannot possibly imagine what we were talking about at that hour that spurred this particular statement, but of course when I consider WHO sent it, i.e. none other than 'the Sage', it doesn't surprise me in the least that it has now come to mean something deeper than I originally thought........


The text simply said: "We'll all reach enlightenment when no one else suffers."


So for my next few readings/posts, I will enlist the help of none other than the Dalai Lama to reinforce and elaborate on my friend's wise words. Stay tuned.......

Day #50 - Half Way!

Today’s favourite poses: Pigeon, all the Warriors, Tree

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 5-10

Today is Family Day in Canada, so I have been reflecting on how BLESSED I am to have such an awesome one, starting with my daughter, who is the most beautiful girl on the planet, extremely smart and funny, creative and athletic. She is caring, compassionate, and such a unique and amazing individual. My father, who taught me to be strong and honest and hard working, with a strong work ethic, to have, and value integrity, to have a positive attitude at all times, and to love nature, is my hero. My sisters, are smart, supportive, sweet, caring, and giving beyond measure. Vince, who I've known over 30 years, who helps me to raise our daughter, and is an absolute genius, and dear friend, who makes me laugh until my sides ache. And finally, my mother, who is so sweet and beautiful inside, and who taught me to have the ability to perservere when things are dreadful and awful, to laugh at life and MYSELF! She taught us all to be kind, compassionate, caring and giving, and to LOVE GOD. She also taught me to appreciate beauty, simplicity and serenity, such as in songs like these (which I dedicate to her):

Day #49

Today’s favourite poses: Child's Pose

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 10-15, give or take 15....kidding. (a solid 15)

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from ZEN - Insight)

It has been asked, "The principle and knowledge of the subtle truth of suchness is mysterious and profound: how can those of shallow perceptions gain insight? One should not misrepresent Buddha - Buddha did not speak in this way. All things are neither deep nor shallow in themselves - it is just that you yourself don't see, and think that means extreme profundity. When you have insight, everything you see is subtle; why put the bodhisattvas on a pedestal, or particularly set up sages? As Master Sheng said, "It is not that knowledge is deep- things are deeper than knowledge." This is just an expression of lament that knowledge cannot reach things. Don't be discriminatory, don't keep a grasping and rejecting attitude. For this reason it is said, "Truth has no comparison, because it is not relative to anything." The scriptures have body and mind for their meanings: the Flower Ornament scripture says, "The body is the treasury of truths, the mind is the unobstructed lamp. Illuminating the emptiness of all things is called liberating people."




Hui-chung

Day #48

Today’s favourite poses: Pigeon, Bridge, Treeeeee

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 25

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from ZEN)

Day #47

Today’s favourite poses: Double D, Warrior 1, 2, Dancing Warrior, Plank

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 10

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle)

What is God? The eternal One Life underneath all the forms of life. What is love? To feel the presence of that One Life deep within yourself and within all creatures. To be it. Therefore, all love is the love of God.

Day #46

Today’s favourite poses: Today I was diggin' on the Dog, and the Dolphin

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 7

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle)

The reason why romantic love relationship is such an intense and universally sought-after experience is that it seems to offer liberation from a deep-seated state of fear, need, lack, and incompleteness that is part of the human condition in its unredeemed and unenlightened state. There is a physical as well as a psychological dimension to this state.

On the physical level, you are obviously not whole, nor will you ever be: you are either a man or a woman, which is to say one-half of the whole. On this level, the longing for wholeness – the return to oneness – manifests as male-female attraction, man’s need for a woman, woman’s need for a man. It is an almost irresistible urge for union with the opposite energy polarity. The root of this physical urge is a spiritual one; the longing for an end to duality, a return to the state of wholeness. Sexual union is the closest you can get to this state on the physical level. This is why it is the most deeply satisfying experienced the physical realm can offer. But sexual union is no more than a fleeting glimpse of wholeness, an instant of bliss. As long as it is unconsciously sought as a means of salvation, you are seeking the end of duality on the level of form, where it cannot be found. You are given a tantalizing glimpse of heaven, but you are not allowed to dwell there, and find yourself again in a separate body.

On the psychological level, the sense of lack and incompleteness is, if anything, even greater than on the physical level. As long as you are identified with the mind, you have an externally derived sense of self. That is to say, you get your sense of who you are from things that ultimately have nothing to do with who you are: your social role, possessions, external appearance, successes and failures, belief systems, and so on. This false, mind-made self, the ego, feels vulnerable, insecure, and is always seeking new things to identify with to give it a feeling that it exists. But nothing is ever enough to give it lasting fulfillment. Its fear remains; its sense of lack and neediness remains.

But then that special relationship comes along. It seems to be the answer to all the ego’s problems and to meet all its needs. At least this is how it appears at first. All the other things that you derived your sense of self from before now become relatively insignificant. You now have a single focal point that replaces them all, that gives you meaning to your life, and through which you define your identity: the person you are “in love” with. You are no longer a disconnected fragment in an uncaring universe, or so it seems. Your world now has a center: the loved one. The fact that the center is outside you and that, therefore, you still have an externally derived sense of self does not seem to matter at first. What matters is that the underlying feelings of incompleteness, of fear, lack, and unfulfillment so characteristic of the egoic state are no longer there – or are they? Have they dissolved, or do they continue to exist underneath the happy surface reality?

But there comes a point when your partner behaves in ways that fail to meet your needs, or rather those of your ego. The feelings of fear, pain, and lack that are an intrinsic part of egic consciousness but had been covered up by the “love relationship” now resurface. Just as with every other addiction, you are on a high when the drug is available, but invariably there comes a time when the drug no longer works for you. When those painful feelings reappear, you feel them even more strongly than before, and what is more, you now perceive your partner as the cause of those feelings. This means that you project them outward and attack the other with all the savage violence that is part of your pain. This attack may awaken the partner’s own pain, and he or she may counter your attack. At this point, the ego is still unconsciously hoping that its attack will be enough to induce your partner to change their behaviour, so that it can use them again as a cover up for your pain.

Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to – alcohol, food, legal or illegal drugs, or a person – you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain. That is why when the initial euphoria passes, there is so much unhappiness, so much pain in the intimate relationships. They do not cause pain or unhappiness, they bring out the pain and unhappiness that is already in you. Every addiction does that. Every addiction reaches a point where it does not work for you anymore, and then you feel the pain more intensely than ever.

This is one reason why most people are always trying to escape from the present moment and are seeking some kind of salvation in the future. The first thing that they might encounter if they focused their attention on the Now is their own pain, and this is what they fear. If they only knew how easy it is to access in the Now the power of presence that dissolves the past and its pain, the reality that dissolves is the illusion. If they only knew how close they are to their own reality, how close to God.

Avoidance of relationships in an attempt to avoid pain is not the answer either. The pain is there anyway. Three failed relationships in as many years are more likely to force you into awakening than three years on a desert island or shut away in your room. But if you could bring intense presence into your aloneness, that would work for you too.

Day #45

Today’s favourite poses: Child's Pose

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 0

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle)

Unless and until you access the consciousness frequency of presence, all relationships, and particularly intimate relationships, are deeply flawed and ultimately dysfunctional. They may seem perfect for a while, such as when you are “in love”, but invariably that apparent perfection gets disrupted as arguments, conflicts, dissatisfaction, and emotional or even physical violence occur with increasing frequency. It seems that most “love relationships” become love/hate relationships before long. Love can then turn into savage attack, feelings of hostility, or complete withdrawal of affection at the flick of a switch. This is considered normal. The relationship then oscillates for a while, a few months or a few years between the polarities of “love” and hate, and it gives you as much pleasure as it gives you pain. It is not uncommon for couples to become addicted to those cycles. Their drama makes them feel alive. When balance between the positive/negative polarities is lost and the negative, destructive cycles occur with increasing frequency and intensity, which tends to happen sooner or later, then it will not be long before the relationship finally collapses.

It may appear that if you could only eliminate the negative or destructive cycles, then all would be well and the relationship would flower beautifully – but alas, this is not possible. The polarities are mutually interdependent. You cannot have one without the other. The positive already contains within itself the as yet un-manifested negative. Both are in fact different aspects of the same dysfunction. I am speaking here of what are commonly called romantic relationships – not of true love, which has no opposite because it arises from beyond the mind.

On the positive side, you are “in love” with your partner. This is at first a deeply satisfying state. You feel intensely alive. Your existence has suddenly become meaningful because someone needs you, wants you, and makes you feel special, and you do the same for him or her. When you are together, you feel whole. The feeling can become so intense that the rest of the world fade into insignificance.

However, you may also have noticed that there is a neediness and a clinging quality to that intensity. You become addicted to the other person. He or she acts on you like a drug………


….….OMG HAVE I LIVED THIS!!! But as my dear friend Greg, (my Jedi Master/ Sage) tells me, “Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.” – Carl Jung. (He includes his writing in this, but that I don’t buy! =) ;)

Day #44

Today’s favourite poses: Child, Pigeon, Down Dog, 3 Legged Dog, Plank, The Warriors

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 10(IsH)

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle)

The first part of the reading starts off with someone asking Tolle the following:

“I always thought that true enlightenment is not possible except through love in a relationship between a man and a woman. Isn’t this what makes us whole again? How can one’s life be fulfilled until that happens?”

(He answers);

“Is that true in your experience? Has this happened to you?”

“Not yet, but how could it be otherwise? I know that it will happen.”

(He answers);

In other words, you are waiting for an event in time to save you. Is this not the core error that we have been talking about? Salvation is not elsewhere in placed or time. It is here and now.

Most people pursue physical pleasures or various forms of psychological gratification because they believe that those things will make them happy or free them from a feeling of fear or lack. Happiness may be perceived as heightened sense of aliveness attained through physical pleasure, or more secure and more complete sense of self attained through some form of psychological gratification. This is the search for salvation from a state of unsatisfactoriness or insufficiency. Invariably, any satisfaction that they obtain is short-lived, so the condition of satisfaction or fulfillment is usually projected once again onto an imaginary point away from the here and now. “When I obtain this or am free of that – then I will be okay.” This is the unconscious mind-set that creates the illusion of salvation in the future.

True salvation is fulfillment, peace, life in all its fullness it is to be who you are, to feel within you the good that has not opposite, the joy of Being that depends on nothing outside itself. It is felt not as a passing experience but as an abiding presence. In theistic language, it is to “know God” – not as something outside you but as your own innermost essence. True salvation is to know yourself as an inseparable part of the timeless and formless One Life which all that exists derives its being.

True salvation is a state of freedom – from fear, from suffering, from a perceived state of lack and insufficiency and therefore from all wanting, needing, grasping, and clinging. It is freedom from compulsive thinking, from negativity, and above all from past and future as a psychological need. Your mind is telling you that you cannot get there from here. Something needs to happen or you need to become this or that before you can be free and fulfilled. It is saying in fact, that you need time - that you need to find, sort out, do, achieve, acquire, become, or understand something before you can be free or complete. You see time as the means to salvation, whereas in truth it is the greatest obstacle to salvation. You think that you can’t get there from where and who you are at this moment because you are not yet complete or good enough, but the truth is that here and now is the only point from where you can get there. You get there by realizing that you are there already. You find God the moment you realize that you don’t need to seek God. So there is no only way to salvation; any condition can be used, but no particular condition is needed. There can be no salvation away from this moment. You are lonely and without a partner? Enter the Now from there. You are in a relationship. Enter the now from there.

Day #43

Today’s favourite poses: Child's Pose

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 25

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from a poem I wrote a while back when I was going through a bitch of a time. I left out the first half because I no longer feel the angst that I did when I wrote it. None the less, it calmed me writing it, and today, I need calm. I really liked the comment Nate added to it the first time I posted it, so I included that on the bottom along with my response). Peace.


I dwell in
light

I dwell in
laughter

I dwell in
peace

I dwell in
joy

I dwell in
Love

I dwell in
hope

I dwell in
clarity

I dwell in
serenity

I dwell in
sweetness

I dwell in
wisdom

I dwell in
healing

I dwell in
courage

I dwell in
strength

I dwell in
kindness

I dwell in
compassion

I dwell in
truth

I dwell in
stillness

I dwell in
goodness

I dwell in
Grace

I dwell in
balance

I dwell in
Me


Nathan said...
There is nothing we are not.

kourtney said...
and yet, we are nothing.

Day #42

Today’s favourite poses: (Today I did Yoga at sunise, which was awesome! Fav. poses were the Sun Salutation series/Vinyasa)

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 12

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from the Bible)

So the LORD said to Moses,
“I will also do this thing that you have spoken; for you have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name.”

And he said, “Please, show me Your glory.”

Then He said,
“I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”


Some of my favourite verses:

"Great is my boldness of speech toward you, great is my glorying of you: I am filled with comfort, I am exceedingly joyful in all our tribulation." Corinthians 7:4

"But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing." James 1:4

"But though, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness." Timothy 6:11

"Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than a house full of sacrifices with strife." Proverbs 17:1

"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" Corinthians 3:16

"Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from and evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water." Hebrews 10:22

Day #41

Today’s favourite poses: .........I cannot even describe what just happened to me. I started to do some poses and suddenly switched to these tantric, joyful, belly dancing, Bali/Hindi goddess type movements. Something took over. What a trip! I hope that happens again! wheeeee =D

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 10

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from my nightly prayers)


Dear Lord,
Thank you for your mercy. Thank you for the health and safety of my family. Please watch over them and keep them safe and healthy, no matter where they are, no matter who they are with, no matter what they are doing. Thank you for the health and safety and happiness of my wonderful parents, my wonderful sisters, myself, and MOST of all, my beautiful daughter. Please keep her safe from harm whether it be from accident, illness, malice, evil, heartache or otherwise. Thank you for the health and safety of our friends and family. Lord, please take care of those who are sick, and those who are suffering (especially the children!) Please watch over all those who are sick, scared, starving or suffering, or anyone who has had/has a serious illness, accident, or disease, especially where children are involved. Please be with them, and show them Your Love, Your Mercy, Your Comfort, Your Compassion, Your Grace and Your Glory, as you’ve shown me. Thank you Lord, for all my blessings, especially my family, my career, and my home. Please forgive me for my sins, my selfishness, my insecurities, my mistakes, my inadequacies, and my shortcomings. Please help me to be a better person Lord, and a better teacher, and MOST of all, a better parent. Please help me to have patience, wisdom, kindness, compassion, courage, strength, hindsight, insight, foresight, energy, and a sense of humour.


Please say ‘hi’ to Ricky, tell him I love him and miss him. Please watch over those that I have loved, including Jacob and Nikita. Thank you Lord, for the people you have brought into my life that have been my blessed teachers, like RICK, ERIK, GREG, NATE, JOE, THERESA, DALE, INGRID, JAYA and CYRUS.



Once again Lord, I thank you for ALL of my blessings, especially the health and safety of my friends and family, and most of all, my beautiful daughter, Kyla.

Day #40

Today’s favourite poses: Tree, Dancing Warrior, TREE!

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 5 (ish) ....Something VERY weird is happening with my laptop. Seems like a Malware issue.........must - call - computer - nerd.

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: From the Dalai Lama himself (again)


….By nature we are compassionate, and compassion is something very necessary and something which we can develop. It is important to know the exact meaning of compassion. The Buddhist interpretation is that genuine compassion is based on a clear acceptance or recognition that others, like oneself, want happiness and have the right to overcome suffering. On that basis one develops some kind of concern about the welfare of others, irrespective of their attitude to oneself. That is compassion.

Your love and compassion towards your friends is, in many cases, actually attachment. This feeling is not based on the realization that all beings have an equal right to be happy and to overcome suffering. Instead, it is based on the idea that something is ‘mine’, ‘my friend’, or something good for ‘me’. That is attachment. Thus, when the person’s attitude towards you changes, your feeling of closeness immediately disappears. With the other way, you develop some kind of concern irrespective, of the other person’s attitude to you, simply because that person is a fellow human being and has every right to overcome suffering. Whether that person remains neutral to you or even becomes your enemy, your concern should remain.

Actually genuine compassion and attachment are contradictory. According to Buddhist practice, to develop genuine compassion you must first practice the meditation of equalization and equanimity, detaching oneself from those people who are very close to you. Then, you must remove negative feelings towards your enemies. All sentient beings should be looked on as equal. On that basis, you can gradually develop compassion for all of them.

It must be said that genuine compassion is not like pity or a feeling that others are somehow lower than you. Rather, with genuine compassion you view others as more important than yourself…………..[sound familiar???!] ;)

Day #39

Today’s favourite poses: Tiger, Pigeon, D.D., Dolphin

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: (Do the minutes doing yoga count??? I'm gonna count them).

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: From the Dalai Lama himself

The Dalai Lama gave a series of lectures in the UK in the mid to late nineties. He describes a scientist that made the statement that it is very important for research scientists to adopt the methodological principle of not being emotionally attached to their field of inquiry. This is because attachment has the negative effect of clouding and narrowing your vision. This is why, through the practice of equanimity, we try to overcome these feelings of partiality so that we can deal with everything and everyone even-handedly.

When we practice developing equanimity, sometimes it is helpful to use visualization. For example, you can imagine three different individuals in front of you; someone who is very close to you, someone you regard as an enemy and whom you dislike, and then someone who is completely neutral, and to whom you feel indifferent. Then let your natural emotions and thoughts arise in relation to these three individuals. Once you are able to allow your natural feelings to arise, you will notice that towards the loved one you feel a sense of closeness and also great attachment, towards the person you dislike you may feel hostility and a sense of distance, and that towards the individual who is neutral you will hardly feel any emotion at all.

At this point, try to reason with yourself. ‘Why do I feel such different emotions towards these three individuals? Why do I feel so attached to my loved ones?’ You might begin to see that there are certain grounds for your attachment; the person is dear to you because he or she has done this and that for you, and so on. But if you ask yourself whether these characteristics are permanent and whether the person will always be like this, then you may have to concede that this is not necessarily the case. Someone may be a friend today but turn into an enemy tomorrow. This is especially true from the Buddhist point of view, when we take many lifetimes into account – someone who is very close to you in this life may have been your enemy in another. From this perspective there are no real grounds for feeling such strong attachment.

Day #38

Today’s favourite poses: Tree, Warrior 3, Plank

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: 9.5

Today’s thoughts:

One area of practice that I have been working on over the past few weeks, is judgement. I don’t seem to have found a balance between seeing more good in someone’s character than they actually possess, and judging people too harshly or quickly. Lately when I meet someone new, I am rather guarded or sceptical (I guess I just don’t have a lot of faith in people anymore). But until someone has PROVEN that they aren’t worthy, then I really think I need to try to be more open and trust a bit more. (In all honesty, usually my mistake is that I trust/give people too much credit, and then I end up paying for it. Sometimes dearly). I’m also guilty on some occasions, of putting people into categories because of the way they look. Not in a negative way, but whenever I meet someone that’s a little TOO good looking, I tend to assume that they might not be kind or intelligent, or interesting, so I usually just write them off. Perhaps I feel that they won’t have as much to offer as someone who hasn’t been able to coast through on their looks all their lives. In other words, if the package is too pretty, I think it’s not really worth opening up. But in a few cases now, I have been dead wrong about that. However, honesty, courage, respect, and substance are still the most important qualities.

Day #37

Today’s favourite poses: Triangle, Tree, D.D., Pigeon, Plank, Child's Pose

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: Negative 7


I thought after yesterday's rant I should lighten it up a bit. So here is a peaceful little tune I found on YT. I also liked the comments that followed, which I have included below the vid. Enjoy. :-)




• Sixth word...Akaal Moorati (pronounced Akaal-Murat)..Kaal means time..Akaal means beyond the effects of time. Moorat means form. Nanak is describing that God has a form that is beyond the effects of time, so that people don't assume God as an outcome of a thought process or a fantasy. It also rules out anything in the universe, including humans such as gurus, prophets, saints being God. That's why we can't capture God in our imagination...we need to transcendent time-space equation to realise G

• Finally, Gurprasaadi (pronounced as Gurprasad)...since God is all the above, he can only be realised through the grace of a true guru, true knowledge, God's own grace.

Day #36

Today’s favourite poses: Cobra, Warrior, Plank, upside Down Dog (right side up)

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: .....are you kidding me?!

Today’s not so interesting thoughts/rant:

True or False??

Over the weekend I had a conversation with a friend from another province. It was about whether or not someone can call themselves a “true Christian”. That term/phrase has always bothered me. But now that I am trying to expand my ‘spiritual horizons’, it REALLY bothers me. What gives anyone (other than God or Jesus Himself), to JUDGE if someone is a “true Christian”?? I have also recently heard the term “false teacher” when describing people like the Dalai Lama, Buddha, or Lao Tzu. Which begs the question, what exactly is FALSE about them?? Certainly not WHAT they are teaching, (these are all intensely peaceful human beings who teach us to love one another, end war, take care of our precious planet, and love GOD. Isn’t that exactly the same thing Christ taught us??). And they are not claiming to BE God, so they can’t exactly be classified as any sort of ‘False Idols.’ They don’t run around proclaiming they are the second coming like some lunatic cult figure. They are simply wise, peaceful teachers/people who are spreading messages that I’m sure God/Jesus would totally agree/concur with, because in many ways, they are virtually identical to the principles that the bible/Jesus taught us! (which in itself, makes them NOT evil, or ‘false’!) Again, just because someone agrees with their principles/teaching/messages, does NOT mean they are saying you should follow or worship them like Christ. While they might have slightly varying beliefs, none of them EVER say follow me INSTEAD OF Jesus. And let’s not forget, as far as ‘spiritual literature’ goes, most of the sacred texts followed by Eastern faiths were around hundreds or even thousands of years before Christ/the bible, and they are still relevant today. That is saying something! But I’m willing to bet that the majority of self-proclaimed “true Christians” have never even picked up the Yoga Sutra or the Bhagavad Gita for example, (because if they had, they just might find something they like or that really resonates with them, even more so than many parts of the bible). And let’s also not forget, if there is a God (which of course there IS), then HE CREATED Buddha, the Dalai Lama, Ghandi, etc. in His image as well.

As far as I know, Jesus said I am the way, the truth, and the life, not the ONLY way, the ONLY truth, the ONLY life. Of course He said that the only way to the Father was through him, but that doesn’t mean that He ALONE had the only message worth listening to, or could be the only one to tell/deliver it. (In fact didn't He Himself have apostles to help spread His message??) He did not say “Be sure to discount every other wise, peace-loving being (which again, he created!) that has ever walked, or ever will walk the earth. He did not say that there can be NO OTHER route to envelope/assimilate the concepts of love, hope, peace, charity, and respect. He did not outlaw any other forms of aphorisms or spiritual texts or say “If you get this message anywhere else, IGNORE it as it isn’t True.” That’s ridiculous. It’s the SAME message, just in a different (and usually more poetic) form. Of course you aren’t supposed to go around WORSHIPPING ‘false Gods’, but God is different to everyone. Some know Him as simply the creator, some as Allah, Yahweh, Spirit, etc. We have come a long way since the days where science couldn’t explain everything so we assigned every natural phenomenon a deity, but that just brings up a whole other can of worms. I am definitely not arguing the existence of God. But while we are on that topic, (well, I am, anyway), the people who try to use LOGIC or REASON to dispute there is a God, just don’t get it. Faith is not something you acquire by logic or reason, so it certainly isn’t something that can be used to erase it. And while we’re on the topic of faith, why is it that you can only prove your faith by going to church?? Am I faithless and not a spiritual being because I have a PERSONAL rather than an INSTITUTIONAL relationship with God?? And of course let’s not forget the 1 day a week Christians (or the ones who claim to be ‘devout Christians’ but live the VAST majority of their lives like soulless, immoral TWITS and are MEAN to the people they supposedly “love”). Anyway, not that it matters, but I actually LIKE going to church. But I also LIKE doing Yoga, and exploring other avenues of spirituality such as Buddhism, Taoism, etc. And I don’t feel guilty about it. Why is there pressure/judgement to conform/choose?? Can’t a Christian (which I consider myself to be) draw the essence of Christ/Life from other sources as well?? My God, is not a jealous or insecure God. He knows he trumps ALL other beings, and he knows I know it! I am not CONFUSED, I KNOW who to pray to (and I do, daily), and I KNOW who to thank for ALL of my blessings.

I’m not trying to offend anyone or incite any sort of argument, and I certainly don’t mean any disrespect. I am just stating what is in my HEART. (I’m sure the 6 people who read this blog agree with me anyway). And I’m not looking for any sort of absolution. (That can only come from my God) I truly believe, that if I have screwed up about this, God will eventually show me, and forgive me, cause that’s the way my God rolls. So before anyone hits me with the Law of Non Contradiction again, remember that I am speaking MY truth, and from MY heart (and didn’t you say you really liked that I ‘tell it like it is’)?? I may be naïve, and I may be a little rough around the edges/wet behind the ears when it comes to this kind of stuff, but THIS is how it is for ME. And I don’t like that I have to defend it. Live and let live people. I don’t judge you, please don’t judge me. As I’ve always said, I believe that at the heart of everything in the entire universe, is indeed, God. But I am also deeply moved by so many aspects of the Buddhist and Taoist path/faith that perhaps I don’t even WANT to be called a “true Christian” (whatever the hell that is……)