Re-Member!

One day.... you will suddenly feel an irresitible need NOT to live in unconsiousness, in ignorance, in that state in which you do things without knowing why, feel things without understanding why, have contradictory wills, understand nothing about anything, live only by habit routine, reaction. --The Mother, Pondicherry, India 1958 It's not easy to live life from a place of awakening, it is so much easier to live unconscious of my actions, of my attitudes, and of my life. I lived many years in an unforgetful cloud of sabotage-- if life did not directly affect me, I didn't care how it affected others. It was a life of complete selfish desctruction. I remember my first day on my yoga mat, it wasn't all rainbows and mystical transformations that came from just sitting on my mat breathing. My first day of yoga class with a formalized teacher, where it wasn't me a dvd and the pause button was a clear face to face moment of who I was and essentially who I was not-- there was no hiding behind my bold personality, there was no hiding there was just me on my mat with myself and a room of 10 other people who did not care about me, or how practiced I was, they were just happy to be doing yoga on their own mat, in their own space. I did not have to make my presance known, it was felt without my having to be the center of the room. For the first time in my life I felt completely vulnerable, transparant and completely not on display. After several classes I realized because as we moved together the energy I brought to my practice was connected to those other people. For the first time in my life, I sat with myself, without a reaction from others, and for the first time I woke up to the fact that I have the majority vote in my life, I didn't need someone to tell me I'm worthy -- I was and am worthy of living from an awake place within me-- I don't need approval for how I live my life-- I just need to live it be trustworthy to my purpose-- to Re-Member myself.

Justifications for the status quo

To be awake in life, to really WAKE UP is not an easy road-- I've seen alot about it lately in the media, with the new year and with all of us not parishing Dec 22, 2012 in an end of war frenzy-- the world is brimming with the idea of "waking up". Gyms are full of people seduced by change. I'm all for it, in fact I spend most of my teaching on the sole purpose of finding an Aim, a direction, a reason to wake up. But what I see is hidden behind the great idea of being awake is that we really want to justify where we are in life as a sleep walker. I have found that just saying I"m awake is not enough, having the cool gagets with apps that help me stay organized, reliable, more awake and even remind me to meditate that unless I make a concrete decision to plug into my self, my body and my life that I can hit a snooze button in life and sleepwalk through my entire day. It's scary to be awake, to feel good, to be alert and to carry myself with constant reliability-- it's a vulnerable place to live-- asleep means I have no accountability. Asleep means I can justify the status quo-- Asleep means I can be just like everyone else-- The secret for me is to embody my life, to practice being awake, to live every minute of my life from my body. I'm not a bag of bones attached to my head-- I don't have to live alseep at the wheel-- Being grounded in my body takes work, I need to remain an innocent investigator- without attachement and with great vision and keeping myself connected to the foundation of my Aim, to live it, to breathe it and to fully embody it. Robert Svoboda says, "hurry, there's no time to delay. Death approaches."