So almost two years have come and gone, and the journey that was starting with my last post is now winding up in some way; the surrender of all I believed, all the thoughts that defined me within, and all I hoped for -- it's found a footing now, that permits ongoing surrender, and it's found a reason where before I just gave in to "whatever You are out there."

What was out there was not just nature, deeper than I'd ever known, or kindness and community and yoga practitioners who get up at 5 am to chant to the Divine. What was out there was not just adventure and travel and love and heartbreak.

Instead I was ready to leave my whole life and all self-definitions behind, and tried and tried and TRIED to do so by all means possible... until at last the great Beloved heard my prayers, and Grace came in to finish what I never could.

In comes joy of a kind that somehow wells up through cracks in my being like spring water seeping up through the moss. Comes meaning, comes community.

After nearly 28 years home found me.

Quote

Cinzia said that the image we had of ourselves, who we think we are, is held as a crystalline structure in our bodies & that whilst it remained there, brittle & rigid, it would be hard for us to change

Vanda Scaravelli in Awakening The Spine,
“Be careful, very careful about organizations. Yoga cannot be organized, must not be organized. Organizations kill work. Love is everywhere, in every thing, is everything. But if you confine it, enclose it in a box or in a definite place, it disappears. Truth, like love, cannot be demonstrated, or explained, or offered, it is there with all its immensity around us filling all space. One has only to look. And to be aware.”

She has told me not to have people staying with me for any length of time any more (she’s not the 1st) – I have a disposition/CNS that needs solitude & time to potter & regenerate, it would seem. Within an hour of being alone this morning, the mental constipation/frozen brain fog/cerebral ennui ceased & the creative floodgates opened with gusto – focus, clarity & sass were mine again. Funny how that works.

‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed‘

Albert Einstein

my heart is open
to all positive possibilities
my head is open to change
my feet are free to walk
anywhere they choose
my mouth to taste that
which pleases it
I am a vessel of pure love
and as such have no fear

Jont

Free of Words

Sometimes I feel as though I have no words to express what is happening to me: the freedom I feel from the old patterns and behaviors that used to make me "me." I used to think I'd arrived in myself, knew who I was, was dealing. Now I feel that there is so much more possibility for growth, change, healing and love than I had ever known. It seems that as soon as I learn one thing I trip over another and another, and my mind/world/self-concept are being blown. To pieces. And I'm so grateful for it.

But it's not something I can fully conceptualize yet. I don't know what that means. That I'm not processing it completely yet? That I don't want to jump out of the stream of experience to attempt recording / journalling, since in the past this modality, for me, was closely associated with control, with keeping hold of experiences that were by nature transitory and beautiful.

I'm going with that feeling, letting go of guilt for not writing, not journaling. I haven't been able to write since last February, even less since my trip to Thailand in September, and those times are the most vivid I can recall. More to the point, I can recall. It's not disappearing on me like events prior to that. I don't have the blow-by-blow that does, inevitably, crystallize experience - "so then I said...and she said..." but it is recollection of experience.

But I will record some momentous words as they occur in my life.

Here's one set: I knew from an early age that a ‘Barrett Home’ life would never suit me – I just didn’t realise this is where I would be lead.. - Suki Zoe at the fabulous Qito is really rocking my world lately

"A spiritual feeling is warm, grounded, secure, loving, and one retains interest in things around them. It is not "spacy" like the light mental feeling of fruit; instead it is blissful."

Tom Billings

Water Detox, Day 1

I ended up delaying the start of this fast because of something simple I should have realized, which is that while your body and mind get fantastically clear, peaceful and focused on a fast, that is so not the way it starts out.

First, you detox.

This means you get tired. Your body starts burning stored fuel (body fat) - for a really neat look at what happens when you fast check out this summary. Many toxins are reputedly stored in body fat, so during a fast they are released into the blood stream. You get sluggish, tired, achey. Focus is at a premium.

So maybe I shouldn't have planned to start a fast the same day I had 4 exams scheduled in an online course I was taking. I came to see the error of my ways yesterday, and decided to postpone the fast by one day.

So today was the first day I actually was fasting, and I don't know if it was made easier or more difficult by the fact that I have a raging sore throat. The kind where you keep swallowing just to see if it's still there - oww. Easier to not eat, definitely. More difficult to do anything else without being distracted. by. the. burning.

Other than that, detox symptoms plus cold symptoms just equals sleepy. So I'm think I'm just going to curl up for the night with a movie and a tall glass of club soda ;)

Detox

Did you ever just wish you could let go of what's poisoning you? Of the limits you impose upon yourself or believe that others impose on you? We are all made of stars, as Moby sings, so the question is, what's stopping us from shining?

Baggage. Old pain. Some fundamental sense of fucked-up-ness, of being a failure. Hurtful patterns we repeat and ceilings we accept. Everyone has them. Everyone has ways of coping with them. Work-arounds. There's no way to let go of these all at once - no opt-out button. Processing your "stuff" is kinda the only authentic way out. And let me tell you, it's scary.

It all started for me when I got spectacularly fired from a job I thought I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was employed in a challenging field, constantly under pressure, directing a large team of people, and doing so under conditions that ranged from mildy to extremely dangerous. As I was being employed half-way across the globe, being fired also resulted in my being more-or-less summarily deported.

What happened to get me fired is not really important. I could say that I pissed the wrong people off, that I got the boss from hell and there was no pleasing her. I could say I was innocent, but it doesn't really matter. Because it happened, and I believe it happened because, on some fundamental level, I needed it to happen.

I wasn't happy in that field. I thought I was, and there were aspects I loved, but the culture, the goals, the work I was doing was, in fact, pretty soul-destroying, now that I've had a chance to step back and reflect. And just before I took a long-term contract that I believe would have proved this to me in a much slower and more painful way, it all blew up in my face.

I believe we attract a reflection of what we are, what we need, what we believe we'll get. We are constantly defining our worlds around us, and so what's important for me is finding out why the collapse happened. What needed to collapse, in my life?

Over the last few months I've come to see that the answer is - a lot. More on that, later.

I don't mean objectively. There is no objectivity, for one thing - it's your story or my story or the collective narrative of a hundred thousand people - elections, sports, culture. We cannot get out from behind ourselves long enough to zero in on the thing we are observing, to see it in itself. The best we can do is to become transparent, so we can see through to it all more clearly.

And part of becoming transparent, returning to the first point of this post, is to let go of some of the poison, some of the restraints.

One of mine is food. I have some pretty intense emotional involvement with it.

First time I've ever shared that in public - it wasn't as scary as I'd thought.

So I want to take a chance to let myself detox, to let go of the emotional pull of food, to allow some cleansing to take place both emotionally and physically.

Check this out for an overview of the benefits of fasting: http://www.hps-online.com/fasting.htm

I've fasted for up to 10 days in the past, once very memorably in Thailand, so I'm going for 14 days. I'm going to post daily on what it's like, what I'm learning. Fasting is a physical discipline, sure, but it's also a way of blowing your mind wide open. Not in a raving visions sort of way, but in a very soft, centred, quiet and healing sort of way.

When it's over I plan to transition into veganism.

I don't believe there's a magic bullet, but every single step is an awakening.

Follow with me on this one.

Balance

So what I've learned is, extremes don't suite me. Veganism. Evangelicalism. Diets. Purging. Judging people. Stressing. Trying to change what is.

No point. Not peaceful. Why bother? Everyone's going to walk their path anyway.

But a little more love won't hurt.

What's my path? I wonder.