Stuff my Future Self might say #reverb10

Tags

#reverb10, advice, current me, flow, future me, letters, past me, time travel, Wake up

 

Future Self. Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead? (Bonus: Write a note to yourself 10 years ago. What would you tell your younger self?)
~December 21 prompt

At the risk of repeating myself, the whole concept of a five-year future plan isn’t in my repertoire. I can barely piece together one year at a time, and generally I don’t think I’m in charge of such things. As a friend of mine likes to say, life works best when there’s a flow, and in such a flow you can kind of guide where things are going in the foreseeable future. But only that.

My Future Self however, might have this to say to the Current Me:

Hey chica,

You always knew time travel was possible

And this is your proof!

Yes, I’m YOU (me/us) from December 2015!!

(don’t share the whole time travel thing with anyone for a little while, okay?)

Anyway… if I remember correctly

The end of 2010 was another one of those turning points we’ve had so many of now

But life’s gonna get real interesting in the next five years

You’ll go places (internally and externally) you never imagined for yourself

Not saying it’s gonna be easy because, y’know…

It’s never really been that way, has it?

But you’ll be happy. Really happy.

The most important thing you need to remember is this:

BE TRUE TO YOURSELF

BE TRUE TO YOURSELF

BE TRUE TO YOURSELF

Keep that top of mind, and it’ll all work out.

Love Me/You/Us from 2015 xo

A little while back I wrote a letter to my 12 year old self, but what would I say to my 29 year old self if I had the chance? Keeping in mind, of course that I actually can’t change anything that’s already happened.

Hmmm, maybe it’d go something like this:

Hey sweetie,

It’s time to wake up.

Wake up.

I said, WAKE UP!

Yep, it’s me. Or rather, you. I know, how weird is that?!

It’s not that I thought you were physically asleep just now

But you do an awful lot of day dreaming, don’t you?

You’re doing well for yourself and life is pretty good right now

Well sorta, compared to what’s coming

I don’t mean to scare you

But things are gonna get real ugly for a while there…

Don’t worry though: there’s both love and a life you’ll adore on the other side of your 30’s

And hey: all that writing you put off for so long?

It’s gonna pour out of you eventually

There’s a few things I want to tell you about

and I hope you listen

and remember them

In fact, it’s probably a good idea to write them down

Or even get them tattooed somewhere you can see them

(I know, you’ve been waiting for the RIGHT tattoo, but get this one anyway)

That’s how important this advice is, okay?

::

Don’t panic when your life falls apart (and it will)

Nothing is ever quite as you imagined it

Don’t be distracted

Never let anyone talk you into something that feels wrong

Listen to your own instincts above all else

Don’t forget: nothing is permanent

::

Love, Future You xo

~Svasti

Samskaras in samsara – part 2

Tags

Asana, Asatoma Sat Gamaya, Ayurveda, bandha, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, dance, Deepak Chopra, duality, Karma, Krishna, Limitations, martial arts, Meditation, metaphysical, mula, non-dual reality, pranayama, psychoanalysis, Reality, Samsara, samskara, self-loathing, Shanti Path, Slim Calm Sexy, Swami Niranjananda Sawaswati, Tara Stiles, Wake up, Yoga, yogic philosophy, Yogis

I didn’t take this photo, but I’ve driven past this statue of Arjuna in Bali. It’s magnificent!

[Read part 1 first]

Okay, so enough with the psychoanalysis of our western self-loathing mind-set for a moment.

How about we go beyond the physical, to the metaphysical for a bit? Yeah?

Okay, so let’s take a tiny peek at some of the subtleties of yogic philosophy.

Note #1: I’m going to do my best to explain these rather complex concepts to you as passed down from my wonderful teachers. Of course, my understanding is still limited and imperfect but hey… I’ll give it a go. Also, there’s only so much I can pack into a single blog post!

Note #2: This is another long post. Try to hang in there!!

Samsara is considered to be this world of duality – the place where the universe can experience its Self as Other than its Self. ‘Nuff said about that for now…

And samskaras are deeply embedded patterns of energy within collective energy forms that manifest as individual human beings. “Pattern” being the key word here – a pattern comes from actions being repeated over and over again. And of course, the more often a pattern is repeated, the harder it is to change it. Kinda like a train running on the only tracks it’s got.

Samskara is a very peculiar thing. It is the library within a DNA molecule, containing everything that we have imbibed. One DNA molecule contains the total information of all of the libraries in the world combined. Samskaras are like that too. Samskaras are the inputs of volumes and volumes of books which we carry within us and which have been accumulating over millions of years. When these samskaras come to the surface of the mind, they are very powerful.
~From Yoga Darshan, Swami Niranjananda Sawaswati

A samskara then, is a thought or activity that’s become part of how the world appears to us. It can define our preferences, personality, understanding of other people and things. And with those definitions come limitations – what is subjectively true and what is not. However, limitations aren’t actually “bad”, not in the least.

In fact, they are key to our ability to exist in as humans where we all appear as separate entities, cut off from source/the universe/god etc. So, samskaras can be considered to be both useful (i.e. they comprise and make possible our limited view of the world) and problematic (when we can’t discriminate between our limited view and a wider view).

Still with me?

Limitations are a naturally occurring construct of this world and universe. They are part of how we function, our identity, why we have certain opinions and emotions and ideas. Our samskaras interact with karma (another much-maligned and misunderstood yogic concept) and form a filter through which we view “reality”. As we know, reality at this level is different for everyone, and far from the non-dual view the rishis and wisdom masters speak of. Hence, our diversity of opinions!

However, one of the true goals of yoga and serious yogis is to free ourselves from the limitations of the dual world, while simultaneously existing in both the dual and the non-dual. In fact, we can’t exist in the non-dual without duality, because then it wouldn’t be a non-dual reality – for the non-dual to be truly non-dual, it also has to encompass duality (hope that makes sense!).

Asatoma Sat Gamaya
Lead me from the unreal to the Real

Tamasoma Jyotir Gamaya
Lead me from the darkness to the Light

~Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

And so we yogis work to free ourselves from limited views through an intimate understanding of, and connection to our mind and body. The path to achieving this can include: asana, pranayama, mula, bandha, meditation, martial arts, dance, Ayurveda and so on. Usually, more than one of these methods is required to develop our mind-body awareness. Ultimately this MUST include long and deep hours of meditation (as opposed to say, fifteen minutes a day).

Freeing ourselves from limited views does not mean however, denying our anger or any other emotion. We need to go fully into the experience of being a human being in order to understand and liberate ourselves from the suffering of samsara. Because, how can you possibly be free of what you don’t understand?

As such, suppressing emotions or decrying other people’s anger as “un-yogic” is doing little more than keeping you stuck on those same train tracks, going around and around and around… and the more circuits of the train track you make, the harder it is to change. Get it?

It is tricky, because on the one hand we are here on this planet that exists in duality, and so we play by the rules of this world where interactions with people, our emotional states and experiences DO matter. But then, as we learn to drop into non-duality more and more (it comes in flashes or waves), we begin to see how much none of it really matters in the end. And things start to change as we begin to increasingly experience non-duality as our actual reality.

It can be both incredibly liberating and stupendously confusing at the same time…

And yet. We MUST learn to see the real from the unreal. This for me, is what makes the false and harmful messages about body image (burn that bra fat, minimise those wider-than-desired hips) so completely alarming.

Because it is being condoned not just by Tara Stiles (who, as a yogi with connections to Deepak Chopra should bloody well know better), but by so many other people involved in yoga.

The outcry in return seems to be all “don’t hate on Tara”, “don’t hate on anything we want to define as yoga” and “you people who are complaining are just simply un-yogic”.

BUT all of the folks in that camp – including Tara – are missing the glaringly obvious point here:

Yoga is about liberation from samskaras and the human condition of suffering. NOT about playing into and re-enforcing those patterns for ourselves and others. NOT about continuing to make people think there is something wrong about their physical appearance that needs to be fixed – this is a mass personal and cultural samskara and one that’s deeply embedded!!

This isn’t a personal attack on Tara or anyone else, but as my own Guru would say: WHERE IS YOUR MIND??

My criticism comes from asking: what kind of yogi supports messages that invoke deep-seated insecurities and self-esteem issues of others? From generating and confirming samskaras as real instead of limited thinking that one can learn to revoke?

This is not good work. And it is not yogic in the least. In fact, those in the yoga community who buy into this, saying that it’s all okay, are demonstrating minds that are still deeply embedded in their own samskaras, whatever they might be. Some things are NOT okay, especially coming from yogis.

Seriously, anyone who thinks Tara Stiles’ “Slim Calm Sexy” yoga is an okay way to market yoga to the uninitiated masses is not engaging in enough discernment or discriminate thinking. And those uninitiated masses? They probably spend most of their time feeling deeply unhappy and thinking self-loathing thoughts anyway, and don’t NEED anyone else to point it out to them!

Even as Tara et all are claiming “it doesn’t matter how people come to yoga” – and I’ll admit that’s generally true – in some ways it actually DOES. Because by pressing the self-esteem/physical appearance buttons you’re embedding those samskaras just a little more deeply than before and messing with someone’s appreciation of what yoga is all about. Who knows how much extra work – conscious and sub-consciously – will be involved in undoing all of that?

Basically, the Tara Stiles school of yoga marketing is unhealthy and unethical.

And as another teacher I’ve studied with would put it… WAKE UP!!

Or as I’d put it… WAKE (THE FUCK) UP!!

This is not a popularity contest where we have to be friends with everyone and accept everything that’s said about yoga, simply because we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

SO WAKE UP!!

Remember, Krishna was a warrior and he worked very hard to make Arjuna fight a battle. It’s not always about having the most friends, but about cutting through the crap and seeing clearly.

Lead me from the unreal to the freaking real, already!

~Svasti

Involuntary actions – Epilogue

Tags

ashamed, bad relationship choices, belly dancing, crescendo of disaster, epilogue, indelibly ragged scars, Meditation, naivety, rock bottom, six sheets to the wind, snaggle-toothed, Wake up, Yoga

[Read part 1, part 2, part 3 & part 4 first]

There is and never was anything I could do about it – then or now. I could never really remember enough to feel traumatised, just vaguely disturbed. Also… I tell myself there’s a possibility that I enjoyed and participated in whatever happened, six sheets to the wind and complete memory failure notwithstanding.

Sure I was vulnerable and stupidly so, given I’d allowed myself to be isolated like that. But they’d paid for a service and perhaps as far as they were concerned, they simply got their money’s worth?

I can only acknowledge those things – that they happened. That I was once a very scared and sad young girl who grew up in a family that did their best given their own long-standing wounds. And that I was woefully under-prepared and paid a very steep price for my wilfulness.

But I think I did my best too, despite my naivety. Fiercely independent and yet operating without a sense of self-worth or the necessary cynicism required to protect myself from the world I insisted on participating in.

If I’d written about this even just a couple of years ago, I don’t think I could’ve looked at what happened in the way I do now.

And though I don’t believe that something positive always has to come out of every negative experience (why should it?), I can see that hitting absolute rock bottom, completely losing all sense of who I thought I was and what I thought life was meant to be about… well, that pried open a lot of doors that’d previously been dead-bolted shut.

I can’t honestly draw a straight line from my early experiences as a mixed up kid, through to being assaulted and terrorised and sinking deeply into a very painful time emotionally and mentally. But perhaps there’s a dotted line or two there with a few bends and swirls? And I can look at the crescendo of disaster I was faced with and think… well, perhaps this WAS the biggest flag that could be waved in my face asking me to STOP.

Just stop doing and thinking in the ways I had been. Stop treating myself with so little love and respect. And, if I wasn’t going to make those changes for myself, if I couldn’t see how to make that happen or even see the need… why then I was gonna get some help, like it or not. Unfortunately, the sort of help I needed was to tear everything down, take it all a part and re-build.

For so many years I was desperately ashamed of myself. Of what’d happened to me. Of the choices I’d made. And although the outcomes of my wildness were relatively minor they still marked me with indelibly ragged scars. I could see them even if no one else could and they are still there today, even if they mean different things now… (I’m sorry to report, there’s another as yet untold story here which occurred a couple of years after this one. More to tell some time I guess! Later, but not now…)

For most of my life, I felt compelled to come clean with those closest to me – friends and lovers. But it was always storytelling with a tightly regulated filter. For my lovers I’d play up the sexy angle, making it sound fun and flirty (the reality was never anything like that!) and mostly they didn’t try to learn more than what was offered. For friends, I skimmed over certain facts and framed it as being very much in the past. But it wasn’t you know – guilt and shame persistently claimed space in my lungs and refused to let me breathe clean, untainted air.

Inhale regret and confusion… exhale humiliation and low self-worth…

While I only told partial tales, I’d delude myself into believing I’d been brutally honest and that people accepted me as I was, warts and all. I think I came close to telling the full story only once. It was probably the “lite” version though, with the less savoury parts tagging along silently.

So believe it or not – this is actually the very first time I’ve ever delivered the no-holds-barred-objectionably-ugly-I’m-soooo-not-the-hero story, as closely as I can recall. And, the only reason I feel I can do that is my somewhat snaggle-toothed veil of anonymity.

What’s brilliantly clear to me now is that I allowed my messed up teenage years to set the stage for most of the rest of my life. I felt worthless, stupid (for putting myself in so much danger), unlovable (who’d want to love someone like me?) and confused (no idea what to do with myself). I knew I was intelligent but I didn’t feel smart enough to figure out how to turn my life around.

Instead, I ran. Ran away from home, away from my brother and family, ran interstate, away from mistakes that made me feel like a fool and most of all I ran from myself.

Luckily I ran in the right direction though and enough blessings came into my life so that despite everything, I’ve been fortunate. Like discovering belly dancing and knowing immediately it was something I’d be good at (and I was)! It gifted me with a sexual confidence that didn’t make me feel like a whore. And I met my guru – one of the single most significant events in my life, which gave me a renewed spiritual confidence that who I am is no different to the very forces that create this universe.

These events (and others) changed the course of my life and gave me some authority, independence and confidence in myself once again and/or for the very first time.

However, it seems I’ve almost consistently made bad choices about men and relationships. Perhaps it’s because I believed I didn’t deserve any better? For example, I was just twenty-four and in London with my soon-to-be fiancé. I was desperately in love but so very afraid that he’d leave me once he figured out I wasn’t good enough for him. [*present-Self rolls eyes*]

And that’s the same reason I accepted other relationships that were never right for me in the first place – because it was someone paying attention to me, telling me I was special and worthwhile, showing interest in me when I simply didn’t feel like anyone could or would.

Fortunately I’m beyond thinking such horrible things about myself these days (well, mostly). And in no small part that’s due to the process of healing I’ve been going through in the last few years… this whole thing has certainly made me WAKE UP!

Not straight away. Not easily. Not without much misery and pain, almost more than I could bare.

But I was lucky. All along I had yoga, meditation, an amazing teacher and gorgeous teachings that showed me there was a bigger picture where the crappy things I believed about myself and the world weren’t true. Even if I couldn’t relate any of those things to myself yet, I knew there was more to reality than my present experience. And that helps.

I can’t ever say that I’m proud of some of the things I did. But I’ve come to a place where I don’t judge myself or others in my life with such a harsh finality any more. I did what I did and I was fortunate to get out of it all so lightly. Yet there’s no point dragging around a palette of toxic greys and blacks, tainting my life with ugliness from so many years ago.

My heart is now open to both myself and other people! I’m not saying I’m perfect or enlightened or that I’ve learned everything I’ll ever need to know. I expect and hope I never stop learning, in fact. And who knows how things might look if I ever end up in a relationship again! Good grief!

But I guess I am saying… this is where I’m at. This is where I’ve found myself (in more ways than one). I embrace that younger version of myself. I accept that she did the best she could. And I know that for better or worse, her story is also mine. It might’ve taken a while to see relatively clearly, but here I am.

~Svasti

Jagrat-Svapna

Tags

Awareness, Dreaming, Non-duality, Poem, Poetry, Self, Sleep walking, Wake up

A sea of bodies moving and
Minds are out to lunch
Head in the clouds,
Dreaming dreams eyes open?
Does any part of you register
A world outside your skin-bag?

Your body animates like
Marionettes jerkily shifting
Colliding blindly unseeing
Unfeeling autopilots, all
Cut off from Self
Can’t you see others?

Breathe and connect and know
There is nowhere that is not Self
There is no thing that is not Self

Wake up! I say, wake up!!

~Svasti