Yogafly2

she's digesting!

That's a picture of lovely Jyoti - one of the Ananda Ashram kids whom I adore. During the Ramayana rehearsal at the Met Museum of Art, she and Rajan - another one of the adorable Ashram kids played with me and kept me entertained. I had my Jatayu bird costume on so it was doubly fun. The game was to chase them around the auditorium so they could squeal with delight.

After my lunch, I came back to the auditorium and Rajan and Jyoti wanted to continue playing chase. And I sat down, patted my belly and said, "not yet, I'm digesting." But as kids are, Rajan prodded me to get up and Jyoti said, "No, leave her alone. She's digesting!" And continued to say this several times.

I think it's a metaphor for my life. Lately, it's moving so fast that I don't have time to digest. What's going on? It's entertaining on one end, because I don't have time to think about anything, judge it as good or bad. On the other hand, it can get too fast that I don't properly digest before I react or respond. We must slow down to digest. To absorb and acclimate. Slowing down is just as important as speeding up. It's important to discern between the two in our fast paced world. Each - speed and slowing down - has its place.

So much of what I write and teach in yoga is a dialogue with myself as much as it is a dialogue with anyone outside of me. Leave all things be, Sumukhi, and digest.

Hare OM. Om to digesting.

what happens when you're squeezed

The ad agency is a constant squeeze affair. How much can you squeeze into a day? How much can you squeeze morw work out of each other. We all respond a little differently to the squeeze. Sometimes, we just giggle. At other times, we balk. But how to do all this with dignity and love? It's truly a wonderful place to practice expanding and opening the heart instead of closing in.

OMBama for Election Day from Michelle Barge

Dear Friends,

Election Day is a week away. There are countless factors at play which will determine the final outcome and your effort is needed for this final push. Please join people around the world in a wave of meditation for change. At eight am every morning (or whenever you awake), from now until Election Day, we will be closing our eyes and envisioning our country as we dream it can be.

Inhale deeply. Set your intention. Exhale slowly. Breathe the change you want to see.

There is exponential power in our collective intention. Join the wave. Pass it on to a friend.

The brainchild of two dedicated yoginis living in Fort Green, Brooklyn.

And on Election Day -- November 4th, I will be holding a special yoga class in honor of this historic day. Please join me next Tuesday for my regular class at East West Yoga, 6:30-7:45pm, but for a slower, more grounded, restorative practice.

Peace + Light,
Michelle

Spirituality for Apocalyptic Times - from Nirmala Devi

This one is brilliant and echoes so much of my own sentiment. Read below for yesterday's Daily Inspiration from Nirmala Devi. Doomsday sayers, "it's the end of the worlders," chicken littles, "the sky is falling, the sky is falling!", and all Apocalypse lovers out there, please listen. The world has always been beginning and ending simultaneously. Death and birth happen simultaneously. Flowers bloom, flowers die. Cities bloom, cities die. Empires blossom, empires fall apart. The world has always been growing and falling apart. This is not new. We pretend it's new every lifetime. Every tv show, every movie, every story, we all pretend we don't know what's going to happen, in the beginning, yet of course we know what's going to happen. Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. Boy loses girl. Girl loses boy. Boy gets girl. Girl gets boy. We just like to pretend that these things don't happen to us (me, die? me, lose? no, not me, only you, you, you.) Give up the drama. Life is a leela:

Robert V. Thompson
Spirituality For Apocalyptic Times

Nearly 135 years ago, Mark Twain said, "October is a particularly
dangerous month to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January,
September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and
February."

The tenuous nature of speculation in the stock market is perhaps a
metaphor for the tenuous nature of life itself. From unanticipated
joy to unexpected pain, from temporary calm to inexplicable chaos-the
markets imitate life.

The dismal news of recent weeks is vaguely reminiscent of the days
surrounding 9/11. Remember? The airlines stopped flying, the stock
market crashed, for a few days, life came to a halt.

Although the financial crisis of 2008 is not as unnerving as the
experience of 9/11 we keep hearing financial news that heightens
anxiety and dampens the spirit. In these uncertain times it is clear
that Yogi Berra was right: The future isn't what it used to be.

Few would deny that recent events have triggered a palpable fear,
fear, anxiety-even dread.

We find ourselves in an apocalyptic moment.

Apocalyptic moments have interrupted the lives of human beings as long
as human beings have been around. These moments come in a variety of
forms but the result is always the same-the end of one reality is the
birth of another.

The art of spirituality is to, as the cliché says, go with the flow.
But this is easier said than done.

To "go with the flow" is an idea that has its roots in the ancient
Chinese philosophy of Taoism. Here's the rub. One cannot go with the
flow unless one is willing to detach from the external circumstances
of life.

For many people, especially in the West, equate detachment with being
aloof or not caring about people.

This is not the meaning of spiritual detachment.

Most of us enjoy a good movie. We enter the theater and sit down with
our popcorn and coke and hope to be transported to another world, for
a couple of hours, anyway. If the movie is really good, we laugh, we
cry, we feel fear and joy. Sometimes the heart beats fast. Sometimes
we sigh. But when the movie ends we read the credits, get up and go on.

Spirituality is the art of being able to view the comedies and dramas
of our lives the way we watch a movie.

We are all actors in a bigger story than that of our own little
dramas. To understand this is to be liberated from being controlled
by external circumstances.

The art of spirituality is learning how to bend without breaking.

The art of spirituality is learning how to play our own transient part
in the inimitable eternal story of life.

In Thornton Wilder's classic play, Our Town, one of the characters
says, "There's something way down deep that's eternal about every
human being." When we awaken to this way down deep of the eternal
within us, we let go of our attachments to the external and open to a
deeper reality. In each and every one of us there is a wholeness
that's hidden beneath the surface circumstances of our lives.

When we touch this truth we are able to say, no matter what is
happening in the world around me-I know that all is well with my soul.

Spirituality is the process by which we touch this hidden wholeness.

What matters is not what happens to us, but our ability to touch this
hidden wholeness.

Have you ever touched it?

Healing as taught by Caroline Myss, Ph.d.

We are all interested in healing and the deepest joy that comes from health. I've been remarkably well-versed in the difference between mysticism (God's will) and healthy cells/tissue because of my spiritual practices and study of great saints such as Santo Padre Pio. Words from Myss' Entering the Castle on healing:

"Healing is not a rational experience that can be brought about by simply visualizing healthy cells running through your body and replacing malignant ones while the rest of you lives a life so filled with fear that you are unable to make the essential choices you need to in order to release your soul to take over.

Unless you are willing to let your soul fully take charge without any conditions, you will never completely heal.

Genuine healing is not physical. It is greater than your rational mind. Indeed, you have to transcend the boundaries and the reptiles of your rational mind to open yourself to the grace that can dissolve illness. During the mystical experience of a healing, your soul becomes more empowered than your body, mind and heart. It frees itself from the ground rules governing your physical body and your physical life.

Your soul becomes more empowered than your body when you truly, deeply, unconditionally surrender the whole of your life to the divine - including your need to know what will happen next and whether you are going to be safe and healthy.

You need literally or symbolically to get on your knees in a position of humility and break down or break through the control that reason holds over you. Finally, you do the most unreasonable act imaginable - you trust an invisible force much greater than yourself to reorder the whole of your life. Let God clean house for you. The prayer, "Lord, get me out of my own way," helps many people who want so much to be able to surrender in trust, but cannot do it. Then you say, "I let go and let God."

- Caroline Myss

I am tremendously inspired by these words and a bit daunted. As a spiritual practitioner, I sometimes believe or think that my soul is more powerful than my ego or my outer needs and I'm often faced with my own greatest fears sitting there in a deep lock-down stare with my soul. And the soul never cowers. It's so powerful, it wonders at these illusions of the outer world. But I know when the ego and fear body take over - it's almost like a sneak attack of negativity.

When this happens, I laugh and laugh. The laughter dissipates the negativity and then I sit in child's pose at my altar at home and I surrender. Everything. There is not one ounce of my being that is not governed by something greater than my self. And it's wonderfully refreshing. But it's a work, this surrender. Because we need to have discernment, understanding and compassion right next to it - or it's all just false humility.

The story about healing that always gets me down on my knees is the one about Padre Pio and one of his devoted followers, a father of 8 children. This father was helping to build the hospital for the suffering that Padre Pio established and one day, when blasting through the rock that formed the foundation with dynamite, he was hurt and his eyes destroyed. Without telling the man what was going to happen, Padre Pio knew this disaster would take place and explained that it was God's will and that none of his prayers could prevent it from occurring, try as he would.

At the hospital, with the blinded man, Padre Pio then prayed over him and ask God, "Please remove my eyesight and give it to him. He is the father of 8 children and needs the eyesight more than I do."

Padre Pio, in his prayers, often intervened for his followers and would ask God to change the course of their life for the better. He explained that God's will is strong, and the only thing that can change a course of events in your life is prayer. It's akin to meditation and yoga. You have karmic destiny, but this can be changed by your practices of yoga and meditation. In Catholicism, it's prayer. Same thing.

What happened after these prayers was miraculous, studied by many doctors. The man, even though he had no physical eyes - as they were blasted out with dynamite, began to see and could see for the rest of his life. The doctors were stunned that the man could see with these eyes. It's a reiteration of what Caroline was saying above. The physical eyes no longer worked, but this man's soul believed so much in Padre Pio and God that vision flowed through. Padre Pio never lost his own eyesight, but bled with the wounds of Christ, the stigmata, for most of his life.

Om Padre Pio ki jai! OM.

Kirtan with Ullamaija and Ed Feldman at Mudita Yoga Center

Come on out on Friday, October 24 at 8 pm for kirtan with Ullamaija at Mudita Yoga Center.

I met Ullamaija at Ananda Ashram. She is an avid Indian classical music lover and singer. You'll feel this vibration in her kirtan.

Mudita Yoga Center is located in Kingston, New York at 4 West Union Street and Broadway - in the gorgeous Rondout district. www.muditayogacenter.com

If you are not part of the solution,

then you are part of the problem." Quote from one of my very wise co-workers. I'm impressed by the yogis in the world, who hold their composure in the midst of corporate life's many dramas. My co-worker likes to say this quote about himself. "If I am not part of the solution, then I must be part of the problem."

This is so wise. I was just telling Jennifer at Ananda Ashram, that we are all in this play, this divine lila, together. We all know this. And we can choose at any moment in all the wonderful dramas of life, to be part of the drama, part of the problem, playing into all of it, or to Witness. As Joan Suval often reminds us: Witness. When we take the time to Witness, then the solutions are inherent within the conundrum. It's highly mathematical and precise, this world of cause and effect. 1+1 = 2.

So if we have a roomful of dramatic actors (and we all have needs that we think aren't being met, sigh, human beings), let's say there are 10 actors. And one of these ten is YOU. And let's say in the midst of the current bru-ha-ha that no one wants to agree on (because agreeing would just be too easy, and we like a little bit of consternation in order to make life interesting) - that you simply Witness. Witness. Witness. Then do the math: 10-1=9. You've subtracted a contentious force out of the Group. And you sit, silently, with God.

And guess what, all the ads for Intel come out any way. Ha ha. That relates directly to my work. But whatever it is that everyone is bru- ha - ha -ing about, 250 billion bailouts, economic workings out, they happen, any way.

What is meant to happen will happen. What is not meant to happen, will never happen. If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. God bless Mike G. at work, who reminds himself, and me of this wisdom, everyday.

Greek statues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Snapped a picture on my phone in the empty, wonderfully empty, Metropolitan Museum of Art, after Ananda Ashram's Ramayana performance on October 11. There's nothing like it. Greek statues of deathless, ageless beauty and courage. And us, walking our way through, towards Ananda, heading towards bliss, nirvana, all the time.

He who forgives...

ends the quarrel." - African proverb. I just thought about Pumla, from South Africa, who taught all of us the deepest significance of forgiveness. May we end all quarrels. May we live in peace.

Ramayana at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

There's me, playing Jatayu, a royal vulture and Vishnu's vehicle.  Picture above taken by the label lover, Alexis.  Ananda Ashram's East-West School of Dance Director, Pt. Satya Narayana Charka guided us through this remarkable performance this past Saturday, October 11 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

I'll quote Heather, whose opinion I highly value, "The Ramayana was soooooo good." 

An incredible feat - the entire production.  And it couldn't have been done without the help of all who volunteered to put the play on together, and without Guru's Grace - Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati.  With him and the grace of all beings of light in our hearts, we all soared through a beautiful re-enactment of the battle between good and evil in our own hearts and minds.