Repairing My Cabin

I’m still in England, staying with my extended family as I always do when I travel here. Over the past 15 years, these trips have always provided me with a real break from my daily life and responsibilities, and along with that have come some of the greatest moments of clarity and epiphany. Last night something happened that I’m still trying to process, and I wanted to share it with you.

I, obviously, am a huge believer in what yoga brings to our lives. The physical, emotional, intuitive, energetic…the benefits are innumerable, and they affect all aspects of my own life. I didn’t start teaching yoga with the intention of filling up my coffers or becoming wealthy, in fact, I’m very aware of what it takes to simply get the bills paid in this field of work. I also have never felt the inclination to run through training course after training course, and to be honest, I found my yoga teacher training to be possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever done. My reason for teaching stemmed from my passion for my own personal yoga practice. What I deemed über-personal and enlightening for myself ended up being what I felt compelled to share with the world. Nonetheless, with the growing demand to teach and speak and bring my message to people, I have noticed how easy it can become to let my personal practice fall by the wayside as my schedule gets busier and busier. The expression “The carpenter’s cabin is always the one in need of repairs” has rung true many a time in my career, and so when I came over to the UK this time, I vowed to come back to my home practice.

After only a few days of coming back to it, I did the typical things we do when bringing ourselves back to a pattern or practice that we have once known but have let fall away: I analyzed how a regular yoga practice affected me – my mood, my physical state, everything. I saw how much better I was feeling, physically, emotionally and mentally. All these things I felt in control of – I had made the decision to prioritize my practice, and these were the benefits I experienced as a result of that decision. And then last night I had a dream.

I was in India. Ok. Let’s stop here for a moment. India has never had a massive allure to me. I consider myself sensitive to suffering and sadness and having seen images and knowing the degree of poverty and suffering that exists in India, I’ve definitely felt an aversion to all that (dysentery has also always been a fear, if I’m being honest). Back to the dream now. I’m in India, at the top of a flight of stairs that borders a river. I’m in need of some kind of help (I can’t remember what was wrong), and before me is a sadhu (Indian sage) with long, dark hair and a beard, in orange robes. He gives me something (I can’t remember what, but it wasn’t a tangible, material object), and a sense of peace and gratitude washes over me. I started thanking him in earnest, my palms together in front of my forehead as I bow to him, thanking him over and over. He then walks a few steps away from me to the mouth of a long horn-like wooden instrument and blows into it, releasing a deep rumbling drone from the opening on the other side of it. I then turn, walk down the stairs to where I thought the sidewalk or road would be, but all is flooded, so I immerse myself in the water and start swimming, hyper-conscious of not letting the water into my mouth for fear of ingesting bacteria. I swim to the side where there are people lined up in single file, and as I join the line, a boy standing in front of me turns around and takes from me what I had attributed as being the blessing from the sadhu. I felt no panic or fear, in fact I realized that I could survive without what I had been given. And then I woke up.

I have read countless tales of people being visited by visions of sages in their dreams (A Search In Secret India and The Journey Home among others), and have always thought it fascinating. I never in my wildest fantasies ever thought I would have a dream like the one I did last night, and am so curious to see if this sage will manifest again somehow in my life. I feel steeped in spirituality today, guided by an energy that I have no control over, an energy that I somehow know will continue to bring me closer to true spiritual light the less I try to manipulate it. I feel so alive and wanted to share this experience with you…

I also wanted to ask if this has occurred to any of you before? Have you been visited in dreams or other states of (un/sub/super) consciousness by someone or something that you felt was guiding you? Let me know, and I will continue to share this ongoing experience as it unfolds to me…

UK Musings

It’s 5 am. I’m buried under the blankets in bed trying to build all the warmth possible in this cold room. It’s a wall of blackness outside, a wall that engulfs the rolling lawn behind the house. The lawn ends in a line of a variety of trees stripped of their foliage, all but the massive conifer that is being pummeled by the roaring wind that started whipping around minutes ago. The dividing line of trees separates the property line from the church graveyard behind it. Lichen-strewn headstones teetering in a state of angular, fragile suspension serve as the funnel system for the wind, building the gales into a low howl. I’m home again. Back in England. My being is literally alive with the vibration of all that is, and that vibration is stronger than ever. This is union. This is home. This is Om.

My Take On Yoga

I read an article yesterday from the New York Times titled “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body“, and posted it this morning to my Facebook timeline because it created such an intense internal dialog within me. I knew that it would get others talking as well, and has it ever! The article talks about the dangers to the physical body that people have fallen victim to through their yoga practices, ranging from torn tendons to strokes, and since I posted it, I’ve had people asking me how I feel about what was included in the article and what my take is on yoga as a potential cause of physical damage.

I have had many yoga teachers in my life, some who have encouraged respecting the physical limits my body has presented me with, while others have told me those limits are markers to surpass and develop upon. I have been the student who listened to what has been instructed and ignored what I knew was potentially bad for me, inappropriate given what I knew about my body. I grew up doing gymnastics and spent my entire childhood flipping around like a fish out of water, so I’ve had a pretty good awareness of my physical self from very early on. Nonetheless, when I started practicing yoga, and when I did my teacher training, I told myself that I would really put myself into the position of a true student – a clean slate, hungry for information and direction. I wanted to let go of the process of discrimination that I usually kept readily available so that all the information I was being exposed to could be new, potentially offering me insight and wisdom into new possibilities for my life and my future. The exercise in letting go of how I labelled and identified things was incredible, because I allowed certain teachings to get past the point where my existing defense mechanisms would have immediately repelled them for one reason or another. However…I did injure myself. A muscular injury in my middle back that took months to heal, and that acts up even to this day if I trigger it irresponsibly.

The tone of the article in the NYT is aggressive in its description of what people have suffered due to their yoga practice…but I take issue with that statement. People don’t suffer because of their practice – they suffer because of their approach to the practice. They suffer, as I did, because they don’t listen to their intuitive voices that tell them exactly what they need to know it terms of what is appropriate for them given their bodies and their bodies’ limits. They suffer because instead of doing a practice that allows you to let go of your habits and conditioning to find a place of peace, they struggle to get through the class/practice so they can walk out of the experience feeling like they accomplished something. They suffer because instead of understanding that they are there to exercise the mind-body connection, they instead increase their muscle tension end effort which inhibits movement, flexibility, and overall release.

As far as I’m concerned (and from the point of view of a teacher), all of this comes down to the environment that the instructor creates for the people taking the class. At the risk of putting myself in the firing line for being brutally honest, I keep hearing about teachers who yell, bark, scream at their students…who create an environment of fear as the main motivator. I keep hearing about teachers who tell their students that they aren’t going deep enough, they aren’t active enough, they aren’t pushing enough. I take serious issue with all of this. I am a firm believer and endorser of pushing yourself to see where your limits are, but once realized, that threshold needs to be respected. Yes it can be tested occasionally, but at what price? Do we continually take headstand because it makes us feel like we’re keeping up with the class and that we’re not standing out as somehow weaker than the others, or do we understand that the potential consequences of taking a weight-bearing posture, with all the weight resting on an area of the body that isn’t built to support it, might be harmful? What teachers and students alike need to understand is that our nature as nice, proper, well-conditioned Westerners is to beat the shit out of ourselves. We are encouraged to push, push, push…no pain, no gain. So if that’s our nature from the get-go, then why aren’t there more teachers encouraging their students to relax? To not be so hard on themselves? I am constantly encouraging the students who come to my classes to bring an element of their home practice (if they have one) to the group environment. I’m basically giving them the freedom to take small liberties in their group classes, liberties which allow them to keep up with and follow the instructions being given, while incorporating tiny movements that they would allow themselves to take when practicing on their own with no one supervising to potentially call them out on it.

I absolutely believe that there is a form of yoga for everyone. We all have our own energies within us that are derived from the same source, and it is our mission to seek out the people, places, and experiences that reflect those energies back to us. Yoga teachers, studios, styles and disciplines are no different. Each one has their own energy and we all have those we love and those we don’t. It’s up to us to find the proper environment for our spiritual undertakings, so that we move forwards, closer to the truth that we seek. With that said, I also believe that asana is not for everyone. I believe that people who have a passion for running have found their yoga. People who love cycling have found their yoga. Yoga is about unifying the mind, the body, and the breath. If that happens when mountain climbing, then one has found a state of yoga. You don’t need a Lululemon mat and goji berries to be a yogi. You just need to be connected to your spirit. What this means is that if one does have a yoga practice, that one approaches it with the intention of letting go of what will give them that constantly-craved ego stroke. You need to feel better after a yoga class than you did when you walked into it. If that’s not happening, leave and seek out another teacher/class/studio. There should be no room for suffering in yoga. None. If you’re experiecing any form of suffering as a result of your pratice, then why are you doing it?

Let me know what your thoughts are…

 

Minding What Matters

I went into work today at Centre Luna Yoga to take advantage of the studio being closed till next week so I could close out the 2011 accounting year, and just being in the space, slugging away at the computer, brought me a sense of peace and clarity. When all the numbers were taken care of and I had turned off the computer, I found myself staring into the calm of the studio with a real sense of vision as to what I wanted to continue doing with my life and throughout the year ahead, and how to really go about that.

I’ve spoken often about choosing something to believe in and then doing exactly that, but I realized today (while zoning out staring into the studio) that  my advice was incomplete, so I wanted to expound on the subject and see if I could offer any more insight or assistance to you readers…I still firmly believe that we all need to find something that we are passionate about, something in which we believe without a shadow of a doubt, but what I had never conveyed before was the need to believe unconditionally in it. Believing unconditionally means that we feel we have been given proof that leads us to a place of firm belief, trust, and identification. Proof of ANYTHING will only occur through direct perception, and so it’s our responsibility to understand and be witness to that which we define as reality or truth. We need to seek out that which attract us, that which contains the energy that most resembles the energy we attribute to ourselves. There are people we gravitate towards and those we don’t, geographical points on Earth where we feel most connected, and places we don’t, and situations we find ourselves in where we feel the most comfortable and those where we don’t. Our first step towards living in a place of truth is to find the people and places whose energies are the most relatable in relation to how we see ourselves and what we find appealing. Once we get there, once those vital discoveries start being made, it’s from there that we start to find that which we can hold up as truth, from which we learn more about ourselves as we see what is reflected back to us. Without direct perception or experience, everything is questionable. When we know something to be true for ourselves, there is no question.

One of the greatest disservices one can do for oneself and for the world around us is to pretend to believe in something and to spout the applicable doctrines and informative details relating to the subject while not having a great enough understanding of it. I believe that it’s better to admit to not believing in anything than to hypocritically project a belief or opinion that comes from a place of fear or ignorance. So what does all this mean?

It means that as we begin another year in our calendar, as we take advantage of the energies around us provoking and insisting for change, then let’s simply focus on what matters. What matters to you? Focus on that, seek out all the information and resources available that pertain to it, experience and understand them, and then FORGET about the rest. Forget about what other people think about you, about your beliefs, about how you spend your time and energy. What they think has NOTHING to do with you. This life is yours to live, and the longer you spend worrying about how something will be received, the more stifled you will become, and the more you operate at the mercy of that which exists outside of you, the less you understand about who you really are and what really matters.

So go on…ask yourselves what matters to you? Where do you want to place your time, energy and intention? And are you placing them in something that matters to you? Understand that we have many options in this life, some of which will carry us forward, some backward. Where do you want to go?

The Beat Goes On

As 2011 comes to a close, elements of the Hindu mythology workshop I gave this year keep creeping up int my thoughts, and I find myself listening for the drum beats of Lord Shiva…wondering if the passage of one year constitutes enough time to merit a beat. It is said that with each beat of his drum the death and rebirth of another age comes to pass, and as much as 2011 has been a year of growth and fruition of our efforts (for many of us), all the kineticism and daily events that have brought us everywhere we’ve been and that have shown us everything we’ve seen are all but a tiny blip on the radar. As we all, to varying degrees, look back on everything that 2011 has shown us, all we’ve learned about ourselves and the path we forge (or follow, depending on your beliefs), let’s remember some things, and commit to bringing these things with us into 2012:

1) We are never simply one thing. We are many things to many people, and many things in the image that we hold of ourselves. The root of all these things is a collective energy that itself is timeless, limitless and impossible to define. Let yourselves remember that to see yourselves as your bodies, your careers, your religious beliefs, your failures and successes, your fears, hopes and paranoia is to limit yourselves. To buy into any or all of these things is to give the ego validity to continue to seek out what it is ravenous for, which in turn validates all that is superficial and that serves as a distraction from truth. None of it matters.

2) There is room for everyone. In a world where the human population has just surpassed 7 billion people, it is easy to believe that we need to make ourselves smaller, to be less visible and to speak in quieter tones. We are encouraged to be small by the powers that be online and in our society. Forget all that. Speak up. Step forward. Raise your voice and make sure you’re heard. Take all the space you find yourself blessed with. Be expansive. It is possible to do all these things and still leave as minimal an impact on this earth as possible. Seek out how you will do this.

3) The space between how we see ourselves and the image we project to others needs to diminish. Let people see the real you. The path of truth is there for all those committed to an existence steeped in authenticity. There is no need to project anything other than what and who you are. The sooner we are all more honest about what we are living, the sooner we will be able to understand that we share more than we’d like to admit.

4) The people in your lives are there for a reason. Allow yourselves to be honest with them. Communicate with them. Allow yourselves to share with them the things that you’re proud of as well as that which shames you. Let them in.

5) One aspect of being human is suffering. Buddhism states that life IS suffering. The Yoga Sutras and many of the Hindu Mythological tales exist to show us that the sooner we get past that fact that we suffer and actually start doing something about it, the closer we move to a state of Yoga, of oneness. Don’t be afraid to suffer, and don’t be afraid to let that suffering be seen. To explore the depths of suffering is necessary to be able to fully comprehend how startlingly beautiful the joyous moments of life are. Welcome everything as an opportunity to know more and be greater than you ever thought possible.

6) Teach. Pass on what you’ve learned. Pass on your mistakes. Pass on your successes. They are not who you are. They are to hold up as a marker of humanity and the human condition. Make sure those around you are learning from you and paying attention. We are all messengers, here to make visible that which has always been here but which is veiled.

7) Love. Everyone. Equally. Everyone.

Thank you all for your presence in my life. All the best of health, love and truth in 2012 to you all, and keep your ears open for that drumbeat…♥

On Our Love

I haven’t seen my mum in a month…and it’s been an intense one. She’s completed her second round of preventative chemotherapy for a cancerous gene, and as one would imagine, it hasn’t been easy. With only two more rounds to go, she is physically and mentally doing amazingly. She is barreling through this like a woman on a mission…and what a mission it is. This is really the first time our family has ever been through something that could potentially shake us to the core of our being. And I have to say that I am so proud of her…proud of her strength and her certainty in how she has to deal with what she’s going through. And I feel horrible because I’ve been dealing with a cold for a month now…the one that comes and goes and comes back and goes and comes back again…so I can’t expose her to this super-irritating-won’t-go-away-nuisance-of-a-cold. But I know that she’s got all the support she needs, because my father is with her.

My father is the strong, silent type. In fact, he’s the poster boy for it. But boy is probably the wrong word to describe him. If “manning up” has any validity as a real term in our vernacular, then my father is re-defining it. He is doing everything in his power to make sure my mother has everything she needs…and every thing she wants. Running her errands, sitting by her side during her treatments, being her pillar of strength. My mother has already lost her hair, and that alone is a lesson in re-assessing how we identify ourselves, especially for a woman who admittedly has never swam with her head below the water line for fear of ruining the coiffe that she has proudly displayed throughout the decades, full peacock-style Throughout everything that is currently unfolding, my dad is fully present. He wants to take care of her. And every time my mum mentions him her voice breaks and I hear the emotion as she fights back the sobs of love and gratitude. It happened again last night when we spoke on the phone. And for the hours after I got off the phone with her, before I went to sleep, I found myself in tears, marvelling at my parents’ love affair in total awe and reverence.

Throughout my life, and still to this day, my parents have used an expression to convey the magnitude and intention behind whatever it was they were talking to each other about. They would either start or end a phrase by saying, “On our love.” And they’ve never once been irresponsible in the usage of it. My parents love each other. They’ve even had an article in the Montreal Gazette written about their relationship. After over 45 years of being married, after raising three boys, and after everything that happens to and around a couple living full, demanding lives, they are more madly in love with each other now than ever. This has been my example for 38 years. And I fully understand the blessing that has been bestowed upon me.  My parents love each other for who each of them is, and they love each other despite who each of them is. They love fearlessly and fully. Unconditionally and completely. They have a real, modern-day love affair that just gets stronger the longer they go on. And it makes me proud to have them as role models, and it makes me well up with admiration…and I feel the depth of my mother’s love for my father as she tells me how he’s helping her along this path she’s found herself on. And being privy to this real-life romance serves absolutely no one if I can’t pass it on and share it with everyone.

When my mother found out that she was going to have to go through this treatment, I told my mother that the journey she was facing would result in the most blinding of beautiful things…and I was right. I love you Mama & Papa. Thank you.

When the Smallest Truths Effect The Greatest Changes

It’s been a while since I’ve sat down to write a post, mainly because I’ve been busier than ever with co-managing the studio, workshops, traveling, classes, and the ongoing Luna Yoga Teacher Training. I’ve noticed how my tendency when I get busy is to get things taken care of or executed one by one, while mentally taking note of everything else that is in store for me during the weeks and months to come. More often than not, this allows me to pace myself and make sure I’m ready, rested, and prepared for whatever project is lined up, but sometimes, this approach backfires on me.

If I spend too much time thinking about what’s ahead of me, what I need to do to prepare for it, and what needs getting done in the interim, I sometimes feel stifled, overwhelmed…and it’s through this process that I lose sight of why I’m doing it all to begin with! I have a tendency to be hard on myself…which is why yoga speaks so loudly and clearly to me…it reminds me that I can take a step back, and put my faith in the knowledge that everything will go smoothly, that I will get everything done, and that there’s an omniscient & underlying current of reassurance and peace that is waiting for me to tap back into.

This weekend I’m giving the teacher trainees a lecture on one of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, Sutra 1.23 – Ishwara Pranidhanad Va. This sutra speaks to the ability to move closer to a place of truth, peace & light by putting our faith, and the fruits of our labours, towards a higher energy, towards what each and every one of us, in our own way, interprets God as being. Putting God/light/energy into the forefront. From my purely non-denominational point of view, that energy is exactly that – an energy that has taken shape in the form of light in my reality, an energy that is always within me and that I find myself tapping into and falling back on when I most need it. I’ve spoken before about God in yoga (God Talk), and how the practice is often mistaken as a religion, and I’ve also written about how I firmly understand that we all need to believe in something, we just need to figure out what that something is, and then believe in it, wholly and unapologetically (Up to You). Both these points are key in interpreting Sutra 1.23.

Most of us get tested in our belief systems, especially when we come up against an event which (or person who) challenges what we perceive to be truth. It is during these moments of conflict when we struggle to remember why we have placed our faith where it is, and whether we need to reconsider alternate opinions. Taking an opposing point of view is always advisable, if only to be able to put one’s self in another’s reality. When researching Ishwara Pranidhanad Va, I was struck by a moment of brilliance that ever since, has really affected the way I see the world around me, and my place in it.

Here’s my take: in choosing what to believe in, I allow for a certain surrender to take place…to open myself up to my beliefs and where they lead me. Let me be clear here: surrender doesn’t mean giving in to anything or anyone, it means letting go. It means allowing the doubt and skepticism to melt away, so that all that’s left is a connection to what serves me. This surrender leads to something even greater: acceptance. If I allow myself to put my faith in the knowledge that the energy and light is, essentially, the source of all being, then I understand that no matter what happens to or around me, regardless of how incredible or horrible it is, it is all part of my evolution, spiritual and otherwise. Every minor detail, and every major event, all have something within them that offers me information…information to learn from, information to move forwards, information to evolve into who I’m ultimately supposed to be. This allows me to keep doing everything I’m doing, no matter how busy I find myself, with a certain degree of peace that provides a solid foundation for me to keep going. And what makes this acceptance even more incredible is that I know that with it comes the certainty that when I come to a moment of conflict or doubt, my faith in my beliefs remove the need to place my own expectations or demands on anyone or anything else to conform to what I believe should be. I know that whatever happens, it’s all good. It’s all part of my transformation, of my evolution.

Ask yourselves this: if you put your faith in the understanding that all events, conflicts, and encounters are part of your evolution, spiritual and otherwise, then how would your life change? How much anticipatory stress would you carry around with you? How would the way you react to conflict change? How would you change?

Let me know…I’m curious

Full Disclosure

I’ve been thinking a lot about how many of the causes of suffering in my life and in the life of those around me are rooted in communication…what we communicate, how we do it, and where we direct it. It seems that so much of what we convey to others passes through a complex system of filters before it pours out into the space we reserve for communication, but many times, it doesn’t even make it that far. That filtering of information happens when we analyze what we have to share, who we’re sharing it with, and a) what our feelings toward that person are, and b) what that person is dealing with in their daily life. When we have incredibly joyous news to share, we often suppress the degree of that joy if we’re dealing with someone who tends to be pessimistic or sarcastic, and conversely, when we have news that isn’t happy, we tend to keep it to ourselves for fear of imposing on others, afraid that we’ll “bring them down”  once the news or information has been shared.

The second Yama in Patanjali’s 8 Yogic Limbs is Satya, which loosely translates to “truth”. Taken from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, Sutra 2.36 states, “For one who increasingly practices honesty or truthfulness in actions, speech, and thoughts, his or her will is naturally fulfilled.” Very often, this sutra is applied to how we interact with others (the Yamas are intended to provide restrictions in how we treat others to live a more balanced, peaceful life), but I firmly believe that if we are not applying these practices to ourselves, we won’t have the necessary tools to apply them to others. “As within, so without” sums this up perfectly. We are also taught that if the truth of our words can potentially hurt someone, we should practice discretion, whereby adhering to the first Yama, Ahimsa. I know that in my own life, growing up dealing with my homosexuality taught me that it was normal to keep secrets and to not impose my troubles on others, and I see that same approach being used by countless people around me, regardless of their sexual orientations, genders, races, and religions. We are so conditioned to buy into the processes of discrimination and categorization that naturally occur in our minds that before we know it, we have become our own censors and end up withholding our own truths.

What I’m trying to get to is this: despite our best intentions in trying to transform who we are, what we experience, and what we have to communicate so that it becomes more palatable for others, we end up doing everyone a disservice. When we keep secrets, when we hold back the truth, we create our own obstacles from letting people know who we are, which in turn prevents us from knowing them. We are ALL guilty of filtering information, of white lies, of bending the truth. What we need to recognize is that in the same way that nothing ever ends up being what we thought it would be, people will most often react to us in ways we never would have anticipated. We create stories in our minds about how events will unfold based on how and if communicate, but ultimately, we need to let go of the illusion that we are writing the script and just surrender to the fact that we know very little in relation to what we think of ourselves, and that the people around us, those that we love and who love us, WANT to know the truth. Whether it be good, bad or horrific, those in our inner circles want to be included in everything that happens in our lives, because being privy to it differentiates them from everyone else. It allows them to step up and be our friends, our confidants, the shoulders to cry on and the cheerleaders to cheer us on. It gives them access to us, the same way we’d want access to them.

So this is my challenge to you: what have you not been honest about? And to whom? What information needs to be conveyed in order for you to feel free and light and liberated? Everyone’s got something…this is your cue to do some real spiritual work. Forget about the left-brain chatter that is feeding you stories about what the possible repercussions may be of full disclosure. Silence it….and start talking. It will make all the difference.

The Beginning in the End

I’m sitting in the airport waiting for my flight that will take me away from Santorini and bring me to Rome, and ever since I woke up early this morning, I’ve been bursting with emotion. The gratitude and happiness I feel are indescribable. To have had all the participants of my first solo yoga retreat be left with feelings of joy and wonder and love and disbelief at the beauty and surrealism of this island and its landscape has taken me by surprise. To have had them connect to each other the way they have has taken me by suprise. To have had them connect to me the way they have has taken me by surprise. To have been told by many of them how this experience has changed their lives and how it will stay with them forever has taken me by surprise. Most of all, to be leaving with such a bursting heart takes me by surprise.

I am once again leaving my spiritual epicenter. This happened to me 3 years ago after I left this magical island the first time, but this time is different. The people who took a leap of faith by trusting me enough to invest in themselves through me and my efforts to organize and execute this retreat have become family. We became a community over the last 10 days, and what we experienced together is ours. It forever will be, and hearing from many of them that they are waiting for the next retreat to be planned gives me added fuel to make the next one equally, if not more, spectacular as this one has been. This retreat would not have been the same without every single person who remains part of our community. The dynamic between us all remains that which exists among those who have gone through something that alters the way we see our lives and the lives of others, not to mention the world we live in and our place in it.

From the depths of my soul, I thank each and every one of you who contributed to our community, every one of you that not only showed up to classes, but who shared your lives with myself and each other. As overcome as I feel in this second, and as I sit here waiting to explore other places on my onward travels, I know that this retreat is the beginning of something massive for each and every one of us. That despite our leaving to go back to our respective homes, we have started something together that has taken on a life of its own and that will grow and evolve and transform into unpredictable and indescribable forms of beauty and truth. Thank you for listening to me and allowing me to share what I believe is relevant. You teach me more than you know, and you encourage me to continue on this path that I find myself, living a life greater than I ever could have imagined for my Self.

Love to you all

Bram
September 16, 2011
Santorini Airport

A Prince Among Men

I’ve just returned from the candlelight vigil on Mont-Royal to observe the passing of NDP leader Jack Layton.. I wasn’t planning on going. I literally found myself turning off the lights in my home, locking the door and walking the few blocks to the meeting spot. And I stood there and observed. I allowed all the emotion swirling around the people gathered there to wash through me, and I allowed my sadness at his passing to mingle with it and recirculate through the crowd. I stood there alone, and then, like it had been previously rehearsed, two people standing directly on either side of me turned around, put their arms around me, and I found myself in the company of Kay & Yvan, students from Luna yoga, but more importantly, friends of mine. And we stood there taking it all in, understanding the significance of the moment and the magnitude of the energy resulting from the passing of this great man.

Let’s talk about Jack Layton…for just a brief moment. The man had focus. He had conviction. He had vision. He had charisma. He had courage. Most of all, though, he had the spark of humanity that seems to be eluding most, if not all, of our current government leaders. Regardless of your political affiliations, and regardless of what you thought of Layton’s policies, the man walked the walk. He understood the importance of not only believing in something, but having the courage to stand up and put yourself in front of millions of people to speak your truth and communicate your vision. At the risk of being torn apart, and torn apart he has been, Jack tirelessly stepped up. He made himself seen…and heard…and he spoke up for people whose voices are regarded as insignificant by our current Prime Minister. He worried less about lining his own pockets, and literally put himself out there for the greater good of Canadians, and for the world we all live in. He was the anti-Harper. He gave us hope that even if and when she-who-shall-not-be-named announces her candidature for US presidency, the political climate South of the border won’t dissuade Canadians from demanding change from the people who are supposed to be protecting and leading us.

In my opinion, Layton was the antidote to the emptiness and vacuousness of our current Conservative leader. He reminded us that the basic fabric of existence – how we live, how we take care of each other, and how we interact – is where we should be focusing. That the world we live in is begging for attention. That just because we age doesn’t mean we immediately slip into oblivion. As a painter’s work of art inevitably skyrockets in value after his or her death, I believe that Jack Layton’s words will resonate and continue to do so, rippling outwards from the core of his followers to people from all walks of life and political affiliations. The outpouring of love and prayer and grief from his death shows me that when we take a second to focus on that which really matters, that which is permanent and transcends race, social status, and geography, we are all the same. Jack Layton spoke to the humanity in each and every one of us. Let him rise to martyrdom. Let his party continue to flourish, and pay homage to him. The man whose cancer did not stop him from making himself heard will live on through all of us, because what happens to one of us happens to us all. We are all better for having had him grace us with his energy. Let that energy live on.