Closer To Fine

This morning, I was musing on why I write. Well...really I was musing on why I do everything I do, and why I tend to often not do what is good for me - even given the perfect circumstances and opportunities to do so. But, let's focus on writing for the moment.

I find I write for mainly two reasons. The first is catharsis - to release! When I feel my body and mind itching for an outlet of some kind and I have no idea why, I write to put onto paper what I cannot express through other means. This is usually when my other faculties of "dealing with it" aren't working, or when I am present enough to realize that zoning out on one of my witchy shows (or Bridgerton) isn't perhaps the best way to travel through the haze. Basically, when life feels heavy, I write to lighten the load. This kind of writing often takes the form of lyrics for me, but sometimes it just ends up as stream-of-consciousness gibberish...which is also quite useful in it's own way.

The second reason is to integrate - to bring thoughts and ideas together. When I have 108 notions running through my mind - and I somehow recognize that they all fit together somehow, but I don't see how yet. This is why I'm writing this morning.

It occurred to me just now that perhaps the best way for me to accomplish this integration and hopefully find my "ah ha!" moment is to just start writing the individual thoughts down and see what materializes. So here we go:

Yoga.

I've been training toward becoming a yoga teacher since January with Angie Follensbee-Hall at Jai Studios in Brownsville, VT. The process has been incredible. Each month I go down for the in-person weekend sessions, I discover new things that move my messy integrated life journey forward. A few things I'm ruminating on:

• Westernized yoga's trend toward becoming enmeshed in ego and a linear focus on increasing one's physical fitness - rather than the OG life-practice of yoga, originating in the East that seeks to integrate all facets of life: physical, emotional, and mental well-being, ultimately leading to self-realization - the ultimate goal being to further develop universal collective consciousness. How I understand it is: If we're all operating as our best selves, we can better help each other evolve and grow. I'm severely curtailing this incredibly in-depth philosophy for the sake of time (and my own still-developing sense of it), so please forgive me. If you're curious, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are a great place to start - or maybe just attend a yoga class with Angie.

  
  

• What about our cultural climate is discouraging us from seeking the OG path - to the point where many yoga studios refuse to encourage their students to learn any of the traditional teachings. They've gone so far as to make "namaste" a dirty word. I agree that if your practice does not honor the tradition, perhaps don't borrow the terms. But, this begs the question: why aren't we then honoring the tradition in the first place?

  
  

• This journey is changing my life and how I think about why I do the things I do (or don't do the things I know are good for me). Westernized culture will have us beat ourselves into submission. Shame, doubt, and grief all surround us as we lose who we are to the machine of productivity and perfectionism - which is fuled by the desire for power over others. Grief is important in this, I think. We are only culturally "allowed" to grieve certain things in life. The death of a loved one is really one of the few things that we're still allowed to take time to grieve. Having experienced that recently, it sparked something within me. I realized that, enmeshed in my grief over the loss of my father, I was actually experiencing a relief and release of all of the things I never allowed myself to grieve - one being the loss of my own self to societal pressure and expectation.

Unemployment.

That's a rather nasty sounding term isn't it? It instantly capitalizes on shame. I am currently unemployed after losing my job earlier this month to reasons I won't get into here other than to say it was unexpected. BUT, this event has led me to ruminate once again:

• The process of applying for unemployment - or any kind of government assistance really...housing, food stamps, disability benefits, etc. - is fraught with finger pointing, mistrust, and shaming people into submission. I could write an entire mini-series on all of the ways that our current system shames people into believing that they don't deserve to live fulfilling lives. It's simply awful. And I've been on both sides. Four four years, I was the person denying and evicting people from low-income housing. Not my proudest time - I have much that I am still actively making amends for.

  
  

• I suddenly have time. I have time to think and breathe and possibly re-write my entire life...whoa. That's a tall order. And it's scary as hell. And, this isn't the first time I've tried to do this...AND I wasn't terribly successful the first time around. BUT, important lessons were learned. The kind of lessons that changed my life, in fact.

Hopes & Dreams.

Can we still have those? Is that allowed? Sometimes it feels like we cannot, doesn't it? There are times that I have felt so detached from my true desires that not only could I not follow them, I couldn't have even named them. I can now. Here we go:

• Our little corner. This is how I refer to the small bit of peace that myself and my family are slowly but surely carving out for ourselves. It involves tangible things like land and a home that we own - thriving gardens and joyful events that brings friends, family, and community together (primarily involving music and food - two of my favorite things). It also involves intangible things like understanding, love, and continued personal growth.

  
  

• Laughter on the regular. Good lord do I love to laugh. I love to laugh to the point where my voice gets hoarse and my stomach hurts.

  
  

• Cats and cows...no explanation needed here.

Alright so I'm not exactly sure where this post started and where it ended up, but I feel better now. Perhaps I need to continue to integrate a bit more throughout the day. I neglected to mention the apparel business entirely, but perhaps that is what was intended. I'm beginning to become more comfortable with leaving things as is. Letting them sink in and not seeking an answer right away - trusting that it will come when the time is right.

I'll leave you with these immortal words from the Indigo Girls: "The less I seek my source for something definitive, the closer I am to fine."

I wish you the best day, filled with intention and grace.