Well, being Valentine’s Day, naturally February brings up questions and issues related to relationship… and we all know how that kind of Ship tends to sink. We are at a time when the old paradigms clearly don’t serve us anymore, but we really haven’t found new workable models to take us through that ocean of loneliness and confusion. We are in a grey, experimental zone, wanting to have fun and freedom and clarity, yet not at all free of the “happily ever after” myth that we were fed since our first fairytale.

From soul mates to polyamorous, the Ships are bouncing on the stormy sea of the Kali Yuga, a time of darkness when the Light of Spirit and Truth seem to be ever so unattainable and most people’s energies are fully engaged in the mere act of surviving.

One popular saying comes to mind that I think is very valuable as a general guideline,

“Hold on tightly and let go lightly.”

How does it translate to relationship?

Well, let’s look at the first part… In spiritual philosophy there is a great emphasis on unattachment. A great misunderstanding of this principle often leads “spiritual” people to become greatly attached to their unattachment! Added to this is the general North American disposable culture… “easy come, easy go.” Everything is breakable (sooner rather than later), everything is replaceable. Too often this leads one or both parties to not being fully present in the Ship. As a beloved teacher of mine once said, “You can’t have your two feet on two different boats.” On a deep level, this applies to modern life in general as we hardly “show up” for our lives. We live on automatic pilot, survival mode, most of the time dwelling on the past or considering the future or simply daydreaming our time away, hardly ever arriving at the proverbial and mystical, in fact, the eternal Moment, where the real Life is waiting for us in all it’s juiciness and magic.

So… we can take the “hold on tightly” part as “show up fully in the Ship!.” While you are there, Be There!, and show it both in word and deed. A firm and solid relationship that one can trust and depend on is a wonderful gift and foundation for personal power and peace. There is no worse loneliness than the one we experience within a relationship and a Ship that is in bad working condition depletes our energy tremendously. The responsibility is ours to fix it or leave it.

That’s where the “let go lightly” part shows up. From the old patriarchal model we are deeply conditioned to think that unless we celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary together and in love, we failed… Breaking up a relationship is absolute, personal (and painful) failure. Is this truly so? We know that the only constant in Life is Change. Relationship may serve us for any amount of time, but it may well also, at any given point, stop serving either or both parties. And what does “serving” mean. It means supporting, adding joy, motivating and cultivating our inner growth, empowering equally both partners, creating a whole that is much greater than the sum of it’s parts.

This, however, is not like an instant soup or coffee, it requires deep, long and committed work. When this work is skillfully and lovingly done, the dividends are immense in personal growth and satisfaction. Relationship has the potential for being the greatest spiritual aid, mirror, path, and achievement.

However, if and when we realize it’s time to let go, it is advisable to observe how attached we are to our pain, how we almost build an identity from it. Negative emotions such as anger, self pity etc…, steep into our cellular structure and literally become poison in our systems. We don’t want to deny or repress our pain and it should be fully and honestly experienced but this is not a case of “holding on tightly”. Let your pain wash over you like a deep river that feeds your power to empathize, your compassion, your ability to love yourself and your power to heal and grow.

Always remember that the most solid Ship you are meant to build is the Self… that ship will carry you through any storm.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

With our brilliant western brains that always believe it knows better, we managed to go to the core of the ancient yoga’s DNA and change it to accommodate our ways. What I mean by “genetically modifying Yoga,” is the manner in which we have modified it to suit our egos and to fit it into the business world by mixing trends and fashion with spirituality.

Photo credit: Danielle Levitt for The New York Times

If originally yoga practice was meant for going deeper, bringing stillness, finding our inner silence and connecting with our higher self, genetically modified Yoga changed the practice to a fast, restless, physical and aggressive practice, where the main modus operandi for “gaining”  is through physical strain and pain, we are all familiar with the expression “no pain no gain”.

When we genetically modify food, by manipulating the natural order of the earth, we pay with our wellbeing. The same happens with the practice of yoga in the modern world. Change it to be a sport or form of performance and you will pay the price in physical injuries and more so by gaining even bigger egos.

You may find, after reading this article, that the descriptions in the article are quite extreme. Trust me, they are not. The only difference is that now the truth of what is happening in the yoga world is starting to surface and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Often I sit with a group of yoga students that are floating from one yoga center to another, from one style of yoga to another and they describe to me the different injuries they collected along the way, since they started their yoga practice. Shoulder, knees, neck, lower back, sciatica, hips, wrists…and the list goes on and on. What amazes me the most is that they do not find it awkward at all that their “spiritual practice” is actually adding more suffering to their being, rather than ease. Look around and you will find more and more balms and other aids for yoga injuries. The New York Times reported that yoga is the second sport that is currently creating most injuries.

The reason for this is first a large number of yoga teachers who, instead of passing on the ancient teachings to their students, mostly approach yoga as performance and they themselves are restless and pushy.

Next are the students who want to change their life but without changing their ways. They bring the same attitude and manners they have towards life, themselves, and others, to the yoga mat, yet they are hoping to experience something different.

I call upon all the hatha yoga teachers who teach the asanas with the understanding that the yoga postures are only a means for higher consciousness and who understand the postures are not intended to be a circus performance, to keep up their very good work. I urge them not to sacrifice the teaching to be trendy, for fame, or to further their business interests.

Lastly, avoid applying external pressure to a student’s body with your hands as you never know what is underneath the skin. Hands are meant to direct, without using force, and intended to transmit love and energy.

Love shakti

In a church in Spain

While visiting Seville in Spain we went to see a beautiful cathedral. I was walking around in silence, my eyes making the effort to capture all the beauty around and above me. Beautiful Gregorian chant filled up the space with a serene energy. Pepe was standing still, in the center of the cathedral. When I walked by him he said to me “I used to feel very different in places such as these, but I don’t any more. Not because I do not find them special, but because it doesn’t make a difference where I am anymore… it is all special.”

Pepe’s words at once transported me to those moments of my life where I keenly searched for the right spiritual formula. In those moments, I felt that so many forms and shapes were between me and the state of enlightenment I wanted to reach. I was convinced that eliminating these barriers was the only way to reach realization- my highest state as a spiritual person. I went through different phases of obstacle eliminations, trying to find the ultimate recipe for spirituality.

Over time, I developed conceptions regarding how a spiritual person should dress up. In my mind, clothes and fabrics where THE obstacle between me and realization. So I made sure I dressed up in a very specific way, wearing what I considered to be spiritual clothes and fabrics. Now when I look back at those days, and to the spiritual insecurity I suffered from, I smile. In retrospect, the main role for my spiritual uniform was to announce to the world, and to myself,that I am a spiritual seeker.

In the market in Spain

Later on I felt that all the colors in the color spectrum were standing between me and realization. So I eliminated all of them, and for years I wore only white. White was pure, white was spiritual and I felt that by wearing white I was one inch closer to realization ;-) When I realized that the colourful rainbow cannot be declared as non-spiritual phenomena, and that white is as wonderful to wear as the rest, all colors gradually found their way back into my wardrobe.

A time arrived when I felt that my beautiful long hair (I was twenty years old ;-) was standing between me and my higher self. In my mind, the long thick dark hair of my twenties represented beauty, seduction and temptation, so I shaved my hair- with a bold head I felt closer to my essence.

Then I discovered that greatest obstacle of all, standing between me and being an enlightened yogini: the obstacle of “making love.” So I chose celibacy to speed up my arrival into Nirvana.

Needless to say, none of the above restrictions I applied to myself brought me nearer to the ultimate state I was striving for.

However, the self-image I created for myself had its own benefits:

1. It helped me to focus my mind around my practice and center myself.
2. Making these choices made me feel that I belonged to a different “tribe,” which eventually helped me attract like-minded people into my life.
3. Following my spiritual convictions gave me the assurance that I am doing something for my spiritual evolution.
4. I was able to forge a new ‘me’, a self-concept beyond what I had inherited from my family and tribe.

In the quiet mountains in Spain

This self-image was definitely helpful and comforting most of the time, but it was never the “solution” for my inner state.

For some years I managed to combine all the above, creating the ultimate spiritual persona: a celibate bold yogini in a white sari chanting Om Namha Shivaya!… However, I was still struggling with a huge question: had I arrived at my destination?

As long as there is a question… any question… as long as we dwell in doubt… any doubt… the answer is: not yet!

It is known through science as well as direct experience that different places, colors, shapes, sounds, and even fabrics or clothes ;-) have different frequencies. Everything is energy and energy is frequency. Some places, shapes, sounds or colors may have higher frequencies… others have lower frequencies… and it is all vibrating us in different ways. We can choose the right places for us, the right people to be with, the clothes that we feel most comfortable wearing and the colors we like around us. Even so, these are external circumstances.

The greatest practice, which the mind would evaluate as the hardest one, is to find peace and stillness no matter where we are, what we wear, and how we look.

True spirituality has nothing to do with time, space, form or shapes…. This does not mean we cannot enjoy and play with the endless forms and energies that create our physical world. All spiritual practices and disciplines use shapes, forms, colours and sounds for enhancing the state of awareness.

Finally, you arrive at the ultimate state of emptiness that encompasses all.

So be it.

And have fun.

But avoid any identification with the package you are wrapped in…

Namaste,

Shakti

The Dao of Honesty and Truth - Fine Art Print - Laree Alexander

Most people have high expectations that their lovers will always be honest with them. Most people rate honesty as a high priority in their lovers’ desired virtues.

The usual perception about honesty is that it is the responsibility of “the other” to always tell us the truth. In fact honesty starts with the one that receives it and not with the one that delivers it. On the spiritual path if someone lies to you, you cannot blame them for it.  On the contrary, you are the one that needs to check where and when you set up the ground for the other person not to be truthful with you.  On this path, each of us is the center of our own galaxy of reality.

Imagine honesty as a stream of water that runs towards a dam. If the dam does not have the capacity to take the water in, the water will flood everything outside of the dam. If you would like people around you to stream honesty in your direction, you have to have the capacity to take it in- otherwise it will overwhelm you.

It is one thing to demand truth from others and another to have the capacity to face the truth.  In other words, simply because we demand the truth does not mean we can handle it and often our lovers can sense it in our actions and energy.

Scenario:

Linda and Bob are just in the beginning of their new relationship. Being fed-up of messy relationships that involved lies and dishonesty, they promise to always be honest with each other, and they both mean it and want it.

Not long after…

Linda just bought an expensive sexy dress she was dreaming about for long time. Linda can’t wait to show it to Bob.  When he comes home from work Linda asks Bob to sit down, she runs to the bedroom with excitement, to try on the new dress.

When she is back to the living room, she is asking Bob with a sexy voice:

“Do you like my new dress”?

Bob replies casually, “It is a beautiful dress but you don’t think it makes you look fat?”

The unexpected honest words stop Linda’s breath, her lips frost in a middle of a word that is now hanging down from her bottom lip like an icicle. Even though she tries to keep her facial muscles pulled up to form a smile, they are all collapsing down with gravity projecting painful expression.

Bob misses nothing in the situation, he immediately understands the impact of his honest words but it is too late, the damage has been done.

An hour later dinner carries on in piercing silence, there is no lovemaking for 10 days and Linda’s communication with Bob during the week is terse.

The traumatic event registered in Bob’s mind as “don’t repeat this mistake again, ever!!! If you want peace, keep what you think or feel to yourself!”

This event, where Linda demonstrated the opposite of what she declared as her true wish for honesty, will affect Bob’s honesty in their relationship forever.

So when you ask your lover to be honest with you, you have to ask yourself first if you can handle honesty, as often our energy and actions deliver opposite messages to what we say or demand.

People lie when they need to survive a situation.

People cannot handle the truth when the truth threatens aspects within them that they identify with.

Often relationships become a battle for survival and as a result lovers keep juggling the above mentioned extremes.

If you would like your lover to treat you as a master, you need to become that master!

Instead of demanding honesty, create space so that honesty may flow in naturally.

Lies sprout from fears. So the first step towards a spiritual honest relationship is to remove all fears.

If you do face dishonesty in your present relationship, instead of indulging in accusations, sit down and replay the dishonesty sequence of events backwards.  You will find the seeds you sowed which brought about the undesirable outcome. By taking responsibility for the consequences, you empower yourself, your lover and the relationship you both have.

Yes, it is a definite possibility that your lover may already have arrived into the relationship programmed by previous life experiences. In this case it can take some time until she or he will put down their defenses which take the form of not sharing the truth with you. It is up to you to bring honesty and truthfulness into your love relationship, not by demanding but by inspiring.

Shakti Mhi

As we know from recent scientific developments, the “material” aspect of matter is an illusion. Everything is vibrating, everything is alive. If we were to accelerate any given vibration until it was audible, we could hear the signature note that each object is broadcasting. In other words, if essentially all is vibration, then essentially all is sound.

Most scriptures tell us that the first seed of Creation was Sound. In esoteric texts there are innumerable references to the use of sound for healing and/or potentially destructive uses. Some sources explain how the Pyramids were built by moving enormous stones through the power of sound, and we all know the famous image of the opera singer breaking a glass at a distance with the power of her voice.

These are all bits of information and knowledge that can help us start to understand the potential behind the practice of Mantra and Chanting.

We can think of a Mantra as a unit of energy that connects us with, and awakens in us, a certain primal force that could be said to reside dormant in our very DNA. They can be keys that unlock certain forces within us, and once awakened, or remembered, they can bring us closer to our center and our full power as human beings.

In the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, for the most part, Mantras are connected with what is imperfectly termed “gods”. In western terms I think we can understand these forces better with Jung’s term Archetype. Each of these “gods” or deities has a certain “power” that can be actualized in us through their invocation.

In other words, these are not actual beings residing in the “clouds”, but Archetypes that reside in us as potential, and through tools such as Mantra, Chanting and Visualization, we can access and cultivate these potential powers consciously.

For example, Shiva is a most beloved deity in India. He represents the destructive power of “God”. In order to build something new sometimes we have to destroy or let go of that which doesn’t serve us anymore. The pain we may have to go through is directly proportional to the attachment we have to that which needs to be destroyed in order to make space for the new. The dance of Shiva is a reminder and in fact a celebration of the reality that the only constant in Life is Change, and that it is actually a fabulous Dance, a dance performed to the sacred rhythm of Time, and that ultimately it is all Maya , or illusion. This is not an excuse to bury or deny our need to mourn and/or feel our emotions fully, but it is a very important perspective that can help us move through life with more ease, wisdom, and a lighter step.

So… when we find ourselves stuck with outmoded behaviors, or we need to change our physical reality, we can call on the power of Shiva by using Mantra. This is a powerful psychological tool that can empower us, almost instantly, depending on the strength of our connection with the Archetype.

There are a myriad forms that can connect us with the energies of forgiveness, compassion, abundance, joy, creativity, assertiveness, love, etc. Whatever capacity we want to cultivate or enhance, it won’t be hard to find an Archetype to aid us and accelerate our process.

Now, having talked about the psychological aspect, the student of spirituality may well be puzzled by the devotional aspect of the practice from the Hindu standpoint. Do these people really believe there is some fat guy with an elephant head in heaven that can grant us wishes? To that I would reply that the western mind doesn’t seem to question fat naked little children playing trumpets in the clouds in our own culture, or babies being born without sexual contact, or saints in “heaven” listening to our needs.

All of these religious aspects need not be ridiculous if we again approach it from a Jungian perspective. Maybe we can allow for the possibility that these Archetypes, through the working of the Collective Unconscious over literally thousands of years, do take a life of their own in some metaphysical realm. In other words, they become a specific reservoir of energy that we can tap into in order to further our spiritual path.

When we express our devotion to Rama, we are expressing devotion to the qualities of faithfulness, unconditional love, protectiveness of the family, and high values that the figure of Rama represents. Ganesha opens our capacity to move through life with joy, ease, devotion and wisdom.

In Buddhism we have figures such as Avalokistewara (related to Kwan Yin in China). He/she represents the quality of total compassion, and the total commitment to help our fellow passengers on this existence to attain their highest potential.

Each of these entities has their mantras, usually several, through which practice we can call upon their particular energy for our own healing and empowerment.

All of these philosophies, or religions, as the case may be, believe in the ultimate Oneness of the Creator, or Original Creative Source, but they allow for the fact that within Creation the One divides into the Many, and different aspects then take certain “personalities” in order to accomplish the Work.

In Africa, for instance, these gods or archetypes usually line up with the elements, and so we have the personification of Fire: Shango, or Water: Iemanja. In the Hindu system Indra is the personification of the energy of Fire, and we could say that Saraswati, the patroness of the arts and learning, is the equivalent of Africa’s Mother Iemanja.

When we practice devotion to these figures we are bringing their energy into our lives. To the outward eye it may seem that we are paying homage to “idols”, and in some cases this may be accurate, but the proper practice is a sound spiritual and psychological technique that mirrors techniques such as NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), where these figures would be called “anchors”.

That in the East many believe in the “objective” existence of these “deities” and the power of their mantras, there’s no question, and, at the end of the day, Life is a vast and fascinating mystery where, literally… anything is possible.

Pepe Danza

Pepe will teach a yoga class based on the above principles beginning in September – Mondays at 5:30pm in Prana Yoga College center. Please see schedule.

And that’s what I did at the Vancouver folk festival! After consuming the fried whale tail, yummy, I decided for once to see what the Tarot man in the orange tent had to say …. about my existence. I shuffled the cards, felt them energetically, divided them and chose the significant ones. The Tarot master looked at the cards, nodding his head lightly, then lifted his blue eyes and looked at me with a serious /concerned look on his face. I smiled, thinking to myself, “I can still hear my breath so it cannot be that bad.” ;-)

Then he started to release words such as painful past … challenging time … uncertain future … hesitation … fears … doubts … being overwhelmed … and other descriptive words that deal with our surviving state of existence. The sentences that were flowing out of his mouth were flying towards me like shooting stars but somehow couldn’t reach me. My mind was whispering to me “I have no clue what he’s talking about” and I whispered back “I don’t either.”

I couldn’t relate to anything he said, as he used words that I had fired from my vocabulary long ago, and as a result of that my whole reality shifted to be very different from what my parents tried to convince me life was all about…

We manifest reality with our perceptions and assumptions. His assumption that “living” is made of various forms of suffering is not how I perceive reality.

He pointed to a card saying “this card represents the challenges in your life.” For me the card represented the assumption that challenge was a mandatory element in everyone’s reality and if you removed that element, life or you yourself would vanish. ;-)

Challenges lose their meaning when the mind does not identify with the perceptions of good and bad or hard and easy. If we remove our expectations from “how thing should turn out” and stop evaluating our moments as an absolute good or bad, suddenly all moments become the same.

In our primal existence we are programmed to see reality from the point of surviving, so the moment something is not serving the purpose of our survival, it becomes “challenging”. Our perceptions shape our realities.

Then he pointed to a card that represents how the (painful) past affects our lives.

If you do not hold onto your past, as if it was a beam of light, how can it be painful?

If you fully immerse yourself in your present moment, how can your past keep haunting you?

The next one to surface was the card of doubt. If you do whatever needs to be done in each moment, if you follow your bliss and tune into your intuition, there’s no space left for doubt.

So maybe the question is not what comes first, the chicken or the egg, but what comes first, the perception or the reality?

I paid for his time (and for the material he provided me for my next article ;-) and left, wondering if his cards were projecting the common human reality that manifests itself in our fear of the unknown (future) and the identification with our traumas (past) as who we are.

Just like no matter how much water you pour into a funnel, at any given moment it will convey only what it can pass through its volume, one cannot experience reality beyond his/her perception’s capacity.

On the small scale, Tarot cards are the mirrors of our perceptions that consist of past, present, future, fear of death, and challenges, and they are often interpreted in the same manner we are perceiving life. This is why the reality of most people is so predictable.

One cannot grasp reality beyond his/her vocabulary of perceptions and assumptions. If we wish to change our reality, we should do it by expanding our perceptions beyond surviving in the physical world, and disable some of our definitions that are limiting our reality.

On the larger scale, the universe around us is the reflection of our perceptions and beliefs. When some people expand their perception beyond the common state of consciousness and form “uncommon” realities that do not fit in our ordinary set of beliefs, we are in awe.

Enjoy this beautiful video (link below) that represents expansion in our relationship with the universe around us that is often based on fear and separation from everything around us. If watching this video makes your heart expand, it is because it may connect you with your essence which is one with all.

shakti

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=WK2LpUoqX6A&vq=medium

True Masters

True masters never add titles to their own name to enhance their power.
True masters share their insights without needing to convince.
True masters never elevate themselves higher than anyone.
True masters never claim to hold on to the absolute truth.
True masters never declare their own realization.
True masters convey wisdom with no ownership.
True masters know we are all masters within.
True masters never encourage dependency.
True masters never encourage idolization.
True masters never fear others who know.
True masters simply radiate their state.
True masters set people free.

shakti mhi

The nature of the mind is to get excited with a new stimulation. Shortly after, it gets used to it. Next, it gets bored with it and as a result it does not give it attention anymore and no longer sees what was so exciting in the first place.

This is how we usually function with our lovers. Our lovers who used to occupy our senses and thoughts with intensity become part of our daily routine, therefore we do not see them anymore, and consequently we stop telling our lovers how much they enhance our moments. When we do acknowledge their presence, it is usually a calendar- acknowledgment. There are five days in the year when lovers, partners and spouses make an extra effort, searching for creative ways to show their beloved one how much they appreciate having them in their life:

Birthdays
Valentine’s Day
Christmas
Anniversary
And when feeling guilty about something ;-)

Unfortunately, the rest of the 365 days of the year are consumed by routine that is nibbling into the passion, the intimacy and the love expressions that were flowing so spontaneously through us when we first engaged with our beloved one. The spontaneity is slowly fading into automatic affection gestures we make while our mind is often somewhere else. (A quick kiss before we leave the house in the morning, while we are wondering where we are going to stop for a quick coffee before work). This is when our moments with our beloved one turn from extraordinary to ordinary.

Ordinaritus is the virus that kills lovers’ passion and intimacy. The natural remedy that keeps the immune system of an intimate relationship strong enough to stop this virus from penetrating is intentional creativity. The idea beyond intentional creativity is to demonstrate to your lover, in a creative way, on a daily basis, that you see them.

It is intentional as it may not always flow with ease when you are dealing with mundane demands. Ask any artist, no matter if they are a writer, a painter or an actor, and you will find out that their creativity is not always available on hand and still they need to get into the studio and spin the wheels of their creative instrument.

See your love relationship as an infinite canvas and your lover as the subject of your creativity.

Make an ongoing list of ideas to express your love and passion for your lover.

Play her/him a special song

Write her/him a few words

Leave her/him a flower on the pillow

Call unexpectedly and say how you feel about her/him

Place a surprise into her/his bag

Prepare your lover a bath

Read her/him something special or interesting

Send a special email

Leave a loving note on the entrance door, in their shoe or on their car’s windshield

Chocolate?

Ask her/him how they feel and be there fully to listen

Go for a walk together

Creativity is the seed for a spiritual love to sprout from on a daily basis. Implementing your creative attention daily is like watering a seed so it grows to become a beautiful flower.

shakti mhi

To discuss this posting or to comment, please visit the forum topic dedicated to this article.

The common pattern is that we fall in love with people as we get attracted to their energy, personality, physical attributes and their characteristic qualities. But once the relationship “takes off”, we start working on converting the subject of our love to become as identical as possible to who we are, since ourselves is all we know. As a result we expect our lovers to think like us, feel like us, desire like us and perceive reality exactly the way we do.

We can say that what was first attractive later becomes repellent.

Even if we win the battle by imposing our ways on our lovers and change them to be who we need them to be for our own sake, we don’t really gain anything. Forcing people to be who they are not creates resentment, as they feel they lose themselves in the relationship.

And this is how it goes:

Imagine this scenario: Mary is a Virgo, a very organized and efficient woman, who irons her towels and arranges her clean T-shirts in an ascending order from light to dark shades. In her tidy apartment even the air does not move so her organized existence doesn’t get disturbed. Our tidy and uptight Mary is describing the new guy she is dating to her best girlfriend over a cup of coffee. She says while beaming with excitement: “He is adorable, he is a journalist and a writer and very artistic in his personality. His apartment is filled with books and magazines; they are all over the place, on the floor, beside the bed, in the washroom. He is so intelligent and creative that his head is in the clouds most of the time. The sink is always full of dishes, as there is always a deadline for him to meet. I always laugh when we leave his apartment because he never knows where his keys are. Yesterday I arranged his closet so he could find his underwear in the morning. He is so sweet, I am so in love with him!”

A year later Mary and Mr. Creative are living together in her no more tidy flawless apartment (because of him, of course, not because of her).

Scenario: Same best girlfriend over a cup of coffee in the same café a year later. This time, a distressed Mary is complaining to her girlfriend about her relationship with Mr. Creative: “I can’t stand his messiness anymore. Why can’t he keep all his books in one place? How many times have I told him washrooms are not libraries? And why can’t he wash his cup of coffee the same day he drinks it? We are always late when we go out because he never remembers where he put his stupid keys, he drives me crazy. We can’t stop fighting; I ask him to be tidier but it doesn’t seem like he cares about my feelings anymore.” End of Scenario.

When we enter into a relationship, feeling and experiencing self-content, we naturally give space to our loved one to be who they are. If you don’t like who they are or cannot accept them the way they are, don’t be with them; but avoid imposing your ways on your lovers. People should change only if this is their own choice. We often give an ultimatum to our lovers; we threaten them emotionally, we manipulate them to fulfill our expectations, we blackmail them so they change according to our comfort zone. We create an invisible jail around them as we take their freedom to be who they are or who they want to be.

Love comes from an infinite ocean of abundance, but as it flows through us, it gets trapped in our internal net woven with fears, insecurity and limitations. As a result, the flow of love gets stagnant, rigid and firm and starts to shape the bars for the cage we are about to place our beloved in.

To be able to allow your lover to be who he/she is, you need to free yourself from the idea that your internal fulfillment lies in his/her being.

So if you are a spiritual lover, you will avoid demanding from your lover
To become a yogi or a hockey fan
To be a vegetarian or to love bloody rare steaks
To stop smoking and drinking or to love wheatgrass juice
To wear high-heeled shoes or sexy clothes
To make the bed in the morning
To visit your mother every Friday
To love the same type of movies you like
To have the same political views as you do
To go with you to church on Sundays
To love reading or going dancing
To want the same frequency of making love that you do
To like outdoor activities or indoors tranquilities

You also cannot force your lover to give you the freedom to be who you are like you do with him/her. Simply let him/her be.

On the path of spirituality we do not change the world, we change ourselves. The same way if you like any of the above but your partner doesn’t, do it yourself and leave your partner alone or don’t be in this relationship.

Free love is when fulfilled and content people allow each other to be who they are and not who they need them to be.

To discuss this posting or to comment, please visit the forum topic dedicated to this article.

Once in a while when I get up in the morning with a foggy mind, throwing into the open air the ultimate question “what is it all about,” I receive from my beloved Pepe all kinds of funny answers that first make me laugh and then put me right back on track.

So when I received the below communication /question, I asked Pepe to reply to it and he did … joyfully … with a large smile on his face.

shakti

Dearest Shakti and Fellow Teachers,

Since my experience at Prana I have reached new heights of awareness, oh how wonderful…but I suppose when I started to do this work, I assumed it would be rainbows and butterflies, and at this stage, I am feeling less and less like I am dancing in an enchanted forest. I have a slight feeling this is not what you meant when you talk about bliss :P

I am grateful for my awareness, as many cannot see what I see, but at the same moment, I find myself frustrated and occasionally, scared. The frustration occurs every moment I realize another destructive behaviour, every moment another reflects back at me a quality I don’t want to acknowledge, and I wonder, what more can I do about this? Is this frustration caused by a lack of compassion for the self, for others?

The fear is more daunting. What is this fear? I suddenly KNOW in the depths of me that not only is everything meaningless, but there is no truth, and while I remind myself that this is what it is, and it is not to say that you cannot create meaning, it is still frightening to see the universe on such a scale. As the world changes I wonder more and more, what am I doing here, and what do I want to do here. I occasionally get the sensation like I have just gotten on a roller coaster, and its started to move, and now I want off, but why focus on the regret of getting on and not enjoy the ride? It is so obvious to me that fear is caused by a lack of grounding, and at the same time, I wonder why my years of effort to ground this spirit seem to be unsuccessful. I wonder is awareness, my desire to change, and my actions of pushing through the fear enough.

As time goes on I become more and more aware of the simplicity in living, and yet there is this deep rooted fear that seems to step in. I sometimes wonder if I allowed myself to become too open, too aware, too soon without properly developing the root chakra. I feel as though I am becoming more present in my body, in my legs, but then, especially recently, this fear comes up. Is this just dark tunnel one must walk through on the path to liberation? To walk into the fear, and come out on the other side?
I realize that not any person”s path or experience is the same, but I wonder, does it occur sometimes on this path where you will see reality as it is, and before you embrace and are empowered by it, it scares the living S*** out of you.

Pepe’s reply

Fantastic ! All you describe is actually a sign that your Practice has come to a very high level. Too soon? Not unless yo u are using drugs.

Reality is truly a terrifying experience for the little ego. When you have an experience of the true Vastness of the Universe and the unimaginable depths of what in Buddhism is called The Void, it’s actually hard to survive it!  We must then seek to strike a very difficult balance, walking the edge between “reality” and “Reality”. Most of us have a hard time doing this, and this includes even Teachers and Gurus, many of whom failed to bridge this gap and got embroiled in scandals and messy situations.

It sounds like you are getting close enough, often enough, to “Reality”, and your ego is naturally getting very scared and creating fear, but it also looks to me like you have developed a lot of awareness around this.

Your “years of effort” are indeed successful! Now you have to learn to handle that new level of energy and awareness.

“Everything is meaningless”… indeed!… “there is no truth”… indeed!, at least in “reality”. What does this mean? Freedom! When we realize this, we may not have mama’s skirt to hang on to any more, but, we can go wherever we want! Life has handed us a magical blank book, and whatever we write there, that’s our meaning, that’s our story, that’s our truth. It either “gets written”, or we write in full awareness and celebration of the amazing opportunity it is!

When we plant a tree, we don’t fuss about when it will flower. We just keep creating the right conditions for its growth. Do the same with your Practice. And don’t “push through” anything! Wherever you are, including fear and “destructive behaviours”, just Be there in Awareness. Applying awareness has the magical quality of feeding that which is conducive to your growth and slowly destroying that which is inimical to your growth.

As far as “what am I doing here, and what do I want to do here”, just stay with your Practice. When we have cultivated our Essence enough and removed our Fear, or at least stopped giving energy and credibility to the ego’s panic, our path simply becomes clear in front of us, and we start naturally attracting who and what we need at the right time (what a great teacher called a “magnetic center”). As long as we have to “find” or “decide” what we “are here for”, we simply haven’t found it yet… and that’s ok! Let it come to you organically and in its own time. In the meantime, cultivate awareness and impeccability in whatever you do. “Showing up” fully in the here and now has the power of grounding us… less philosophy and more washing dishes!

I’m glad you got rid of the “rainbows and butterflies” fantasy. The Path requires a lot of courage and discipline, and as one of my most beloved Teachers used to say: “The brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow.”

As long as we are in this “reality” we have to accept the Dance of Yin and Yang. It’s up to you to dance as a  puppet or Dance as Shiva.

Many Blessings your way…

Pepe Danza

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