“What the hell; you are what you are, and self honesty occupies a definite and vital part in the ever-growing process to become a real human being and not a plastic one.”   ~Bruce Lee

Who knew that Bruce Lee was such a wise yogi? I didn’t! I’ve long adored the love poems of bhakti (devotional) poets that illumine the great yogic understanding that we are all expressions of Consciousness — God dwelling in us, as us. It makes me appreciate that “what the hell” wisdom from Bruce Lee even more. And since, we are all just elaborately unique expressions of God, it follows that we are well served by embracing and expressing the unique beauty that is us.

Easier said than done for most people.

Nonetheless, I love the invitation Mr. Lee is extending. We are all just who we are. There’s really no way around that. Getting grounded in deep self-acceptance, experiencing yourself in any given moment without the inhibition of self criticism, self evaluation, or self judgment, you can experience the beauty of who you are, the essence of Consciousness that is expressing itself through you as you. It becomes easier to experience yourself as a REAL human being and not a plastic one. There’s a kind of ease of being that carries with it a sweet delight.

There’s this great feeling that accompanies that ease of being, when you are just being who you are completely. Yet, stuff gets in the way. You walk out the door and encounter all manner of challenges, particularly in your relationships. I mean, it’s one thing to accept yourself in the privacy of your own life ~ NOT interacting with others. It’s a whole different matter when you try to take that same humanity into relationship and bump up against someone’s grumpy mood or your own unmet expectations and you find yourself being the antithesis of a peaceful yogi. Not cool.

This month, in the Integration Club, we are using Deep PEAT 4 to dismantle some of the typical charges that get in the way of our being REAL human beings in the context of relationships. And one of the things we are looking at is what gets in the way of you being YOU? For many of us, it’s things like FEAR — Fear of being judged, fear of being misunderstood, fear of speaking up. You can surely fill in the blanks here with your own fears.

With the right tools, these fears just fall away. Literally F A L L   A W A Y. What you’re left with is this brilliant awareness, “What the hell, I am what I am.” As an introvert, I can tell you that releasing the fears that kept me bound to my social awkwardness  has been liberating. I can still be socially awkward from time to time, but I don’t have the tension I used to feel. I’m closer to leaning into that old Irish saying ~ Dance like no one’s watching. Some of you might know that dancing was the ‘alt-career’ I walked away from and chose social work. I still aim to dance like no one’s watching, for to me, WE ARE ALL DANCERS!

What supports you in being your MOST authentic YOU in relationships? Even more valuable, what gets in the way? When you know the answers to those questions AND you know Deep PEAT 4 you are well on your way to coming into a more stable alignment with self honesty.

Now for a little entertainment and inspiration.

“Come out of the circle of time, and into the circle of love.” ~ Rumi

As this month draws to a close, I’m sitting cozy in my office, three large dogs sacked out on the floor around me, while sheets of ice fall from the sky. This is by no means a typical winter day in east Tennessee. I’m finishing up the final touches on my “plan” for the year — all the while knowing that God is laughing.

Nonetheless, I definitely overcrowded my schedule last year and I just don’t want to do that again. Such overcrowding doesn’t leave much room for the delightful spontaneity of the play of Life’s energy. Yet, I’m a girl who needs a plan. Otherwise, I tend to work, actually I overwork – well beyond my capacity. I’ve finally realized that my calendar is the secret to honoring my capacity.

For instance, I LOVE my work with private clients and I LOVE mentoring coaches and therapists and I LOVE training others in the empowering methods of Spiritual Technology. If I’m not careful, before I know it, I’ve overcrowded my schedule and things start falling through the cracks and I’ve lost track of LOVE in the unfolding moment. So, I’m mapping out a sketch for my focus this year with the intention that I “Come out of the circle of time, and into the circle of love.”

For me, this mapping out time has involved long walks with my meandering  imagination — trying to listen deeply to how can I best serve both that which longs to express itself through me and those dear ones who honor me with their trust.

I’ve got some great things on the horizon … doing and being, being and doing, but more to the point, being WHILE doing. Though my website hasn’t quite caught up to my reflections, I’m feeling on track. THAT, my friends, is a real blessing for me.

This year, one of my goals is to share the power of Deep PEAT 4 with more folks. Once you know how to use this parsimoniously elegant process, you’ll be able to join the “Integration Club.” This is a monthly program where participants will receive an integration plan for the month. We all hear about how important it is to integrate our experiences as we lean into a more expansive experience of unified consciousness – YOGA. In daily life how this looks is as we integrate more and more opposites, the sweet space of peaceful ease that we experience in meditation begins to infuse itself more and more into life OFF the cushion and OFF the mat.

“Come out of the circle of time, and into the circle of love.” What an invitation! That’s what I’ve been doing this month. I found that I had to come out of time, to bring LOVE back into how I spend my TIME.

Some of the questions I asked myself were:

• What do I want to be celebrating this time next year?
• What do I want to experience this year?
• Who do I want to spend time with?
• What do I want to learn?
• What do I want to make sure I give myself time for?
• What doing goes along with all this wanting?
• Where will this doing live in my calendar?

What questions do you ask yourself to get clear about bringing LOVE back into BEING?

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may” is perhaps my favorite line of Robert Herrick’s poem, To Virgins, to Make Much of Time. Remember this poem? Maybe you’ve never heard it. Maybe you have and you’ve forgotten it. I find this young woman’s reading of the poem, particularly delightful. Stay tuned to the end to catch her youthful delight.

Gather ye rosebuds. This past year, as most years do, held some challenges, some big wins and many many moments lost between. Such is life. One of the lessons for me this past year had to do with time. I became aware of how I rushed I felt and how much I pushed myself. For the most part, I did not gather rosebuds. I gathered tension from my rushing and trying to do too much with too little time.

Of course, one of the consequences of this kind of rushing is moving out the spacious beauty of the Eternal NOW. This rushing also moved me out of my own nature, slow. I tend to move slowly. I tend to dawdle. So much so that many years ago, my father gave me the nickname, Mo ~ “Damn girl, you move as slow as molasses at Christmas.”

There’s a balance that was obviously missing for me

For the past several years, I’ve chosen a word or a phrase to help guide me ~ a kind of touchstone. Last year, the New Year flew past me and I didn’t choose a word. Turns out, I like having something to turn to and missed my word. This year, AWARENESS. Already this word has served me well. Really well.

I’ve long loved the luscious awareness that comes from mindfulness practice. Yet, adding the integration of opposites related to time with Spiritual Technology has revealed a widening AWARENESS and a gradually expanding and seemingly effortless mindful awareness.

Do you ever choose a word or phrase to lean into for the year? What’s your word for this year? It’s not too late. Once you’ve chosen your word or phrase, you can lean into the support of Spiritual Technology, especially DP4 to really bring your intention alive.

Coaches Corner

If you are interested in exploring your relationship with time, there are three things I would really recommend; unification of time, Zivorad Slavinski’s Chronokinetic Time Contraction Process and the integration opposites related to time. Here are but a few of the opposites I’ve been working with:

Rushing / Going Slow

Plenty of Time / Not Enough Time

Eternal / Temporary

Fast / Slow

Then / Now

There are lots more that I’ve integrated around time, this is just a bit of a list to get you started. If others come to mind for you, do share!

We each have the power to cultivate sustainable personal peace, build greater confidence and create fulfilling relationships. It’s a journey that can begin with intention and a willingness to love YOU, that much. Love yourself as if you are worthy of the greatest gifts life can offer. From my point of view, what greater gifts are there but a heart full of peace and fulfilling relationships?

Do you believe it’s possible for you to cultivate sustainable personal peace? That’s not to say that you will not encounter suffering in your life. You will. I am suggesting that you can meet this suffering with grace. You can meet suffering with the Awareness that you are so much more than whatever temporary state of mind or heart that presents itself in the moment.

If you go deep enough in the stormiest of seas, there is a point of stillness. In the same way, if you go deep enough into the human heart, there is a point of still peace. Going deep into the human heart means transcending, ending the trance of petty grievances that rob you of peace.

Even as you read, “petty grievances,” you might be saying to yourself, “my grievances are NOT petty.” After all, you might be facing deep emotional pain, profound grief, or ferocious fears. And there, right there you encounter one of the essential qualities that will make your journey to sustainable personal peace a very real possibility. Compassion.

Self compassion and compassion for others will not only enrich your relationships with others but will open you unfolding a life where you feel worthy of the good things life has to offer.  Compassion brings the gift a kinder, gentler approach to life – an approach that will begin to turn your life into a garden of peace.

Accessing this kind of compassion can begin with increasing your awareness of when you are being judgmental of yourself and others. Practicing compassion in this way can open you to moving out of auto-pilot into living fully, being present for your life. It can become a way claiming and reclaiming your birthright of peace. Just for a while, practice cultivating compassion for yourself and others.

It can be as simple as reminding yourself that there is always a back story.

I recently went for a walk with a dear relative. On the walk, she was talking about how another relative had not yet put his child in braces. The child clearly needed braces and she seemed angry and somewhat horrified that he’d not taken steps to attend to his child’s dental needs. She was miles away from compassion.

Keep in mind, when you are miles away from compassion for others. It’s likely that you will scream for others to have compassion for you or you will treat yourself with that same judgmental attitude you offer to others.

As we talked, I shared with her that I’ve learned there’s always a back story. In other words, there is always something going on with the one we are judging. If we can lean into the awareness that there is some pain, some back story driving the other person’s behavior, it’s a little easier to come back to compassion. Even if we don’t know what the back story is.

I shared with her what I know of the medical rights of some non-custodial divorced parents. Essentially, the parent she was judging may not have any medical rights with the child.

After a moment or so, she took a deep breath and said, “You’re right. I judged too quickly.” I could see by the softening in her face and the quietness in her voice that for that moment, she found the peace-filled gift of the heart – compassion.

Sustainable personal peace is not a myth. It begins with and is sustained by a commitment to claim and reclaim peace. If you’ve ever played on a teeter-totter, you know that our experience of life is dynamic. It’s not static.  So it is with peace. Learn to recognize when you’ve lost it and learn to find your way back to it. One route is compassion.

This time of year, many of us in the U.S. turn towards the practice of thanks giving –giving thanks. For me, this comes down to a very simple yet fruitful practice, mindfulness. Being mindfully thankful for the simplest gifts of life coupled with sense awareness not only gifts me with the Presence in the present moment, but with a very tangible interconnected thankfulness.

Slowing down and using my senses to be present for as many moments as I can, brings me to a heightened awareness of the simple gifts of life for which I’m thankful.

Feeling the coolness of the air, I am aware of heat in a cold room. I’m thankful.

Seeing the soft light from the lamp on the table, I’m thankful that I can turn a switch and have light.

Taking in a deep easy breath, I’m grateful for lungs that work.

Tasting the velvety tomato sauce covering my leftover lasagna lunch, I’m thankful for easy access to food.

Hearing the phone ring, I’m thankful I can be with my family and friends despite our seeming distance.

Feeling the familiar click of my fingertips on the keyboard and the sound of tap tapping, I’m thankful for your presence in my life. I’m thankful that you read my ramblings. With those of you I’ve met and served, I’m thankful I’ve had the privilege of your trust.

For me, this thankfulness seems to multiply like bunnies in my awareness with each moment more alive than the previous moment. These moments are more alive with Awareness and with gently widening circles of thankfulness that seem to ripple out from the center of my being – like a blossom dropped into a still pool of water.

The partner in this dance of mindful thanksgiving is a blessing that seems to emerge from that center, may others be so blessed as I.

 The sun streamed through the late southern summer afternoon in golden rays. And, there I stood in front of my grandmother’s mirror. It seemed huge and somehow magical to me. This was not the first time I stood in front of that mirror. My grandmother often placed me in front of that mirror and told me that it was magic. I just had to look long enough to spot the magic.

Whenever I was upset about something or I did something wrong, she would stand me in front of that mirror and say, “You just stand there and look at yourself until you see God looking back. Then come talk to me.”

My grandmother was deeply religious or ridiculously nuts. I’ll get into that another time.

On this particular day, the light was achingly beautiful. Deep gold reflected off the dust particles between the mirror and me. I remember getting distracted by them, how they looked like rivers of golden light flowing all around me. Then I turned my attention again to the mirror. Within moments I was enchanted by rivers of the golden light. Then I turned my gaze back to the mirror, trying to see God looking back at me. This back and forth went on for some time.

I don’t know if it was gradual or sudden, but I remember feeling surprised that I could see God peeking back at me, or at least I thought it was God. I felt like I both disappeared and was completely present. I was aware of that golden light permeating everything. Everything seemed empty, even the golden light. The mirror, me, the room and even the giant purple hydrangea flowers outside the bedroom mirror all seemed to be made of the same stuff. I remember thinking, “this must be God.”

I felt an unimaginable peace, an infinite, yet empty love. I don’t really know how long I stood there in this incredible space of ONENESS ~ experiencing everything as being made of the same God-stuff. After some time, I remembered that I was supposed to go talk to my grandmother. By the time I opened the door to the bedroom and found my way to her, the experience had faded, leaving a deep impression nonetheless. I don’t remember what she said when I found her. I just remember the feeling and the fading of the feeling.

The impression left by this experience has lasted a lifetime and seeded in me the desire to enter that space again and again. Decades later, I’ve had a handful of similar brief transcendent experiences. Most recently when my mentor, Zivorad M. Slavinski, led me through a series of dharanas, concentration exercises, that culminated in Sunyata (Divine Void, Empty Consciousness). Unlike previous experiences, this one lasted days and left a very deep impression.

As my mother-in-law might say, “Well, pin a rose on your nose.” It’s not that I’m intending to brag with a kind of spiritual one-ups-man-ship here. I believe it’s of great value to remember and contemplate our experiences of transcendence. For these experiences leave an impression and reflecting on these experiences can bring them alive.

My earliest experience of Sunyata, of Samadhi, absorbed in a non-dual state of consciousness set me on a course that guides me still. At a young age, I got that Life is more than it seems and I knew that I liked peeking behind the curtain and wanted to live from that transcendent state – all the time.

So, what prevents us from having this experience all the time?

I think its ego. An ego comprised of layers and layers of deeply imbedded impressions that form veils around our awareness and leaves us feeling separate, separate from our truest Self, separate from each other and separate from God.

What do you think?

Have you had an experience like this? How did it affect you?

On my recent podcast, “Yoga Conversations,” I had a great conversation with the brilliant Sally Kempton on the topic of shadow consciousness. One of the things we discussed is what makes it easier to engage in what Sally called, “authentic shadow work.”

She said, “To do shadow work authentically, it makes a huge difference if you have a relationship with your essence, with your true self, if you actually have an experience of yourself as basically good. Because, part of what makes it so hard to look at shadow is if at bottom, you don’t really love yourself.”

What this illuminates is the very real importance of having, at base, an understanding of and appreciation for yourself at the deepest level you can access. As we are all expressions of ONE Consciousness with different points of view, you’d think that having an appreciation of and caring for ourselves would be easy. Yet, for some, we might as well be talking about climbing Everest. For others, they might have glimpses of that appreciation, but maintaining it in a steady way is not so easy.

That experience of  Gnosis of myself, the deep knowing of oneself at Essence, can be a fleeting moment, but this moment leaves an impression that supports us in diving deep into shadow work. My first experience of a kind of Gnosis came in a dream. I did not feel worthy of time with my beloved teacher. In the dream, she had me stand by a tree as I watched what felt like thousands of people from all walks of life approach her chair, receive a glance from her, a brush of peacock feathers or not even the hint of acknowledgement. Regardless, they all walked away with the most serene look.

This dream felt like it lasted the whole night, thousands of people receiving darshan while I stood by this giant tree. Finally, it seemed to me as though all the people were all just drops of water in a river of Consciousness. At that moment, she looked at me and waved me over. I recognized myself as an expression of Consciousness – one drop in the ocean of Consciousness. It was as if a shell of unworthiness was shattered and I felt completely worthy of her love and the love of others. Yet I still not have a strong sense of who I am.

My second experience of Gnosis was more intentional and longer lasting. I was in Italy, training with my mentor, Zivorad Slavinski. He led me through a Gnostic Intensive. Using his prescribed process, Zivorad lead me into a deep experience of who I am at base. I experienced myself with a kind of pure clarity I’ve never felt before. Though the experience faded over time, the memory of it left a very deep impression of who I am at core along with an unwavering love, recognition and appreciation for who I am as a unique being.

What have been your experiences of Gnosis?

Short of such an experience, cultivating lovingkindness towards your self can go a long way towards instilling a sense of appreciation for you. The practice of Metta is one way to do this. Another practice involves approaching your relationship with yourself as you would a good friend. Treat yourself with the kindness and compassion you would show your best friend. As you move through your day, occasionally take in a deep breath with the thought, “Breathing in, I am loved. Breathing out, I am Love.”

Beyond that, begin challenging those ideas of who you think you should be so that you might begin discovering who you are.

My dear friend, Lisa Briggs, has this totally delightful gift of being able to discover beauty in the rituals of daily living. She recently started a Wise Woman Council and asked me to be a part of it. One of the cool things about this is that we get to share and discover new rituals for accessing the wisdom that is ever present in each one of us.

Aside from the daily rituals of brushing my teeth and washing my face, I engage in hygiene for my heart. After all the heart, too, gets cluttered up with gunk and then we try to LIVE with a kind and open heart through that gunk. Not easy. Instead, what kind of world might we create if each of us valued heart hygiene as we do body hygiene.

My favorite heart hygiene rituals are meditation (duh!), ujjayi pranayama in supported shavasana and PEAT (Prime Energy Activation and Transcendence). PEAT is an emergent tool from Spiritual Technology. It rises to the top of the pile here in its ability to keep me centered and at peace on a daily basis. I use this to process any emotional junk left over at the end of the day as well as to help me align with my highest Self. If I find myself remaining tense over a particular situation or if there is something I just can’t seem to let go of in a day, I sit down and feel what is really happening in that situation and thoroughly release the tension I’m feeling ~ AT ITS ROOT!

PEAT is a kind of second generation Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) with a deeper reach and spiritual implications that EFT simply doesn’t have. A client recently said that her experience with PEAT went a BAZILLION times deeper than EFT. I truly do consider it hygiene for the heart and soul. PEAT is a process that takes a situation or problem and allows you to realize and release the underlying issues in a few short minutes. Once you have gotten to the polarities, the opposites that are driving the tension of moving towards one experience and away from another, you integrate them.

Integrating polarities means you let them merge together so that you KNOW that one is never without the other, like knowing that sadness can make joy all the sweeter. Once they merge, that situation or ones like it never have the same kind of pull or charge that they did before. In this way, you create a gradually expanding feeling of wholeness and ease in life.

More than anything I have found, including my daily meditation practice, this clearing of the day’s tensions through PEAT has allowed me to find my center more easily even in the midst of chaos and stay in peace and ease more often regardless of what is happening around me.

What daily rituals keep you centered and at peace?

I was recently asked by a friend of mine, Ramona Rice of DeStress Express to share my thoughts about beauty. What a great contemplation! In this day and age with so much focus on external beauty, I have loved thinking about what I find beautiful and when I’ve seen beauty. For me, beauty boils down to one quality, ease of being.

When someone is so comfortable with who they are they make no excuses for themselves, I find that achingly beautiful. The way they move, they way they laugh, the way they express themselves seems to be infused with the very essence of LIFE expressing itself through them and I find that BEAUTIFUL.

This beauty seems to be most recognizable in small children and older women — they seem to simply delight in the wonder of being alive. This kind of beauty is not the same thing as confidence. It’s more like being completely at ease with yourself, with your opinions, your body and your life. With this ease of being, it’s more likely that you will move with a kind of grace and full presence.

Though young children express this ease with youthful vigor, I am particularly drawn to the beautiful ease of being that shows up in mature women.  I’m thinking of two of my friends, Bee and Anna. These women are perhaps the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. They would both likely turn a lovely shade of red upon hearing this and wonder about my eyesight. Nonetheless, their beauty carries the joys and pains of a life well lived. My mother was also this kind of beauty.

Living with ease of being doesn’t mean making choices based on guilt or worry. Choices are more likely made from a place of peace or love. This kind of living beauty is infused with an easy acceptance of the ups and downs of life free from the ideas of how life SHOULD be.

I think we can each grow ourselves into embracing this beauty in our own mirrors. Though, it’s hard won with a consistent practice of self acceptance, self compassion and self responsibility. There’s no room to blame others for your experiences or deny your own needs.

It means cultivating attitudes that allow you to be at ease with who you are and how life is NOW rather than how life was or how you think it SHOULD be. It means releasing the pains of the past in order to be open to the joys of the present. It means continually bringing yourself back to YOU in this present moment and cultivating the ability to move through life with an ease of being, BEING the beauty that you are.

What is beauty to you?

The yogi who is established in a steady posture easily becomes immersed in the ocean of the heart.

                                                                                     ~ Shiva Sutra 3.16

As I reflect on this sutra, what is most compelling to me is the phrase “ocean of the heart.” As we all know, the ocean can be still and smooth as a mirror reflecting the thousands of tiny diamond lights of the sun. Or, it can be swirling with tumultuous waves reflecting a sky of darkened clouds. In the same way, the heart can be calm and serene or it can flutter with anger and anxiety.

To me, a steady posture is not just the asana form. It is a steadiness in the heart, where we can reflect the pure Light that we are. This steady posture is a heart free of emotional static, free of charge.

The word charge has many meanings. You can think of two or three right off the top of your head. But the charge I talk about is an emotional static that indicates when things in life are out of balance, or more accurately when you’ve gotten wrapped up in the maya of the ego. There are as many individual ways to feel charge as there are people on the planet, but why is it important to pay attention to when you feel charge?

Any time you feel static, or charge, you are getting a clue that you are not in a steady state. It’s a clue that you’ve shifted identification from the Light that you are, to the ego’s play and dramas. Something has triggered a reaction and taken you out of the flow, out of the current of YOUR life. Sometimes people say, “Oh, that’s just how it is.” Or they will make excuses for it, trying to ignore the charge or deny it. Neither of these options is particularly helpful in the long run.

Charge comes to us or comes from us so that we can use it for information. In fact, it’s more than information. It’s a gold mine for spiritual growth. Develop a kind and curious relationship with your charge and what charges you and you will get clues as to how to find your way back into a steady state. Charge points out our attachments. The resistance to what is shows us where we still have work to do in achieving a steady inner posture that allows us to flow with the ocean of the heart.

Any time you are feeling reactive you are not in the current of your heart’s flow. A steady inner posture feels like an ease of being, a sense of harmony with everyone and everything. You become that ocean of the heart and that ocean becomes you.

So how do you cultivate that steadiness inside? The same way you do in your asana practice. Start to develop compassion for yourself and really begin to look within with self-compassion. Take responsibility for your state. Use that feeling of charge as a beacon to illumine where things are out of balance and recognize what is going on from a place of humility and kindness. Do this with detached mindfulness, just noticing.

Any charge can be released temporarily by any number of things. You can pet your dog or go for a walk and discharge some of the energy surrounding whatever issue has come up. But a deeper release is possible.

Deeper releases take deeper work, however, and that is where the PEAT (Prime Energy Activation Transcendence) processes help. In PEAT processes, we take an issue and we work with it until we come to a pair of opposites, a polarity. That polarity can be anything really, it is individual to you and it is driving you with or without your knowledge.

Once you have found that polarity, through PEAT you integrate them, creating more freedom within. From that place of freedom, you can choose from the spaciousness of a steady heart.

As a result, you become freer to be who you really are. The limiting beliefs fall away and you are able to live life from the ocean of the heart.

Paying attention to your own charges and those tensions that come up for you and then processing them through PEAT is like hygiene for your heart. It helps to clear out the debris of what has come before. You begin to take care of yourself in a profound and fundamental way. And by taking care of yourself in this way you can start to release on deeper and deeper levels and become established in a steady posture, immersed in the ocean of the heart.