The Karma Train

Have always had a real fascination with Karma.
   Partially because I always felt it was kind of in conflict with what I believe about free will. I think that, "free will",  is the greatest gift we were given as human beings. So how do those two things fit together?

  We had a very interesting discussion in my teacher training group one weekend that shed a lot of light on this topic for me. Sometimes the most brilliant moments for me, are when I am able to spend time in a group of people and absorb the intelligence of the group. We started a discussion about hard and soft Karma and what those terms meant. As the talk progressed, a concept came up that I really liked.

  Hard Karma is determined by your learning in past lives. I am starting to frame it like this. Your soul, is "Atma".  Regardless of who you are in this life, male or female, race, colour or creed, your atma is constant and beyond those kinds of labels. And "You" are a passenger on a train. Your ticket with your destination printed on it is your hard Karma. No matter what you do, based on past lives and past learning, you are going to, for example "Vancouver". Soft Karma, however, can dictate how you get there. You can go straight there, or you can go to Calgary and fly seventeen other places on the way! You can go past it to the coast and take a boat all the way around the world until you get to it from the other side. But in the end, you are going to "Vancouver".

  And "Vancouver" is not the punishment we seem to imagine that Karma meets out. It is simply the final point that connects to the learning of your next life. You are exactly where you are supposed to be. And in order to go forward in the best possible evolution, this trip ends and your next one begins in that place.

  Now there is another concept to throw in here, that influences it all. That is the concept of "Dharma". "Dharma" has been described in Hinduism as "the natural universal laws that if followed, allow a person to be contented and happy and to save themself from degradation and suffering". Now that is wikipedia's definition. Mine would be this, your dharma is the path you are meant to follow in "this" life. And through the process of learning we wander on and off that path. It is in a funny way, the karma you create in your every day behaviour and your every day choices. It is very influenced by your free will and the map you follow is your own intuition, your own divine intelligence.

    The Bhagavad Gita talks about Karma as being the great wheel of life and death that we cannot seem to get off of. We cycle through it over and over again as our learning progresses towards enlightenment. It also gives us the key to getting off that ride.

    There is a very important concept that has a different meaning today than it did in that original text. The meaning of this word has become distorted in a way that it no longer conveys the same message.
The Gita explains that the way out of the endless cycle of birth and death is to be concious in every moment and to do everything in the spirit of Sacrifice. Now sacrifice today has a very "martyr" smack to it. That is not the essence of this. To do things in the spirit of sacrifice is to offer every action, every moment of your day for the betterment of all that exist, not to the detriment of yourself.
It is not to deny oneself, but instead to release all attachment to the outcome of your actions, the need to be recognized for what you do. To simply do things because they need to be done and you are there. When a being is able to be in service without the ego being engaged at all, there is a place we can slip through and be released from Karma.

   It is certainly something to aspire to!
In love and light,
Kathryn

Agni- Give it to the Flame

  Well apparently there is a lot waiting to get out on the paper today, so here goes number two!
There is a phenomena in yoga called "Agni". I love it. It is essentially the burning discomfort we feel during growth whether it be physical, spiritual or emotional. It has been the topic of my internal discussion since the beginning of this course.

   I need to digress briefly to set the tone here. There was some interesting information for me in the readings we were assigned for this course. The term "Yoga" has several different meanings according to what I have read. One states that it means "to be yoked", another says that it means "union". Yet another speaks about yoga as "the path" that we all take. Yoga is not postures, it is a path of life. How we all get to where we are going. For me, Yoga has meant the yoking, or union of myself with the Divine. It is the path that I choose to take to journey into myself, which depending on your belief system may mean the same thing for you. I believe that we are all strings of divinity upon which lives are strung like beads. The Agni is the fuel for self realization and awareness.

   During a meditation that we did the first weekend I was very aware of how things that I am dealing with seem to stream to the surface when my mind is still like bubbles in a glass of champagne. I realized as I was standing and the floor seemed to be 2000 degrees that so much of what I think of as real is only a fabrication of mind. I had a complete discussion with myself in that moment that although my feet were telling me that I was standing in lava, I knew without a doubt that the floor was the same temperature it was at the beginning of the exercise. It got me thinking after it was over, how much of the rest of my perceptions get that distorted? How much of the rest of my way of thinking is simply my mind trying to get me to move away from something a bit uncomfortable?

    Back bends. I don't need to say anymore because any of you in my class are already laughing. Back bends. 60 you say? Guess what! Agni baby! Because the number of back bends you can do is only limited by your mind saying are you kidding? More? Mind is the real blockage, more often than the body. That is the frontier I am playing in now.

     Even meditation contains elements of Agni. A very close class mate of mind was telling me she couldn't meditate. The minute she tried she was flooded with a thousand thoughts. Not going to happen. Our Guru told her it is not about stopping the thoughts. It is about just letting things come up and observing them, seeing the patterns in what we are thinking. They come up at exactly the right time and in the moment we are prepared to release them.
   
     Agni for me has been a purification process. A burning off of what no longer is required or no longer serves me. I realize this is such a unique and personal journey for each of us. And there is beautiful humour in that. The true challenge in agni for me is in the asanas, whereas for her it was in the meditation. Our strengths and need areas are so different and so perfect. I have the arms of a T-rex and binding was one of my goals in this training. I think I am the only one who could not bind. But I'll tell you, I can sit upside down in headstand forever. And some of the best yoginis I have watched struggle with that. Our challenges are not related to anything other than where we are at on our own map. That is why it is so important to resist the temptation to look up and judge where I am in relation to where others are on the board whether in my class or in my life. They are not travelling my path and therefore they are not markers I can use to judge my own progress. I have to look internally for that. And that is truly a higher calling.

   Give it to the flame, for everything is transient. We are new beings in each and every moment.
Thank God for that!!!!! Here is to pure potential people,

In love and light,
Kathryn
 

Leave A Little on the Table....

   Well it's been a while since I have shared using this forum. But I realized this morning that a little further down the road, that there are once again things to share. I stopped writing this blog for a while so that my own learning could continue. In essence in that moment, although this will make those of you who know me laugh, I had said all I had to say.

    This spring I enrolled in Yoga teacher training at the Yoga Loft in Edmonton. I had started practicing yoga last May and attended a retreat in Golden in August that was such a profound experience for me that I signed up for teacher training as soon as I got home. I have not felt such a pull to do anything before, except Dental school. It was not particularly logical or explainable with my lack of experience but I felt so strongly that this was significant on my path, that I wrote a letter to the teacher. It was a long letter, explaining that I had to be in that class. That if he felt at the end of the training that I didn't have enough experience to teach, that he could write that on my certificate. Only let me come and learn. I need to be here.

   My application was accepted and in March my training began. I was a bit daunted sitting in the room that first weekend surrounded by beautiful young people in the peak of their physical fitness. I pushed myself to keep up, with my type A personality and my worthiness issues poking through my fitted Lulu lemon attire. I ended up totally injured after the first day, my SI joint, which is my achilles heel. I struggled through the rest of the weekend and managed to practice but I was kicking myself and wondering if I could make it through.

  Six weeks of chiropractic treatments and walking an hour a day got me to the second weekend which was our anatomy course. I was so grateful we were not practicing I can't even tell you. I thought a lot during that six weeks about my patterns and how I operate in the world in relation to the situation I had created. I am very aware of  how sometimes in my life what is happening on a small scale is actually a microviewer for some of the large patterns that play out in my life. I started to think about why I had enrolled in this training. It wasn't to try to out do a bunch of 20 year olds. It was to learn, to grow as a person. To understand myself better and gain more personal insight. So what did I do? I lost sight of why I was there and started to try to be like everyone else. And that, has never been my strength.

    My dad had hip surgery just before my third teacher training weekend and to make a long story short I slept in a chair two nights and undid all the gains I had managed since the first weekend. Damn!!!!!!! I was so frustrated. I emailed my teacher and said I was sorry, that I wanted to come and participate, but that I would likely be unable to practice. He emailed me back that I was to come, that we would sort it out through the practice.  I really trust him, so I took a big breath and surrendered to the fact that he would know what to do.

    He met me with a knowing smile at the door and gave me some stretches and postures to do, and some to avoid.  The whole time he was speaking, I couldn't help feeling that he had known all along what I was going to do to myself that first weekend and that I would be exactly where I was in this moment. It was kind of funny and made me laugh even to myself. The only other time I have felt that was with my mentor at PB. Like she had seen a thousand of me before. THAT, is a humbling thought. He spoke a lot that weekend about listening to our bodies. Something I have not been historically all that good at, and in a large part, why I was there. He said when you are giving 100% in a posture, that you are on the edge, your body is in crisis management, and the natural intelligence in your body cannot allow it to open. He talked about how you should always leave 20% in the posture. Leave a little on the table. That from this place of stability, we can breathe into the posture and our body already knows what to do. I thought about that a lot, because in life I am kind of a believer in giving 120 % in everything. But what does that actually do to me? On the long run, it burns me out and I run out of steam because it is not sustainable. Sound familiar? That 20 % is like the self care. And it is the first 20%, not the after thought. It is the most important piece to remember, because it allows the growth to occur. It is the gift we must be reminded to give ourselves.

    Thank you my Guru for throwing light on such an important lesson for me. It has been the first of many. And for that, I am humbly grateful.

In love and light,
Kathryn
 

The Greatest Responsibility

  A year ago in Sedona at our Goddess retreat we arrived there on the anniversary of a very sad occasion. The man who wrote the book " The Secret" James Ray had held a sweat lodge on the site where our retreat was being held and several people had died. The owners of Angel Valley came to talk to us about what had happened and the important lessons that had come out of that terrible tragedy. The people who attended his retreat had paid thousands of dollars to go, and in the end some paid with their lives. Almyra and Michael spoke about the dangers of giving someone else our power on the journey to spiritual enlightenment and even within our ordinary lives. I remember listening quietly as they spoke but I do not think I really understood the lesson being imparted until last night.

  James Ray became an overnight celebrity with the success of "The Secret" and as often happens everyone looking for a quick fix in spirituality wanted to learn from him as it seemed he had all the answers. The long and the short of it is that there are no quick fixes in spirituality or in life itself. There is real danger when we hand over our personal power and responsibility for our growth to someone else. The people in that sweat lodge died because they didn't listen to their own inner voices. Their own truth. They gave someone else responsibility for their salvation and it cost them their lives.

  Those words have sat quietly within me germinating without my understanding or awareness in my life until today where they have come back with particular significance. For in my own journey, I have unconciously done the same thing. And I hope that in sharing my experience I will give you seeds that might help you at some point in the future as well. I had an amazing friend in my life who I have done the same thing to as those people did to James Ray. I made him responsible for all the goodness in my life. Now you think that wouldn't be a bad thing, being responsible for all the goodness in someone's life, but think of the weight of that responsibility. And not only that, you never asked for it. And worse than that, it isn't real!!!!!!!!!!!

   Six years ago I watched a person walk a path I admired and in that moment I made a choice to change my life. Not him, me. And I worked hard at it. And when I finished, I gave him all the credit and saddled him with a burden no lighter than the one Atlas carried. And in doing that, I have without meaning to. left him under a crushing weight.  Today I take responsibility for all the things that I have created in my life. Me, myself. I am so proud of what I have accomplished and of where I am in my learning and this is the first time I have really stopped to appreciate what a kind, amazing, wonderful person I really am. And I have worked so very hard to create that person. I am the person responsible for the life I choose, for the life I create. And you are responsible for yours.

    There was pain involved in this realization, for him and for me. But in the end there was also joy and relief. I am finally free and I release all the expectations and attachments that have held me back in guilt and shame around not being a good enough friend. I realize in this moment that I did the best I could. We all do the best we can. And I can finally say, that it was enough. And I am very sorry for any pain that the burden I placed upon you has caused you. Love is no lighter a burden than hatred or anger when it comes with a complete abdication of personal responsibility. I had no understanding until now of the weight I had placed upon you. I ask for your forgiveness. I did not understand. I have clarity around it now.

    I am not afraid of the darkness anymore for I know there is as much to learn in there as there is out in the light and I want to know and understand all of myself. I thank you for listening to me on this amazing journey and sharing what has been such profound learning for me. I am winding down this blog for now, as my own learning is calling me in a different direction and my path now is meant to be more of an internal one. " Seek not strength in numbers, not even the like minded, for the soul's journey, the true path, is not one that can be shared". I am sending each one of you love and light, and reminding you that you do not need anyone else to give your power to, the responsibility for your learning, your successes or your life. Because doing so robs you of celebrating your own achievements, because they can't belong to anyone but you. Believe in yourself and know that we all arrive down here with everything we need to complete this journey already mapped out in our soul. All we need to do is look inside and the light that seems dim at the start will grow to be a blinding flame and we will be able to see exactly where we are supposed to go.

     I begin the journey towards that light today. And this beautiful part of my journey for now comes to a close. Thank you for your love and support and know that I am always in the world, laughing out loud and sending all the love in my heart into the air to share. Although we each have our own path to walk,  I know we are never truly alone.

  In joy, love and light,
I thank you for all that your love has meant and continues to mean to me in my life.
Kathryn

The Whole Hearted- the Gift of Vulnerability

  I was recently forwarded a TED link by someone I value very much. It was about a topic very close to my heart so I was intensely interested. The speakers name was Brene Brown, and she is a PHD social worker, a quantitative researcher.

    She said in social work, she very quickly realized that the whole reason human beings are on this planet is connection. To experience ourselves in connection with others. It is truly and honestly why we are here. It gives purpose to our lives. She started looking into what kinds of things get in the way of our ability to connect with one another and she came up with two biggies. Shame and fear. Shame and fear of disconnection lie at the heart of vulnerability. Everyone on the planet experiences these two things on some level. In order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen for who we are, and this involves excrutiating vulnerability.

  In her research, she found there are two distinct groups of people. Those who have a strong sense of love and belonging and those who struggle. The only difference between those two groups was that the first group believe that they are worthy of those things. The only thing that keeps us out of real connection with other people is our fear that we are not worthy. It is a deep seated belief, a false belief and weakness that plaques all of humanity.

   There were three thing common to this group that believed they were worthy. The first was courage, defined as being willing to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart, willing to be imperfect. The second, was compassion. Those who are able to love themselves as imperfect, are often kinder to other people as well as themselves. They are willing to put themselves out there and allow themselves to be seen because they understand that is essential for connection to occur. They all had vulnerability, they fully embraced and understood that it is what is imperfect about them that makes them beautiful. They understood that vulnerability was necessary. They had the willingness to say "I love you" first,  or to invest in something that may or may not work out. They knew it was necessary.

   Vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and struggle for worth, but it is also the birth place of joy and creativity, belonging and love. It is the most precious gift you can offer another human being.

    Brene Brown calls the people who get this, the " Whole Hearted".

    In our society, she explains that we numb vulnerabiliy. We live in a vulnerable world. We numb it with purchases, debt, food and addictions. But what you need to know is this. You cannot selectively numb emotion without affecting them all. When you numb the hard ones, you also numb the joy and all the other essential, beautiful, important emotions. The other way we do it is that we create certainty out of the uncertain. We make ourselves right and others wrong. We leave no mystery. No room for conversation. We try to make our lives perfect. Which is a total illusion. The illusion of control. She reminds us to tell our children this,"You are imperfect and wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging." That is why we are here. To struggle and connect,to learn and to love.

   My own experience of vulnerability has been particularly profound in the past two days and so this post was sent to me by one of my angels. In my life, I realize that I am fully open to my own vulnerability. It has been one of the most precious lessons of my journey. I am more afraid of what might be left unsaid between us, than I am of looking like a fool. I am working on being humble enough to really be able to learn to laugh at my imperfections. To hold them kindly between my hands and open myself up to share them with the world. I am learning to love myself first, and that love is filling me up and spilling out of every seam. What would it look like down here if each one of us could do that?

    I am reminded of the statement she made again about compassion. That those who are compassionate with themselves are kinder to other peolple. These words ring in my heart like a mantra. Be kind to yourselves. I write this to honour my friend. The woman who believes that vulnerability is her weakness. I watch you in your life and I am humbled by your journey. I am honoured by the things your share with me in complete vulnerability. I am grateful to walk by your side,

   Because you are enough.

In love and light,
Kathryn   

The Calling: The Gift of a Dream

    My dream debt has continued. Or so I thought. Still unable to recall any dreams I have started asking to remember them before I go to sleep. You are laughing now, but, what would you do? Right? If you don't ask, you don't get. So I asked.

    Three nights ago, I had a very interesting and detailed dream about a white stallion I met on the road. The meaning for me was profound. The night after, I woke up "thinking" about the mechanics of something odd. I felt annoyed for a moment and then I thought I have dreamt this before. Only I thought I was awake thinking about it. Recurring dreams for me are very important.  That really shifted my thought process. I am dreaming. But my mind is confusing thinking with dreaming at night. My mind has somehow relabelled my process.

    My mind is so busy and engaged these days in what I am studying, that it did occur to me to think that maybe I am actually dreaming, but it feels like an extension of my mind's play during the day, so I am not perceiving a difference between the night and the day state. My mind is essentially dreaming all the time.  I just finished a book by Don Miguel Ruez called The Voice of Knowledge. He is a decendant of the Toltec people in Mexico. They are an ancient people and they believe that human beings are simply dreamers dreaming a dream. That in fact, it is the dream that becomes our reality. And our night dreams are only dreams within the dream. We create our own story by our choices in every moment and ultimately if we are concious enough, we can form a relationship with our own manifestation space and begin directing or conciously choosing our reality from that internal space. My own experience lately has been a merging of these states and a bluring of the lines of concious awareness. It has been a beautiful experience, unfolding of a great deal of new understanding for me. From an intentention space, it has been about opening in every sense of the word, body, mind and spirit.

   Last night I went to bed with particular focus on remembering my annoying trivial dream so I could figure out what that one was all about. Instead I woke up repeating a phrase over and over in my mind. It felt like someone was whispering in my ear all night. The phrase was "Seek Brahma, connectedness in all things". I woke up with the cat on my chest and for a moment I was disoriented and thought it was the cat talking to me, unlikely as that was! But the message was clear and concise. And I felt like I had been hearing it all night long. So who the heck is Brahma and how do you seek him? The connectedness part resonated with me as that has been a theme within my yoga and meditation practice, so I decided to start looking there for an answer.

    I got to work this morning after thinking about it my whole drive in and hit Google with a vengence.  It turns out that Brahman is one third of the Hindu trinity of God. He is the creator, the creationary force in the universe. The others are Vishnu, who incidentally rides a white stallion like the one I have been dreaming of, and the last is Shiva who I just wrote about in my Yoga talk blog. I don't believe in coincidence anymore, but this last piece of convergence kind of blew my mind. Brahman is the creationary force of the universe, the world is his projection. Vishnu is the protector, and Shiva is the destroyer. Together the three of them form the circular nature of our universe, the ever renewing process of our reality, seen and unseen. Brahman would be essentially the idea within the phrase I heard in my dream, the connectedness in all things, the light, the sacredness of OM, the sound everything in the Universe makes at a soul level. Brahman is the connecteness of all things. How to seek him on the other hand, is a whole other matter. I emailed my yoga teacher to ask if he had any thoughts.

  One half of the mystery solved, I spoke to one of my dearest friends who is one of our hygienists at work and I asked her what she thought it meant, Her husband is Hindu and I figured she might be familiar with the stories. She said it reminded her of what her mother would call a "bol" or a personal mantra. It is thought that such a mantra can become a personal channel to the divine much the way we seek divine connection through meditation. She suggested that because of the way it came to me, that I should take it and meditate using it as my mantra and see what shows up. I told her in my dream, I felt like it was the lyrics to the most beautiful song I had ever heard. I woke up feeling blessed and happy. It was like they were lyrics to the song in my soul. That convinced her that she was right. Your own personal mantra is meant to open your bliss.

    Today has been one of those beautiful days that are happening more often now for me, where I feel connected to everything and everyone. Quiet days where my mind is happy and overflowing with oneness and peace. I wonder silently what lies ahead, as all of these pieces come together and the tapestry unwinds before me. There is so much joy for me in the learning and so much awe when there are things in the outer world that correspond to what I am experiencing within my inner world. Connectedness. I realize that I don't need to know. In fact the joy of my life has become the unknown. The mystery. That space from which all things come into being.  It is the essence of faith, which is the core of my very soul. The willingness to act from a space of complete trust, to leap empty handed into the void without fear.

    What I am learning has such profound resonance for me that I am struck with how very lucky I am in my life. How very many things I have to be grateful for and to be humbled by. I believe this mantra is a call in my life somehow, and I know that where that will lead me, will be exactly where I am meant to go.

 In love and light,
Kathryn