Promoting Teaching From a Book Yet Written?

 

 Your purpose in life is to use your talent and gifts to help other people. Your journey in life teaches you how to do that. 

Tom Krause

I was encouraged by AI... (I know I am guilty of seeking guidance I know will be objective from the most objective thing I know...the non human. sigh!) ...to promote teachings related to the book I am writing now.  It came up with a  rough script to promote these teachings. Of course, I revised and edited the whole thing.  I will share it here. Silly, I know. 

For the past few months, my morning sadhana or practice has looked a little different. I don’t open my eyes to a familiar room, a permanent desk, or the stability of my own home. I open my eyes to a temporary, sometimes unfamiliar, ceiling. With awareness of every new stucco pattern above me, I feel this body crunching up automatically, into a ball of survival tension.  I look over to my belongings packed in a few suitcases, ready to go to the next place and I feel the dread closing my heart. I feel a heaviness weighing me down, strongly encouraging me not to move. Not because the body and mind want to embrace the beauty of meditative stillness as they usually do...but because suddenly they do not want to face the “what isness” of my situation, the unpredictable, unforeseeable indefiniteness of this sudden homeless experience.

 I will be honest, the thoughts of rolling over and getting up to face another day as this struggling human who is suddenly unhoused, outside a long-term relationship, and with not enough income to survive independently are not positive, or enthusiastic ones. In fact, this mind is entertaining thoughts my spiritual ego is telling me, that no evolving being should ever entertain. Still, here I am observing and experiencing these thoughts encased in the energy of great fear and shame. Huh!

 The two key words here are “observing and experiencing”. I observe and experience what mind is doing but from a peaceful distance.

You see, when sudden homelessness and a poverty-level income hit, the human mind panics. The ego screams that you have failed, that you are unprotected, and that you are completely ungrounded. It wants the human to get lost in the drama brought about by the unrelenting question, “Why are you doing this to “me”? That is a normal, human reaction. But we can experience it all from a place behind what the human mind is saying and doing.

 Hmmm!

 As a meditation teacher, and lifelong student of Yoga and ancient wisdom, I have discovered that just because something is normal doesn’t make it healthy or wholesome. We do not have to follow the normal human tendency towards reactivity.  I no longer get lost in the question or its subsequent reactivity when encountering such challenges. I learned to observe and experience the emotional energy of life whether it is labelled as good or bad, right or wrong, should be or shouldn’t be by the human mind from a deeper place that is my unshakable home. I no longer get swallowed up by the question, “Why me” or the drama that ensues. I certainly observe and experience what is unfolding but I ask another question, What is life actually offering here?

 Though my practice may look different now than it did when I was housed, I can still see through it, how challenge, like sudden displacement or crisis, is an offering, not a punishment. “Difficulty”  is a beautiful gift of learning potential that can enhance our lives rather than diminish them. The psyche and body may judge unfairness and be struggling to survive through these life events, but the Higher Self within isn’t one bit concerned about this drama unfolding. This seemingly unfair and difficult life situation, one of many this human has experienced over the course of her time on earth, is being observed, dissected, examined, and explored, in the laboratory of this mind. I am recording what I am learning through the process of writing a book about what lay beyond the “brokenness of me” and how to get there.

 The truth is, life is staging a radical, forced dismantling of this identity we call “me” through the intense challenges that we may find ourselves facing. When the outer structures of security are ruthlessly stripped away, we are forced into absolute nakedness before existence. We can no longer rely on a deed, a bank account, or a societal title to define our worth. We are forced to discover the beautiful truth about who we really are beyond this idea of a broken “me”.

 The intense Life friction or challenge—the pain-filled emotional strain—you too may be experiencing is not a sign that you are broken, that you have failed or that Life has failed you. It is simply a late labor pain of your awakening, leading you to give birth to something greater. It is the triggering of the release of another Samskara, a deeply buried one, helping you to purify in a radical way so this greatness within you can flow through.

.What are samskaras, crazy lady?

 Samskaras are those hidden, hardened karmic impressions stored in the subconscious that dictate our fears and reactive behaviors.

 Right now, Life is helping this human I call “me”, one human of 8.3 billion other humans, to advance in this practice known as purification by offering this homeless state. Life is likely triggering your samskara release and purification with a special set of difficult challenges, as well.

 Why would we allow such a painful purification?

 Once purified the inner state of stability will no longer be dependent on what is happening out there. We will be able to find peace, joy, and love regardless of whether we are living a life of luxury sitting on a yacht or whether we are poor and homeless sitting on a park bench.  It should not be our intention to continue to shrivel up in reaction to Life but to embrace and honor it all, as we heal and advance in the development of higher consciousness. These challenges are opportunities to purify, heal, and grow into that which we were always meant to be.

 I am writing the upcoming book on Samskara release not from a position of comfortable theory, but from the raw trenches of this displacement and from a lifelong history of human trauma. Throughout all this turmoil I was able to find a stable home within in which to ground, and in which to experience unshakable peace. I want to show you how to find the Unshakable within yourself while your outer world may be rumbling and threatening to break open beneath you, like “mine” is now. We can heal and grow together through anything Life throws our way.  

You in?

All is well.