Genius

You never know when your genius may show up.  Some of us are born with this incredible talent that is encouraged by our parents and they continue to nurture it.  Some of us struggle for years wondering if we have anything at all to give. We innately want to give.  Gifts are for giving and sharing.  Talent is just unblocked energy.  We are all connected to the source that is creation. Our purpose here is to create.  There are some, like me that may have suppressed our natural gifts due to experiences that made us feel like we may outshine others or fear of criticism.  There are many reasons why some of us deny our own genius.   Taking a moment to really listen to our own feelings and what ignites you.  It is most likely the thing that you are afraid of or the thing that you can talk about for hours.  We all have something unique, it is not just for the elite that you admire and see as successful. Ask your close friends and family what gifts they see in you. Listen and see if it matches up with what you feel you enjoy most. Sometimes we have so many interests we spread ourselves too thin.  Fine tune your energy, get focused and one pointed.  Do little things everyday towards what you love.  Joseph Cambell said “Follow your Bliss”.  We believe we have to do things that we don’t love because we need to pay the bills.  That is a belief system.  Our entire experience is built upon our belief systems.  Honor your gifts and do not compare yourself to others or wish for something else.  Shine bright. We know that everything and everyone is a reflection of our inner world.  If you feel someone is intimidated, it simply means you are intimidated of yourself.  Go beyond your self destruction and do everything with love of the self. Be of service to everyone, help them. Let go of the fear of competition. No one can do it like you do it.

Darkness

I have a great desire to help others release resistance because of my own personal struggle. Maybe some of you have it together and everything is perfect.  Kudos to you if that is the case.  It has taken me a while to get to a point where I appreciate the struggle.  I still have my moments asking “why oh why?” They are now lined with a deep trust that I am guided and exactly where I need to be. Struggle will make you a strong asker for new and better.  We all see the world in a certain way according to the life experiences we have had.  I, like everyone else in the world have experienced pain and heart break.  How can you have compassion when you have not had the experience?   We are experiencing certain circumstances so that our soul can evolve.  You just have to relax and trust, stop reacting.  The struggle that you are going through now will pass and you will have another one very soon.  The moment you truly accept that, the struggle is over.  Not everyone is dealing with the same problems.  The experiences we are having are a direct result of what we need to experience to become more aware.  We will keep experiencing the same circumstance until we are ready to transform it. We have a tendency to want to play victim mentality.  We ask why do I have to deal with this? What did I do wrong?  Eckhart Tolle says “Life will give you whatever experience you need for the evolution of your consciousness”.  Find a way to look to how this conflict is serving you, this will shift you from victim to creator mentality.  In my darkness, I find myself.  I emerge new and better.

 

Trigger Happy

What if you decided today to welcome pain? Our natural proclivity is to resist pain. We all have triggers that engage our own personal fears.  We stop ourselves from getting into a relationship or trying something new for fear of failure or rejection.  We remember a time when we were let down by someone or a situation didn’t work out in our favor.  We start to feel those feelings again.  It is quite painful. It actually feels like the end of the world.  We are then consumed by the thoughts and emotions associated with this particular fear.  It can swallow you up very quickly.  I have the good old fear of abandonment program running.  If I feel like I have opened up to someone and it feels like they are pulling away my ego kicks in.  It either wants to cling to the person or run far away.  Those are the two options to protect it from being abandoned.  There is another option and it is so much easier.  It might not feel like it and I promise you that your ego will want to fight this.  It is possible to see the pain as it it comes up and tell yourself things like “oh, this is my old pattern coming up”.   Then say “I am just going to relax and let this be here for a while”. See it as a passing event and however it turns out I will be ok.  It sounds really simple and it is.  You must however actually do it and be so present when these feeling arise.  Catching it in the first moment you feel the heat rising is the way to really change the course of your behavior.  The secret is you have to WANT to change.  Do you really want to feel better? Do you believe that you can?  Do you want to live in peace, joy and harmony? If you do, then do the simple thing.  Relax around your triggers.

Mantra in Motion

Kundalini yoga is the yoga of awareness. What does that mean? It means as you practice Kundalini yoga you release old subconscious habits that no longer serve you. It works in increments and subtle levels so we shed the layers that prevent the experience of our Sat Nam. Sat Nam means truth is my identity.  You may wonder what that means but I will leave that up to you to contemplate.  Kundalini Yoga is a comprehensive technology to live your full potential. We use mantra (sound vibration), asana (posture), pranayam (breath), meditation (infinity talks to man) and many more technologies to open you to your own divinity.  We use mantra to increase our vibration and shift consciousness.  It is a tool to keep the mind still and cleanse subconscious thoughts.  I am living and working in Bangkok, Thailand at the moment and my life is quite different here.  At the moment I do not have to luxury of going to a group class like I do in Los Angeles.  At first thought I felt this to be such a tragedy. I understand now that the universe brought me here to teach me many things.  I am able to utilize the technologies that were given to us by Yogi Bhajan.  As I ride my bike here in Bangkok, there are many outside circumstances I must be aware of.  One, stray dogs here may bite you.  Two, your bag in the your basket may get snatched.  Three, you may be swiped down by a serious Bangkok driver.  As I remember the power of mantra, I just begin chanting Aad Guray Nameh, Jugaad Guray Nameh.  There is magic in this.  You just repeat the mantra focusing your awareness at the middle of your brow.  This is the mantra of protection, you chant and feel protected.  Don’t worry if it feels like too much to learn, you just set the intention and listen. Remember Kundalini Yoga is a technology of the human.  It is a your universal toolbox to navigate through your beautiful life experience.

Perfection

I am on the path of self growth. I am human. I am doing my best at any and all moments. I am doing my best to remember to let go. I am not perfect. I make mistakes and I react and worry sometimes.  I will do my best to forgive myself when I feel guilt for not being perfect.  As a yoga teacher and a with this desire to grow I have a tendency to feel major guilt if I am not perfect.  I find those of us working on our selves with purpose of growth tend to be perfectionists.  This can be so detrimental to our growth.  We do not allow for mistakes or blemishes to be ok.  There is this voice in your head that berates you for not being good enough.

So we just begin to be a little easier on ourselves and remind ourselves to find the perfection in imperfection. Can we see everything as perfect in the sense that there is absolutely nothing wrong? We see the tainted world as perfect.  Maybe we can just laugh at ourselves when we make a mistake knowing it is just a blip in time.  Beginning to really pay attention to the voice in your head that is criticizing. Do your best to be nice to yourself.  All it really takes is being a little more aware of what is going on in your head. Those thoughts are not going to go away.  It is however very important to take time our of your day to sit and watch these thoughts.  There are many different types of meditation that you can research and play with.  In fact, you can make all moments of your life a meditation.  When you notice yourself in thought, pause and just witness.  Find a way to actually like the things about yourself that you criticize on a daily basis.  Stop the comparing and competing.  Enhance your own gifts and talents. When you look at another, see what you like in them and appreciate it genuinely. This energy of appreciating will guide you.

Emotionless

Why are ancient statues sometimes emotionless? This is a question I asked myself a long time ago at the beginning of my awakening.  I ruminated on it for so long without any clarity. I am working in Bangkok, Thailand. In the city you see Buddhist monks here offering prayers.  I see them and smile, I realized that they do not give me any sort of emotion back.  I have a great desire to understand this more.  Are these ancient statues trying to tell us something?  I know beyond a shadow of a doubt they are.  My intuitive thought is telling me these statues are reminding us to remain neutral.  To allow all to pass through without reaction.  This does not mean we cannot be joyful or sad, we just let those emotions be without clinging. We have become so involved in our outer world, our aversions and attachments to things that make us feel good.  Our modern society is enticing us with the proverbial carrot on a stick.  We never seem to never be satisfied. Buddha teaches us the desiring is suffering.  Do we really understand this?  If we are involved in the energy of wanting something and we don’t have it, then we suffer.   Do you feel suffering when you want something that you don’t have? We also remember that absolutely everything is ephemeral.  When we are connected to spirit, the living energy that pervades you,  we become a witness to it all.  No matter the adversity or joy, we remain unattached knowing it will pass. Is this what the statues teach us by representing this neutrality?

Just Relax

Just relax. This is what it is all about. It seems to be that we all have an opinion and think it is right.  That is the ego, it wants to be right.  But really we don’t know for sure.  Sure, science may be able to give us empirical evidence.  In the end though, that information is going through the filter of a human being that has its own set of beliefs.   There is sure to be a mishap of observation there.  Regarding diet, it seems that there are groups that believe eating meat has major advantages and others that believe being on a plant based diet is better for your health. Yogis keep a vegetarian diet because when an animal is slaughtered stress hormones are released into the body of the animal. You in turn, consume the stress of the animal.  In Traditional Chinese medicine there is a condition called blood deficiency that can be addressed by consuming red meat.   I am, and I encourage you to do your own research and find your own Sat Nam (Your Truth). I want to make an effort to release my desire to refute any point and just relax. Enjoy life.  Stop beating myself up over the tiniest morsel of sugar.  Let it all go and just be.  I know resistance will come up again and at this moment I am enjoying this feeling of really relaxing about it all.  I don’t need to figure out how I am going to do anything that needs to be done in the future. I am going to make a conscious effort to relax my energy anytime I feel nervous resistance arising.  There is no doubt I will feel this resistance again.  I know in that moment that I am asking for something new and better. 

Equanimity

What does it mean to live a spiritual life?  In short, it means to know that there is an unseen force that is loving us and supporting us.  You trust the process of life and understand that each moment is a gift so that you may grow into your full potential.  Our purpose is to let go and be present to your emotions.  When you start to feel old patterns emerge, you step back and become a witness to the pain.  You do not get involved in the pain.  You notice the patterns of berating yourself.  This is old conditioning that lives in our collective consciousness.  Spirit is your essence, spirit is the energy that pervades you.  When you begin to awaken to this truth you constantly remind yourself to come back to the zero point with in.  In yogic terms we call this zero point Sunya.  The mind will continue to create problems and thought patterns, this will not end.  It is in the remembering to come back to this zero point that we begin to find equanimity.

Barrier to Bliss

The feeling when you decide that you just don’t care anymore is freedom.  Freedom is our natural state, stress and worry is the only barrier to our bliss.  Absolutely everything is a choice.  I chose for the past thirty years of my life to worry about what everyone is thinking of me.  I think that is called social anxiety or self consciousness.  In my case I might have been born with it.  I remember hiding behind my mom’s leg when anyone came near me to say hello.  You can forget letting Santa hold me for a photo without an absolute meltdown.  I have faint memories of when I was a teenager and the fear of going somewhere alone was so overwhelming.  My inner thoughts imagined what other people were saying in their head, whether good or bad.  Eckhart Tollle tells us a shy persons ego is ambivalent, it both wants and fears attention.  The fear is that the attention will come in the form of criticism.  This may not be your biggest problem, we all have our set of challenges that we are working on in this YOUniversity.  I am talking to us narcissists that believe everyone is just thinking of you.  The truth is that everyone is so involved in their own incessant rants about their own set of what they believe are their “problems”.  From today on I am going to make the choice to live in my truth and be free of others opinions of me.

Sweet Talk

Next time you catch yourself in some self talk start sweet talking yourself.  You find yourself talking to yourself about how you don’t want to be where you are.  The panic and the dread come up to play and you start feeling terrible about all of the decisions you have made.  This is called resistance. Every spiritual text talks about resistance. It is the mind wanting to solve the so called “problem” that you have.  As you start to become more cognizant of the patterns of your own mind you can begin to shift those patterns of thought.  I start by dialoging with myself that I am eternal and this is just a moment that I am going through, very soon this will pass and I will have a new experience.  You can tell yourself that you are being guided and all is and will be well.  It is ok to feel these feelings. We are on planet Earth where we have been gifted the ability to experience the gamut of emotions.  This makes for more fun and growth.  I know it is tough to see it in that way when we are in a strong resistance moment.  Just sweet talk yourself, tell yourself that you are doing great and good things are always coming to you.  Be patient by loving every moment with the deep trust that everything you have ever dreamed of is being conjured up by the universe.  You are exactly where you are supposed to be.  Sweeten that resistance.