"Selling out" vs "Saying yes"

The thing is, I really like saying yes. I like new things, projects, plans, getting people together and doing something, trying something, even when it's corny or stupid. I am not good at saying no. And I do not get along with people who say no. When you could die, and it really could be this afternoon, under the same bus wheels I'll stick my head if need be, you will not be happy about having said no. You will be kicking your ass about all the no's you've said. No to that opportunity or no to that trip to Nova Scotia or no to that night out, or no to that project or no to that person who wants to be naked with you but you worry about what your friends will say.

No is for wimps. No is for pussies. No is to live small and embittered, cherishing the opportunities you missed because they might have sent the wrong message.

What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand. What matters is that the Flaming Lips' new album is ravishing and I've listened to it a thousand times already, sometimes for days on end, and it enriches me and makes me want to save people. What matters is that it will stand forever, long after any narrow-hearted curmudgeons have forgotten their appearance on goddamn 90210. What matters is not the perception, nor the fashion, not who's up and who's down, but what someone has done and if they meant it. What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on as grand a scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say. Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do no dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and forgiving and accepting, but Christ that is what matters. What matters is saying yes."

-Dave Eggers

Shifting the Default

With all the talk of cycles ending, moving from light into dark, expansion into contraction, it seems the natural progression of these thoughts brings me to the following question:

How does one navigate transition and change gracefully?

Typically we humans have our defaults set in such a way that we don't even realize we are in a constant cycle of repeating the same patterns over...and over...and over. Usually we react to things (interactions, decisions, relationships, challenges) in one of two ways: we either shy away from it, tune it out ("I can't do it") or we try to conquer it--muscle through, take control, assert our power. This is our default. Think about your tendency: How do you typically react when something unexpected arises, when your buttons get pushed or something triggers you? What are your patterns in relationships, in your career, in your social sphere? If you are having trouble thinking of something, look no further than your family. The holidays are right around the corner, and a lot of us will be spending time with family members we don't see very often. For me, when I go home to visit my family, it is the shiniest mirror I could possibly imagine reflecting back all the things I may the day before thought I had all figured out and squared away. I see my life through a certain lens; I imagine myself a certain way, until I go home and suddenly I'm 17 again and playing out all the old samskaras with my sister, and I'm thinking, what the hell just happened? This isn't how I want to be.

Now imagine a particularly challenging yoga pose, one that causes you to cringe every time your teacher announces it. What is your default here? I'm willing to wager that how you react to a difficult pose translates exactly to how you react to struggle in your day-to-day life.

So how do we shift the default? Just like anything else in life, with practice. This change won't happen overnight; just as our physical bodies on our mats get stronger with consistent asana practice, and those challenging poses begin to open up for us, so does the practice of shifting out default get stronger over time to the point where the practice doesn't fade away the minute you roll up your yoga mat, but is carried with you into the 'real world' as well.

A consistent yoga practice is a call to the highest: can we practice in such a way that every movement, action, thought, and expression begins to move into alignment with our highest nature? By learning to approach challenges on the mat with a sense of curiosity, rather than aversion or assertion, we are more able to work with life's curve-balls instead of being constantly mowed down or blindsided by them.

Ramakrishna said, "The winds of grace are always blowing; it is for us to raise the sails." By opening to the winds of grace, we begin to have more and more of those fantastic "A HA!" moments and it becomes more and more easy to catch ourselves falling into old patterns and snap out of our defaults with greater ease. And the world in turn starts to turn every day a bit rosier.

The Flying Trapeze

Sometimes, I feel my life is a series of trapeze swings. I'm either hanging on to a trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments, I'm hurtling across space between the trapeze bars.

Mostly, I spend my time hanging on for dear life, to the trapeze bar of the moment. It carries me along a certain steady rate of swing and I have the feeling that I am in control. I know most of the right questions, and even some of the right answers. But once in a while, as I'm merrily, or not so merrily, swinging along, I look ahead of me into the distance, and what do I see?

I see another trapeze bar looking at me. It's empty; and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart-of-hearts I know that for me to grow, I must release my grip on the present well known bar, to move on to the new one.

Each time it happens, I hope-no, I pray-that I won't have to grab the new one. But in my knowing place, I understand that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar, and for some moments in time I must hurtle across space before I can grab the new bar. Each time I am filled with terror. It doesn't matter that in all my previous jumps I've always made it.

Each time, I am afraid I will miss, that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless basin between the bars.

But I do it anyway, I must.

Perhaps this is the essence of what the mystics call faith. No guarantees, no net, no insurance, but we do it anyway because somehow, to keep hanging on to that old bar is no longer an option. And so for an eternity, that can last a microsecond or a thousand lifetimes, I soar across the dark void of "the past is over, the future is not yet here." It's called transition. I've come to believe that it is the only place where real change occurs.

I've noticed that, in our culture, this transition zone is looked upon as a "no-thing," a no-place between places. Sure the old trapeze bar was real, and the new one coming towards me, I hope that's real, too. But the void in between? That's just a scary, confusing, disorienting "no-where" that must be gotten through as quickly and as unconsciously as possible. What a shame!

I have a sneaking suspicion that the transition zone in the only real thing, and the bars are illusions we create to not notice the void. Yes, with all the fear of being out of control that can accompany transitions, they are still the most alive, growth filled, passionate times in our lives.

And so, transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear go away, but rather with giving ourselves permission to be aware and awake in the transition zone between trapeze bars.

Allowing ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really happens can be terrifying. It can also be enlightening. Hurtling through the void, we just might learn to fly.

*From The Essene Book of Days

On Contraction and Expansion, Part II

Before the Industrial Revolution, western civilization connected much more deeply with the natural world and its cycles, and the end of summer/beginning of fall marked the new year. We see this in various cultures, as this time is marked by harvest festivals, festivals of the dead, and for us, Halloween. It is considered a magical time when the veil between the two worlds is thinnest, a time during which conscious intention setting is most potent.

It makes sense, right? At least more sense than waiting for January 1st when everything is already dead and barren to "start over," to shift from one day to the next by planning everything you're going to suddenly do differently. Not typically considered the most inspirational part of the year, wouldn't you say?

I'm not advocating that we switch our calendar to reflect this, just that you reconsider fall. Doesn't it feel more intuitive to take a self-inventory now, as the harvest is ripe, before the night comes early and the trees are bare, when the only thing we want to do is hibernate like little honey bees and cozy up by the fireplace (or in some cases, miniature space heaters)?

How does contraction and expansion play into this? For you yoga nerds out there, contraction and expansion plays out on our mats in a multitude of ways, but suffice it to say for the moment that the way we are on our mats is an exact mirror for how we are in life. In yoga class we are often guided to walk our edge, that juicy space between going too far and into potential injury, and it's opposite: constantly backing off and even tuning out the practice. Imagine yourself in a challenging pose; what is your tendency: to immediately retreat (contract), or to muscle through (expand)? Now apply that same exact tendency to how you are in relationships...see any correlation? As practitioners we engage constantly in this sweet dance, riding the edge in seek of balance between two sides, diligently flexing an entirely new set of muscles (both literally and metaphorically). It can be exhilarating and terrifying all within the span of a few breaths.

With this in mind, I ask you to take your own inventory. What seeds planted last spring have now come to fruition (what personal harvest(s) are you reaping?)? What thoughts/ideas/goals/intentions would you like to incubate during the cold months so that you may better tend to them, better nurture their growth come winter's end? How can you skillfully assimilate the expansiveness of summertime in ways that will support you now that the days are moving into contraction (see what I did there?)? Go a step further than just thinking about these things--be in conversation about your intentions, write them down. Do your work and allow the universe to also play its part.

Instead of plowing through the cold months, as I know I for one am wont to do, utilize the natural stillness of fall to turn inward, engaging in some self-reflection; to allow contraction instead of shying away from it or making it wrong. Cozy up to it, even.

As you take this practice on, my wish for you is that you go easy on yourself; in other words, NO "SHOULDS" allowed--they can be poisonous. Simply take a look and ask yourself, what are the areas of my day to day where I can invite more expansion? Where in my life am I perhaps unnecessarily contracted? Or, the best question for you might be, where in my life am I too overextended; where would it benefit me most to scale things back, maybe engage in some rarely taken self care, create a new boundary?

Let me know how it goes, if you dare...

San Francisco Remembered

I have been wrapping my tongue around this poem for a while now (since Dave was here), and with the arrival (finally) of our San Francisco summer it tastes even more juicy. Here's your daily dose of inspiration; I have one request: read it aloud. Even better, read it aloud to someone you love.

San Francisco Remembered
by Philip Schultz

In summer the polleny light bounces off the white buildings
& you can see their spines and nerves & where the joints knot.
You've never seen such polleny light. The whole city shining
& the women wearing dresses so think you could see their wing-
tipped hips
& their tall silvery legs alone can knock your eye out.
But this isn't about women. It's about the city of blue waters
& fog so thick it wraps around your legs & leaves glistening trails
along the dark winding streets. Once I followed such a trail
& wound up beside this red-headed woman who looked up and smiled
& let me tell you you don't see smiles like that in Jersey City.
She was wearing a black raincoat with two hundred pockets
& I wanted to put my hands in each one. But forget her.
I was talking about the fog which steps up and taps your shoulder
like a panhandler who wants bus fare to a joint called The Paradise
& where else could this happen? On Sundays Golden Gate Park
is filled with young girls strolling the transplanted palms
& imported rhododendron beds. You should see the sunset
in their eyes & the sway, the proud sway of their young shoulders.
Believe me, it takes a day or two to recover. Or the trolleys clanking
down the steep hills--why you see legs floating like mirrors! Please,
Lord, please let me talk about San Francisco. How
that gorilla of a bridge twists in the ocean & the earth turns under
your feet & at any moment the whole works can crack
& slip back into the sea like a giant being kicked off his raft
& now if it's all right, I'd like to talk about women...

On Contraction and Expansion, Part I

Ay, fall, the time of year that is historically the juiciest for me. Summer fades away, and there I am, kicking and screaming, sad to see her go, only to be blessedly most pleasantly surprised time and time again by autumn's warm embrace. In this case, quite literally, it's nearly Halloween and the temperatures in the city have been upwards of 85 degrees for the past 10 days at least...

Summer is officially over and, despite the unseasonable heat, there is no denying the sweet signs of fall. The light is jamming in at crooked angles and everything seems backlit with an almost amber glow; although the trees don't really change color here (they kind of go from vivid green to dry and dead almost overnight), the streets are filling with leaves, the branches growing more and more visible every day. It's hard to explain, but things feel slower; despite living in a go-go-go culture (where I feel guilty on the days I come home and take a nap after work instead of doing something productive), if you take a closer look you'll notice a stillness, albeit a subtle one, as we innately, collectively prepare for the impending cold season.

One of the things yoga helps us align with are our natural rhythms, but also the rhythms of the world in which we inhabit. How can yoga do this you may ask? I think it has to do with the fact that it starts with a deep inner listening, both in general on the mat as we move into physical postures but also off the mat--within relationships, both professional and personal, and even more importantly, with the relationship we have with ourselves. The rich inner landscape we cultivate on our mats translates exactly to the way we walk in the world, the way we treat ourselves and each other.

It is with these ideas in mind that I wish to examine within the coming days/weeks this idea of moving into a more natural rhythm, even within the hustle and bustle of city life, how our yoga practice correlates; I'll also make a case for why we feel the way we do depending on the time of year, and how bringing an awareness to this aspect of our lives can help us make better sense of the world and our place in it, and ideally help us to go a little easier on ourselves.

That's a tall order, so go easy on me. And let me know if I'm going overboard on the semi-colons while you're at it.

photo credit: flora douville

6 Ingredient Lentil Soup (I'm not kidding)

Happy Monday everyone!

I am finally posting my recipe for lentil soup--I am positive I don't have one friend who has not tried this at my house at some point. The recipe only calls for 6 ingredients and makes a huge pot--good to share at parties or sustain you and yours throughout the week. It's especially lovely during these here cold winter months, aka about 10 months of the year here in San Pancho. Do it up, tell me how it went/goes:

Easy Lentil Soup

Ingredients:

• 2 cups green lentils--picked over and rinsed
• olive oil
• 1 onion--chopped
• sea salt
• 1 12 oz can garbanzo beans
• one bunch of greens--I use kale, but you can use chard or collards also
• 1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
• 2-3 cups water

Instructions:

• Boil 6 cups of water in a large soup-pot.
• Add lentils and cook 20 minutes (or until tender). Drain, set aside.
• Heat oil in the soup pot over medium heat. Add garbanzo beans and saute 1-2 minutes.
• Add onion and salt and sautee until tender
• Stir in tomatoes, lentils, and water, let simmer.
• Add greens at the end for about 1-2 minutes, until they soften and turn a bright green.

That's IT! And it's bomb. Some people like to add a dollop of yogurt on top, I personally like it best with a dash of Tapatio.

Nom

Happy Decade (inventory and numbers)

I smoked my first joint on New Year's Eve 1999. I was 15, a child, and the world was ending anyway, so what did it matter? Remember that, Y2K? My friend's father shut down the electricity at midnight, and we screamed, thinking we were on the brink of something big, bad, and important, only to look out the window and realize the streetlights were working just fine, it was all a hoax.

The twin towers fell the Autumn of my senior year of high school. We all remember exactly where we were when we heard the news. I spent that semester getting kicked out of my economics class for insubordination and wandering the halls in my itchy skin, or driving around aimlessly in my car, sneaking off campus to smoke cigarrettes, every moment planning my escape. In high school, I had three different cars, 3 speeding tickets, hit a parked car twice, and accidently ran over one cat. I set off 6 fart bombs at a school assembly, my favorite music was Weezer, Sublime, and 311, and my favorite show was Six Feet Under.

In the 7 years since I moved out of my parent's house, I lived in 7 apartments on four continents, and coexisted with sixteen people, along with, at different times, rats, mice, chickens, roaches, dogs, and one infant. I shared a bathroom with 50 girls, and mastered the art of squatting to do my business over a hole. I learned one language, but can get by in about three others.

I voted in two presidential elections--too young to vote during Bush's first time around, I went out and got drunk after the second one, believing I might find the antidote to my feelings of powerlessness at the bottom of a pint. I felt proud to be an American for the first time the day Obama won the election, sitting in a bar in a Thai mountain town of 800, surrounded by 5-6 Americans, all of us so far from home, crying our eyes out, hugging and kissing like old friends.

The United States has been at war for my entire adulthood.


I lived in Spain when Katrina hit New Orleans, and felt shocked that a foreign nation seemed more concerned about the tragedy than my president. On New Years Day 2006, the Spanish government enacted a law banning smoking in bars and restaurants, and I was there to witness the collective majority basically laugh in the governments face and continue on as if nothing had changed. Imagine if Americans dared to stand up for themselves so boldly? I swam in the Mediterranean and ran with the bulls and slept on beaches and passed my evenings in caves listening to live gypsy flamenco. I learned the value of doing absolutely nothing.

When I first moved to this city, bus fare was $0.50/ride. Now it's $2 a pop and my monthly Muni pass costs more than an entire month's rent in Thailand. I shopped at Russian delis in the Richmond district, dodged the gutter punks on Haight, and witnessed 24th street slowly but surely begin to lose it's local color (excuse me, but do people actually need a bacon mocha cappuchino? And I don't understand the novelty with the mini-donuts and cupcake craze, have people actually never stepped into on of the myriad Latino bakeries that dot the Mission?). I was here when gay people were allowed to get married, only to have it taken away. I found yoga and started dancing again.

I remember, back in the day, keeping my cell phone, perpetually turned off, in the glove compartment of my car (I remember having a car). In the years since, cell phones have become so ubiquitous that California passed a law banning their use while driving, while I have become a master at artfully dodging any number of pedestrians so buried in their PDA's they wouldn't notice the Buddha standing before them. Because all the knowledge of the universe has been made available at our very fingertips it's impossible to have a dinner with friends without consulting this little machine ("What was that song? You know, the theme song from My So Called Life? I must have listened to it thousands of times..." "It's cool I'll just look it up."). My good memory isn't even that good anymore. This Christmas I finally got my first iPod. I feel like I just gave birth.

This was the decade of TMI. The paparazzi showed us photos of unsolicited hoo-hah, we became privy to the lurid details of the sexual escapades of half the Republican Party, and I learned that Tom Cruise's baby's bib costs more than my entire year's salary. Over the last 10 years, we became voyeurs, and it seemed Americans took an almost morbid pleasure witnessing the downfalls and downward spirals of dozens of vulnerable celebraties. The rising popularity of reality TV actually brought us further away from reality and instead into the epicenter of the dregs of American culture and society. We have been in perpetual war since the beginning of the new millenium; yet, we remain disconnected and oblivious to the horrors of war, and entire industries have risen up to provide information about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and their growing brood.


I've been Friendstered and Myspaced and Spacebooked and Twittified, and I wonder, how the hell did I spend my time before? Was there a time when I was able to read something from start to finish without simultaneously writing an email, chatting with a friend in Argentina, checking my bank statement, and job hunting?


I sat with spiritual teachers and great beings and quacks, abbots and sages, and once had to fend off the advances of a sneaky Thai monk. I've given alms at dawn and received blessings at daybreak, climbed mountains to kneel in Buddhist temples, and prayed to Gods and Goddesses and trees and mountains and big sky. I accidently stole a dog from a monastery (long story).


I twisted my body into suchirandrasana, baddhokonasana, parivrtta padmotonasana and eka pada raja kapotasana. I stuck my leg behind my head once, and held handstand without a wall for 6 seconds.

I smoked thousands of cigarettes and had countless hangovers.

I dated musicians, artists, yogis, massage therapists, carpenters, waiters, bartenders, chefs, scientists, engineers, DJ's, one Sicilian, and two drummers, one of which was missing a full set of front teeth. I had one night stands and enough bad dates to last a lifetime. I've been in love twice, and had my heart broken once.


I was employed 13 times and went from being able to take my pick of jobs in 2007, to, just two years later, feeling grateful to land a gig doing the same thing I did to make easy spending cash back in high school. I witnessed my mother not be able to find work after 30+ years of steady employment and my father struggle to keep his business afloat at a time in his life when he should be starting to chill out. Every single person I know has been directly affected by the current state of the economy.

In ten years, I've gone from and angry, know-it-all teenager, to a sad and confused early 20 something, to a strong, responsible woman. My parents are still happy and together, and I still have 3/4 of my grandparents. The biggest lesson I've learned/am learning, is to not focus so intently on the goal, and to enjoy the ride more, that ultimately that's all that exists. The best piece of advice I received was to imagine where I see myself in my life, imagine how that looks, and to live every day as if I had already arrived.

As we enter the next decade, I hope we can learn from our experiences and take more responsibility for our collective actions and their effects on the world. I hope to build conscious community and to continue stretching out my body and the corners of my brain. May we all learn to start following our hearts instead of living always in our minds.