No A/C

I would love to have air conditioning. Don't get me wrong. But, what I notice without a/c in this hot and humid North East Ohio is that I can tell when the thermometer fluctuates even 5 degrees in either direction.  I notice that when the temperatures rises past my comfort level, I need to breathe and let my body sweat itself cool. It is an interesting yoga experiment.

 --Charry

Spending time

Spend time with the people you really want to spend time with. Other wise, what is the point?

--Charry

Some people

Why is it that certain people can just rub us the wrong way?

Is it that we let them? Is it that we have something to learn from them? Do they mirror how we act and drive us crazy until we change how we act?

What if a situation like greed keeps popping up in our lives? People "taking" as though something was theirs without thinking that they should pay for it?

For example, the teachings of yoga, or anything for that matter.

Isn't it interesting that teaching is so highly regarded as a profession, yet so poorly compensated.

As a nation, we know, fundamentally that education is at the heart of our children's success and yet we continue to pay more to fund wars in Afghanistan than teach our children how to read.

And what about food?

Here we are, the most "civilized" nation in the world, and we can't even figure out how to feed, house, and clothe everyone.

There is a disconnect and I believe it starts with each one of us.

Where in your life are you stealing because you view someone as having "more" and you having "less"?

Where in your life are you stealing because you think someone "owes" you something?

Where in your life do you feel like you are so desperately lacking that you take what is not yours and rationalize it to yourself?

Where is the disconnect?

I have been working on my "money karma" recently. No answers, just more questions. --Charry

Sponge

Getting my cardio points in for the day and thought about the state of affairs of our over-programmed children...

Imagine a used, dried up sponge. This is our bodies and brains if we get stuck. If we become too one-dimentional. For example. If our children get plugged into one set youth sport at the age of 6. This is the state of youth anything these days, from music to dance to soccer. If you are not specializing at an early age you may not "make it".

This is also happening to us in old age, but mostly out of fear. We get trapped by our own habits, our own routines, our own little box of chores and activities.

Our minds and our bodies become to shrivel and dry out like that old, used, dried up sponge.

Now imagine a new, wet, soapy sponge that expands and becomes open to the task at hand. This is the mind and body of a child that is soaking up multiple languages, arts, learning musical instruments, playing multiple sports in the back yard with friends, nothing organized, all motivated by curiosity and the inherent challenge of the activity itself.

This can also be us as we age well into our 90s! We can learn how to dance, paint, write, new languages, travel, garden, take up a sport, we can still live outside of our little box. We can still grow.

So, you can choose, soak it up and stay wet and wild, or shrivel up and dry out. Be the sponge.

--Charry

Rewrite

When you write an essay, an article, a poem, or a book, there are countless edits and rewrites. There is continual scrutiny placed on each word. You must reread what you have written an incredible amount of times to know just how to continue. You must try to extract the exact meaning that you want to convey out of every syllable and every sentence. You review, edit, rewrite ad nauseum until there is "completion".

What if you took that same approach to your life?

What if you were careful with every word you said? What if you could try again over and over to be the kindest, most compassionate, most patient person?

Oh, you can! It is all right there for you! It is called practicing the art of mindful living.

--Charry

Living

We are just trying to figure it out.

If you don't try giving something up, you might not know its true value in your life.

If you don't let go and take a look at your pain/tightness/discomfort you might not know true happiness.

Meditation, is a time to be still so that your thought patterns can emerge without the distraction of movement in the body, or grasping of the senses which pull your mind in all sorts of directions. When you sit, even for 1 minute, you begin to notice the static of your mind. You begin to notice the chatter, the movie reel, the constant movement of the mind. Do not be afraid of all the noise.

Without fear, without judgment, without pride, try to sit and become non-reactionary to your thoughts. Befriend what appears. Become intimate with all that arises. Try not to push the thoughts away. No clamping down. No time outs. Just noticing.

And then, without any force or negation of your thoughts, bring your awareness from the movie reel, the chatter, the illusions of the mind's thoughts and place your focus on your breath. You do not have to make anything happen.

As soon as you are back with your breath, notice what happens. A simple shift of concentration onto the breath, away from the monkey mind. Just notice.

Do this exercise over and over again.

This is meditation.

Reflect. Be patient. Be kind. Be compassionate. Be receptive.

--Charry

Kids

I went in to tell my kids that they were "breaking our rules".

Apparently I had also just broken a rule because my daughter came in, showed me our family rule list, and pointed out the "No shouting" rule on the list.

Oh boy.

Would that be considered karma in action?

--Charry

What if...

If yoga was simply a bunch of physical poses to strengthen the body and stretch muscles, what would you do if you got hurt, had an illness, or went on vacation?

If meditation was simply sitting in stillness, what would happen when you had a real life crisis?

If yoga and meditation were just exercises that you did to fill your day and pretend that you were "improving" your life, what would happen if your spouse left you, someone died, or you hit rock bottom?

If you want your "practice" to be more than just a physical exercise, a tool to heal your back, or something else to become addicted to, use your mat and your cushion to rub up against what is really at the bottom of all of your suffering: tap into your greed, selfishness, hatred, guilt, anger, elation, euphoria, judgment, pride,...

Sit and reflect on that which is eating you up from the inside out.

Do you really think you don't have "enough"?
Do you really think you need someone else's "approval"?
Do you really need to hide behind the busyness?

What do you really need to end the suffering?

The yoga postures and the sitting practice both lead to an even higher limb of yoga- Self-Realization.

But, you must be patient, diligent, fearless, receptive, and make the effort to be kind and compassionate in every moment with every living being.

Take it off your mat. --Charry

Why o Why?

Just when you think there has been some light shed, some little opening, you are reminded...

And then, you know that you must begin again...

And again...

And again.

Just when you think that you have lots of interested readers, students, friends, you are reminded...

And then, you know that you must begin again...

And again....

And again.

Just when you think, you are reminded...

That you are human...

And you must begin again.

Patience.

--Charry

The Master Game

The Master Game

by

Robert S. DeRopp

Seek, above all, for a game with playing. Such is the advice of the oracle to modern man.

Having found the game play it with intensity – play as if your life and sanity depend on it.

(They do depend on it). Follow the example of the French Existentialists and flourish a banner bearing the word “engagement”. Though nothing means anything and all roads are marked “no exit”, yet move as if your movements had some purpose. If life does not seem to offer a game worth playing, then invent one. For it must be clear, even to the most clouded intelligence, that any game is better than no game.

But although it is safe to play the Master Game, this has not served to make it popular. It still remains the most demanding and difficult of games and in our society, there are few who play. Contemporary man, hypnotized by the glitter of his own gadgets, has little contact with his inner world, concerns himself with outer, not inner space. But the Master Game is played entirely in the inner world, a vast and complex territory about which men know very little. The aim of the game is true awakening, full development of the powers latent in man. The game can be played only by people whose observations of themselves and others have led them to a certain conclusion, namely, that man’s ordinary state of consciousness, his so-called waking state, is not the highest level of consciousness of which he is capable. In fact, this state is so far from real awakening that it could appropriately be called a form of somnambulism, a condition of “waking sleep”.

Once a person has reached this conclusion, he is no longer able to sleep comfortably. A new appetite develops within him, the hunger for real awakening, for full consciousness.  He realizes that he sees, hears, and knows only a tiny fraction of what he could see, hear and know, that he lives in the poorest, shabbiest of the rooms in his inner dwelling, and that he could enter other rooms, beautiful and filled with treasures, the windows of which look out on eternity and infinity.

The solitary player lives today in a culture that is more or less totally opposed to the aims he has set himself, that does not recognise the existence of the Master Game, and regards players of this game as queer or slightly mad. The player thus confronts great opposition from the culture in which he lives and must strive with forces which tend to bring his game to a halt before it has even started. Only by finding a teacher and becoming part of the group of pupils that the teacher has collected about him can the player find encouragement and support. Otherwise he simply forgets his aim, or wanders off down some side road and loses himself.

Here it is sufficient to say that the Master Game can NEVER be made easy to play. It demands all that a man has, all his feelings, all his thoughts, his entire resources, physical and spiritual. If he tries to play it in a half-hearted way or tries to get results by unlawful means, he runs the risk of destroying his own potential. For this reason it is better not to embark on the game at all than to play it half-heartedly.

Come backs

I keep coming back to this:

Is all disappointment in life simply a matter of not having gotten what I wanted, as I wanted it, in the time that I wanted it to be gotten?

Is all suffering simply a matter of impatience?

Is this too simplistic of a viewpoint?

These are some of the questions I am living at the moment.

What about you????

--Charry