Having Faith in the Finish Line Part 1
There is a point in every marathon where no runner quits and there is another point where the majority drop out. The quitting point is painstakingly close to the finish line and, when measured in terms of percentage points, sits at approximately the last five percent of the race. The drop outs' hurdle is the last stretch of the race where the end remains hidden from view. It is here where athletes have been working for a long time that all the major mental and physical obstacles set in. Doubt, anxiety, disbelief, exhaustion, dehydration, hunger, the feeling of no end in sight and physiological stress compromise rational thought and convince many to throw in the towel. Just as night is somehow darkest just before dawn breaks, so too is the race toughest right before it ends. Absolutely no one quits when the finish line is in clear sight. Whatever mental, emotional or physical pain may exist dissipates because the finish line represents an end to the torture. When circumstance is both finite and clearly defined the capacity for human endurance grows dramatically. Not knowing is what drives us nuts.
Whether you're a yoga practitioner, an avid meditator or a business executive it augurs well for your long term success to bear in mind the drop outs' hurdle when faced with challenges. You never know when all your hard work and dedication will pay off and you cannot force life into giving you what you want exactly when you want it. Complaining, comparing yourself to others, making excuses or finding something juicy to escape into will not get you what you want. The only thing left to do is to focus on your technique, dig deeper into your stores of internal strength, steady your mind and surrender. Different than giving up, surrendering in the context of a daily spiritual practice is the equivalent of having faith. Literally meaning the process by which you give up the false notion that you can control anything, the ability to surrender opens a doorway into letting go and letting a higher power take over. It is this type of faith that carries runners out of the dark zone of quitting into the power of the finish line being in sight and it is this type of faith that will carry you through doubt, fear, disbelief and anxiety into true power. It takes a steady, practiced mind to feel the obstacles pounding on the inner door of the mind and remain calmly committed to a better outcome with the knowledge that sooner or later everything changes and sooner or later the end will be in sight.
Spiritual practice is merely a reflection of your attitude towards life. If you make it through to the end of a seemingly insurmountable situation you have greater stores of strength and confidence the next time something similar happens. Patients of long term illnesses under going holistic treatment often display what Paul Pritchford calls in his book Healing with Whole Foods a "healing crisis". This stage of the game is analogous to the drop outs hurdle in the marathon race towards health. Patients in the midst of a "healing crisis" will usually see a virulent resurgence of all their old pains, injuries, negative emotions, destructive behaviors and symptoms only to purge them from their system completely if the healing program is followed to the end. Those who withdraw from the treatment at this point remain unhealthy and those who make it through often, although of course not always, experience healing. Just before it gets better it usually gets much worse. Those who develop the bravery and fortitude it takes to see the good, the bad and the ugly about themselves are the ones who make it through to the finish line.
A daily yoga practice is riddled with ample opportunity to practice staying through the darkest point of your journey. From postures that have eluded you from the beginning to new postures that create new pains and disbelief, yoga's greatest gift is the real world passage from the impossible to the possible and then from the possible to the easy. Fortunately this path is often walked on the treacherous road of physical pain. One of the best tests of character that exists is how you respond to your body's signals of distress, for it is often also how you will respond to life's signals of distress. Do you quit the moment something even remotely hurts? Or do you lean in and hammer through? Would you be able to allow a higher awareness to teach and guide you? Learning to distinguish different types of intense sensation in your body will help you work with the pain that is an inevitable reality of life, both in and out of the yoga world. The key is to walk the middle way between forcing yourself into injury and shying away from challenge while remaining aware, alert and alive.
continued in the next section
Having Faith in the Finish Line Part 2
Psychological barriers present similar tests. Sometimes when approaching a certain posture you will feel no pain but you will not be able to perform the asana. For example, I unsuccessfully attempted to balance in a headstand for the first eight months of my yoga practice. Every time my legs came tumbling towards the floor I beat myself up with my apparent inadequacy. What I didn't know at the time is that every moment where you fall out of a posture is where the body and the mind learn how to be in that very same posture. When you fail you learn a priceless and unforgettable lesson. There are days where it really feels like it's never going to get better and perhaps might even worse. It is ironically often right before a big breakthrough in your practice that an injury surfaces, that you start to get tired of practicing or that you begin to doubt the method of your practice. Tibetan Buddhist teacher Ani Pema Chodron says that progress along the spiritual path never feels like progress. When it feels hard, when you doubt whether you're really doing anything at all, and when you feel like you're going crazy is when you're actually growing, learning and evolving. Life delivers five steps forward and five steps back, then five steps forward and four and a half steps back. Happiness is merely a recognition and a celebration of that small half step forward gained after years of back and forth vacillation. No matter how convoluted your path may seem faith carries you through to the finish line every time.
by Kino MacGregor
Copyright 2009 Kino MacGregor |
All rights reserved
The Hidden Key to Health
Food is not who you are. It is a way you communicate with the world. You express things through food, through eating, like you do through any art form, but it nevertheless is not who you are at your deepest essence. Your eating habits are merely habits, not your life or your vitality, though they may seriously enhance your life, your energy levels and your overall health.
There is so much attention given to diet and exercise as the solution to every health worry. There are at least a dozen new diets promising to make you forever young, cancer-free, heart healthy, thin,vibrant and closer to God. Yet what lies at the core of every extreme diet is a fundamental rejection of who you are in the present moment. While you might do well to work with the part of yourself that still hungers for a Supersize Big Mac, thinking that the epicurean in you is bad, evil or unworthy creates unhealthy thought patterns that last for lifetimes. What all crash dieting misses is that when you reject a part of yourself along the way, even when you finally arrive at the goal of skinny body with perfect blood sugar and cholesterol levels, you are not fully happy.
Health and happiness are part and parcel of a total life perspective that includes genuine gratitude for the gift of life. In order to be deeply happy in a lasting way, you will need to develop a high degree of tolerance for the multitude of selves that you are. There is a part of you that loves culinary indulgence and another part that enjoys living a very pure life. In a truly integrated existence, there is no separation between these apparent extremes. You as a being in fact already contain them within you. The work of creating a yogic diet begins with accepting who you, what your basic likes and dislikes are and working with yourself in a patient, persistent and kind-hearted manner.
Solutions to your health problems that have at their basis a fundamental rejection of your basic worthiness do not lead to long term success or sustainability. Extreme crash diets can only last so long before you fall off the wagon. The truth about food is that the only diet that instills lasting change is one that embraces both who you are and who you want to be in the same loving light.
Unless you address some of the basic beliefs you hold about yourself, merely changing what goes into your mouth won’t make you happy for the long haul. The inner world of your mind directs the physical world of your body. You hold certain thought patterns about food, life and self-esteem. The thoughts you keep in the hidden realms of your subconscious mind play a crucial role in your overall level of health. All food choices are reflections about your level of self-love, self-acceptance and self-appreciation. If you do not work on loving and appreciating your life, then no diet will make a deep impact in your sense of joyful living. If you want to begin working of your health, then begin to a dress the silently held judgments you have about yourself.
Health in a word is balance; it is a dynamic equilibrium that holds food, health, emotions, thoughts, your body, work, love, relationships and fun in a teetering sphere. When all these aspects dangle in harmony, you are filled with an effortless happiness and peace of mind that emanates forth from you. It’s a magnetic glow that’s unmistakable.
by Kino MacGregor
Copyright 2009 Kino MacGregor |
All rights reserved
The Inevitability of Change
Can there be any doubt that we are in the midst of great change? From the historic campaigns waged by both American political parties to the rise of China as a superpower to the generational shifts in the workforce to catastrophic weather patterns to changes in the face of yoga, everywhere you look the tides are turning in some form or another. When Shiva as the great destroyer dances on the small ego we all have, it is change itself embodied the great equalizer of the Hindu deities. Resist change and you resist the law of life. Fight it and you will only hurt yourself. No matter how angry you are at the present, how sweet your nostalgia is for the past or how hard you try to deny the inevitability of change, you simply cannot stop the powerful thrust forward that defines life.
Things change. Even the things that you want most to stay the same. No amount of fighting, denying, sarcasm, depression, resistance or maneuvering will stop life from delivering you into the future. Bodies grow old, generations shift, leaders evolve, technology becomes obsolete.The acceleration of the rate of change in the last decades is perhaps even more shocking to us all. There is nothing more frustrating than buying a computer only to find that it is a dinosaur one year and three thousand dollars later.
Change is the inevitable reality everywhere you turn and resistance, anger and frustration are evident in almost equal measure. Yet in the midst of such seemingly devastating circumstances you have a unique change to dig deeper into the teachings of yoga and ultimately into yourself. The basic teaching of yoga is to cultivate strength and steadiness of mind alongside the flexibility of spirit that allows you to move through the most challenging situations with wisdom. Perhaps the evidence that our world is changing with increasing rapidity can be found in so many people’s interest in yoga. Amidst a sea of change-induced stress we are all searching for peace in one form or another.
Yet yoga never offers a definite answer that ends the inner search. Instead its peace comes from reflecting the truth of the inner state of your being and it is in the realization of your highest self that you find a way to literally roll with the punches of life. The holy grail of one era is the bygone relic of another and how you deal with it is perhaps the greatest test of the success of your spiritual pursuits. Your response to change reveals your basic notion of yourself.
I for one can be quite resistant to change at first and then after some period of time I surrender to the power of life that is greater than myself and jump in with full force. There is no dream of the past that can be preserved forever. Vision is a living, breathing thing whose very inspiration depends on spontaneity and a museum of dreams is not the future. In a Darwinian sense the ability of a species to adapt to its changing environment is the hallmark of species survival. The Earth, along with everything else, has been changing since its birth and it will continue to change along with everything else. It is the flexible, strong mind of a dedicated yoga practitioner that will have the humility to let go of the past when appropriate, move forward when necessary and accept the bell of change when it rings.
We are all in our own processes of transition, release and surrender, yet in the midst of such intensity there is a reflection of hope amidst a sea of doubt and disbelief. You will see in the world what you have cultivated within yourself. Yoga teaches you to have faith in your own ability to change and grow, to know and evolve your own values and literally to become the change you want to see in the world. Accordingly what change you can believe in is a direct reflection of your own strength and grace.
by Kino MacGregor
Copyright 2009 Kino MacGregor |
All rights reserved
Integrating Practice with Life
It's easy to seem peaceful in the quiet cave of your own mind. It's much harder to face the test of integrating your learning with your life. No matter how peacefully you might leave your daily meditation or yoga practice, there is nothing like a seemingly callous or thoughtless comment from a friend to trigger the stickiest habitual patterns.
Know that in moments when your emotions seem larger that you, there is the real meat of personal transformation. If you practice regularly you will see that no emotion, no thought pattern, no physical condition has power over you. If you run or fight, you create more of the suffering that you desperately want to escape. What you work with in each yoga practice or meditation is the strength it takes to maintain your equanimity in the face of the vicissitudes of life.
It is easy to write and read about these things and harder yet to live them. You might find yourself having days of constant connection and then days of reactivity where you are embroiled in the messiness of interpersonal relations. You mind find yourself sometimes reaching a state where your presence is a gift to those around you and then moments later acting out a juvenile pattern. It's all part of a greater process.
If you feel drawn to the deep inner work of yoga, begin it now. Who you are matters to everyone in your life, to your loved ones, to the people at the coffee shops, at the airports, and in the traffic jams.
Your realization matters on so many levels. There is a world of deep connection and joy available to you right now. It starts with your experience and never ends. It is infinite. Just like you. Just like our connections.
by Kino MacGregor
Copyright 2009 Kino MacGregor |
All rights reserved
Love's Self-Reflective Test
You will see in others what you see in yourself. All of the insecurities you see in others are really the ones you have within reflected back at you. A Course in Miracles states that you cannot give to another what you have not known yourself. But is this true with love? Or does love play by other rules? When we ask others for unconditional love does that mean we are capable of it ourselves? In the total acceptance of our imperfections we find a grace beyond measure and a joy in the otherwise confusing panorama of humanity. Yet if we are only able to love another person to the extent that we are able to love ourselves our capacity to give might find a dead end in the caverns of our self-loathing and the doldrums of low self-esteem. One of the first and exceedingly difficult lessons in life is to learn how to love ourselves fully--foibles, faults and all.
Love and the search for it can sometimes take up a large portion of our mental, emotional and physical space that it can be possible to devote entire lives to the pursuit of love, be it returned or unrequited. Without someone to love we feel incomplete and lonely. With someone to love we are tested through and through. All human beings need relationships to know themselves truly. For when you share your life with someone there is an intimacy that bears the truth and honesty of the soul beyond any theoretical explanation. It is in the mirror of your deepest love where you can see yourself most clearly. Love is a desire everyone harbors. There is a sleeping romantic in every cynic, a broken heart in every hardened facade and a secret yearning in even the most independent minds. We all yearn for the gift of being together in a safe space where we can let our guards completely down and open our hearts with ease and grace.
Life's greatest tests are perhaps not in the grand battles of religion, morality or politics but instead in small acts of kindness, compassion and generosity. Sometimes the best expression of a person's character is whether they're willing to share their piece of the pie or not. It's easy to stand aloof from a situation and proclaim absolute right and wrong, but harder still to stand in the midst of need and distress and choose a caring course of action. When we stand in relationship we know first hand how hard it is to love another person and simultaneously how fulfilling. It is a powerful choice to maintain healthy self awareness while giving yourself freely.
Love is not abuse though often we abuse those we love with careless words and selfish actions. Love is not hierarchical power though its feeling is powerful when shared. Love is not smothering though it flows from an inexhaustible source within. Love is an action verb, yet sometimes needs no action to be expressed. Love is a tenderness that must be cared for, tended to and nurtured lest it forget how to grow. More than anything love is our deepest, truest nature whose real miracle is that we need each other to express, feel and share our love in the world.
by Kino MacGregor
Copyright 2009 Kino MacGregor |
All rights reserved
