PranaBeing blog: Soul Fire

Consider that you are a genius,

that you were born with a precious spark of perception, motivation, expression unlike any other.

Through the natural course of life, this spark was overcast by deep shadows of collectively held beliefs, coated by opaque lacquer of unspoken assumptions, muffled and buried under insulating layers of what you should do and how you should be. The most well-intentioned and trusted people in your life piled it on in the name of protecting you and preparing you to deal with life. Because that is what we were taught to do.

Being the good human that you are, you soldiered on. You’ve done the best you could to fulfill your duty.

Somehow that spark has stayed alive, and for years it was a constant source of slight irritation for you, because it rarely seemed to help you do what you “had” to do or what you “should” do, but instead has always whispered alluringly for you to explore experiences and do things that seem utterly irrational, unproductive, inefficient, and otherwise against your obligations as a “responsible adult.” And you’ve kept it at bay by answering its requests to explore and play with, “Later….later,” all the while dedicating your vitality to the To-Do list.

Yet the deeper desire in you to live true and live fully expands beyond what is expected of you. The seed of consciousness which is the evolutionary imperative within you will not stop calling you toward yourself, toward your soul.

Gradually through the tempering of life’s projects—beginnings and endings, dreams and failures—you have begun to recognize that achievement of the standards you’ve learned and upheld doesn’t bring zest for life. This grind to show up the way you are supposed to actually drains your energy, and it doesn’t even bring a guarantee of security!

And the persistence of that tiny voice, that impulse to keep searching, has prompted you to ever-so-slightly turn towards the spark, to listen with tentative curiosity. Maybe you started running. Maybe you took a yoga class, started journaling, or spent a day planting trees.

Whatever you did to crack the door to this tiny spark, the moment it received even a breath of air, it sprung to life and started to dance inside you.

Your courage grows.

You start to meditate regularly. You begin to explore dietary changes. You take a day off from work to be with your kids—or with yourself. You decide not to buy the thing that you know has such a horrible environmental impact. You trade your $5/day latte for a superfood meal. And you see what happens.

You’ve begun to understand that the part of you that seemed so unruly, so difficult to discipline and impossible to channel - this part of you feeds directly from the vibrant fountain of Life itself. This is your connection to vigor, inspiration, and happiness. It is the genius of your essence, outside all learned notions and conditioned responses around how you should be.

And this spark within you, this atom of Nature, is you as a part of the whole of life. It carries the intelligence of the whole, and it carries the desire for healing of the whole, and it carries the strength to really live into your deepest questions, to courageously pursue your deepest wishes, and to face your deepest fears with compassion. It stands for the fulfillment of your divine (beyond human) potential.

It continuously serves your highest growth.

Now that you’ve glimpsed your Self, you are beginning to admit the truth: your REAL job is to tend this fire within you, to dis-cover this genius, to build a hearth within your body and your life where it can burn brightly and bring warmth to the world.

It’s not easy - because most of the world is asleep, trained to pay for electricity instead of connecting to the sustainable power source within. When the world sees a real fire burning, it panics and comes running, yelling, “Put it out!”

That’s why you need to build a moat of calm resilience around your soul-fire. To protect yourself and contain your vibrancy so that you can channel it for the benefit of all.

The world will not validate your efforts. You will have to use what you’ve learned to penetrate illusions, feel into your own heart, and find your way into the unknown, again and again.

Good thing you’re a genius.

You’ll figure it out.

PranaBeing blog: Meditation

There is no one else.

There is nothing else.

There is not even me.

Alone is impossible:

it’s all one no-thing-ness.

Yet

here I am,

sensing a shift,

from me to nothingness.

Silence,

as if a rain drop

were suddenly to know itself

as water and cloud.

No;

even beyond the form of all

I emerge,

silent.

Nothing to say.

Nothing to do.

I notice

I am once again

alone.

PranaBeing blog: Ways to Fly

I received a wonderful bodywork session today and I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes from the spiritual wild man Ram Das:

We’re all just walking each other home.

Each time I receive therapeutic facilitation, I am reminded of how valuable it is and how helpful it can be. The energy of the partnership and allowing ourselves to drop into receiving mode creates a unique opening. There are just some things we cannot do for ourselves.

The dynamic shifts again when we come together in groups. Gurudev would say,

Company is stronger than willpower.

When a group of individuals unites under a shared focus, an energy field is generated that is greater than the sum of its parts. This field can lift up and sustain all the members of the group with strength far beyond any one person. Community, known in yoga as sangha, is an essential part of our life support system. Certain things can only be achieved by working in a group.

Finally, we experience ourselves differently when we are alone, and there are some things that we can only experience when we are free from the influence and allure of any other humans. In the moments when it is just us, face to face with the universe, we are granted the opportunity to become intimate with ourselves.

Our capacity to be with and within ourselves is the basis for our capacity to forge relationships in the external world. Ultimately, the way we experience life is all about our relationship with ourselves.

These three modes of being—solo, paired, and in a group—are each and all important.

How are you accessing each of these in support of your highest growth? It’s good to check in periodically and see if any fine-tuning is needed.