Did you know that...

You find, for the same volume, 10 times more adrenaline cells in a tear than in blood, which clinically explains the stress-release effect of crying (over bleeing, I guess :p).

Freaky. Crying IS the ultimate stree relief, confirmed!

Now

Now is where it all happens. As much as my mind tries to sink ever so much into the past, mine and that of the people I love most, nothing is left there to be found.

Now is when we experience the course of our Lives, and where we are given the power of choice, the ability to feel and the right to joy. Time is an illusion, scientists will agree, as the only instant of action and reality is now. I find striking that the universe allows us to see the past because light travel too slow in this wide open space, but even there, where we can see planets as they were thousands of years ago, we are looking at the current reflection of the past onto our Selves today. The perception, the understanding of what we believe to be seeing in happening now, no matter when or how the events actually unfolded.

And because there is only now, the why does not matter. Why does my mind keep clinging back to the past? Why is it trying to evaluate the Now based on events that have disappeared, and whose effect, the only way to experience them, are carried in the present moment? I am today the result of my past, but not just. Because I am much more complex than that. Similarly for other people and events. The present moment can not be reduced to the output of the past.

And yet, we all try to validate the present moment, or worse, evaluate the future, based on what has happened. Worse even, we evaludate the present and the future through our fantasies of what our past and that of others has been. Cynical, but ridiculous, that we would use outdated and unreliable information, processed through the drama-loving emotional body, to decide what to do today, how to feel today, and what tomorrow holds.

I am figthing hard, today, to block the past out. And to wonder why.

The solution is not to be found in the why, as if things that were explained were no longer causing harm. I have tried, it does not work. Instead, I am trying, hard as I can, to be here and now. To fend off the past's attempts at splurging back into my present experience. So that i can finally stop being blinded, and see, feel, experience the Now as it truly is.

The past sets bars, usually too high. The past wants us back or makes us feel we have eternally missed out.

But the Now is an open field. Where things happen as we live and direct them.

What am I feeling Now? What do I choose Now?

'Let us flow in the current of the present moment, without attachement and without detachement, without hope and without fear.'

I will try that today, after I've sucked up my coffee and completed my planning memo!

Change: do you make it happen, or do your set yourself up for it?

Not too long ago, I did a reading with an energy reader from Australia, who proved totally amazing and insanely humble. Besides all the amazing information and details she came up with, she said something at the end of our time together that struck me like lightening. It was so obvious and yet so profound that I lost the ability to talk (now, THAT is a miracle) and got stuck on the light of this Truth.

She said: ‘Change naturally unfolds when your energetic and emotional frequency is where it needs to be’.

Amazing.

Forcing change, creating change, enabling change, igniting change. Externally. Was that all a dream and lost attempt at shaping the world around me when I was not ripe inside? Does that mean that all you need to work on to change your world is to change your Self? Even more abruptly, is there any point at all in trying to shift our surroundings until we have shifted our inner world?

First of all, this is a new paradigm for me. Not that I have never experienced the organic process of changing naturally when you are spontaneously ready. I have experienced that many times over, when you are so ready for a shift that manifesting it is a necessity that could overcome any obstacle. When things are so clean inside and out that there is no more question. Just an answer. But I have never tried to make this a practice, and I often find myself in a place where I try to change things, rush others, stop some when truly, the winds are not there yet. And I feel it. YOU feel it. When you try hard and truthfully to generate something, make something happen and no matter how hard or honestly you try, it just does not work. That failure to manifest is often nothing but a sign that things are just not ready yet.

Does this mean that will power and hard work are useless? I think not. The way I feel this is that will power and hard work are both required to create an inner practice of aligning yourself with what you want to achieve. Use this energy to visualize, to feel, to align your heart and mind, to bring yourself to a place of certainty. Felt and experienced certainty, not theorized or intellectualized certainty. So often we try to feel with our heads, when we should feel with our hearts. And too often we try to act from our hearts, when we should act from our bellies.

All this is telling us – and ME – is that we should try on creating the space for change in ourselves, no matter what that requires. It is telling us that while it is important to keep an eye on the end-picture, we need to keep working now on creating the perfect foundation and environment for change. Talk to our hearts, build the belly and heart fires to allow the change to unfold from within, organically.

Surrender? That is probably what it really means. Not give up, but understand that deadlines and timelines are the play of our minds, wanting to show how much in charge they are. When they are not.

So can we allow our hearts to love that future we want to manifest, and our bellies to sustain the shock of the transformation we want to materialize? Can we allow ourselves to be the change we want to see in the (our) world?

Do we have the courage to wait?

Do we have the faith to trust?

Do we have the confidence to look within to act without?

Do we?

 

Do I?

You've been walking the ocean's edge, holdingup your robes to keep them dry...

Today, I was having lunch, then coffee with a lovely friend of mine who is just back from this amazing city that is Paris. She brought me back 2 little presents. One for me and one for me and the Lover. She will smile when she reads how I describe this. Anyhow, we started talking about how we are just so immersed in the present moment in our Lives these days, and that we wish we were independently wealthy to fully appreciate and dive into such experiences. Learning languages. Teaching yoga. Travelling to places that we feel pranically attracted to. So many things that would either have a cost, or require that we take time (but not money) off work.

There seems to always be that painful challenge in life where you either have time or money at a point in time, but that both resources, which are both needed to a certain extent, never can be managed or achieved at once.

And then we got to think… Why doesn't the Universe readily give you all the resources you need to fully manifest your potential in this lifetime? Why do you always need to work your way to something, in order to get to something else? And why does that rule just not apply to a minority of very lucky individuals, who seem to have been given both the gift of Time and Abundance at once?

So what is the point of never being able to fully immerse in the experience you feel you need to grow and develop all that you need to learn or work on? I will of course acknowledge the usual standard ‘perfect’ yogic answer, that you either don’t really need what you want, or that the work required to get there is what you actually need to derive your learning from. That sounds all really good and smart, but from a very pragmatic perspective, here is my issue. Where does a corporate job that takes up many hours, much presence and creates a lot of confusion and tension fit on my journey not too enlightenment (I don’t have that pretention) but to perfecting myself? Why does fitting a physical practice into a day require such pressure? Why does fitting a trip to meet old friends and dear family members create such a maze of decisions? Why can I not spend most of my time with my beloved to learn more about us, enjoy the presence of each other and learn from each other about who we individually are?

Why are there so many roadblocks on a daily and recurring basis between your Self and the Good? Why is there a shared social acceptance, for which even yogis have tried to find theories or justifications, that Life is not meant to be fun or filled with pleasure and leisure? Why have we all come to accept that once you become an adult, Life is just not as much fun anymore? And I personally don’t buy all the amazing theories that have been put together by philosophers, thinkers and yogis alike. Look at children. Why do we accept the fact that Learning and Playing is what should fill their days, week days and week ends alike, until pay-back time comes and they have to start being separated from fun all over again?

What can we do, as almost fully operating adults, to bring the fun back into our lives and refuse to accept the fact that LIFE SUCKS MOST OF THE TIME?????
I don’t have the beginning of an idea at this stage.

But I am working on it.
- I guess that finding a job that fills you with excitement is one thing.
- Making sure you don’t devote too much to work, no matter how much you love it, is probably another.
- Knowing what really matters in your Life is another.
- Winning the lottery is a great way, although it depends much on Ma Lakshmi.
- Spending time to really identify what rocks your boat and what makes sense on your path is super duper important.
- Reviewing whatever you think matters on a daily basis is required.
- Listening to your heart every morning when you wake up and every night when you go to bed is another.
- Letting your loved ones love you, and making time for you to receive and swim in that love is key from my perspective.
- Being creative to create new pockets of fun in your life is paramount.

For the rest, I hope to win the lottery and remain healthy and in LOVE, and enjoy that for at least a little while. Because I was thinking of the people who sadly saw the end of this incarnation in the crash of the flight from Rio to Paris early this week.

Some of them had probably worked a long time to afford that trip. Or some had just finally decided to stop it all and finally have fun. But maybe the lesson is that they waited too long?

That this trip that we all wish to take one day to claim reward for all the hardship in our lives should be taken today. Not tomorrow.

Today.

Maybe we should all leave our jobs at once. All of us. To render the system pointless and create a completely new paradigm.

That love and light and ecstasy is the natural rhythm of Life.

That we should not, collectively, have to work our asses off, in dirt mines or office cubicles, to eat, have a roof over our head, or attend school or trainings on things that are likely to change our lives. Time with our lovers and children and parents should not be subject to the pre-requisite of doing something that kills the little flame in your heart 8 to 12 hours a day.

There should be no prerequisite to ecstasy. There is no preparation for joy. It is happening now right here. In you!

NOW!

Rumi says...

You've been walking 

the ocean's edge, holding 

up your robes to keep them dry. 

You must dive naked under, 

     and deeper, 

           under, a thousand times deeper!

Gotta love it!

Perfect translation of the 'vibration' I was talking today in my blog. Go Olivia Ruiz!

Elle panique!

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/olivia+ruiz/video/x94nig_olivia-ruiz-elle-panique_music

STOP IT!

Noticing when things go weird, and claiming your power to say STOP!

It happens all the time in our Lives, and it will happen again in the next. It happens to all of us, from the most casual souls among us, to those whom we believe to be evolved spirits or incredibly grounded beings. It happens all the time that at some point, when things are otherwise fine, a flame of doubt, a vibration of fear, a shadow of uncertainty will arise and create that all too familiar queasy feeling in your belly, in your heart or in your throat.

All of us, at some point, will not be sufficiently strong or grounded or rested to avoid the troubles spelt by this invasion of our Present, by images of our external mind, or unprocessed views of our Past and Future. All of us will start feeling this drain of Prana Shkati, like a pierced bottle at the root of our being, letting our sacred and vital energy flow outwards, depleting even further our ability to cope with this dramatic experience. All of us will experience that shaking moment where we no longer seem to be able to control our thoughts, our emotions, and inner flow, and when we seem to be bitten right on the neck by the long sharp teeth of our inability to stay whole and centered.
It happened to me not too long ago, in the most cataclysmical intensity that I have ever come to face in my Lifetime. And it is happening again today. However, I feel that today, I am able to see it coming, I am able to feel the rotten smell of that pranic invasion and to feel the presence of the beast behind my back. Last night, as I went to bed, I knew it was there. I could feel its glowing wet yellow eyes on my back. I could feel the hair on the little of my neck rise. I could smell around me the sudden withdrawal of air and space, as if I was suddenly being concealed in an air-tight chamber, knowing very well that oxygen would not take long to run out.

I felt it.

And because I was able to feel it, I am activating today all the protection I need to fight back in full potency, avoid another dramatic collapse of my energy and emotional level, and sustain the integrity of my sacred space and soul. How? Ah… That is an exceptional question. I do not have an answer, but I have many. We all have an underlying pattern when it comes to experiencing fear. Although moving into full analysis of the patterns as the attack hits is usually too late, you must be able to pinpoint immediately that gut feeling that is dawning upon you. But I will get back to that later. I will focus now on what can be done, from my humble experience, to push back the insanity, the energetic theft, the vibration of fear, right as it hits.

- Clear the space: as it hits, exclude from your pranic space anything that is not exclusively You: music that reminds you of something or someone, smells that pull you to loved ones, food that is not your very own favorite and most balancing option, clothes that you bought with or for someone, necklace, statues and other representations of living beings or ishta devatas (deities)… This very effectively helps you push back out anything that could be at the root of the intrusion, whether you am conscious of it or not. By reducing the clutter around and inside you, and by retaining or bringing in things that are very exclusively you (I do highlight the ‘exclusively’), you can achieve grounding and clarity at an amazing speed. This sounds silly, but in my case, it goes as far as wearing clothes or playing music that I purchased when I was single, wearing a perfume that I wore during my young adult (single) years, eating bread that I no longer buy but that I had the habit of eating daily when I was growing up…

- Cleanse the space: this is a tricky one. Cleansing is an important practice, but if we rely on external forces or faces to help us cleanse the space, we may end up putting in jeopardy the space clearing exercise that we have completed as an initial step. Cleansing should be done, in these specific moments of strong vibrational fear, exclusively from the inside to the outside, and with no reliance whatsoever on external media or intervention. I am very much in favor of using white sage or a simple stick of incense (light neutral smell only), and avoid as much as possible calling upon Gods, gurus or other incarnated energies to help me clear the space. While we all have (or should have) a protector, it remains an external force, and while its help can be of use, I personally talk directly to external energies as I walk around the house while burning sage, and invite, politely but clearly, all external energies, good or bad, to clear out and move away from my sacred space. This practice raises a very interesting question, which I have personally had to face: that of the vampire’s kiss. When cleansing, we always think of parting from the bad and retaining the good, but cleansing is a more dramatic practice than that. Vampires are not always intentionally hurtful or consciously preying on you: it is said that a vampire’s kiss gives you a moment of ecstasy before damning you for eternity. Good energies, such as love and friendship, are binding and limiting, and can be the source of attachments, that eventually lead to fear or neurosis, especially if the intensity of the vibration of that very emotion exceeds our energetic ability to deal with it (think of being insanely in love and forgetting your own good because your are so fully consumed by that tsunami-like feeling of Love). To give you an example, asking the energy of your Lover to leave you alone and to get out of your sacred space is interestingly one of the most potent cleansing practices you should do. Love should be retained, of course, but cleansing requires fullness, and the object of your Love should be asked to leave. Naturally, the obvious negative energies should be pushed back, but anything that can be or is a source of drain to the outside must be cleared as well. And the most positive and intense emotions and relationships in your Life fall directly under this category. So go ahead my friends, cleanse away, and be fair and balanced in this.

- Pull your aura in: and here we enter the really challenging practices, as they are to be performed at every instant of your day, whenever you prepare to re-enter the flow of your life after the clearing and cleansing is done. When you enter that space of energetic neurosis, your first goal throughout the first few days, as you roam the flow of your life, will be to stay drawn in, centered and to avoid the temptations of letting your energy leave you further. So you must pull your aura in. Visualize your aura like a bed sheet that people and events that surround you try to pull towards them. This is even more the case if you are the kind of person that people like to stay close to in order to feel taken care of, protected or inspired. This is typical of yoga teachers or people with strong energy fields. During these first few days, it will be your duty to avoid thinking of the past and future, of letting your mind be engaged in others’ flow, of letting your energy leak towards the people in your life. It is time to be Present inside! This is very true as well of people that you love or that make you feel secure. Your duty is to pull the pranic sheet back to you: as you walk in the street and someone or something catches your attention, refuse to let your mind and energy wonder, whenever you invoke the image of a loved or worshipped one to make you feel better, look inside and breathe into your heart and down into your belly. Be disciplined to the extreme about the flow of your energy, which MUST originate from within and move back within. I personally visualize 6 layers of protection, like plastic wraps a few inches away from my body, preventing anything from coming in and anything from going out. I breathe into my heart space, visualizing a cloud of prana flowing in my chest, and breathe out into my third and second chakras through raindrops resulting from the condensation of that pranic cloud located at the heart. When I see myself being pulled out of my protective space, I pull that tentacle of energy right back in and look down to avoid the temptation of dispersing myself or being drawn out. Simply put, pull your aura back in and keep it close to you, well protected within your pranic ziplock bag.

- Nurture yourself: this is the medicine that needs to be applied to promote healing. It can take many shapes and forms because we all come from different lineages and have different practices. So choose wisely and practice rigorously: meditate, move, write, cook, sleep, walk, swim, breathe. Do it. Just do it. Don’t expect any benefit beyond the practice, except the practice itself. The practice is solely here to ground you in the present moment, and to reload your energy level. Do each one of your practices with full intention, and with simplicity. And remember that at these times of danger and fear, more than ever, less is more. Do not engage in vigorous or new asana practices that you are not familiar with, or that are too draining and could lead you to feel depleted. Take it easy, nurture yourself and accept that when under the Attack, only your root and well-established practices will serve you.

- Stop it! Just remember that you are an expression of the Divine, and that although you are a part, a building block of a greater Universe, you, as an individual, are a full expression of the whole Universe in its entirety. You can watch what is going on inside you and - with full intention - decide to STOP IT! You can freely talk to your outer mind, with love and compassion, and tell it to stop it. You can caringly recognize your limitations and fears, and still find within the power to stop it. So say it. Mantras help, and they don’t have to be complex invocations in foreign languages. As my beloved Shannon told me so many times, tell yourself, at the appropriate moment: ‘I can stop this now!’. And you will.

And now you will want to ask: ‘should I not try to understand and figure out and comprehend and analyze and resolve and process, as a means of fighting the intrusion more effectively?’. It is key indeed to observe your pattern and witness what kick-starts it, whether it is an attachment to someone, a fear of loss or isolation or whatever else. You might even come to understand that very basic environmental conditions, from the weather, to your diet or a vacuum of activities in your Life can easily switch on the neurosis. The better you understand the root cause of all this, the more your will be able to see it coming. You may not be able to prevent it, but the earlier your will see it switch on, the earlier and the more effectively you will be able to activate the practices we have mentioned above.

And every time, it will get easier. Shorter. And you will feel further empowered as you start gaining fractions of control over your inner workings.

Just remember, you are the Universe. This is not happening TO you. This is happening WITHIN you.

So today, as the vibration strikes, I say STOP!

Being faithful

How do you define being faithful? Not in terms of manifesting exclusivity. Not in promising monogamy.

Here is what I came up with a few months ago with my dear friend Christine: 'Out of all the times I am going to be wanting to have sex, I will choose to be having it with you, or not.'

Being faithful is about intensity, but also about surrendering to your Love.

Ay mi amor, ay mio...

IY