Body Awareness Is It

“In order to participate in life as fully as possible, you must cultivate awareness, and learn to know yourself. Body awareness is an important foundation for the practice of Yoga. Your body is constantly sending gout a flow of thoughts and feelings which are messages for you to receive and act upon. For instance, when your shoulders become tense, it’s a signal to change. You might need to get away from what you are doing, or from your immediate environment. You may only need to change the position of your body, or just taking a deep breath might relax your shoulders. If you can attune yourself to the inner mechanisms of the body, then you will be practicing Yoga in daily life.”
— Michael Reed Gach, from his book Acu-Yoga

My Conversation With Avoidance

“Okay, so how long are you going to avoid this issue?”

I’m not really avoiding it— I’m pushing it aside.

“Okay, so how long are you going to push this issue aside?”

Well… I don’t want to rock the boat too much given our living situation. We’re more or less stuck here.

“You are not stuck anywhere. Believe me, if you had a deeper sense of how extremely you are compromising, you would not be avoiding this issue. You are compromising your own sense of self.”

I’m not. I am not. I’m not. I just want this opportunity to relax and not think about what I have to do for a while,

“What you have to do? What about what you have to do to maintain your sense of self? What about that? All you’re doing is thinking about what you have to do. You are constantly bombarding yourself with what you have to do and you are choosing not to look at it. What you have to do is decide who is your priority. Look, it’s my job to prick up your ears and let you know what you are avoiding. You’re not avoiding working; you’re avoiding your souls calling. You’re avoiding the Universe. You’re avoiding the knock on the door from the Divine. Do you choose not to answer when Divinity comes calling? Always answer! The bummer is, if you keep avoiding the calling, the calling will get more and more faint. It will fade into the background noise and eventually you won’t be able to hear the knock at all. That’s the problem. It’s my job to get you to push me off. That is my sole, job here. There’s a “greater good” plan at work.“

But there’s a little thing called free will— what about that?

“Okay, free will? You humans are good at throwing that term around when convenient. We both know what you’re doing here don’t we? We both know that free will is your prerogative as a part of humanity, but don’t be a baby soul and use it to avoid responsibility to yourself. You’ve tried that before and it didn’t work. We both know free will is your option. So what— use your free will to sit on your ass and not move forward and let a faulted relationship bind you? Use that relationship to compromise your essential work? You know you can’t get away with that, you know that that will not work for you anymore. 

Don’t you have someone else to bother?

“No as a matter of fact I’m all yours right now and will be yours until you get it.”

Get what?

“Whatever it is you have to get. Or should I say whatever it is you are not getting due to avoidance. That’s why they call me. That’s my purpose. I know what I am and how good it can feel (temporarily) to use me to side-step, but you have a purpose just like me.”

What is that purpose? Tell me, I want to know what the purpose is.

“You know I can’t do that and besides stop pretending you don’t know. It doesn’t suit you and I can’t, nor can anyone else, tell you what that is. That’s between you and your higher power, or whatever you call the Divine. I know you have a very good sense of your own purpose. You are using this relationship to avoid it. Please, let’s communicate about the mystery, not the known. You know this. You know this! We have had this discussion enough. Time to move forward.”

So you’re saying that if I leave this relationship…

“Wait a minute, we’ve been down this road before, too many times. I’m not telling you to leave the relationship or stay in the relationship. That’s not the point. Haven’t we gone through this before?”

Yes, we have— It’s not about leaving the relationship. It’s about confronting the issues and staying true to yourself and your purpose. Stay in the relationship, if that’s what I choose. It’s not about this relationship, but about what I use the relationship to avoid.

“And voilà, here I am to bestow clarity about that avoidance. You can be in the relationship or be out of the relationship. That’s where free will comes into it. The relationship is secondary. Your purpose is the same in or out of the relationship.”

Damn, I know that.

“I know you know that, so let’s move on. Let’s stop using the relationship as a crutch and a tool to AVOID the real issue. It’s simple. You’re afraid of your own power.”

Yes, let’s move onto simpler issues. 

Tricia, from the archives

I See You There

I see you, there deep within my core.
You— you beauty, hiding out.
Can you come out and play?
Don’t be afraid, we are no longer in that scary place.
We are in fields of possibility
Don’t temper your joy.
Release it! Show yourself!
Show the world your essence and you will be rewarded.

Tricia—

Chronic Urgency-- Let It Go (Copy)

Yesterday, while in a flurry of unfocused, superfluous activity I asked myself, “What if you were not in such a hurry? How would it feel if you took your time?” I guaranteed myself it would be a much different existence. So I took a deep breath, my first line of defense in every stressful situation, and it was validated once again that breath is a potent tool for good.

I witness many who, along with me, suffer from this affliction I call— Chronic Urgency— the self-imposed demand that everything must get done sooner than we are actually capable of doing it, and there can be nothing left hanging. I got news for all of us— there are always things left hanging. It’s part of the package. Ironically the Chronic Urgency mindset means very little ever gets done well, as the surging energy goes into the immanency rather than the holistic completion of whatever task is at hand. So take a breath right now, and know it will all get done— eventually.

Tricia