A Letter to the Energy-Sucking Zombies



Dear light-stifling, energy-sucking zombies,

Don't pretend like you don't know who you are. You are the toxic people in my life. You are the ones that, no matter how much I give, you keep taking more. You take advantage of my kindness instead of appreciating it. You are not dependable and are not trustworthy.

You are the people who, when I say "I love you," do not say it back.

You are the people who project your insecurity onto me, and try to make me feel not good enough. You try to bring me down to your level. Your misery loves company.

You are the people who cling to me like leeches, trying to absorb my light. If you would just stop the clinging, end the attachment and addiction, you would see that my light would still warm you. You could nurture a light of your own.

You are the people who never sincerely say "Thank you" and only say "More."

You are the people who coldly push others away, only to see if they care enough to come back.

Energy-sucking zombies, your drama bores me... yawn. I am much more fascinated in love, peace of mind, kindness, and selflessness. I am interested in a life of contribution and joy. You are the sleep-walkers, moving methodically through your cyclic patterns of push & pull, attachment & apathy. As of today, I am no longer responsible for trying to wake you up.

Zombies, kindly remove yourselves from my path.

Love,

b.

Letting Go, Yoga Style

"The Master has faith in the way things are."

Tao Te Ching

If you practice yoga, you've probably heard it: "Savasana is the most challenging pose." (For those of you that don't practice, allow me to enlighten you. Not impressed? Read on.)

I had always thought that this was said because in this pose you're meant to be completely present and to calm the mind, and that's partly true. But the real challenge of the pose is the surrender. You're surrendering your entire weight to the earth and surrendering your active practice to completion and stillness. It is meditation of the body. It is the embodiment of serenity.

Surrender is just as challenging off of the mat. Complete surrender - when you have entirely detached from expectations and judgments of yourself and others - is possibly the most difficult process to achieve in this life, but one I believe we should strive for. To surrender to your grief is to be with the pain of heartbreak or of loss instead of resisting it, questioning it, antagonizing it. It is knowing that your time for joy will come again. If you are struggling to control situations in your life, surrender to a higher power, any higher power, and allow things to fall as they will.

Surrender can also mean shedding a layer of ourselves that is no longer reflecting who we truly are. It may be a friendship that has been draining us, or a recurring drama in our lives that we've had enough of. Surrender can be our sanctuary when we have no strength left to decide and no energy left to fight. And surrender sometimes doesn't mean making a choice one way or the other - it is simply allowing the currents to take you and having faith that you will rise up again. To surrender is to cease the struggle. It is rest. It is flow. It is grace.

And that to me is sacred, on the mat or off. Namaste.

Gently Down the Stream



Let's try a shift in consciousness, shall we? For a minute, believe that the world you see is the dream. The world within - our true nature, the essence, the source, the part of us that is completely pure and present - this is reality. This is all that actually exists.

All the figments of our imaginations live in the dream-world that we see: Our fears, our doubts, drama, jealousy, despair, superficial happiness and attachment. And our egos thrive on this external world and the constant desire to control it. Realize the dream, defeat the ego.

Everything that we know that truly matters deep down lives in our inner reality: Love, peace, true prosperity, insight, intuition, joy.

What projection are you living in? What world do you call home? In what plane do you deliberate and base your decisions on? The dreamworld you see with your eyes, or the true world you feel in your heart? If you limit your beliefs to the finite external world, you miss out on the infinite nature of what's within.

We all have an inner sense of what's right and wrong for us - a gut feeling. Consider that your intuition, your gut feeling, is the only thing that is concrete and real. Imagine that you trusted it without a doubt. Imagine that you completely trusted the silent voice that tells you your calling. Imagine that you followed this call without a second thought, and instead doubted the outer world that you see with your eyes. How would this change the way you live? The way you feel? The way you love?

Merrily, merrily...

How I See Beauty

"There are always flowers for those who want to see them."

- Matisse

Thinkin' about beauty lately. Daydreamin'. Eye of the beholder - yes, I know. But I'll tell you what else I know about beauty. It's a man with a broken heart that overcomes fear and makes the choice to love again. It is survival; it is not only beating the odds, but realizing that the odds are only a figment of our imagination.

Beauty is our bumps and our bruises. It's the jagged line between perfection and humanity. It is the divine, but it's also the veil that separates the human existence from the divine. It's not the promise of something; beauty is the hope of something. It's faith. It is light in darkness but it is also the darkness. Beauty is forgiveness for no reason. It's saying "I love you" to the people who certainly do not love us back. It's treating someone with kindness when they've betrayed us, and it is walking away from those that are toxic to us.

Beauty is our holes. It's the woman who has lost a father but has somehow found the courage to keep growing on her own, as much as she might want to just run back to her daddy's arms. It's feeling pain instead of choosing numbness instead. It's loving when we're afraid to lose someone. It's being completely terrified of doing something, and doing it anyway.

Beauty is making eye contact with the homeless man with the cardboard sign on the corner of the intersection instead of avoiding his gaze. It is allowing yourself to be with your suffering and the suffering of others without movement of comfort or sympathy - just being.

Beauty is the moment that you consciously choose to listen to your heart, to laugh at doubt until your sides hurt. It is believing in yourself when no one else does. It isn't just quietly believing in your dreams in the face of adversity, but actively fighting for your dreams. It is breaking cycles and patterns. It is more than a physical appearance. Beauty is sacred, it is sensual, it is sexuality and spirituality.

Beauty is when you realize this life is just a dance, and realizing that you may need to close your eyes, breathe deeply, and start the motion before you hear the music. Beauty is knowing the music is there before you're able to hear it. It's the space between two thoughts. It's the moment in meditation when you gently, silently touch a presence that is not of this world.

Beauty is the now-nearly-invisible scar on my left breast. It is our history, our triumphs and our defeats.

I don't care how you look, how I look, or what your eyes tell your brain about what you see. I want to know how you feel when you do what you love; I want to know what lights you the f*ck up and sets your soul on fire. I want to know how you've been betrayed, how you've been raked across the coals, and what energy helped you to stand up again. That's beautiful.

Close your eyes and open your heart to this ugly, flowing, beautiful moment we call life. Love you.



The Size of the Cloth

Before you know kindness
as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness
that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
"It is I you have been looking for,"
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

- Naomi Shihab Nye