On Teaching Yoga

Another essay from writing originally intended for use in a local yoga teacher training–Dedicated with Love to the 100+ New Kripalu Yoga Teachers that I was blessed to help birth last week.  Jai bagwan!

Teach-(verb)  To cause to learn by example or experience

Learn-(verb) to gain knowledge, comprehension, or mastery of through experience or study; to acquire through experience. [1]

It takes American Heritage until its third entry under the verb “teach” before it lands on the expression that describes the action of a yoga teacher. Yoga is an experience, a yoking, a union. It is a state of being, a system of practices, a series of postures which seek to open, enliven, and evolve the mind, body, and spirit and join them with the Divine.  At its root, to teach yoga is to embody one’s practice, to share it with others, and to cultivate the experience of this knowing within the student.

It is difficult to teach yoga simply as book knowledge or mental constructs; it is nearly impossible to learn that way; one must experience yoga.  In the introduction to his book Sadhana (or “Spiritual Practice”), Indian poet and Nobel-Prize winner, Rabindranath Tagore wrote: “The meaning of the living words that come out of the experiences of great hearts can never be exhausted by any one system of logical interpretation.  They have to be endlessly explained by the commentaries of individual lives and they gain an added mystery in each new revelation. ”[2]

A yoga teacher’s role is to become a living revelation through the comment of his or her individual life.  The yoga student’s role is exactly the same, for at no point on the path is there a true distinction between student and teacher.  We each bring to the mat and to the classroom our living understanding of the great teachers who have gone before us.  Our own practice, our continued learning, education, growth, and curiosity inform the heart of who we are and what we do as teachers.  A quote sometimes attributed to Master teacher, B.K.S. Iyengar says, “Teach for yourself and practice for your students.”

There is nothing more joyful than finding a way to share your deepest and most authentic self, the discoveries you make on your mat, the insights from your own sadhana, and the fruits of your own evolution unless it is witnessing the change and awakening of another.  In many ways, you arrive to teach as an expression of service, of love, and of wisdom from your own practice and your own life journey.  The mood, the pace, and the inspiration you bring to the front of the room will largely be an expression of what you are learning and living in that moment.

Away from the classroom, your own continued growth and exploration and the embodiment of the practice become a deep well of refreshment and inspiration which you offer your students.  Your practice gives you the insights and the tapas (inner discipline or fire) to hold the space for the “ah ha” moments of your students.  It doesn’t need to be a huge practice, simply a continual return to your own source of inspiration whatever that is.  You will have only as much to offer your students as you offer yourself.

As your study of yoga, the principles of yoga, and yoga philosophy and practice deepens, the line between teaching and learning will blur.  Your students will teach you by responding to every spontaneous “mistake” or insight you have.  You will become clearer in what words, actions, and expressions elicit the fullest breaths and deepest insights for your students.

A good teacher begins to recognize the many ways that students learn.  She steps out of her own preferences and comfort zones in the way of learning to discover the multiple intelligences of her students.  He visually demonstrates a pose for the visual learners.  She cultivates clear verbal descriptions which inspire those that learn best by hearing.  He gently offers a touch here or an awareness there to bring a kinesthetic learner into deeper knowledge.  She holds the space of the entire class by seeing the wholeness and the uniqueness of the individuals within it.

It is just this kind of spaciousness, stemming from the deep inner knowing and self confidence build of the teacher’s commitment to inner growth, that creates a safe and loving environment for the student.  Teacher and student act as mirrors for each other, shining light and awareness into places of possibility and awareness.  To cultivate a loving environment, the teacher must remain present with his or her own process so that the stresses and adventures of teaching (a nonfunctional sound system, a cold room, a late or surly student, etc) inspire growth and reflection rather than reaction.  By modeling this process, the teacher can then offer that spaciousness to the student by becoming an external Witness of the student’s own process dancing to the edge of the pose on and off the mat.

As an external Witness, the teacher cultivates a presence of unconditional love and a non-judgmental space.  This external witnessing and acceptance of whatever arises permits the student to first experience and then create inner safety for him- or herself.  It goes without saying, that cultivating the internal Witness is what allows the teacher to be a neutral, loving, and nonjudgmental external witness to the student.

Yoga is a path and a journey as is teaching. Stay curious.  Experiment.  Deepen into what works.  Breathe, and let your life speak.  This is the fundamental teaching.  This is the essence of being a teacher.  This is the practice of living and living the practice.  This is the loving space you carry with you off the mat and find in the world.

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[1] Morris, William, Ed.  (1969).  The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Houghton Mifflin; New York.  “Teach” third definition, “Learn” first and third definitions.

[2] Tagore, Rabinadrath.  Sadhana.  Boston: Macmillan and Co. 1913.  p. viii

A New Model for the Universe…

This is something of an experiment….this blog is at it’s finest, an opportunity to grow a web and community.  The letter below is a new model in many ways of community and support.  It is reaching out for help–energetic, physical, monetary, in order to engage and support a growing movement of collaboration, dreaming, healing and love.  I offer it first as idea in fund-raising, an inspiration in community, and a challenge to reach out and help one another.

My dear Friends and family:

I’m hoping you can help me share this letter out into the wider community, as an important part of the Dreaming that will offer healing to the fear and destruction in the world will come through breaking through bonds of isolation.

I’ve been personally invited to do the upcoming Facilitator’s Training for Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream. Feb 12-14.    Awakening the Dreamer is a symposium organized by the Panchamama Alliance. The mission of the symposium is to “bring forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just human presence on Planet Earth”.  I participated in a symposium in Honesdale in May; it is a deeply moving introduction to the history, consequences, and possibilities of these times.

It’s an exciting invitation. It would be fun to do and an excellent way of weaving more widely into the world.  I see Panchamama as an example of an organization growing out of the need to link indigenous wisdom and the force of the industrial world to find ways of bringing change and transformation to the future.  I’m most interested in finding venues at this time to help challenge the isolation and separation that keep us trapped and immobilized in fear–and this fear, this old Dream and way of Dreaming is the single most potent cause of the “evils” and destruction in the world.

So, if becoming an Awakening a Dreamer facilator is a way for Spirit to move through me out into the world to challenge, address, and heal some of the contraction, fear, and hurt in the world, I’m eager to get onboard.

I would and could only do this training with the support and encouragement of my local and wider communities.  First, I’m very clear that the new Dream I am interested in dreaming is one of mutual support, community, connection–I refuse to work in isolation.  In the last two months I’ve been involved with Yoga Teacher Training at the Kripalu Yoga Center; it’s been such a gift to be part of a team of 15+ staff supporting nearly 100 people in becoming yoga teachers.  I’ve also had time to dive to run my larger networks, travel, and visit beloveds, which affirms this time of community, invitation, and support.  And, in the last week I’ve been caring for sick and aged grandparents; the most healing and beautiful part of the whole adventure has been the community that has supported me in the roles I was called into for my family.

On a practical level, I also cannot personally budget for this training at this time; Awakening the Dreamer have very limited scholarship funding, and a great many requests for this training.  They have offered me the maximum scholarship, and not only is this only a small partial scholarship, it also takes from others that might be interested in training.

The total fee (tuition, room & board) is a very reasonable $370. I would like to see how much of that I could fund raise from the folks I’d be first serving with this, and from my larger network of friends and family. (It strikes me that I must know 37 people who could offer $10, we’d have an instant network AND I’d feel well supported in becoming a facilitator).

This is my request, and my query to the Universe to see what form my new dreaming will take.  Thanks for helping me spread the query; if you wish to support me financially or in any other way in pursuing this training, please let me know.

Thanks and love,
Sarah

Enough Said

There is so much I could say about this poem…or about why this poem says, so cleanly, what I would really say in this moment.  I’ll let it speak for itself until I have breath to spend on more words.:

I COME BEFORE DAWN—Rumi (in The Essential Rumi , Coleman Barks trans, with John Moyne et al. Castle Books Edison, NJ, 1997) p 175

Muhammad says,
“I come before dawn
to chain you and drag you off.”
It’s amazing, and funny, that you should have to be pulled away
from being tortured, pulled out
into this Spring Garden,
but that’s the way it is.

Almost everyone must be bound and dragged here.
Only a few come on their own.

Children have to be made to go to school at first.
Then some of them begin to like it.
They run to school.
They expand with the learning.
Later, they receive money
because of something they’ve learned at school.,
and they get really excited. They stay up all night,
as watchful and alive as thieves!

Remember the rewards you get for being obedient!

There are two types on the path. Those who come
against their will, the blindly religious people, and those
who obey out of love.  The former have ulterior motives.
They want the midwife near, because she gives them milk.
The others love the beauty of the nurse.

The former memorize the prooftexts of conformity,
and repeat them.  The latter disappear
into whatever draws them to god.

Both are drawn from the source.
Any movings from the mover.
Any love from the beloved.

Introducing the Practice of Living Yoga On and Off the Mat

This is part of a series of pieces originally written in for use in a yoga teacher training….

Becoming Human—Hafiz

*

Once a man came to me and spoke for hours about

“His great visions of God” he felt he was having.

*

He asked me for confirmation, saying,

“Are these wonderous dreams true?”

*

I replied, “How many goats do you have?”

*

He looked surprised and said,

“I am speaking of sublime visions

And you ask

About goats!”

*

And I spoke again saying,

“Yes, brother—how many do you have?”

*

“Well, Hafiz, I have sixty-two.”

*

“And how many wives?”

Again he looked surprised, then said,

“Four.”

*

“How many rose bushes in your garden,

How many children,

Are your parents still alive,

Do you feed the birds in winter?”

*

And to all he answered.

*

Then I said,

“You asked me if I thought your visions were true,

I would say that they were if they make you become

More human

*

More kind to every creature and plant

That you know.[1]”

When it comes to the practice of yoga, yoga on the mat is simply a preparation for yoga off the mat.  A “yogic lifestyle” isn’t about what clothes you wear, what car you drive, your job, your marital status, or the food you eat (though doing yoga may well influence how you think and act on these choices).  A “yogic lifestyle” isn’t about who you hang out with, how much money you have in the bank, or even how nice other people think you are.  It’s not a set of accessories, a vocabulary, or a set of memes you can put on a bumper sticker.

A yogic lifestyle is about the often slow, steady, cultivation of awareness and consciousness, flexibility and strength, self-knowledge and discernment and their application into all aspects of your life.  Yogis come in all shapes and sizes.  Age, gender, and political party don’t determine who can be a yogi, nor does an inherent ability to touch your toes.  If, at its root, yoga is a yoking or union between our individual selves and our inherent wholeness, a yogi is someone on the path to wholeness.  By weaving together and integrating the parts of him- or herself which are fragmented, the yogi remembers the Divine Wholeness and Union that is our nature.

On the mat, the yoga practitioner learns to cultivate strength, stability, and focus through a willful practice.  As the yogi learns to surrender, grace, flexibility, and well-being begin to surface.  Dancing between will and surrender, strength and flexibility on the mat, the Witness becomes a formidable presence helping us reflect and deepen our experience and work to our edge.  As we hold a pose and sensation builds, we begin to notice how we respond.  When the going gets tough, do we push, seeking some goal or striving for a particular “workout” or do we back out, preferring not to sweat or stay with discomfort? We watch our resistance to trying something new, our irritation with some piece of experience.  We relish the joy, grace, and ease that bubble out unexpectedly.

Off the mat, this same presence becomes how we learn to navigate our lives.  It isn’t that a yogi is a nicer person, it is that he or she begins to cultivate the same ability to observe sensation and emotion as it arises in line at the grocery store, at the dining room table, our caught in traffic.  A deep breath slows things down in the same way that breathing into the edge helps us stay with intensity on the mat.  We begin to make choices differently—do I react with anger when someone cuts in line, or am I able to clearly respond by either letting it slide or by making my needs known?

As we learn to listen to our breath and our bodies, we develop a huge number of resources that give us information about how each choice we make impacts not only ourselves but those around us.  We begin to practice the Yamas and the Niyamas, and evaluating our ethics and our priorities.  For example, we study ahimsa, and start noticing the violence and the love within ourselves.  We might become aware both of the killing that takes place in order for us to eat and the violence to ourselves that happens when we don’t eat in ways that nourish and support our whole being.  Similarly, we might notice the way lashing out in anger is hurtful to whoever receives the brunt of the anger and the way anger serves as a warning that we have been threatened or hurt.  We might also begin to notice the patterns of violence in our own thoughts, limiting, constricting, or sabotaging our growth and choose to cultivate a loving silence.

Living yoga on the mat, in some ways, is easy.  We’ve got a 3×6 foot space which can contain all of our experience—the sweat, the tears, the pain, the bliss.  We have our teachers (both the external teacher and our inner wisdom) to help inform us and move us through a reliable experience, which—though it may contain moments of discomfort—ends in deep relaxation and ease.  We know that at the end of the class or the end of our practice we’ll get to move on to other things, even if in that moment we’re stiff, awkward, or uninspired.  On the days that practicing feels divinely inspired, we are immersed in an inward glow of true union.

Off the mat, the practice is bigger.  We cultivate the equanimity on the mat and then apply it out in the world.  There’s no guarantee that a particular experience—painful of pleasurable—will end at the end of the hour.  It’s hard to hear the steady voice of your wisdom, and you can’t walk out of your life the way you can roll up your yoga mat.  Moreover, in our practice and in our lives, we go through periods of ease and grace and times of trial.  It is the refuge of the mat and the safety of that container which can provide some relief during hard times (and serve to celebrate the times of ease!)  We then learn to embody that safety out in the world.

Off the mat, we find ourselves making different choices.  Suddenly, friends and activities that do not nurture our growing awareness and consciousness are abrasive and begin to fall away.  We notice that we become more sensitive to the needs and desires of our bodies, and we crave new healthier foods, friends, and environments.  Our consciousness begins to affect other choices; as our experience of inner union deepens, we recognize that we are not separate from the rest of life.  How we live, what we buy, what causes we support may shift because the insights we have on the mat change the way we think and act.  You may not immediately sell your car, become a vegetarian, and campaign for world peace, but you may find that you become more human, more kind to every creature and plant that you know.

Yoga wants you body and soul.  Got yoga?  Get a life.

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[1] Hafiz.  Daniel Ladinsky, Trans.  The Gift. Penguin: New York.  1999 p. 223.

Serious Business

(This was originally intended for publication in the NEPA Natural Awakening’s Magazine…and may well get there)

“You know, yoga is very serious business,” I say, looking out over my yoga class.  Rows of serious faces strive to perfect the pose.  Intent on all the little details, students seem gripped in a life or death battle over Warrior One.

“Now,” I quip, “I know that yoga is no laughing matter, and you wouldn’t want to have any fun here, but you might consider breathing. “  From the back of the room, someone catches the joke and giggles.  Then another catches my grin, which begins circulating through the room.  Suddenly there’s a new ease and lightness in each person’s pose.

Often, I watch my yoga students struggle to hold a pose.  They stop breathing.  I like to joke that it makes them very patriotic: “First the yogi turns red,” I say, shaking my head side to side.  “Then the yogi turns blue.  Then the yogi turns white and falls down—kaboom!”  Eventually, someone laughs, even if they’ve heard me say it before.

If a yoga student is not breathing, he or she certainly isn’t laughing, nor probably having very much fun.  It shows up as tight shoulders, clenched jaws, shallow breathing—all signs of stress. This kind of freeze and shut down response works incredibly well if you are a rabbit hiding from a circling hawk—it works less well if you are a human being looking to have a full and vibrant life.

Of course, life is very serious business, what with all the details—dogs to walk, dishes to do, children to wash, and bills to pay.  Just like building all the details of a particular yoga posture, there are so many things to which to pay attention.  It literally becomes a life or death battle to take care of the details that we turn into scared rabbits waiting for the hunt.

While the yoga mat is a perfect place to begin noticing these patterns of tension, constriction, and breathlessness, it’s the skills of breathing, relaxing, and feeling what is under all the busyness that we can choose to take into our lives.  A little bit of humor doesn’t hurt either.

It’s more and more common knowledge that “laughter is the best medicine.”  The relaxation, ease, lightness, and breath that I see in my yoga students when they take themselves less seriously, is precisely what the good doctors point out.  Like we stretch out of our habitual movement patterns on the mat, we stretch out of our habitual relational patterns by lightening up.  Habits are good, as long as they serve us—then they begin to take up our life force.

By exploring a lighter touch, giggling a bit at the absurd positions we put ourselves in time and again (be that a complicated yoga posture or a life posture), we relate to ourselves, each other, and our planet in a much more conscious and relaxed way.  If that isn’t serious business, I don’t know what is.

Intention

Spirit has me traveling.  Diving deep. Sitting more and more still in the great Unknown.  Intending to be more regular about posting, and sharing some past writing on Yoga…and hopefully more on my journey.  That’s the intention–sankalpa–thanks for support, inspiration, and understanding.

Healing Ceremony: Invitation

The Universe says to me, Love.  Burning to ash has had its use, now become the deep well that forms at the center of the glacier’s melting.

Self Portrait (accidental)

Invitation: from where you are, when you are, I ask you if you will join me in a Holy Ceremony, sacred and spontaneous.  The Universe is holding to me a mirror of the places I refuse to love—the parts and pieces within (and without) where I refuse to receive the love so abundantly offered.  Here are the stories I tell and the myths I believe that prevent me from fully accepting and loving myself, and here are all the reflections of that unlove in a seemingly broken and imperfect world.

Really, there are no words.  In the space of Weaving that was born out of the primal sounds of sacred toning with friends, I saw the web of which you are a part.  A ritual was asking to be born.  This is how I bring it into form: I write an invitation.

Waterfall, Davis Trail, Nay Aug Park, Scranton

Will you stand as a human representation of Love for me?  Will you stand in that space as the External Witness, shining Love out towards me that I might learn to receive it?  Will you let me stand in the place of dissolution, until I melt down, receiving, loving, becoming Love?  Will you let me stand for you as a representation of unconditional love pouring through a human form?  Will you permit me to Witness not only your Wholeness but also your acceptance of that Perfection?

For myself, I will be standing in Ceremony tonight and for as many nights as it takes to come to stillness at the bottom of the well.  I will be calling on the images, the lessons, the offerings of Love which you have (consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or not) offered to me in my journey. I will be (not standing in the fire but) diving into the deluge of this amazing way (relationship) that the Universe instructs the Being in the arts of loving.  If my intuition holds true, there will be a shattering, a cracking of the ice, a melting of all of the myths that I have honored that say I am not lovable, I am not enough, I am not trustworthy, I am not deserving, I am not desirable.  The myths that talk of shame, hatred, loathing, powerlessness, lack, loss, and imperfection will lose their grip here. I’ve already begun to taste the emptiness and freedom of this surrender, and I have glimpsed the Knowing of perfection that is already present.

I call out for help and support and I do so because of what I saw tonight in the vessel of Sacred Sound.   I offer the Image that came to me of the web being woven.  You stand in the place of loving; I stand in the place of receiving.  I stand in the place of loving; you stand in the place of receiving.   Each of us in turn offers apology, love, forgiveness, and gratitude; the line between self and other blurs.  And since each of you will have your own net your own web your own weaving….it’s a re-gridding and a birthing anew of the sacred tapestry.

If I didn’t Know it was already so, I wouldn’t think to ask. The invitation is what is important.  Time, space, distance have no meaning here.  This is work so important and so vital.  It is what it means to be free, to be fully Human, to Know the Divine.  I accept all consequences of this magic, and I’m honored that you are part of the tapestry.  Spirit asked me to ask you (to ask me to ask me) (to ask you to ask you) (to ask you to ask me) to be (part of) this.  And I said Yes.

Thank you.  And Love.

Dreaming is the Secondary Function of the Womb

“…Dreaming is the secondary function of the womb—the primary being reproduction and whatever is related to it.  They told me that dreaming is the natural function in women, a pure corollary of energy.  Given enough energy, the body of a woman by itself will awaken the womb’s secondary functions, and the woman will dream inconceivable dreams…”—Florinda Donner, Being-in-Dreaming: An initiation into the Sorcerers’ World (HarperOne, New York, 1991).

I’m going to start doing some writing around women, the womb, and blood in general, and the Bleeding Time in particular.  I’ll probably though sex in there, too, and relationship, just so it stays interesting.  It’s been brewing for a while, and if I don’t start giving birth this baby is going to fester within me.   It’s time to be Dreaming more deeply, and to risk walking into the world more visible, more vulnerable, and more feminine.

For nearly two years, I lost contact with my womb and with my grounding.  This, would of course, seem to indicate that I had been in previous intimate and permanent contact with my body or women’s center.  I may have been, though not consciously.  Fortunately, the magic of living means that life continues even when we fail to notice.

It doesn’t surprise me that, being a sensitive being, I developed some confusion around the deepest place of the sacred feminine housed in the flesh of my body.  My mother’s womb was surgically removed (for sound medical reasons, I’m sure) shortly after I began to bleed, and while I recognized the sacred magic of my own seasons and cycles of fertility, I didn’t find those images honored or recognized in the larger world.  I crafted my own coming of age passage, learned to track my moon, and yet

While I never rejected myself as a woman, a subtle pattern of androgyny crept in under my skin.  Attending a women’s college, I was surrounded by strong, smart, funny women, yet as I trained in biology and I undertook the rigors of an education that supported a drive to results, activities, and a very full schedule, it took more digging to uncover the slow, still, receptive moments of nurture.  One cannot be schooled in feminine wisdom; it is something embodied and gathered in from generation to generation, womb to womb.

I’m telling my own story, because it contains the words I have to describe the sink and decent into an understanding and acceptance of the void, the power of creation, and the deep inner knowing that frees and empowers us as women living in the world that is struggling to wake up out of a dream that I describe as a denial of the Sacred Feminine and a wounding of the Sacred Masculine.

***

I work, primarily, as a solo eclectic, and also in depth and sacred partnership.  I weave the sacred and the magic into a budding network of loose collectives, women, men, warriors.  I work within the world, within the culture, within the dream of a modern society that is remembering the balance of the holy.  I work within the vessel of my Self, my body, my mind, and my spirit.

Canyon Cave Womb

Gift of Life 1 (c) Corinna Stoeffl (http://www.stoefflphotography.com/) Thunderstom over Mt. Pedenal

On the most recent trip to NM, I spent 15 out of 21 days sleeping without walls (3 days traveling, and 2 days inside).  How I hunger for this.

Between time in the wilderness outside of Grants NM and my time in Las Vegas at Rose Mountain, I spent the night in Abiqu (think Georgia O’Keefe), on my friend Corinna’s land. (Check out her photography, she has such soul!)  I walked in the canyon which held me for half of my retreat time last summer.  The August Full Moon marked the Lunar Anniversary of that personal solo, a month mostly of solitude, silence, and the space of non-doing in the wild places.  This time, this next moon cycle of remembrance and moving forward, is a month of checking in to the depth and mystery of the canyon.

Bean Creek.  I wandered back into this chasm in the earth more deeply on this brief trip.  Last August, I spent much of my time in a shady space of the canon where the wall made a cave of cool dimness still open to the sky.  Then, the ground was level, open, and wide enough that I spent over half of my waking hours lying on my yoga mat being restructured by the Universe in body, mind, and spirit.

A huge rain washed out the bottom of “my” canyon-cave.  As I left last year, and as I now find, there is no real floor left there.  Now, I journeyed back further along the vaginal curves of the wash to the very womb at the heart of the canyon.  There, for this one afternoon’s visit, I could curl up and dream.

I know better than to speak out loud too many of a canon-cave-womb’s Mysteries. Yet, I am reminded of the continued journey, the continued rebirthing, and the sacredness of the land of the heart.

“Door of my heart, open wide I keep for Thee

Wilt thou come, wilt thou come?

Just for once, come to me.

Will the day fly away, without seeing Thee my Lord?

Night and day, night and day,

I look for thee night and day…

Door of my heart, open wide I keep for Thee…” –Paramahamsa Yoganandaji

Out of the Office

It’s been a while.  The blog, it’s coming back.

If you sent me an e-mail any time between the end of July and the middle of August, you’d receive a reply:

Hello!  Thank you for your e-mail!  I’ll be out of the office July 25-August 11, 2009, and will return your message as I am able.

For much of this time, I was cooking for a retreat called Deep Listing at Rose Mountain, Las Vegas, NM.  We had a fantastic menu (if I do say so myself), acres of wilderness, and small solar panels to run our simple lights and pump the rain catch from storage tanks to the roof for gravity pressured running water.  No cell phone, no land line, and certainly no e-mail.  Cabin-tent (just like Scout Camp) and outhouse (with great reading material and an even better view).  Oh yes, Full Moon, Lammas, Eclipse, and retreatants drawn out to play with sound, silence, dreaming, creativity, and movement.

Dusk out back of the Cook-Cabbin, Rose Mountain

Mikva, the living waters

It was great.  And I got two extra nights on the mountain, which gave me the first proper Sabbath I’ve had in a very long time.  Gratitude is an understatement.  As a friend’s reply reminded me, my “away message” is somewhat deceiving; as it turns out, my office is a very large place called the Universe.

ps – (writes Cal) I love that you refer to yourself as being “out of the office”  I guess I never think of you as being in the office, but I’m glad you’re getting out of it.  very, very out

Really, these days, I’m always in the office, especially when I’m “very, very out”.  My trip started with deep partner work in the wild places outside Grants, NM.  With that energy still processing its way through my structure, I prepared to transition up to Rosemountain.  I love it when Spirit sends me to amazing places for assignments, and these day’s I’m recognizing how (be it inner, outer, or some combination,) there is always an assignment from Spirit to See and be Present to the moment.

My foot. Las Vegas Wilderness. Sabbath.

So what do I do on assignment?  Tend carefully to a variety of special food needs, help nurse a participant through an acute attack of altitude sickness (we were up over 8,200ft; he is from the sea), wild-craft herbs for stimulating morning elixirs and soothing evening tisanes, and, yes, sharing a kitchen and cooking for 19, for starters.

Channa Masala, our last supper.

I was quietly conversing after supper with a few retreatants, gently offering some healing work, when someone asked, “Is all of this part of your job description?” My pause time is shortening as learn to reply, “Yes, it’ is part of my Job Description from the Universe, though not necessarily part of what I was hired for here.”  “I like that,” she replied.  “It’s good to recognize your real work.”  Yes, yes it is.  And to do it unwaveringly wherever I am and see how I’m always paid well in the process.

When looked at in these terms, as a Spiritual Warrior, my employer (Spirit) is first rate, the benefits (what with the grand views and the witty repartee of the supportive minions) are good, job security is tight, and I’m seeing more of my (human and non-human) colleagues these days (hallelujah!). I’m recognizing that my role is to be wherever I am, which casts me something like a “Healer or Teacher in Residence” (which is not all that unlike “chief cook and bottle wash,” or “friendly garden gnome” but requires less particular costuming.)

Now that I’m recognizing my job description on a 4-D level (that is the level of the heart, soul, and spirit), it’s even starting to come through in 3-D.  (i.e. the kind of “jobs” that come to me in terms of money, look for me in the kitchen, at the conference table, or at your local yoga studio or community event; it may look like I’m cooking, taking notes, or folding blankets, and I am, while also listening, weaving, seeing, and touching.)

My job description is: “To be present and show up fully to the myriad of invitations presented by the unfolding universe.  Stay vigilant to opportunities for personal and collective transformation.  Take each encounter as an opportunity to expand freedom, grow, and in that way be of service.  Please, do not take yourself too seriously.”

Creation is about relationship.

Bright blessings on your journey.

“To bare our souls is all we ask, to give all we have to life and the beings surrounding us.  Here the nature spirits are intense and we appreciate them, make offerings to them…sealing our fate with each other, celebrating our love.”  –Alex Grey