How would you define love?

A friend of mine recently how asked me how I would define love; what it means to me to say or hear the words, “I love you”.   

It caused me long pause for thought.  These are the kinds of questions that I spend a lot of time thinking about.  Because the question wasn’t just about love, it was about human relationships, and how we express ourselves within them; how we connect to one-another.  These are questions with no easy or static answers.  The idea of love is both as individual as a birthmark, and as universal as the air we breathe.

I am still exploring what love means to me, especially within the context of relationship – be it romantic or not.  I am fascinated by human beings, and human relationships in particular ... and although I’m still formulating my exact thoughts around it (and may be for the rest of my lifetime) I recognize that I do have some beliefs that are quite clear and strong.  One of those is a firm belief that as human beings, we are designed to love, and designed to be in relationship.   in fact, whether we understand it or not, we ARE in relationship, all the time – with ourselves, each other, and with the world around us, and with the divine. (however we interpret that)

I believe that, fundamentally, what ails us in this society comes back to lack of authentic, present, loving, connection. It is our chronic inability to be full present and connected in those relationships with ourselves, each other, and all that is around us.

I also believe that however one defines love - it's never love itself that causes pain.  It is fear, misunderstanding, and our stories that cause the hurts.  I believe that love itself is absolute and transcends all the 'stuff' of ego and human suffering.  

I don't, however, believe that the statement, "love conquers all" is necessarily accurate - because while love may transcend all - we humans get in the way all the time.  We let fear, ego, stories, and whatever else we can come up with, get between us and that love. The love itself is always there, around us, and available.... we need only the courage to tap in to it, to allow it, to be fully present with it.  

Coming back to the original question – how I define ‘love’.... it’s a working definition (at best), but I think that love is like water; It is both what we are made of and what we are surrounded by.... and it is essential for our survival.

Which doesn't mean that it always looks the way we want it to. Once we're in the realm of relationship with another person we're no longer dealing just with 'love'.  We're dealing with values, beliefs, stories, hopes, fears, boundaries, fantasies, and egos – ours and theirs.  And all of those things are both what bring us suffering, and what give us opportunities to grow, to learn, and to fully experience love when we do open to it. 

It is in the very human struggles, of egos and stories, of fears and hopes and dreams, that we are connected to each other.  It is in our places of darkness, as much as in light, that we find connection, that we need each other.  We are conceived in relationship; our identities are formed in relationship – at our core, we are human in relationship.  Where we hold ourselves back from relationship, we hold ourselves back from our full humanity; we deny ourselves the fullest opportunity to grow and actualize.  To enter into intimate, loving, relationship is the single most courageous thing we can do as human beings.

Reflections on becoming a yoga teacher....

What is the image of a heart cracking open?  Of a body being reclaimed?  Of a soul coming into the light?  Is it like a closed lotus flower, coming into bloom?  Or a crevice in the earth, widening.... revealing the dark soil and rocks and heat of her very centre?

What is the sound of a heart, yearning to open, to surrender, to deepen? Of a body, finding its true expression and movement? Is it a keening wail?  A low sigh?  Is it a bird song high in the trees?  Is it the sound of the wind in the trees, breathing power into the world?

What is taste of finding synchronicity?  Of connection?  Of the meeting of minds and bodies and hearts?  Is it sweet like a mango?  Or rich, like dark chocolate?  Or is it full bodied and complex, like good red wine?

What is the smell of unfurling?  Of the unwinding of a lifetime of trauma knotted through the nervous system, embedded in the flesh?  Of the peeling away of layers of shadow and illusion?  Is it like an onion?  Astringent and strong?  Or is it the smell of compost or fetid soil?  Or is it the smell of fresh spring coming through the wide open windows as the house is swept clean?

What is the feel of coming home?  Of reconnecting to a deeper truth?  To the core of my being?  Is it soft, like a down pillow?  Scratchy and yet comforting like a wool blanket?  Or is it spacious and hot and wild like a wind-storm under the hot sun of summer?

How do I put into words this journey? How do I even describe when and where it started?  Do I arbitrarily pick the first weekend of classes?  Or do I include the application process?  Or the thought process?  Or the knowing in my body, that has been with me for 4 years, that I would do this when the time was right?

What do I focus on to describe how I’ve experienced this?  The postures? The anatomy?  The teaching? The people?  And where does yoga teacher training end and the rest of my interconnected, open-system, bio-feedback loop of a life begin?  It’s a tapestry .... pulling one thread tugs them all.

This program, this experience, has opened up a world of possibilities – and shined a light on so much of what was already within me.  It has been a year of deep inner exploration, even as it has been a year of learning new skills .... Verb, Body Part, Direction. 

I feel both stronger, and softer.  I have met my edges, over and over.  I have felt into my vulnerability, and fallen in love with my teachers and my cohort.  I have learned to be present with my own experience – if only for moments at a time when it was most painful .... even as I learned that my primary coping strategy is to escape.  But I kept coming back.  And I keep coming back.

I have learned to move my body differently, hold space differently, breathe differently, and feel my way through differently.  I have learned to listen to my heart and my body in ways I never thought I would.  I have found meditation (finally) that feels resonant, and a path that I can see walking.  I have found my direction, that a year ago was so elusive.

I have rediscovered gratitude and possibility, having weathered my way through a dark night of the soul on the journey.  And the journey, of course, isn’t over ....it simply shifts and evolves into a new chapter. 

The sounds of Silence: going in

Well, the day has arrived that we begin our silence.  As of 5pm today we descend into the inner sanctum of our minds, hearts and spirits.  I am both looking forward to it, and a tad nervous about it.  I think I am far more nervous about what will happen when I emerge, as I have not yet set up housing . . . . and I´m not sure what I want to do yet. I trust that will sort itself out when it´s meant to.

Yesterday and today have been busy days of running around coordinating details - getting candles and other things we´ll need while we can still speak, and coordinating the sharing of teas and other things for the next 5 days.  The silence will be complete . . . more or less.  No active communication with others . . . verbally or written.  The purpose is to go within and to connect with ourselves.  Doing life as usual, but mute, defeats the purpose.

Of course, the no communication piece means I won´t be online either . . . so no updates and no email responses for the next week, but I promise to update the blog when I get out and my time is my own again.

The surprising exception around the silence, I learned this morning, is that it is considered acceptable to use our ipods when we feel the need for music that is more supportive and less detracting or distracting than the evangalistas.  There was a good giggle in temple as we attempted to have a politically correct conversation about trying to be in silence in San Marcos . . . which my last entry clearly indicated, is NOT a silent kind of place.  We were strongly encouraged, however, to use our discretion, and not to use the ipod to escape our experience . . . but rather to enhance it.


Suffice it to say, it will be an interesting week. 

The Wonder(ing) of Love

I have been called to wonder deeply over this last month about love. What is it, really? We have so many fairy tales, and beside them equal number of horror stories. What is it that draws two people together? What makes them really good together? What is it that makes their interactions, their relating to each other something that is good and healthy – something that builds and creates - rather than something that hurts and tears down?

How do we know when we have found our ‘other’ – the one that meets us truly? Not one who completes us –for no one but ourselves can do that . . . but how do we know when we have found that other that is truly our match, the one with whom (at least for now – for what, really is forever?) we, together, are more than the sum of our parts?

And when we have found it, how do we know whether the timing is right? If it hurts others, or threatens to take us away from the path we know we need to be on, is it more courageous to dive in against all odds, or to walk away, holding that love in reverence, trusting that it will come again when the timing is right?

I tasted, briefly, this month what it was to experience that match – that equal - to love and be loved with equal joy, passion and reverence. To learn and grow with and from another even as he learned and grew with and from me. I also experienced what it was to let it go, with love and reverence, and a knowing that the timing was not right. I feel a little like I’m living a romance novel, and am chagrined at that . . . .life often imitates art, but somehow the romance novel is not the art-form I think of when I hear that reference.

Truly, even as my heart aches, I am filled with gratitude and a clear awareness that I would not give back a moment. I willingly accept the pain of loss knowing in it that I am vitally alive – that is a testament to how deeply I have felt love and joy in such a short period of time. I do not know if the timing will ever be right for the two of us – and right now I cannot picture another man being with me as this beautiful man has been in this past month – but I know now what is possible. I know that such a way of being with another exists. I know that it is possible to be truly met on all levels: body, mind, spirit and heart. I know that the skeptics who say I want too much are wrong. They, like me, simply need to call on more patience and trust.

And so, even in my sadness, I know joy and hope. I choose to hold my heart open, even as it wants to contract. I choose to breathe through it and allow the feelings to move through as waves - for I dishonour the beauty of what we have shared if I close in response now, and I hold myself stuck if I contract.

I know my love to be ever-growing and expanding. For he will have a piece of my heart forever – and still there will be a full heart for me to give when the timing is right – be it to him or another. And always I know my life to be filled with love - for I am blessed to have a rich circle of friends and family, and a wonderful community - and I am filled full by all of these.

And so I know the Power of Hope . . . and that is a whole other story