Author: ratnadyer

A colleague said to me recently:

‘You take all that you can get.’

I saw clearly in that moment that I could take it in two ways: one through the lense of self judgement, stemming from an old wounding, where I had been made to feel I was wrong and rejected as a child.

Or, through the lense of love and celebration…. Where I said, with my arms spread wide ‘Yeah! That’s right. Bring it on! I’ll receive as much as you can give me’. I was so happy to notice my response and hear myself celebrate 😊

I thought about it after.. mulling on whether she could have been taking a dig or not. And I realised that even if she was making a dig, it couldn’t hurt me unless I was listening through my old wounded idea of myself.

And that if I listened with openness and love, then whatever is not wholesome can only fester in it’s own bad feelings where it is coming from, and for that I can have compassion and send blessings.

This is the nature of mind. We create the quality our experience through how much love we live in within ourselves.

Love is all that will give us healing and peace in the end.

Watching this video I had a clarity in seeing… we are the rock; constant, unmoving, present. And life’s experiences; activities, thoughts and feelings are like the reflection moving across the surface.

We get so transfixed in watching what is moving in our life, that we forget ourselves, our beingness, our awareness, our stillness, and that we are always there as the base.

There is no experience that can exist outside of your awareness. Awareness is the base. Without that, there is nothing.

In some of the earlier stages of spiritual seeking, it is often that people think of learning to be present as something they need to try to do, to come into the present, to become more present.

This is a good start and a helpful practice for a time, however it can become an impossible, never ending task and another way of feeling we’re failing, and spiritual practice is too hard.

Think of it this way: It’s not about continually trying to come into the present moment. As if there is you and the moment as two separate phenomena.

It’s actually about connecting. It’s a connecting in with our awareness, with feeling the energy of life unfolding, within and without, alive. This is only happening in the now.

In practicing this connecting in, with guidance we come to recognise ourselves as presence itself.

You are presence itself.

Presence is never experienced apart from your awareness. They are one.

This is yoga.

What is age? A number we give from counting time.

What is ageless? The one who can see the counting.

We often try not to have/be the parts of us that we don’t like. However when we reject our parts, their discontent will stick around and often grow.

We need to learn to stop and listen inwardly; being kind to ourselves. We need to talk to our different parts to gain understanding and give support, like we would talk to someone we love.

Are you free enough to experience whatever feelings are present in you?

Listening to Jeff Foster this week, what stuck out for me was this notion:

We often think of freedom as having ‘freedom from’ difficult emotions. Instead, consider it this way.. that with true freedom, our being has ‘freedom to’ have whatever we are feeling and not need to push it away.

Freedom to, not freedom from.

Freedom doesn’t need to exclude anything.

Changes it up completely. And oh thank God! We’re allowed to be human.

With any exercise, is helpful to realise what your motivation is.

Coming out of our head and into our body, is core to the healing journey.

A regular yoga practice has been researched and proven to be one of the most powerful tools for healing and releasing trauma.

Let your body be wherever it is at, and tend to it from there.

Learn to listen to your body’s sensations. It is a language you can trust.

Learn to recognise your emotions can be expressed safely through your body.

Coming home to truely feeling good in body is such a joy!

Our body is the sacred vehicle for our life, but it is not who we are.

Life and love is about being human, not about being super human.

When you learn to listen within, you can sense the silence on a deeper level. The silence of being. The silence of awareness.

This silence holds all sound, and all sound is sourced here.

It is active and alive and yet quiet, still and beautifully empty.

The mystery of true being.