Beware of Your Ugly Little Troll

The ego is that ugly little troll that lives underneath the bridge, between your mind and your heart.  (Gael Greene)  The ego is subtle, it's not as vivid as the humorous prior description.  The subtle effort of the ego cannot be dispelled by the use of more effort.  When we use effort to try to eliminate the ego we just end up frustrated.  Deepak Chopra says if you want to reach a state of internal bliss, then go beyond your ego and internal dialogue.  Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge.   Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time.  

Controlling situations, seeking approval, and judging others are not conditions we are inherently given as a birth right.  They are responses to pain and turbulence in our life.  So it is natural for the mind to say, Wait a minute!  that's how I protect myself, and it's true. Those three devices probably are the way you have learned to protect yourself from feeling pain "caused by others" (in quotes because the pain is actually your reaction to the other person and has nothing else to do with the other person).  However, when you are able to let go of those three things, let go of the worldly ego, you will not be affected by the way others want to look at, treat, or interact with you.  By acting from a place of the true ego, our Divinity, we are able to be true actors rather than existing in the fog of the reactors.  Understand that when someone is treating you poorly they are most likely reacting to something that has nothing to do with you, and that is their karma.  Your karma is how you choose to react to their behavior.  Your karma is not to fix or change that other person, but to remain at a place of balance, equanimity.  

It is important to remember in life, and in yoga, that we must always practice ahimsa, non-harming/non-violence towards the self and others.  Practicing ahimsa is what keeps us from being a doormat, but also what keeps us from tearing ourselves apart over every little imperfection.  You will have days that you are moody and judgmental, days that you eat too much refined sugar and have entirely too little activity, but that's okay.  What's not okay is keeping people in your life forever for the sake of "controlling the situation" or keeping up appearances when you know that it is not well with your soul.  Now if you are in a toxic relationship with someone you might be thinking to yourself that the other person, the one who has a drinking problem or a problem with screaming foul things at you all the time, that person is the one who has the selfish, narcissistic problems.  An examination of the ego will tell you other wise.  

Remaining attached to toxic people, in hopes that we will change the other person's behavior is selfish and narcissistic.  You are only in charge of the way you act and only have responsibility over your own happiness. By remaining in situations that tear down the fabric of who we are as individuals we allow another person to consume all of our energy, to the point that we no longer have a life other than manipulating and controlling a situation that was never ours to control in the first place.  We become ugly little ego trolls.  So detach, find a place to exist where you and your beliefs do not have to be conflicted with the ways  of another, and allow that person to have the freedom to be their true self as well.  (Your partner has just as much of a right to be wrong as you have a right to be "right") 

Once again, the more we let go of what we think is ideal the better off we are able to become.  Being in touch with your true soul and spirit is a higher level of consciousness that allows one to be in every situation, experiencing the beauty and lesson, without being attached to the outcome, without dwelling on what might have been.  Imagine you are driving down a highway.  If 0 is doormat (not practicing ahimsa, letting others treat us poorly) and 100 is bull in China closet (being mindlessly controlled by the worldly Ego, consequently treating others poorly) you want to be at 50.  At 50 we are not playing "god", sacrificing our own happiness to control the lives of others, and we are also not so caught up in ourself and our physical body that we forget we have a soul to share with the people we love.  At 50 we are able to see the world as it is, not as we want it to be, and then be grateful for it.  At 50 you are balanced.  

So when you feel yourself controlling, seeking approval, or judging others, it might be time to step off of the gas a little.  And when you know your boundaries have been crossed and your soul does not sit right with your situation, maybe it's time to speed up and move along.  Either way seek balance, not perfection, and stay flexible :).  

~Namaste

God dwells within you as you

I'm a BIG work in progress and I am far from perfect.   (I know an obvious statement right, but I feel it is necessary to pretext what I have to say.)  

Have you ever seen that movie "A Series of Unfortunate Events"?  Yes, no? Well, that's not important... the point is at one point in time I felt like that was becoming my life.  Yes of course, I didn't have real problems like hunger or water shortage, but for a privileged American trying to survive in this world, I'd say I deserve to call it a rough patch.

I can still remember the first time I met my therapist.  She was an older, hippy-like, soft spoken, but vibrant woman.  She wore bright jewelry, fun patterns, and tennis shoes (of course keeping her heels under her desk JIC - that's just in case for my non-tech savvy friends).  Her name was Nan, which was very appropriate.  Something about nasally consonants and soft vowel sounds to sooth the soul, right Mom?  

Nan's first suggestion was that I learn to accept that a higher power was watching over me- that I was taken care of and loved beyond all human calculation.  A lesson I had indeed been greeted by many a times, but it was different this time.  I was ready for it.  

Over the span of the following couple of years I became a witness to my own journey to find God.  And while my interpretation may not sit well with everyone I know or meet, that does not matter because I have no doubt in my heart anymore.  I have felt the power of acknowledging that God dwells within each and every soul on this earth and I have benefited from its miracles.  

While it may seem like I spend most of my days making an asana of myself (yogi-joke) there's more to being me than maybe expected.  We all dwell in our own minds all of the time, which is what makes us kick-ass individuals but also what takes some of us straight down the drain of self-destruction and demise.  

Here recently, I have noticed myself becoming more in tune with the people around me.  No I don't mean that I am acting as a puppet and stringing up to whatever quartet is being orchestrated  (I tried that once and ended up married).  Instead, I am becoming more aligned with the bigger picture.  

I would love to say that yoga is how I got there, because I want everyone to feel the joy of having a relationship with their body rather than constantly rejecting it, but I can't let pranayama and asanas take all the credit for the life force I am talking about.  

Law school helps.  I am a good student, but I am able to grasp the concepts in law school with ease because I understand how to see the bigger picture.  Law school for me has been one big picture test after another.  

I've also got to give credit where it is due for a couple other great gurus- my angel Catherine Coon who fell into my life at the perfect moment and always seems to shine light on what I need to see when I need to see it, Don Miguel Ruiz & Jon Kabat-Zinn- whose words guided me toward a better understanding of myself, and my mother- with whom my relationship has taught me that to love unconditionally you must see the bigger picture, step outside of yourself, and forget what the world has to say about how things should or shouldn't be.  

When I share my beliefs and experiences with others I am sometimes greeted with dissonance.  I have to remind myself not to get offended by the mood swings and defensiveness.  I think I've pinpointed the root of this finally.  I speak with authority, which did wonders for me in education because a writer with a voice has a better chance of getting a better grade than a writer with a self-esteem complex.  Speaking with authority has its downfalls.  I look back at some of the things I've said or wrote or posted and think about how full of shit I was or how ignorant I really was, but that's past tense.  The "now" of speaking with authority means that I am threatening to people who have different beliefs or dispositions.  

Here's somewhere I might offend some (if I haven't already)-  it is in my opinion (so not to sound authoritative) that people who become brash and confrontational in regards to beliefs and opinions are people who do not have strong and sound beliefs and opinions.  I don't get offended by others who see the world differently than me because i know we all have a different experience going on and I know that for me, right now, my beliefs are 100% correct.  Maybe later they wont be and I'll be different.  

I become weighted down sometimes with the responsibility to show others how to find a better life for themselves.  Finding more light than darkness.  Letting go of the bullshit societal woes and foes.  I also get lonely and bored sometimes, not the kind of lonely that you fix by surrounding yourself with people, no I have great people in my life and great relationships.  Instead, it's the kind of loneliness that is a symptom of looking into the world and seeing so much distance from what it is that makes us human beings- compassion.  

I think compassion is missing in a lot of places, but maybe more than ever, and more important than any other place- compassion is missing in our health with regards to the Self.  We've been covering up symptoms and casting out irregularities for so long that we don't remember what it is like to really see the human beings in front of us.  Doctors, hospitals, parents, and OURSELVES- we have all forgot how to treat a human body to make it feel better.  We let stress drive us to the point of medication so that we can find peace, but then it takes more medication to snap out of that peace (I write this while drinking coffee, which is just as much a drug as any other f'n substance).  We put our kids on medicine to keep them from being kids, buy them toys to allow us the freedom not to show them real love.  We do that buying shit with everybody.  We buy, and buy, and buy, so that we feel a little more whole.  We buy lovers flowers and jewelry and cars.  We buy ourselves name brands, and catalogue ready wardrobes, so we can fill the void that we've created by never really knowing ourselves.  We buy so much because we've forgotten how to just look someone in the eyes and just say we love them.  (When was the last time you told yourself I love you? ever?)

Our doctors don't touch, don't see, don't hear- they just pull their lever in the big machine that we call medicine, another brick in the fucking wall, a modern day Berlin.  Don't change your diet, take medicine.  Don't fix your happy, take medicine.  Don't align your spine, have surgery, take medicine.  It's a joke.  They're just fueling the disconnect that we have with ourselves and with the world.  The more we get out of line with what our bodies and souls are supposed to feel like, the less we are able to acknowledge anything but our physical feelings and pleasures and pains.   Which is why some people all together forget that there is a world around them occurring and seem so wrapped up in themselves that they eventually just figure out how to disappear.

There are more "God-fearing & loving" hedonists in this world, than anyone who ever wrote a canon intended there to be.  I get lonely sometimes because I haven't figured out how to balance the level of consciousness I want to exist on with the ways of the world and life.  I don't know how to mesh and mold around being a superior and pure soul with being a successful human being.  I think the problem I have with it mostly is that I can't just exist without saying anything. 

I want to inspire and teach and lead others to feel better and more importantly feel something besides themselves, to feel and acknowledge the many miracles that God puts in front of us every day to remind us that we are loved.  I see the light in everyone I meet.  I see the potential and the graciousness and the goodness.  I see the honesty and integrity of how peoples' actions truly are a direct reflection of their mental anguish.  I see the big picture with people and when you can do that you can look past any imperfections, be they your own or another's.  

It hurts my heart sometimes to be met with such dissonance when I am just sharing my truth.  but there's a bigger picture to that too.  I crave acceptance from people who I will never get acceptance from because of family relationships.  I have to consciously avoid making decisions from a place of fear, and one of those decisions is to be an active reminder to myself that I can't take it personally when people get defensive towards my way of thinking.  My truth is authentic, and it is my own.  I don't have to infect anyone else with it, because for all I know a year from now I will think I was wrong.  But if I'm not wrong, and this big picture stuff- not taking things personally, loving unconditionally, and being a compassionate warrior- is the way to true freedom, well maybe those who are being so distant just aren't ready for it yet.  

I love to teach and share because I want to fix the people I love, which is probably impossible.  You know the saying -Blood is thicker than water- that might be one of the most moronic and overused cliches ever, I can't stand it.  I would instead say that Blood Ignites the Water.  and you can look at the Grand Canyon for proof of how powerful the persistence of water can be.   

So maybe all of this mumbling is just my way of getting over the way some old lady treated me at the bead shop when we got on the subject of health and wellness, another story for another time.  Or maybe this rambling is my way of explaining a phenomena that I have observed occurring in my life- that the things that have pained me the most, have turned out to create some of my most favorable of characteristics in my soul's path.  That although I can not make the world just as I wish it would be, my attempts are not in vain because the ripples of compassion are far greater in water than they may be in thick blood. 

I am eternally grateful for every guru in my life, the good and the bad,

I love you all so much.  

Maybe it is because of you that one day I could be somebody's Nan.