Marsha Pappas Yoga

Buddhi Call

3/31/2015

At this point in history, for the first time ever, we have the means and resources to provide a decent life for every single human on the planet. We have enough food, enough land, enough shelter and enough knowledge yet everyday people go hungry and suffer.

At the same time, we also have the means to destroy every person on the planet. We speak of saving the environment and the earth’s resources, but even then, as the comedian George Carlin once pointed out, if we destroy the earth’s ability to support human life, the earth will be fine without us! So really we should be talking about survival of people and not the survival of the planet.

I love nature, don’t get me wrong, God entrusted us to cherish all living things, but if given the choice between a human life and a weed or a bug, I’d choose the person. Many people who consider themselves nature lovers are kinder to plants than they are to people. We love our dogs, but not our neighbors. We can connect to a sunset, but see everyone else as competitors and simply don’t know how to play well with others. If someone’s beliefs are different from ours, we become adversaries and whether literally or figuratively, we go to war. So much for “Namaste’.”

My teacher, Swami Satchidinanda in his typical way of turning a phrase, said, “Illness starts with “I” and wellness starts with “We”. Yes, a bit corny, but still profound. So, to heal this planet and its people, we need to switch our focus from competition to cooperation. And this starts with each of us finding that place inside ourselves that is always peaceful, always joyful so that we contribute that energy to the collective consciousness and turn this whole thing around.

We talk about that in yoga, but do we really do it? We talk a good story about connection and community, oneness and service, but the concept of that is very different than the practice. I’m not saying I’m not guilty of this myself. I can get really worked up when I hear a story about unethical behavior by a teacher and find myself getting really self righteous about it. My mind starts spinning stories about what “they’ should be doing, and how “they” should be behaving and how maybe meditation isn't all it’s cracked up to be if that teacher who dons mala beads around her wrist 24/7 is still such a hot mess! I exhaust myself! At these times, I’m especially grateful for my practice so I can re-boot and realize just how off balance I was.

So, I include myself, when I say that I think what we all need is a good buddhi call. I should mention here that I’ve been preparing a lesson plan on the Bhagavad Gita and have been travelling down the rabbit hole and questioning myself and my own understandings and behaviors so I can speak from experience instead of just parroting commentaries, although I so appreciate the wisdom and clarity they provide.

In the Gita, the main character, Arjuna is in dire need of a buddhi call. As it happens to all of us, when facing difficult decisions, conflicting values and duties, he has a paralyzing fear of paying consequences for making the wrong choice. Basically, the problem is caused by living from our heads instead of our hearts. The buddhi is the part of our consciousness that connects us to our True Self. They say when the buddhi awakens within us, we are one-pointed, focused, and we know the right thing to do at any given moment. We aren't just reacting to what’s going on externally by being dragged around from one thought to another, or caught up in the attachments to things outside ourselves. Our focus turns in and points to the Atman, or the God within which grants us access to the wisdom to choose the right action. We tap into that, and we just know, and we can actually feel it in our body as we move beyond the limitations of our minds, and even of our own experiences, to a place of truth. We get past ego and all the needs and desires of the me’s , mine’s and I’s, and we fulfill the heart’s desire to love, connect and share.

The survival of this planet and the wellness of its people have a chance if more and more of us would connect with our hearts moment by moment and collectively express our innate sense that we are one...because we actually are. We need to become more authentic and courageous. So when we find ourselves judging and grasping and comparing and competing, if we can just pause and remember to nudge the buddhi, we actually can create that heaven on earth that we all hear about. Namaste’.

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I will turn 60 this year.

1/19/2015

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I will turn 60 this year.

I can hardly say these words today as they stick in my throat like a dry piece of chicken. I’m in the mode of seeing this squeezed sensation as a warning sign that it’s time to get my act together and at the same time, being afraid that I won’t be able to follow through with that.

As I understand that nothing in nature happens suddenly, today I fear that at some point all the ways I had not taken care of myself in the past will catch up with me. Too many hours in the sun, too many pounds of sugar, too many cigarettes smoked, and too many of the other deadly whites consumed over the years. Not enough exercise, too many days of not loving myself and feeling defeated. Memories of failed relationships along with all the coulda, woulda, shouldas that go along with them. This is one of those days where my fears and regrets outweigh my dreams. What is to become of me?

Now before you plan an intervention, know that I get that this is just my inner demons rearing their ugly heads. I think they have their purpose and in some cases they make a strong point, but most of what they say is bullshit and based on things that either happened many years ago, or things that could happen if I was completely unconscious of the concept of cause and effect. They say when you are young and/or unconscious, what happens to you in your life is the cause and you are the effect, but once conscious, you are the cause and what happens in your life is the effect. I read about this concept in Yehuda Berg’s interpretation of the Kabbalah. I had to chew on that one for awhile, but I get it. Once conscious, and paying attention, we can choose to think and act in ways that will allow for a happier, healthier life.

So, all that has happened to me up to this point has brought me to where I am now. This reminds me of one of my refrigerator magnets: “I chose the road less traveled, now where the hell am I?” Anyway, I am where I am, and the real question is “NOW WHAT?” or even more accurately, “If not now, when?” What do I want to cause to happen? And then, how do I go about doing that?

Now, I knew this before, as it is also a huge part of the teachings of yoga, but I guess I have a new sense of urgency to really get it. When I have days like this when I am only aware of the downside of being this age and start the day brushing my teeth and wondering if I should go the route of botox and injectables, it all seems hopeless. I’m happy to say, that most of the time, I am able to be grateful for all that I have been given and I can look at my face and my life with kinder eyes.

I’m reminded right now of the principle of pratipaksha bhavanam, or replacing a negative thought with a positive, which is also practiced by analyzing your thoughts and underlying beliefs and then coming up with a better story for yourself.

I will turn 60 this year.

How blessed I am to be able to say that. To be sitting here, in a house I own (well, I will in 13 years, anyway), with a furnace that works, with a dog that I love patiently waiting for me to get away from the computer, in a body that works pretty well needing no medication for that to be true. I can instantly bring to mind many of the people who feed my soul and I have work that fulfills me in countless ways, giving me tools and language to navigate my way through my days. I have a tangible sense that there exists a law of nature that is there to help me through the obstacles when I can get out of the way and actually listen. One time this help came to me in a lesson from a very wise teacher who said “Obstacles are not in the way, they are the way.” So, I’m trusting that even on these days when I wake up negative and crazy, I am being guided to release the things that keep me from living my best life and appreciating where I am now.

Now my mind just connected me to thoughts about forgiveness, but that’s going to have to be the subject for a future blog. My dog has lost her patience and it’s time to go outside and play.

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Down the Rabbit Hole

11/19/2014

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This morning, before I opened my eyes an image of a Google search came into my mind. I've already forgotten what it said specifically, but it seemed profound at the time as it was tied into what I've been focusing on lately, and led me to thinking how funny that was.

It seems my dreams have become more high tech. You see, for many years now, they have often come to me in the written word. The dream is of someone writing my dream on a yellow legal pad. All I see is the hand, the pencil and the pad. And I must read vigorously to keep up with the words as the story unravels. The dreams always make sense at the time although right now I can't think of any of them in any kind of detail, although I know one of them was a story about a bunny family. Dreams...go figure.

So, within seconds of seeing this Google search, my mind took me to the idea of how these searches work and how it ties into how the mind works. That’s what led me to sit here before I've even had my coffee, in hope of following this thought stream to see if it makes any sense later in the day.

First, I should tell you that I am a bit attached to Google search and it worries me that it’s going to turn my mind to mush. But then again, it may be making me smarter than my genes or education ever could have dictated. I generally sit with my iPhone nearby so that if anything comes to mind or I hear a name or word on the radio or tv that is unfamiliar, I can instantly Google it and learn things that may or may not be of any value in the scheme of things. For instance, I know more about character actors from the golden age of Hollywood than any person under the age of 85 should know, except maybe for Robert Osbourne.   ( If you don't know who he is, Google it.)

Anyway, back to the connection my mind made about my mind. During the past two weeks I did a couple workshops on Yoga Nidra, the yoga practice of deep relaxation. I've been gearing up for them for some weeks now and found myself deep into the rabbit hole with more material than I could possibly use in the short time allotted.

Much of what I was exploring were the many concepts from yoga philosophy that come into play in this practice. My intention was to share with the participants, most of whom were yoga teachers, the worthiness of this often ignored method of experiencing a profound sensation of peace. In a nutshell, this peace is accessed by withdrawing our senses from the outer world (pratyahara) so we can go within and tap into the peace that lives deep in our hearts and defines our true nature. The benefit is that then we are able to respond to the world from a calm, stress-free place, beyond the worries, doubts and limitations of the mind, and therefore, are able to make better choices for ourselves moment by moment. We move from thought to intuition, from guessing to knowing.

In yoga, we call the thoughts that get in the way of us tapping into our inner wisdom, or intuition, vrittis. The analogy I make is that the mind is like a blank piece of paper and the thoughts are like the type on the page. The thoughts, or vrittis are divided into 5 categories: right knowledge, misconception, verbal delusion, sleep and memory. The biggie is memory. Everything we see, hear, touch, taste and smell instantly connects us to a memory of something we experienced in the past and the mind is off and running taking us out of the moment into dwelling on the past or reaching to the future. These memories can be either painful or painless, but in either case, take us from what we are experiencing here and now.

So, what the hell does this have to do with google searches? Well, google is like our memories. As information comes in, we go into our memory bank and search for associations. Like with Google, this all happens in a nano second. And as with Google, what often happens is that you go so far down the rabbit hole, you forget what brought you there in the first place. You are no longer just searching for the name of that character actor whose name you couldn’t remember, you're reading about the history of MGM and the making of the studio system. You are now missing the nuances of the movie you are still watching and although you are still able to follow the plotline, you're missing out on the clever dialogue, the beauty of the cinematography and all the reasons this film was considered a classic in the first place.

This is just like when someone is talking to you and something they say triggers a memory for you. Instead of really listening to what they are saying, you are already in your head thinking of your own story about what they said. So, in essence, you are not listening to them anymore, you are listening to yourself. And if you are not really listening to them, you are not really connected to them and you've lost out on the richness and healing that connection offers. This can happen when looking at a beautiful sunset. Instead of soaking it in and really feeling it, your mind takes you to the sunset you saw when you were in Colorado last summer. What a pity, as now instead of having 2 memories of bliss, you now only have one - the cost of attempting mental multitasking.

I have to admit, I don't know if there is a big point to what I'm saying here. I wasn't really looking to answer any question or make a profound statement, but it does remind me to take note of what is lost when I lose focus of the moment while realizing there is really nothing inherently wrong with that either. It’s just another choice I’m making.    Hopefully, a conscious choice made while fully knowing that there are consequences. I just hope that I end up up choosing connection over living in my head with all its justifying and analyzing, more often than not. It just seems like the best way to go to live a richer life.

“If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly our whole life would change.”                                                                            The Buddha

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Matchmaker, Matchmaker Make Me A Match

10/7/2014

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So, I finally gave in and joined Match.com last month. Shoot me now! That whole experience is, however, a subject for a future blog or sit-com I may decide to write one day.

In order to prepare myself for this dreaded process, I decided to pump myself up and re-read my books on relationships. This can turn self-help into self-hell if you’re not very careful. I did a lot of skimming, but ultimately landed on Harville Hendrix’s book “Keeping The Love You Find.”

If you’re not familiar with Hendrix’s work, you may want to check it out. In my opinion, he’s brilliant. I did some of his “Imago” work when I was trying to save my last marriage (yes, there have been two). Imago is the label he gives to the person who we are subconsciously attracted to because they possess both the desirable and undesirable qualities of our primary caregivers. Well, in my case, although the therapy was successful, the marriage wasn’t saved. It did save my sanity, though, and I learned a whole new way of looking at relationships, my role in them, and their role in my life.

Anyway, in this book he focuses on self-discovery whereas his other books are more for couples. I think one of the reasons this work resonates with me is that it is very yogic in its philosophy. He talks about unconscious patterns and how we’re like heat-seeking missiles, finding partners who will most certainly treat us much in the way that our primary caretakers did. Furthermore, that we will end up using the same childish ploys to deal with them and end up just as frustrated until we finally wake up and recognize our patterns. He says that these are our true soul mates. We find the person who pushes our buttons so our unconscious patterns can be expressed. Then, when they surface, instead of just justifying and defending our position, we become aware of the pattern and work together with awareness, willingness and compassion to help each other move beyond them. The alternative is that you get caught up in an endless power struggle.

In yoga, we call these patterns samskaras, he calls it personal quicksand. We keep doing the same things over and over again until we can break through by becoming conscious and deciding to choose something different. This is where Dr. Phil might jump in with “And how’s that working for you?” One of my favorite poems by Portia Nelson, “Autobiography in Five Short Chapters “ sums it up perfectly.

1.

I walk down the street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I am lost...I am helpless
It takes forever to find a way out.
I fall in
It isn't my fault

2.

I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I can't believe I'm in the same place
It still takes a long time to get out.
I fall in again
But it isn't my fault

3.

I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I still fall in...it's a habit.
I know where I am.
I get out immediately.
I see it's there
It is my fault.

4.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

5.

I walk down another street.

I might paraphrase this by asking, ”How deep in shit do you have to be standing until you realize that you just may want to take another route?”, but then, I’ve never been very poetic.

The thing that really stands out for me and ties into my understanding of yoga philosophy is when he talks about our innate connectedness.

“ Does it ring a bell when I say that we all share an inarticulate longing for something that we cannot quite put our fingers on?...I believe these feelings arise from our forgotten connection to memories of a time before birth, from the period we spent in our mother’s womb, and even before, when we felt totally and safely connected not only to an all-giving mother but, beyond that, to everything and to everyone. I believe this memory is the source of the primary and universal human belonging, and the unstated hope of love...our fundamental yearning is to transcend the barriers that now separate us from our awareness of this connection...our secret goal in relationships is not some movie-screen fantasy of love, but rather a drive to recover the state of relaxed joy that is our birthright.”

I love that…”relaxed joy.” Is that not the feeling we get in yoga when we are able to get out of our heads, beyond our thoughts, our emotions, our attachments and aversions? When we are able to move beyond even our emotional hearts into the core of our hearts or what Gary Zukov calls “the seat of the soul”?

How does this all tie in for me? Well, it’s a reminder that it is not up to anyone else to make me feel this connection. That’s movie-love. Initially, that “you complete me” feeling makes it seem like this other person is the answer to our prayers. Personally, I think it’s the cosmic trick to give us the courage to hang in there for the roller coaster ride that’s to come. And, I am actually praying for that to happen for me. I think it’s harder to do this work outside of an intimate relationship because it is too easy to avoid the parts of ourselves that we don’t like when there is no one there to push our buttons. Besides, I’ve always loved roller coasters, even though I white-knuckle it and scream like a 5 year old the entire time I’m on the ride.

Like Ram Dass so wisely put it, “ When you think you’re evolved, go spend a week with your parents.” And as Harville Hendrix says, we choose partners that are going to mimic our relationship with our parents so we can help each other heal and come back to being our authentic selves and our sense of “relaxed joy.” So, there it is.

So, if this theory is correct, I guess I’m looking for a man who is good- looking, strong, smart, sociable, fun-loving, sausage-eating, witty, impatient, insensitive, critical, emotionally unavailable and loves food, art, music, family and travel. So, if you know such a man who is willing to get his hands dirty and do the real work, bring him on! And tell him to wear a seat belt because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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Losing Face

7/2/2014

4 Comments

In one of our yoga teacher training sessions one of the students in the group shared her inability to let go of one of her fears. We had been talking about pratipaksha bhavanam, the principle of replacing a negative thought with a positive one as a way to experience peace.

Understanding that this can seem difficult to wrap your head around as it can seem like you're faking or denying what's real. We got into talking about the idea of facing fear and instead of thinking of how to create a more positive scenario, that instead, we play out the negative scenario to the nth degree.

So,what if her fear came to fruition? Then what would happen?And if that happened, what would happen next? And after that? And so, on and so on, until...

At this, Nikki, my co-facilitator, shared that at the end of this process, she always comes up with "And then I'm going to die."

The group responded with a laugh, which was actually the appropriate response. If you play out any fear, at the end, the worse thing that could happen is that you'd die, and this makes all the worrying and fretting pale by comparison.

Anyway, after the laugh died down, I turned to Nikki, and said, "I can take that further. Wanna hear it?"

“And then my dog is gonna eat my face.”

Well, the reaction was a pause, and then they all laughed.

Looking at me like I was crazy, Nikki, then asked, “How the heck did you come up with that?”

So, I explained.

About a month earlier, at my standing Tuesday morning coffee date , my friend Rick told me the story of one of the regulars at the coffee shop.

This young woman had been in a relationship with a man for a long time, but had broken up with him some months back. He suffered with bipolar syndrome and she realized although she loved him, she just couldn’t go on with the relationship. They remained friends and spoke off and on, and realizing he was very lonely, she surprised him with a little dog for his birthday. It turned out to be a great idea, because he fell in love with this little dog.

So, Rick goes on to tell me that a couple weeks earlier, she had called to see how he was doing, They usually spoke every couple weeks or so and had since they broke up.

When he didn’t answer his phone, and days went on without having heard back from him,she got worried and decided to go to his apartment to see what was going on. He did have his dark periods when he cut himself off from other people so it wasn't all that unusual not to have heard from him, but she was afraid he had gone off his meds again, and she was very concerned.

Anyway, she went to his apartment and when he didn't answer the door, she let herself in with her key and to her horror, found him lying dead on the couch. But the real horror was that since he had apparently been dead for quite awhile, his little dog had started to chew the flesh from his face. The dog she had given him for companionship.

Now, this is one of the most horrible visuals I had ever imagined and it haunted me.

So, when this conversation came up in teacher training, and Nikki said "And then I'm going to die", this vision popped into my head and and then, I said “and then my dog is going to eat my face."

Now, although it got a laugh, this was not my intention.

I don’t happen to believe that death is necessarily our biggest fear. I think death of the ego, or death of the image we project can be worse if we are overly attached or identified with them. Some people would rather kill themselves than face shame or rejection, losing face or facing punishment, or simply just not wanting to face another day of hopelessness. I understand that most suicides happen on Monday morning, for example...the thought of another week of the same old thing is just too much to bear.

Anyway, for me, in this case, behind the fear of my dog Gracie eating the face off my dead body, was my fear of dying alone.

Now, for those with families, and regular jobs, this is probably not a big fear.

But for me, it is, and at this point in my life it is a real possibility.

You see, I live alone with my dog Gracie. I live in Indianapolis, and the closest of my immediate family, live in Chicago. I have friends scattered all over the country, most in Chicago and San Diego where I lived for 9 years. I am not in a relationship so there is no significant other that I see on a regular basis.

I have a civil, but not close relationship with my neighbors, so I could feasibly go days without talking to one of them, especially in the winter months. I have friends here but like everyone else, we get busy and don't touch base as often as we'd like.

I work in a job that takes me to different places, and am only expected to show up once a week at each place. So, if I didn't show up to class one week, although it may seem unusual, this could be blown off as a misunderstanding, that maybe I forgot to tell them there would be no class that week. So, most likely the second week when I didn’t show, one of the students might take it upon themselves to call me. And then, maybe another few days could go by when they might realize I had never called them back. Now, most of my students don’t even know where I live, so God knows when someone would actually come and find me.

I haven't quite figured out what to do to prevent this from playing out in my life. It would be great it I could find a great guy and have that constant witness to my life as one solution. I guess I could ask one of my friends to start calling the authorities if they haven't heard from me in a few days, or take on a 9 to 5 job where I'm expected to show up, but that is not likely.

I like my life. Yes, I get lonely at times, but who doesn't? I've made choices that have set up my current circumstances, and being physically alone much of the time is one of the downsides. However, I do realize it is better to be alone that to feel lonely in a relationship that isn't really clicking. Or at least that's the story I'm telling myself at the moment.

So, in the end, taking it to the nth degree for me is to just keep living in line with my principles by choosing happiness, kindness, generosity and gratitude as my guiding forces. To choose connection over impressing others, meaning over glory. This way, at least I can look myself in the mirror while I'm still breathing.

After that, it really doesn't matter after that. Not to sound morbid, but if eating my face after I'm dead is what my Gracie needs to survive, she can have at it. That, too, lines up with my belief that we are all here to serve.

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Buddhi Call

I will turn 60 this year.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Matchmaker, Matchmaker Make Me A Match

Losing Face

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