VRATA >>

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I’m studying yoga, and the very first day of our 10 week course, we discussed ”vrata.” Vrata is Sanskrit for vow. This word comes up often in our online studies, as well as the implications of vrata throughout yogic history. We learned that vrata connects inner intentions with outer actions, which is the essence of momentum in life and yoga. Vrata seals an intention and makes it real by speaking it into existence. There is sound value to vrata. I double underlined that phrase in my notes. Sound value. You become what you articulate because vrata gives us direction and empowers us. It has karmic weight, and therefore, has consequences.

A few nights ago, I played a song I hadn’t heard in a long time: “True Companion” by Marc Cohn. His lyrics eloquently describe his vow of companionship, and the melody is equally as beautiful as the meaningful words. The lyrics particularly struck me, but not because they are flowery. It was because they are clearly articulated. He outlines his life-through-death plan with his companion, and airily sings it into existence, giving it sound value, direction, and weight.

The word vow in and of itself has depth. It does not simply imply compliance, but rather a willful, yearning to comply. A promise that means something when you keep it, just like my blog states in a pretty pink banner. Promises are to be kept, but not by begging, coercion or ultimatum. A vow has a sacred connotation. It symbolizes the ultimate commitment to oneself, or to something that has immense meaning and value. But a vow is only meaningful if the desire to keep the promise far exceeds the notion or temptation to dissolve or ignore it.

A vow is risky. It holds more weight than a resolution or a goal. Didn’t stick with your New Year’s Resolution? Fine. Just make a new one next week and try again. Not with a vow. Vows either lead to growth and higher consciousness, or to devastation and failure. Of course the potential growth or failure can ripple into numerous beneficial or detrimental outcomes. It is the ripple that renders a vow risky. Perhaps the ripple is small, and affects only one. Or perhaps it continues well beyond the devolution of the promise, and continues far beyond the act of failure. The detrimental rippling is especially difficult if you are an empath.

Empaths don’t “do,” they “feel.” And they never stop yearning for potential growth, because with growth comes deep feelings. Feelings are like a drug. The deeper the connection, the deeper the feeling, and the empath is fed. Conversely, lack of connection and depth starve an empath. It is a living hell. Starved of emotion or of an outlet to share these feelings with takes training and practice to be able to cope. And just like any loss or withdrawal from a drug, it is debilitating. The biggest drug is of all is hope. Hope is a gift and a curse, just like being an empath is. The gifts of being an empath are the immense capacity to feel, the ability to foster intense emotions and connections simply by watching body language or by touching someone, or even just by reading or hearing something. Each instance is connected to a strong emotion that lasts far beyond than that moment in time. I not only feel the words, but carry them with me. I don’t just feel my emotions, I feel the entirety of emotions from anyone within my radar. I feel emotion connected to the lines on your face when I stare at you, to the feeling of your skin when I touch you, or to the words I read. They all hold weight. The hope drug keeps the possibility of deep connection alive and feeds me.

Thus, the curse is exactly the same. There is no off-switch. You can’t “just get over it” or forget what you heard or saw because they are connected to a strong emotion. It’s a losing battle to even try. Therefore, the gift of a vow is potential nirvana. It is real as soon as it’s spoken because you immediately bind the promise with strong emotions. Consequently, the curse of a dissolved or disrespected vow is the hollowness that will never leave you, because you can’t turn off your innate ability to feel. Strong emotions don’t dissolve just because a promise did. And that’s scary as hell.

A vow is not just a thing to do. It is an appellation of intense emotions and yearnings of the heart and mind. The vow bundles these into a neat package, just like my pretty pink banner. It’s so enticing and alluring, why wouldn’t I commit to a vow again in life? I see the potential I have, and I honor my promises. So I am conflicted. I love and hate the notion of a promise with depth and intensity. I am afraid to try and be left in the dust, loyal to my vow and starved of an outlet. So what is the solution? Make a vow to myself, and keep it. The gift of hope tells me that someday that vow will lead to a gift of light-hearted ease, coupled with heavy intense emotions—both good and bad. I don’t fear those when they live concentrically, I crave them.

So last night, I wrote a vow. It’s a promise to me and my daughters. It’s not as melodic as Marc Cohn’s, but equally as clear and heartfelt. It is direction packaged with intention, and even a little hope. As I wrote it, I thought about the fact that this vow may be the only weighty vow I make again in this life, which is a bit daunting. Nonetheless, I will keep this promise to us and come out ahead of my fears. A vrata has sound value, and is grounded by the weight of truth. Truth is clear, directional, and empowering. I vow to connect my inner intentions and outer actions, which I am speaking into existence.

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Finesse The Float >>

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I’m a swimmer, but I don’t surf. However, I imagine surfing takes the same practice, patience, grit, balance, thick skin, and ability to read the water, just like swimming. Great swimmers have a natural feel for the water, and create movement from that.  Great surfers have a natural feel for how the water moves, and create patterns around that. Both take finesse. I bet if I asked which one sounds more exciting and rewarding, most would say surfing. The black line on the bottom of a pool is, in fact, extremely boring. Surfing is inherently risky, and thus, fantastically thrilling, I imagine.  Great Risk=Greater Reward. At least, that’s what we’re taught.  It’s ingrained in us from birth.  We’re praised for taking risks. We’re praised even more for failing—even when it repeatedly hurts—because we might (eventually) get something better.

“Ride it out until you catch that one amazing ride of your life.”

“Go all in, and at all cost.”

“Nothing good comes easy.”

“If it were easy, everyone would do it.”

“Fall down 7, get up 8.”

It’s as though we must grind through the days, and keep crashing, or somehow we don’t deserve the big prize of a better, more fulfilling life.

I’m a swimmer, and I don’t surf. Yet for years, I’ve been trying to get up on my board, and I keep crashing.  I crash in the same set of waves every time. I thought repeated crashing was an inherent part of the journey I was supposed to take, and what I had to endure to reach “better.”

When you surf, you learn to read the waves ahead of time. If it looks gentle and rolling, you take it, but just for practice. And you practice in order to push yourself into something more challenging and worthwhile.  Challenging is exciting and risky. Challenging is committing fully without backing down. Challenging is an adrenaline spike from simultaneous excitement and fear. Challenging is success waiting to happen.

So you swim hard to catch the big one, and it’s sheer elation when you do.  All you remember is that incredible feeling of soaring through the spray. You forget all the falls, the fear, and the pain. It’s like child birth: the most painful, fearful, heart-jerking moments of your life, and once the baby arrives…poof! You feel nothing but elation and wonder why you don’t have 12 more already.  What pain? What were you even afraid of in the first place? This is nothing short of magical.

Or, perhaps you go after that wave and swim hard, but not hard enough. Typical, that’s what you always do. You’re too slow and your timing is off. So you fight to adjust and eventually fall off balance.  At least you tried and didn’t give up like you usually do.

Next time, you swim even harder, but miss it completely and it’s total embarrassment. You were never good enough to catch it, you should have known, but maybe no one noticed your failure. If you were more fit or fierce you would have gotten it. You’d rather crash 1000x than not even come close. Don’t draw attention to yourself, close your eyes and block it out. Try again.

So you wait for the biggest set you’ve seen. But somehow you misread it. You were so focused on proving to yourself that you could do it that you’d forgotten to take into account the surrounding elements: wind, erratic swirling of the sand below, and a break in the wave pattern.  It’s suddenly choppy and inconsistent.  But it’s just water, and you can swim fast, so you decide to go for it even though your gut says not to. You lose focus because it doesn’t feel right. You panic, can’t breathe, and envision an epic crash.

No. Not again. If you listen to your fears, it makes you vulnerable to pain. So, suck it up. You’ll crash and you’ll just get back up and do it as many times as it takes to catch it. Learn to get better.

You tell yourself you’re weak for second-guessing, and that you should be strong enough to adapt to any conditions. You dismiss the sight and feel of choppy water, as well as your stupid intuition, and you replace it with shame.

You are determined not to sit back and watch potential pass by. So you swim even harder to catch the wave, and are sucked into a spinning, dark abyss. You are swirling in slow motion because it’s deja vu. You’ve done this before, knew what was coming, and now it’s your fault. You’re upside down in a whirlpool that you got yourself into. You deserve this. Shame takes over again. 

What if you just stay down there? You wouldn’t disrupt any water and could quietly observe from below. The choppy surface wouldn’t affect you here. No no one would pressure you to try again, judge your failure, or blame you for crashing. No one would even notice.

You almost drown in the feeling-sorry-for-yourself-whirlpool, but the same shaming voice that told you to take the wave (and then to stay underwater) smacks you back into reality. It says you’re even weaker if you can’t figure out a way to get up for air by yourself. And so you do.

You praise yourself for being strong enough to take a risk and make a mistake, rather than praise your intuition that begged you to pause and look around. You buried that intuition long ago that says, “You are good enough just hanging out on your board today.  Observing and absorbing is the experience.” 

Water is hard when you fight it. The bigger the wave, the harder the impact. Most people would say, “Work on your timing.  Read the wave better next time. Get stronger. Fight harder. Someday it’ll just happen because you didn’t give up.” 

So many outlets steer us towards grit and perseverance. Battles are good. Success requires continuous failure and clawing our way to the top. That is celebrated. It’s in our genes: fall down, get back up and learn to walk on your own. We get praised for effort and failure equally. We’re praised even more when we get hurt, and we’re shamed for avoidance or listening to our intuition that tells us to pause and listen to our fears. We’re taught not to use experience as a tool to redirect us away from the same crashing patterns we throw ourselves into.  We’re taught to fight the water, or at the very least to keep trying to surf it.

“That a girl! That wasn’t so bad, and you weren’t afraid! Get up and try again!”

What’s wrong with being afraid when you know how hard that water feels when you crash? What about celebrating the ability to float rather than the ability to endure? We are shamed into thinking we should do more and endure, simply because we can.  In fact, we’re often judged by our capacity “to do” rather than our capacity ”to be” just as we are. I have immense capacity, and I am just beginning to get a feel for how much. But the question is: the capacity for what? To feel and trust the patterns in order to avoid the crash.

Avoidance.  It’s often synonymous with weak or afraid.  On the contrary, avoidance comes from knowledge of past experiences, confidence in who you are in that very moment, and intuition which reminds you that pain doesn’t have to precipitate gain.

Patterns are etched into our minds and bodies through past experience, and yet we still deny our intuition when it attempts to guide us away from crashing.  The ability to feel and learn from patterns is just like having a surfing coach alongside as you analyze the incoming set of waves. The coach reminds you not to take that chance based on what your future goals look like, but rather on what the choppy water feels like in that moment, which forewarns you of ensuing danger.

Coach yourself to take in the whole environment, versus selecting bits and pieces to serve your ego.  Ego shames us for floating.  But the coach says, “Stay here and float, I’ve seen this pattern before and it doesn’t feel right.” How can trusting your experiences be weak?  Perhaps it’s simply a more peaceful way to enjoy the water.

I’m done riding waves, sick of crashing, and disgusted at myself for constantly misreading the environment, or actually, for ignoring the environmental patterns. I’m even more done with convincing myself that I need to do and be more.  Floating and observing is an art. It takes confidence, patience, and practice to be as you are, just like surfing.

Finessing the float is the release of external expectations.  We are taught that great success goes hand-in-hand with great failure and pain, and that failures must be over-corrected if we are to learn from them.  What if failures weren’t followed by a high-five or a “good girl” as positive reinforcement? Would we still chase them? Maybe we would instead allow ourselves to choose a different path, just to feel better.  There is often shame in that choice, which prevents us from choosing ease over grit. Floating means unlearning patterns as well.

Success can be internal, and you have the capacity to determine what that feels like. To me, success feels less like riding a wave and more like following a trickling mountain stream with my eyes. It feels like being enraptured by the sight, sound, and gentle flow that urges me to calmly watch, rather than run towards the rushing water around the next bend. Gentle flow feels like universal peace and love.

So perhaps less is more.  Less competition, less accolades, less money, fewer friends…and fewer crashes.  Maybe more isn’t the end goal after all.  What is the greatest good for ourselves and others?  It’s the release of expectation from every outlet in the universe to strive for more.

So float. You don’t have to ride the waves. You are enough right there, as you feel them. Feel the water, the sky, the wind, and the depths below. Those elements collectively create the big picture, and maybe that’s the goal.

As a swimmer, I used my feel for the water to create flow patterns to move through it.  Although I still have a great feel for the water, I don’t use my skills to surf for a rush.  I simply translate and trust what I observe about the fluid patterns moving towards me, and finesse the float.

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GROWING INTO ME >>

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My years are marked by wrinkles and responsibilities. They are 14 and 12. 

My skin folds when I forget to tighten my belly before I look at it. Gravity is not friendly in your 40’s. But my belly is. It gave me two children.

My hands are cracked from dishes and shoveling in arctic temps. My rings no longer fit because my knuckles have gotten bigger. But my hands hold smaller, softer, clingy fingers well—which, by the way, like to try on all of my rings while I sit and watch. 

My hair is expensive. I’m blonde-ish, which hides my gray that I pretend not to have. The silver flashes gently frame my face, like a crown of accomplishment. That crown is invaluable as my accomplishments sleep upstairs in peace.

My jokes and sarcasm have been sidelined in lieu of quiet joy, unimportant and inconsequential to most who know me. Unless you know me.

My presence is less influenced by where I need to be and more influenced by where I find meaning. Being the center of attention is increasingly less appealing, and inversely proportionate to being centered.

As my body shape shifts, so too does my soul. My body grows differently, begging for my mind and soul to stay ahead. So I silence my body and ease my mind a bit more each year so that my soul has room to grow. And it grows louder. It must grow to keep up with the hearts (42, 14 and 12, respectively). So I sit in my body as quietly as I’m capable of in any given moment, and I listen to the hearts. If my body is too loud, I can’t hear the beats, and I’m lost. My mind becomes flat and one-dimensional. And my soul leaks and slowly deflates until I grow quiet enough to repair them both. Then I can hear the distinct beats again.

As I grow into quietness, I feel more at ease and less combative with the universe. 40 is a tipping point.  It’s not a bad place, but you have to let go of the noise in order to connect the beats to your soul. Actually, 40 is the place to be—but only when you’re ready. And when you’re ready, you’ll know, because you’ll hear all the beats. I’m growing. I’m going. My soul is flowing for the beats and me.

2/6/19

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HOPE DANCED >>

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I’ve been taking lots of walks the last few weeks. No headphones, no music, no phone. Just me and my dog. I don’t really know where I’m going nor do I care. I don’t wear a watch, and without my phone, I have no concept of time. I go on a walkabout ala Crocodile Dundee. Seems adventurous. Yesterday, I went on three walkabouts and one of them ended up being almost 2 hours, I think. I judged this by the sun because it felt more authentic.

You’re probably thinking, “How does she have this much time…must be nice.” The easy answer is that my kids happen to be gone on vacation so it’s just me and my dog. I own my own business and train people a few hours a day, and have the rest of the day to work as hard or as little as I’d like, which is directly related to my mood du jour. I also have a large presentation that I should be composing, but I would rather poke my eyes out than stare at my computer these days, so my walkabouts are a healthy distraction from my work. Both are plausible reasons to get outside more than less.

However, the real answer is that I have time to walk because I make time. It’s important for my mindset and mood, and I function better when I make time to breathe, decompress and think. Or not think.  I’m not sure which one is better these days, but I think I’ve been thinking and not thinking and it seems to be working out well for me. My thoughts wander but I try to keep them wandering in a positive direction.

I like to walk throughout my neighborhood and explore. My dog is in charge of that. I go where she pulls me. Her leash-pulling used to bother me because I felt some stupid need to be in charge of my dog. That’s what dog owners do: train the dog to do what you want them to do. My dog is pretty smart and carefree. She likes to explore scents and sounds. I think she goes where life is interesting and rewarding at that given moment. She’s not looking at the butterfly passing in front of her nose wondering if there’s a better one in the next patch of tall grass. She enjoys that one, right there.

I like my neighborhood, but I live on a postage stamp sized lot with newly planted trees that are barely above shoulder height. I feel like I’m in a fish bowl as I can spit on my neighbors’ homes from any place in my house. I’m assuming they know that I know this, so hopefully they won’t irritate me because my aim is pretty good. When I walk, I tend to wander away from the spit zone devoid of privacy to the back of the hood, because there are less homes, less people, and more room to breathe. The lots are bigger and there are actual trees, big sledding hills and even a beautiful old silo with vines crawling up the sides.

There’s one lot in particular that I tend to meander through. It’s like I secretly own it, but I’m just waiting to build my tiny, modern dream home. I’m not sure what I’m waiting for or why, but nonetheless, I’m waiting so I’ll just keep pretending it’s mine. It has a phenomenal view of the sunrise, silo and sunset. There’s a winding gravel trail behind it lined with white pines, spruce, birch trees and tall prairie grasses. I envision waking up to the sun rising behind the vintage silo. In the evenings, I watch the sunset from our deck while my kids play with the dog, who is chasing some critter through the tall grass because that is what matters to her most at that moment in time.

My walkabouts free my mind. Without an agenda, I am much more aware of everything around me. I’ve heard that’s the thing to do if you’re trying to get in touch with yourself and the world around you. Just stop and notice things. Appreciate everything around you. So, that’s what I do. I look at the pretty rock formations, the tiny white pine that thrives despite the one dead branch below, listen to the frogs chirping and the hawk screaming. I even take note of the Japanese Beatle invasion of the trees that line the gravel path behind my secret lot.

Today was particularly lovely because the sun was shining—and it was shining on me today. I felt its joyful attention because it followed me as I walked. The rays warm my soul. It’s like a microwave oven–they heat from the inside out, and that is the sun. After it brings joy and warmth, it keeps giving. It lights me up on the inside, like a beacon of hope within me saying, “It’s ok, Kari. Everything’s warm and bright and ok now. Your light is still there. I just recharged you. Come back again tomorrow, I will be here again for you.” I notice you, sun, and I appreciate the free recharge.

Today, I am currently late to meet a friend for coffee. I awoke a little anxious and needed a quick walk with my dog. So, I hurried to the gravel path in the back of the neighborhood to harness some serenity and take it back with me. I got to the path and my level of awareness consisted of the sound of the gravel below me. I needed to walk faster to go get the calm before the coffee. Get through your walk. Get to the end of the path. Get home. Don’t be late. Somehow that was supposed to help me breathe.

Nonetheless, I was quite happy in the elements when suddenly my dog attempted to rip my left shoulder out of the socket. She jerked me because she was interested in something, but I was laser focused on the gravel path, and I jerked her back to my plan.  I had a coffee date, after all, no time to explore. The second time, she jerked me so hard I had no choice but to turn my head in her direction. Then, I stopped and cried. Because I wasn’t listening to her. She was trying to tell me to look up from the path. There’s more out there and you’re missing it. Not 20 yards in front of me were two Sandhill Cranes. They stood side by side amidst the tall grasses, right in the middle of my dream lot. My dog had seen them, I had not.

To complete the equation of a perfect walkabout with no music, headphones, phone, or agenda, plus the warming of my soul and the glowing beacon of hope, there was even more to appreciate today. But I needed to shift my focus from my initial intent to the life happening around me. Their graceful necks and distinct song as they fly overhead are alluring. You often hear them even when you can’t find them in the sky. But I think if I had to pinpoint my favorite thing about the cranes, it’s that you rarely, if ever, see them alone. They always have their partner with them. Sandhill Cranes mate for life, and to me, that is warmth and joy and glowing from within—because it exists. They are hope.

The wonderful thing I noticed today as I watched these beautiful creatures was their fluid synchronicity. One would ‘peck-peck-peck’ and forage for whatever it is they look for in the grasses while the other stood nearby with its long neck gently swaying side to side to keep watch. Then, they seamlessly switched roles. And then, hope danced.

This is by far the neatest part. It was as though they had previously choreographed their steps to shift to the next spot, only a few feet away. They foraged and shifted, all the while never getting too far apart. They moved in sync, like they knew where they were going before they even stepped because they’d done this so many times together.

So, today I am now 25 minutes late to meet my friend for coffee because I stood and watched the cranes dance for 15 minutes and then felt compelled to write this down lest I forget their magic. Other than my dog’s attempt to dislocate my shoulder from trying to eat the cranes, and lack of caffeine, I am quite warm, happy, and dancing with hope today.

 

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DO YOU SEE ME >>

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Each night I have my girls, we talk to each other as they are going to bed. One is in 8th grade, the other in 5th. They are best friends, although they have vastly different personalities.  Our nightly ritual is to read or to look through their old yearbooks.  They love seeing how their friends have changed over time.  I usually lie on the bed next to them and just listen to their banter back and forth. The other night, my older daughter was reading something different.  She found her younger sister’s diary from several years ago–this was apparently ok with the younger one who was in the other room getting ready for bed.

She stopped reading to herself and said, “This page says to name a time when you were very mad or sad and explain why.” What she said next was something very personal to all of us. Our family changed that year and a 2nd grader’s diary entry took my breath away. I had never heard her words in that diary or in that way. She walked in from the other room and laid down on the bed next to me as if to say, “Mama, do you hear me?”

Ironically, there was a poem folded up and stuck in between those same breathless pages.  The oldest one had written this poem around the same time as the diary entry, and somehow it ended up in her younger sister’s diary.  It was called “Hello.”

She took the poem and said, “Oh I remember writing this. This is dumb. I think I’ll just rip it up.” Then, she stopped, for just a fraction of a second. Her eyes shifted to mine and immediately darted away as if to say, “Should I? Do you want to read this, mama? Do you see me, mama?” I took the poem from her and asked if I could read it. A tiny smile flashed through sad eyes, and then it was gone. The poem spoke of the impact the word hello has upon a person, as well as the meaningful implications.  She also noted that it was “the opposite of good bye.”

Do you know the times in life when you are so happy that your heart is bursting and you think, “How can my heart grow any bigger?” I love those times. This was not one of them.

This was a time that I wished I didn’t have a heart, or rather, one that felt. I wished I were heartless. That’s how I felt hearing the words from the diary and reading the hello poem. The girls needed a distraction from old feelings and quickly moved on to new topics in the diary.  I did not. I was still lying next to them trying to send them silent messages from my heartless heart: “Your mama feels you, I promise.”

Nothing about changing families is fair to kids. Just because their yearbook images reflect change doesn’t mean they get any better at dealing with it. They just get better at hiding the fact that they are still dealing. You simply must be able to live at their level of awareness and within their reality. This is a very powerful, innate gift as a mother. It may be more convenient for my heart to be heartless rather than to burst with real pain and emotion, but I can not ignore the pleas behind the poems or read the lines in the diary rather than reading in between them.  I can not simply see a smile without noticing the sad eyes behind it.

I hear, see, and feel it all–and all of those things bring me to my knees. But if my girls end up knowing what it means to hear and be heard, to see and be seen, to feel and be felt, then that is worth something. It is understanding and that means love.

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