Monday, March 19, 2012

As it is, here and now...


AS IT IS, HERE AND NOW…


I have heard my yoga teacher, Karen Sprute-Francovich, make this statement time and time again. I always think I get it, but then each time I hear it again, I “get” it even more.

AS IT IS… HERE AND NOW…

So, what does this mean now? 

I met with a friend this morning and we were discussing, amongst numerous subjects, this organization, ICAN.  What’s it really about? What are we attempting to do? How does it impact our lives, and out families? Do we need to move out, “into the country” to live simply? How can we live simply in our own lives, HERE AND NOW?

To which I answer, “I have no idea!”

Well, okay, I guess that it not fully the truth. I do have an idea or two, ok, maybe even three- hahaha! But for the most part, I really don’t know what the full picture of it means. All I do know is that TOGETHER we can paint the picture of the direction we want to be heading so that we can live the way we know in our gut is right.

I also feel that this is not about ‘moving to the country’, but rather, to LIVE FULLY where we are today, HERE AND NOW, JUST AS IT IS!

This is such a beautiful, powerful statement! It makes me think back to a yoga class I taught not too long ago. The theme was about acceptance. In our minds, we have this “picture” of what perfection is to us. Whether it be a spiritual goal, a physical goal, or “way we are supposed to live”, whatever… We hold onto this goal, this picture in our minds of the “perfect” way we should be living, acting, being. And then life happens, the AS IT IS part.

The clouds of judgment roll in, followed with despair and sadness of the ‘reality’ of what is. Depression and hopelessness slowly take root thereafter.

But what if, what if… What if we could take this picture we have of the “perfect” way of living, being, acting and RIP IT UP?!? Then we could replace that picture with where we are, today, just AS WE ARE, AS IT IS. We could look at this picture, just a little closer. We could see the light shining in our eyes, perhaps sense the brightness of our hearts. Maybe, just maybe, we could even be happy with the intelligence of our minds, the warmth we emit, the gentleness of our compassion, and the gifts that we alone bring into the world.

Maybe we aren’t the perfect essence of what we think we should be, maybe we aren’t living as simply as we know we should be living. But what if instead, we could see what we are doing right, start shedding light on THAT ASPECT? Because, more important than changing everything we think we doing wrong, is shedding light on what we ARE doing right.

HERE AND NOW, JUST AS IT IS.  Then almost as if by magic, we start to understand that, that which we pay attention to GROWS….

How does this impact ICAN? Well, we can paint a picture of which direction we are heading, but with love, we can accept where we are today. We needn’t move onto acreage, change our families, or be in a commune living off the land. We need to be HERE AND NOW, AS IT IS, then we can act from this space. We don’t need to know what the final picture of this means, all we need to do is shed light on the things we doing right so that this Light can grow bright   

No comments:

Post a Comment