Thursday, October 28, 2010

Freedom's Blog Part 2 - Whoosh! Letting the Freedom Wave Roll

Riding the Freedom Wave

The Freedom Wave is a natural counter balance to the MOM, More-of-Me Wave. Our thoughts diversify on the wondrous MOM Wave. MOM is natural force which helps us compose love and order, or lesser stuff. We craft our ideas into reality while riding of wild MOM Wave as discussed more fully in Part 1 of Freedom’s Blog.

The Freedom Wave’s job is to decompose less useful forms so there is space for new growth. When we align with nature’s plan to clear out the cob webs, it is best done minus complaints. Whatever we accept we get to go beyond. When we stop resisting this leads towards peace, a state Buddhists call the void or emptiness. When we are open to playing with both waves, as the need arises, a sense of harmony is felt. We are more able to act in accord with the creative laws that govern the universe. Cooperating with the movement of life encourages synchronistic events to occur. Riding both waves is in balance is a lot like captaining a ship poised between waves and wind. I will elaborate more on “Shipology” in a later blog.

Wouldn’t it be nice to ride The Freedom Wave with grace, ease and trust; allowing change to wash through our lives without clinging, begging for mercy, throwing hate darts or screaming mutiny? It is easy to love The MOM Wave, look at all the great nurturing stuff she brings us! When there is More-of-Me who is complaining? But when MOM’s partner the Freedom Wave takes away – Ouch! So why does the universe have to play take away? The force of the Freedom Wave is a big burley bear to hug no doubt, cute in concept, but in person, we sense its’ big claws and teeth. Life can be scary if we stay in the dark.

I am learning how to ride my ship of body/mind on the rise and fall of the MOM and Freedom Wave so I may better enjoy every magical moment. My imagination can travel to the edge of time and beyond. My eyes were opened reading a fascinating book called The Tree of Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar, a modern day Yoga master. Iyengar is also a spokesperson for the ancient sage, Patanjali, who wrote The Yoga Sutras. The tree plan unveils a recipe for keeping your ship on the UP and forward track and balancing the effects of the elements of wind and waves so to speak. The UP-beat heart has the impetus to laugh a little, generate a few nice hormones and keep the course for freedom’s gate. The tree formula has eight steps.

Tree Tech Practices


The tree of yoga is an old formula, thousands of years old, for spiritual achievement. It is a map of how to navigate this world and steer clear of obstacle-making on the path to enlightenment. There are eight steps or limbs on this road to freedom’s gate. The tree is an organic model of how the body, mind and heart become one with the universal pulse, the MOM and Freedom Wave. I can look back in my life and see the effects of ignoring Tree Tech wisdom. Stalled energy resulted. Adherence to the 8 point tree plan is what I now use to remove knots in my body and mind. A knot is a place where life and consciousness flows but not awareness.

The Winning Recipe: (more interpretations on these aspects to follow in future blogs)

The Eight Limbs (Astanga) of Yoga from The Yoga Sutras by Patanjali
Patanjali – 500 B.C. Indian sage, scholar, yogi, dancer, philosopher & doctor
The eight limbs are explained in detail in The Tree of Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar

The SEED of The Tree of Yoga is the Soul, the indivisible spark called Atman in Sanskrit.
Its’ house is in the human body in the heart center.

1. Yama – ROOTS OF TREE
• Non-violence - Ahimsa
• Truthfulness - Satya
• Non-stealing - Asteya
• Moderation in sexuality & relationships - Brahmacharya
• Non-covetousness or greed – Aparigraha

2. Niyama – TRUNK OF TREE
• Cleanliness of body/mind - Sauca
• Contentment - Santosha
• Tapas - Fervor on subject, practices aimed toward liberation, heat
• Study of the Self – Svadhyaya (& sacred texts)
• Surrender to God - Isvarapranidhana (offering fruits of labor)

3. Asana – Yogic Postures – LIMBS OF TREE

4. Pranayama – Breath Regulation – LEAVES OF TREE

5. Pratyahara – Sense Regulation – BARK OF TREE

6. Dharana – Focus & Concentration – SAP OF TREE

7. Dhyana – Meditation & Reciprocation - FLOWERS OF TREE

8. Samadhi – Liberation & Complete Absorption in the ONE

The Goal of Yoga is the state of Samadhi – various levels of -
SAMADHI - ONENESS OF BODY/MIND/SOUL - THE FRUIT OF TREE

The Tree of Yoga –by B.K.S. Iyengar - Pg 3 – Chapter: Yoga is One
“The science of yoga helps us to keep the body as a temple so that it becomes as clean as the soul. The body is lazy, the mind is vibrant and the soul is luminous. Yoga practices develop the body to the level of the vibrant mind so that the body and the mind, having both become vibrant, are drawn towards the light of the soul.”


Chant - Ready, Set, Go or Know, Flow, Grow!

I found that the tree model, a familiar symbol, helps me to memorize the methodology of yoga. Tree Tech lessons are well suited for practical applications in dealing with all manner of relationship, money and health challenges. I match up my experiences by the tree template and examine my actions. If I want to create or dismantle something, first I set it UP in my intention. I imagine that both waves cooperate with my request, to both spin their magic through me. I chant - ready, set, go or know, flow, grow NOW!

The natural components of the tree, the roots, trunk, limbs, leaves, bark, sap, flower and fruit grow and change a little each day just like we do. Each day, the sun shines and the earth supports us with gifts of nature. We all have equal opportunity to grow. With our thoughts, words and deeds, we chose to either add or detract from the UP and forward growth of our tree. Down energy slows us down, whereas UP energy accelerates more UP!


Healthy Roots = A Healthy Foundation

An inventory of our roots is the most fundamental of all the Tree Tech practices.


Tree Tech 101 – The First Root of Our Tree

Yama #1 – Ahimsa – Sanskrit for Non-Violence

Non-violence is an art worth mastering. When we keep our agreement to love and honor our self in our thoughts, words and deeds we practice the core of the non-violence art. Healthy roots must be established first, otherwise we will see our violence manifest and craft more obstacles and knot-making. The five root practices listed are called the Yamas in yoga and Ahimsa is the first root discussed in the classical yoga tree model.

To disassemble violence against self, those thoughts and actions which reject and punish self need to be exposed. Ahimsa acts like a lynch pin. Once we begin to master non-violence, our defensive shields and those aggressive or passive aggressive strategies tend to pop up so we can see them. As we break free of ruts, the flow increases. We get used to higher velocity. Knowledge of our purpose, the intelligence from our soul can get through to our conscious attention.

Adherence to Ahimsa - Tree Tech 101


Ahimsa, non-violence is both a fundamental causative principle in our life, shaping everything we touch, and an under-pinning of our behavioral complexities. Disconnection and fear is the “root of the root”. Love, respect and acceptance of our self prime the pump of the creative well within. Violating self-love and siding with self-neglect or self-loathing is the core origin for all manifestations of spiritual dryness. The seat of our own awareness, our soul, this indivisible awareness with the total vision, the seed in our tree story, is our own inner hero. In The Yoga Sutras, how the mind first subdivides and creates its own obstacles is explained clearly in 196 aphorisms. For me reading the sutras lit flaming torches on the road to freedom. Our demanding ego, a shadow of the real self, is the cause of the real drag in life. It slows down forward thrust and increases our addictive need of and enslavement to this world. The world is wonderful, but not so when we have forgotten our true nature and let ego call the shots. For when we resist either the flow of the MOM or Freedom Wave, when we resist and say NO to our very own life creations, we reject self. Thus energy stalls and slips down. This is against self, this is violence. We can stop such nonsense once we see the game.


Promises, Promises – The Honor of Our Word


The ultimate promise to self is to allow our soul seed awareness to fully incarnate into the body and mind. The luminosity of the soul may cause intense feelings of radiation within. Some feel heat, sense a warm fluid moving within or see light. Sometimes I do too. Now the body moves with greater grace. These warm feelings help provide impetus to keep UP and find the keys to access our wishing well, our font of all good to come. Our heart of infinite gold rewards us when we open. As we soften, this flowering offsets the rigors of the upward climb, our spiritual journey. The Yogis call this heart juice, nectar. We need the hearts energy to sustain UP drive.

When we honor and keep a firm commitment to know, flow and grow beyond whatever illusions enslave us, regardless of what comes up, we culture self-confidence. In life we are likely to come face to face with challenges that sprouted from our less-than-loving thoughts. Yet the practice of non-violence, of self-love, self-communication and self-acceptance form this powerful foundation of self-reliance and inner strength. When our foundation, our promise to love and honor our self is solid, our roots can drink deeply. Then we are open to receive. By pausing to breathe deeply, by practicing the tree of yoga and by studying ourselves we transform. Plucking apart negative thoughts before we express them begins to break the pattern. The defensive egoic formulas that fuel down loose power. Down begins to turn to UP! If you are excited by this then perhaps your wonderment factor is already twirling you UP the cosmic slide! Good work.


Exposing the Ego Song – Anytime but Now!

What tools can we summon to expose the ego song? The ego likes to look good and tends to mask its destructive underlying motives. We are either 100% committed to live up to our word or willing to slip slide through life, looking for “outs” - justifications. An agreement represents the honor of our word and the power of our commitment is a tap root which supports and feeds the growth of our tree towards freedom. Being impeccably responsible and trusting in our own self-worth is the basis for creating freedom and prosperity. Forgetting significant agreements or allowing reasons, accidents, sickness or circumstances to unilaterally shift the rules is generally the slid/slide work of the egoic mind. Violating promises and commitments undermine our own self image – these actions are against self and therefore are violent. If agreements are broken regularly, we loose trust in our word to get the job done. Have you ever argued for your own limitations? It is an illusion that circumstances dictate our life, health, relationships or professional status. Our ego mind is a song, a voice that puts ideas in our head. It invents creative ways to get out of commitments. It’s a misuse of the MOM Wave. We are divinely gifted with free will and can use it for good or not. Now, we can select the high path, the tree tech path to reverse all downward spins and lighten UP!

Harmonic Alignment = Freedom!


I find that the more integrally I operate without what I call Hit and Run Tactics, the games my lost child plays when it is scared, the more energy I have for fun. The more fun I have the more I hear the freedom song of my soul. In this flushed abundant state, I now and only now, can cope with the take away factor of the Freedom Wave. In this exuberant wide open place, I begin to figure out how to use the dismantling process without hurting myself or others. I ponder Ahimsa and ask for clarity within if I get into a jam of any sort.

When I am in harmony, I have both Wave reigns in my hands, to create More of Me and the Freedom to give UP! The seed of my soul thrills in taking the MOM and Freedom Wave ride to higher and higher octaves. The more I stay UP on my wave, thrilled with the day, balanced and joyous, I falter less and thus wave friction is reduced. Growth is fun! Harmonic alignment is possible! The Tree of Yoga and The Yoga Sutras explain systemically how to remove the causes of obstacles. Yoga leads to Samadhi – Sanskrit for a state of harmony.

Yes Listening


The YES form of listening is a disciplined approach to hearing that can attune us to know the richness of our inner landscape, the magical dream world I call Wowland. As we become free to journey to Wowland throughout our day and night, synchronistic events are drawn forth more frequently. We catch glimpses of this juicy heart place leading to freedom’s gate where the egoic walls melt and the fluids run clear. Yes, we taste the salt of high adventure and smell the wind of relief. Maybe we cry, or dance and celebrate. Whoosh! we let that Freedom Wave roll. We let go! Now we can make more fun. We say YES, I am ready! Now, ready, set, go. Now, go - know, flow and grow.

And please remember to love each other UP! …..Oh, that is Part 3…to be continued.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Freedom's Blog - How to Turn Down to UP! In 5 Part Harmony

Part 1 – Riding The MOM Wave

Introduction
This tangible universe operates according to the laws of opposites, checks and balances where every force is counterbalanced. From this perspective there is no good or bad, right or wrong, just the ever moving dance of cosmic ether into matter and then the reverse process of dissolution. I call these two vectors The MOM (More of Me) Wave and The Freedom Wave; together they cause full atomic cycling. Noticing and riding these two waves with equal openness brings harmonic balance. Letting go on the Freedom Wave makes more room for creativity. Creativity on the MOM Wave is enhanced when we can put down our old habits. Posing our mind and heart between these opposite forces and accepting life as a joy, helps reverse downward trends and restores UP and forward motion. My perspectives and the exercises that follow are drawn from the well of ancient yogic wisdom of which I am a student. Take what fits for you. At this time, some of my favorite authors are B.K.S. Iyengar, Eckert Tolle and the Abraham material.

Caveat for Down & UP
Labeling life as down or up is quite absurd! The cosmos is swirling! However, in this blog “down” refers to mood energy which has become dismembered from the inner throb of peaceful being. This sub-divided aspect of self takes on personality characteristic and causes a mood removed from full MOM and Freedom cycle, a mood that fights itself and tends to create encumbrances or obstacles. So “down” in Freedom’s Blog refers to emotional energy that has become awkwardly complex, isolated, slow moving and biologically dysfunctional. Healthy flow gets inhibited and cellular cycles that depend on the full MOM and Freedom cycle become chaotic. A build up of stuff that blocks our insight of how to move on is caused by resisting the cleansing power of the Freedom Wave.

The MOM Wave and The Freedom Wave
Most of us know what its like to get stuck in the down dimension. Down and UP emotions create matching life circumstances. If heading down you might get more down and notice your life turning downhill. However the good news is the well is always open! The More-of-Me or MOM Wave describes a common direction in time/space, a force that primes the creative well within which is designed to express and manifest our desires.

In yoga, the stages of development from a seed to flower and fruit bearing tree describe the spiritual quest. Our soul is the seed, the original spark that caused life. Our soul is a watcher that allows the creative wave to flow through the body and mind to awaken, grow, bloom and completes itself. The MOM Wave is moving behind all life and there is no stopping it. Trying to block MOM can cause exhaustion. The wishing well of our heart, our very own creative vortex, is the hot little idea-box that the MOM Wave draws from and returns to. Our unique soul generates its own beautiful ideas to add to the collective wave. The MOM Wave causes fruitation, it composes and the Freedom Wave facilitates decomposing or cosmic composting.

Allowing The MOM Wave to Move Through You
If we try to block the MOM Wave from moving through us, it tends to cause friction. This disturbance can cause a type of blindness where the soul gets dizzy and forgets what it is UP to. It is easy to become so enraptured and busy in this marvelous world. The yogic theory is that as we grow immersed into multiplying the complexity of our idea-forms, the very dazzle of it all creates amnesia of why we first came into motion. We loose our memory of purpose. Our soul seed voice gets crowded out by other competitive agendas that the mind makes up. This aspect of the mind, the ego, is very much like a lost child. The animal mind will fight to the death to prove it’s self along with clinging to everything in sight. Really our child is afraid. This floundering of desperation wastes energy and disperses concentration. That is how downward swirl occurs; dynamic UP and forward motion is sacrificed. Our disconnection within is what starts the whirlpool of down. Distrust maintains the blockage. Lack of faith in the MOM Wave causes us to pinch tight the feed lines.
We pivot towards the good when we open to allow the MOM Wave to flow through us. To prepare for MOM, we widen our chest, relax and invite her to move through us without complaint. Trust opens our heart and teaches us to ride the wild MOM for all she’s worth. YES IS THE WORD for more MOM!

The Goddess of MOM
The MOM Wave is called The Goddess by ancient cultures. For instance, Lakshmi is the Hindu goddess of wealth, prosperity, wisdom, fortune, generosity and courage. For me this archetype conjures up an image of a magnificent being that emits luxurious, generosity and infinite benevolence. Belief in a high power can help restore trust or you can just trust MOM without needing a stimulus or symbol. Accessing innate intelligence and remembering we are free to create our own destiny is the first step to come awake. Even our cells have the codes to recall our truth and make MOM, more of me. Our solar plexus can be triggered to act like turbines of trust, real guts, ever ready to spiral UP!

Posing or Imposing
While we have little control over the world and its myriad of characters, we do have control over the posing of our emotions. We cannot impose our ideas on others but we can be the peace we wish to see in the world. You see, even if a person is really stuck in “Downland”, and believes they have zero control over their feelings; one step in the UP direction will reverse down.

Give Up the Future
The shift can only occur in the now, not later. I had to give up the future. It never came and that made me unhappy. So then I learned to let go of this fleeting thing called future. Turning down to up requires a powerful pivot, best to do it immediately, fueled by gut trust in our self. UP feelings empower our will to live, activates digestion, increases our rate of inhalation and exhalation and mobilizes cellular intelligence. An UP energy vibration impacts health, happiness and harmony. Down energy can cause the soul seed to forget entirely its reason for being, causing anger, blame and confusion. It is never too late to turn around. UP energy restores memory, relieves frustration and despair and leads towards freedom’s gate. So ride the MOM Wave and go for UP and forward with all your might and don’t look back. Oops, I forgot to mention, you have to give up the past too!

Hint
She, the great MOM Wave, flows on your in-breath!


Stay tuned in. Part 2 of Freedom’s Blog explores The MOM Wave partner – The Freedom Wave