If I were to ask you where would you like your life to be, would you rather have a life that’s grounded from your interior world, or would you rather retain a life that’s grounded in physicality? You know physicality. It’s that world of being a human. It’s living in the physical world. A place that we all know is full of an awful lot of chaos. While we’ll always move in the physical world because we are in human form, we are energy in physicality and human form, we can choose a life that is grounded in our interior. What do I mean by that? I mean you have a choice. You can choose to visit your world of intuition, your spiritual, your soul, your world of connection to your spiritual values. You can choose that world by going to yoga, by meditating, taking a walk in the woods, ...
Very often when we look to make shifts in how we be or we want to add practices into our life or we want to reflect, we want to have the active practice of reflection and observation about how we’ve been in the world in order to make our life our practice, it always seems as if, for many people, that we have no time. “Finding the time” seems to be beyond the reach of many people. So, great intentions never get realized. Often, when people think about making shifts in their behavior, or simply looking to add time onto their day in order to reflect and add the practice of meditation to their day it seems as if there’s no time. I find in talking with students when we talk about putting a practice into their life or adding time to reflect on how they be in the world, ...
Making decisions for many people can be a very, very difficult task. In fact, some people get paralyzed making commitments. Other people, regard decision making, as quite simple or quite easy. I remember when I was a little girl, my grandfather, my mother’s father,Jack was from Poland. He was a tailor and he lived in the Bronx with my Grandma Lily. He was one of the wisest people I know. I absolutely loved him and he adored me. I remember once at some point when I was just about a teenager, asking my grandfather about making decisions. I had a decision to make an didn’t know how to do so. Although his name was Jack, I called him Grandpa Pop. I remember saying, “Grandpa Pop, I can’t figure this out. How do I make my choice?” My grandfather, in a way that only Grandpa Pop could do, took his cigar ...
Many students who come to practical spirituality are already on a path. They may be yoga teachers, people who meditate regularly, they’ve possibly worked with other spiritual teachers. They’ve gone to workshops. They’ve read lots of books on spirituality, on energy work, on Buddhism, on Taoism, on different practices. They’ve studied teachers like Caroline Myss and Eckhart Tolle. They’ve followed Deepak Chopra and possibly done silent retreats. What hasn’t happened for these dedicated students is that they haven’t moved what they know into their daily life. They haven’t integrated the knowledge so their life still yet is not a representation of their beliefs. They haven’t incorporated their values into how they be in their daily life. Students who have been studying for some time, who have done the work, incorporated their values quite a bit, and see their state has changed, may find themselves calmer. Upon reflection they realize they ...
The consistency of our time and attention when we approach practical spirituality is very, very important. The concept of practical spirituality is to approach our everyday life and to respond to the challenges, to our relationships, opportunities, events, from one of the many faces of love. This looks like, as things happen instead of getting lost inside the event we always keep an awareness that there is a response we can have in any situation that comes from love. As events arise, as challenges show up we train ourselves, to respond form love. This is a practice, we train ourselves to automatically say, “I see I’m having an opportunity here to not lose myself to my emotions” We use our emotions as an alarm clock and we say, “I have choice. What face of love shall I respond with?” Is it patience? Kindness? Grace? Tolerance? As you choose that face ...
Honoring your humanity. It’s important. It’s important to not denigrate but to celebrate who we are in our totality. Sometimes when we’re on a spiritual path and we’re so invested in bringing forward the intuitive body and beginning to work from the intuitive rather than the brain and emotional state, which is where we’re usually functioning from, when we’re in that process of bringing forward the divine and having that lead our way, there is sometimes a tendency to denigrate, to make less the parts in us, the thinking mind, the feelings and to put them aside or hold them in a place where we say, “Go away.” We’re taught in certain spiritual material that we read that our ego doesn’t serve us and we’re looking to replace our ego. I would kindly suggest that our ego serves us quite well. What we need to do is indeed not to ...
Living in your own truth, is not an easy thing to do. Maybe that’s why so many people in our world today are so interested in everybody else’s truth. In fact, many people are interested in everybody else’s business. We’ve got magazines that blare the stories of not only celebrities but anyone who has any type of visibility in our world. We have TV shows that are going into the lives of all kinds of people who have dysfunctions and parading them in front of the world as if it was news. Many, many, many people today are buying into the distraction of other people’s lives instead of spending the time to discover and make real what their truth is. You know, living in your truth isn’t just about how you build your life or the type of life you build. It’s about knowing moment to moment what is really ...
Practical spirituality. I’ve been thinking about that term, as it was recently given to me by spirit to define the teachings they given to me to give to you. Practical spirituality. It truly refers to the idea that everything you need to do, all the tools you have in order to access and work and develop a life that is based in spirit you already have. You have everything. It’s all inside of you. The memory of who you are, the memory of energy in form that you are. Not the thinking memory, but the true experience of who you are is inside of you. The breath that will take you and open up a place of space for that memory, that spirit inside of you to exist in your daily life, that breath is the tool. Yoga is a tool. Yoga is not a destination. It’s not just a ...
The purpose of our daily life. We’re here in bodies as energy in form. I believe there is a very specific purpose for this. The purpose of our daily life, of the challenges, of the stories that happen, of the relationships we have, the decisions and choices that we get to make, the events, the beauty, the wonder, the pain. I believe that the purpose of the way that our life is constructed is to help us to practice and to bring into the physical world the energy of who we truly are, the energy of our natural inheritance, the energy of love. Think about it. If every opportunity and exchange, every glance across the subway platform, every person that we meet in the street or don’t meet but we see, if every decision about our life is an opportunity for us to express one of the many facets and ...
In the last few days, I’ve had the opportunity to be reminded of the power of love. Many will tell you that love is our natural inheritance. I believe that to be true. I read an article very recently in the New York Times that was about people who supported those that were transitioning off the planet. Many of them said that they felt so helpless. They felt so hopeless. One man felt particularly felt powerless as his friend was dying of a brain tumor. He was so moved that he ended up doing a major study asking many people who had gone through similar circumstances, “What would be of help to you when you\’re dying? What can people do to be of service to you?” He was totally surprised because across the board all he heard was, “All I want is to be loved. Tell me that I am ...