Have you Forgotten

I can't sleep.

I'm staring at the lower right corner of my computer screen as it reads 4:47 AM. I forget for a moment that good old Chip (my beloved computer) has still got me on Maryland time. It is in fact only 10:48 PM. Nonetheless, I can't sleep.

I set my i-tunes to shuffle and a new, well favored tune, Have You Forgotten by Jenny Owen Youngs starts in.(I do enjoy the original by Red House Painters as well)She's got the quirky-folk-vibe of an Ingrid Michaelson or Regina Spektor with a hint of Cat Power and Kimya Dawson. I hear her voice and imagine an old fashioned stand up microphone, a smoky lounge with colored lanterns, over-sized couches, and entry ways adorned with dangling beads or strings of paper birds. Groups of funky hipsters, writers, and artists wearing thick framed glasses drink tea and tap their fingers to the melancholic, yet perceptively smart lyrics of this hauntingly sweet sound.

Hmm, how nice to be transported if even for a moment, huh?

And so goes the refrain: Have you forgotten how to love yourself? Have you forgotten how to love yourself? And so it resonates tonight.

In a seemingly serendipitous moment I flip open my latest purchase, Meditations from the Mat, a beautiful collection of daily meditations/reflections not only on the practice of Yoga, but its full integration into every day life.

As my own practice reminds me, we are Yoga.
We are yoga.
We are the breath, the Prana, the light source of unique individuality.
This is not a practice but an extension of our most natural selves. We move out into the world: beyond the studio, stepping off our mats, releasing postures, all the while living our yoga. And these notions of positive energy and gratitude are not just notions but realities. Thoughts of peace, understanding, and the most central component of love are not just thoughts. We live Yoga. We hold it dear then thrust is outward into the great expanse, feel the great wash over all that surrounds us, and wait as divine Karma provides all that we should need. (still with me?)

Tonight I've flipped open to Day 19 only to find a favorite quote from the Indigo Girls: Well, darkness has a hunger that's insatiable, and lightness has a call that's hard to hear.

Talk about good timing- about interlacing liquid threads, to steal from my other writings. These thoughts have intersected here, tonight, in my own meditation of sorts.

The book's reflection delves into our human nature of making mistakes - of falling into a downward spiral, or even the fear of following in the destructive footsteps of another. We have all known the insatiable hunger of darkness, though in choosing to hear lightness the call becomes clearer and clearer. We live in a world filled with voices of judgment. We've been conditioned, perhaps taught, to fear or cause harm to others and even ourselves. Gates and Kennison, the authors of Meditations note that there is another voice: one of lightness. Ahimsa is the practice of listening to this voice - learning to cultivate and act upon it, so that we may choose to not listen to those darker voices and move toward the vitality and energy of light instead.

We are surrounded by even the smallest elements of darkness daily. And while we have no responsibility or obligation to listen to, or act upon them, we all at times fall down the spiraled path. We are human after all. Yet, what if we could more actively call upon the light? What if we could remember to love ourselves more readily and fully without guilt or judgment? Maybe then others would be more apt to love us in similar manners and we in turn, could love them too.

5:28 AM
no, 11:28 PM.

I still can't sleep.

But I may at least (at most?) take comfort in knowing that I am in the most beautiful state of light. There is an inherent calm and peace that comes from an existence of such heightened self awareness. I wonder if Thoreau felt like this when he went off to the woods to live deliberately? When he sought to suck all the marrow out of life did he come to this place of lightness? Free of judgment or external voices and fear?

My Yoga instructor Melanie says that our greatest misunderstanding is that whatever it is we think we want, or need, or are looking for is something external. But rather, whatever that thing is already exists within. It is simply our responsibility and task to uncover and access that unique element of self. And then we realize what we've known all along: that we are beautiful, powerful, unique beings. Ours are the voices of substance, ours are the hearts filled with love, ours are the minds of complex and valuable matter.

....
So where did I go? It started with a song, and then connected to another lyric which was a piece of another text... And that resonated with a practice and an ideology and a way of life. And now I'm back to this internal investigation which is in a sense, what all of this is really about. (still with me?)

5:52 AM
no, 11:52 PM

Regardless, I'm tired. But I think there's some coherence in there somewhere.