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My birthday’s in a couple of days. I’m not big on this birthday thing. A birthday person, not me. But every year I know it’s that weird day.  The special day?  The day that I was born, September 27th, 1995.  The expectations come on the people I love.  The disappointment follows along.  On this day, every year.  I know my mom threw big parties when I was a kid.  She brought ponies, friends and family.  Cake too.  When I was in 5th grade, I gave a note to my teacher,  “I’m going to bring cupcakes to celebrate tomorrow”. The next day, I put them under my desk, hoping that we would sing soon.  The teacher forgot and I didn’t want to be a bother.   Tears were falling right after school.  As the years roll by, I forget what happened.  But one or two, I remember a few.   Like my friend telling me last minute she couldn’t come to the field trip.  Her head, pounding from the night before.  Hungover still.  I found myself alone. In the green grass, no one to talk to, no one to care.  Just the clouds and I. Or the time I went hiking, only for my boyfriend to say, “can you pay for the gas.”  A lot of time has gone by.  Some birthdays were great, some I wish to forget  And through the years I learned and cried.  I cried a lot.  But let me make this straight. I’m living a life I never imagined.  To be standing in front of people everyday teaching.  I went down this spiritual path, accepting my life for what it is.  Not perfect at all.  Not married with kids by 30.  No boyfriend insight.  I am 31 years young. I have that.

We stay in the tension, the fire and soften into the pose, so we can finally get out and understand how strong and resilient we are. But tapas is more than the poses. Tapas is more than the discomfort we feel when we are in a split, half split or whatever pose is uncomfortable.  It’s the real emotion. The emotion that is so sad you become numb. To really be in tapas is the real sadness. The sadness you still think of and cry. The sadness of breaking up with your boyfriend years ago.  I think back to then. The thought of doing that broke me into a million pieces. The future that I thought I had was gone. The feeling of trying so hard to make the relationship work and actually becoming the biggest failure.  Realizing that I was not worthy of real love. That my efforts were not enough and that I was never going to be enough.  I was not enough  I was not enough  I was not enough  That’s the feeling of tapas.  The feeling of not being enough.  This is my fire. I am not enough.  I’ll stay in this feeling til I finally realize I am enough. 

For a long time I have been cocooning.  First, I was a caterpillar, muscling my way to finally see the light.  Then a butterfly, discovering my confidence. Realizing that I can fly.  I created amazing relationships with friends and family, adapted and accepted people for who they are. I stood on my own two feet, taking care of myself, then a cat and a dog. I was a capable functioning human. I was kicking; my butterfly stage.   As I reflected, again and again. I realized that becoming this butterfly had a cost. I was protecting myself from any harm and lost my ability to be vulnerable. I didn’t want to go back to my cocoon stage, but here I was, in a different way. My wall, so high.  From hurt to num. From one cocoon to another.  I was stealing from myself, my inability to have intimate connections, my inability to trust. The only person I could trust was me.  I could trust people to some degree, but never with my whole heart.   So what happens now? Present moment.  Can I really break free?  #Astey #nonstealing #self-study #svadhyaya

I believe that we are shown, given a signpost, to the books that we read. There was a specific message for me when I read, “The Inner Heart of Reiki” by Frans Stiene. The book talks about reiki of course. Specifically, when we say the precepts: For today only  Do not anger  Do not worry  Be humble  Be honest in your work  Be compassionate to yourself and others  it brings out our anger and worry for a reason. Because we all know that if you say, “I don’t hate you” or “I don’t love you” there’s always some part of you that does hate and love that person. I always thought that I shouldn’t say, “do not play in the park” because unconsciously we want someone to play in the park. What the precepts teach us is that we are human and we do have these feelings and in order to get it out of us, the worry and anger we need to acknowledge that it’s there.  A lot of the time we may not acknowledge our feelings. We just want to float and be in control of how we act, so we don’t have extreme lows or extreme highs.  But what I realized by reading is that suppressing it does not help. Saying, “do not anger” and “do not worry” means we are human and we are allowed to have those feelings. And when we continue to chant and repeat the precepts the goal is to intellectually understand them, so we can start to embody them with our whole being.  The hand positions don’t really matter so much, but embodying the mantras and the precepts do. When we fully are (and that takes time) we don’t need to do anything else and we can finally be. Finally being able to be our True Self is what matters. Removing one lampshade from our great bright light again and again.  To be able to stay in the fire (tapas) so we can finally learn the lesson and see our great bright light.