Party like it's 12-21-12

Thanks to Happy Box 365 for posting just the right thing this morning.

A weekend at Kripalu was just what this yoga teacher needed. I came home yesterday a different person, not just renewed but having tapped into something deeper, something I didn't know was there. I'm still processing and I'll continue to share as things settle.

The weekend was a business trip. A Bona Fide Butterflies cohort and I participated in a workshop called "Creating Transformational Workshops" presented by Ken Nelson and Lesli Lang. While we each had our individual reasons for going, our joint intention was to get ideas for the upcoming women's retreat.

Last evening, while it was all fresh and bursting out of our heads anyway, the group of facilitators met to revisit our retreat plans. Changes were made, and more changes will be made, but we are very happy with what's coming together.

In an interesting juxtaposition, I found out that a friend is planning an "end of the world" party for December 21st, because if the world should happen to end she wants to go out having fun with the people she loves.

Which got me thinking. Are we planning a post-apocalyptic retreat? How can we make plans for a future that may never happen or may be so radically changed that the plans are irrelevant?

I don't think we'll be gone on December 22nd and the expansion of consciousness which I believe has already begun is more likely to be a slow process than a flick-of-a-switch change. But it does make me think about how I'd like to spend the next thirty days.

If this was my last month on earth, I'd try to be more present to the moments, to listen to my children when they speak, to hug more often, to spend time with people who make me happy, to let go and to forgive. I would keep my house neat, just in case I get a visit from some divine being. I would meditate and do my yoga practice every day, and smile at strangers. I would try to notice and appreciate the trees and the animals and eat the bountiful gifts of the earth and share the energy of the web of life.

What if we all lived every day as if we only had thirty more? Would we create the very change that would mark the "end of the world" and the beginning of something new?

If I knew the world was going to end, would I spend time planning the retreat? Absolutely. And I'd enjoy every minute that I spent with the ladies that are the Bona Fide Butterflies, who laugh, share, support and challenge each other and who, each in their unique way, would enrich my last thirty days in countless ways.

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There was so much at Kripalu that inspired me during my stay. Here's a snippet of a song by a group that I really enjoyed, recorded during another performance at Kripalu earlier this year.

Sunday Sutras: Unbounded (1.3 and 1.4)

Image via Wikipedia

Last week I started my study of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras with verses 1.1 and 1.2. This week, as promised, we get to find out why settling the mind into silence is something we want to be doing.

1.3 When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature, which is unbounded consciousness.

The big word there is "unbounded." Consciousness without boundaries. Consciousness without limits. Sounds good, right? So what limits our consciousness when the mind is unsettled?

1.4 Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind.

The mind chatters. It creates thoughts all the time. Those thoughts tend to be very mundane and not very focused on the present. Sometimes my mind rehashes the last conversation I had with a friend. Sometimes it reminds me, over and over, of something I need to pick up at the store (except, of course, when I'm driving by the store). Other times my mind comes up with new ideas for yoga workshops or things to blog about. What my mind doesn't do is quiet down.

Underneath all that chatter is knowledge of our essential nature. Which is where things start to get tricky. Isn't it the mind that knows stuff? And if it is, how can I know anything if I turn off my mind?

If you saw the movie Shrek, you might remember Shrek saying "ogres are like onions, they have layers." Our minds are like onions. There are layers and layers of thoughts. The superficial thoughts prompt us to put another load of laundry into the washing machine. Then there are layers of memories. There are math problems and literary themes. And deeper there are reactions to the senses - touch, smell, sight, sound - that create the boundaries that turn clusters of molecules and energy into things. There is a layer of names for these things.

Underneath all those layers, at the core of the onion, is something that is not the mind. People give it different names - the watcher, the soul, the true self - but it is that essential nature that the mind hides. It is consciousness unlimited by the boundaries created by the senses and the associated thoughts. In other words, that consciousness is not constrained by the physical world.

Our true selves don't end at our skin.

When we cease all those layers of thinking, we can experience the limitless soul. That sounds pretty groovy if you ask me. But thinking is in the way. Before we can figure out how to stop it we need to know more about all that thinking that's going on. And that's for next week...