Tag: surrender

Living with a heart wider open

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

Yesterday, I was reading a reflection in a lovely yoga book called Meditation on Intention and Being, by Rolf Gates, and there is a passage there that really resonated with me to share. It is from a section discussing self-study, or self-examination, being willing to look into ourselves, to understand our motives and our intents better – so we can change and purify them, change and purify our habits of thinking and doing and relating to others.

Anyway, these are the words I wish to share: “We find … that what stands between us and an act of kindness, or honesty, is not race, or gender, or politics, but just plain old-fashioned self-protection. We may mutter unkind stereotypes under our breath, but it is not because we are fundamentally against any particular type of people. What we discover is that we are against any threat to the immediate gratification of the self (ego).”

For me, this cut to the core of my own personal struggles with learning to live with a heart wider open, with generosity and vulnerability … and what I suspect is at the core of many prejudices and biases and extreme reactions people sometimes have toward those who are different, and why they feel so terribly threatened, hesitant or resistant to reach out or step out of their comfort zones. It is a self-protective measure, an ego-protective measure, a feeling that the sense of themselves as they have understood themselves, of the world as they have understood it, is threatened. And that is a fearful thing, that invites a passionate reaction of some sort … a reaction that perhaps covers up what is really at the core, that desire to protect ourselves.

That self-protectiveness, that self-defensiveness, the kind that causes me to resist or shrink in fear from deeper acts of compassion and generosity, of going beyond my self,  is something I am working on surrendering … and surrender is a challenging practice! But I don’t want the self-protective urges of my ego to cause me to miss out on the joy of surrender, living from the soul, living in abundance, generosity, purer integrity!

My intention: to become more self-aware of that limiting self-protectiveness, and to surrender it.

 

On becoming forty: Surrendered vows, divergent paths, transformed topography

/ Lanae / 2 Comments Featured

Sometime ago, in my wayback files, I found a forgotten collection of poems from my late twenties.

Seventy-seven glimpses into who I was at 29, windows and mirrors in time. Early days of motherhood, word snapshots of my first son as a baby, the changing seasons, world events, prayers, dreams, life lessons, my heart and soul.

And then, this poem. Reading it from the vantage point of 40 now felt so strikingly poignant and invited reflection… since the journey between 29 and 40 unfolded in ways unforeseen and unfathomed by 29-year-old me!

Becoming twenty-nine

And now –
I am twenty-nine
forty seems closer
more real
than it did at twenty
at fifteen
At fifteen –
I imagined twenty-four
but I think I could not
stretch my imagination more
and think of myself
who I would be beyond
Twenty-four came, twenty-four went
every year since
as though journeying into
a realm unimagined
And it seems to me
my true youth has fled
not that I feel old
but here – at this juncture of time
the limitless, or the illusion,
of limitless possibilities
has narrowed to a single road –
not even one I ever dreamed
I would walk down –
(the aisle as bride)
The future lies ahead now
with the simple choice
of living with the choices
that have closed doors
and opened but one –
ah, but let’s see how far the road
beyond it will go
and what waits along the way

Oh, what waited along the way!

That single straight road became a spiraling one with several forks in it, surprising crossroads where divergent paths met … and many new doors opened onto new paths, views, opportunities, possibilities.

Years before, I thought my life had narrowed to a single road and my path was set only to find myself drawn down an unexpected path.

Since I had felt moved to be in ministry work at 15, I had envisioned my life spent in that calling, a lifetime vow. But Spirit taught me to surrender that vision and vow … and at the time, it was painful to surrender what seemed my truest calling.

I had never dreamed I would walk down the aisle as a bride – no, I hadn’t.  Marriage hadn’t seemed a calling meant for me. But, much to my surprise, Spirit led me there, so I believed that’s where I would stay, always.

I never dreamed I would reverse that walk down the aisle; love bid me stay. But Spirit led me there, too; love bid me go.

And the profession vows I made in the fellowship I grew up in, I only thought then but what those would be for life. I dared not think otherwise … “My vows I have made, I cannot now go back.” I never fathomed leaving; love bid me stay. But Spirit led me there, too; love bid me go.

And never did I think I would be free to accept and embrace my sexuality, my identity, fully and openly … there I had made a vow of silence and self-denial, what seemed a necessary sacrifice (though I was sacrificing my wholeness and well-being, a costly sacrifice indeed, because it affected all those in relationship with me, too). Self-denial that requires denying the essence of who you are isn’t healthy self-denial, but soul-warping self-denial.

But Spirit showed me I was beloved and free, and that loving the essence of who I am and living the truth set me free.

My 29-year-old self believed there would always be a familiar and safe topography along the road ahead: same vows, same faith, same church, same community, same friends, same marriage.

And the same inner landscape with its long angst-y dark night of the soul that I believed would always be a constant in my spiritual and emotional topography, no matter what unfolded on the path.

But then the spiraling road brought me the gift of belovedness.

And living in this belovedness and liberty transformed my inner landscape, then the entire topography of my life, opening up paths, perspectives, possibilities divergent from the familiarity of the known and expected road.

I embarked on a coming-out path and surrendered that vow of deep silence regarding my sexuality. For the good of my soul I vowed to walk and live in wholeness and truthfulness; Spirit opened that vision and vow to me.

For a while, I thought the outward familiarity of the well-travelled road might mostly continue as it was … that I could walk that old path and keep other vows in a new way, as a whole person.

Yes, I expected significant changes. Yet somehow I didn’t see some of them unfolding how or as soon as they’ve unfolded … I didn’t wish for the whole path and all its familiar safe topography to change so much so soon.

But as I continued to make choices aligned with the truth of my sexuality and my spirituality, those divergent paths, those crossroads, kept meeting me at every turn. And at every turn, Spirit, yes, Spirit, kept directing me down the less familiar path, into places and paths of surrender.

My spiritual topography kept evolving; my path kept diverging.

I laid aside belief in any ‘one true way’ teachings and yet found the Way that transcends all religious traditions, creeds, and doctrines, and is the essence of true religion: Love, the universal thread of truth and life.

I parted with dear friends, friends I loved. Left a church community I loved. Spirit bid me leave, but love remains.

Ended a marriage that even in its trying times was precious to me …. worth all of the 13+ years. No regrets, no bitterness. All is gift. Spirit bid me leave, but love remains.

Some might question how it’s of love to surrender a marriage vow; a good question.

But what if the vows come to cause the hurt of your own soul … and surrendering them for the good of your soul?  What if keeping the vows causes the hurt of others, of their souls … and surrendering them for the highest good, for all?

Then surrendering them is love. Surrendering such vows, if it must be done, is best done in Love, because of love.

I surrendered none of these vows without intense contemplation to know its rightness or without profound grief for the accompanying losses.  Because of love.

Not only for my own losses, but also for the losses some near to me felt keenly. For just as my earlier lack of wholeness affected my relationships, following a path of wholeness affected my relationships. To some, I seemed no longer to be someone they recognized or knew; the changes I experienced as good for my soul, they didn’t.

And so I know there was loss and grief for others because of the divergent paths I followed, and I knew (I know) the pang of it in my own heart. Because of love.

So now, my path and my life landscape, inside and out, looks so different than my 29-year-old self could have fathomed, indeed!

For all I’ve lost, I’ve found much, much has found me. I’ve found my wholeness, my mind and soul, spiritual abundance, liberty, Belovedness! New spiritual communities, connections, capabilities. Rich relationships, deeper perspectives, purpose. And realized: I never left ministry, it only returned to me in a new form!

I see more clearly now: there have always been divergent paths. There has always been surrender on the journey. Love in each choice. Surrender and love always interwoven.

Such a divergent path it has been and become and will be, always! And Belovedness now the constant in the entire topography of my life and my journey, always.

So, here’s a new ending, on becoming forty, and beyond:

The future lies ahead now – no,
is Now
with the simple choice
of living with the choices
that have closed doors
but also opened many –
A single path, yes,
but with boundless possibility
limit itself the illusion
and abundance the truth
Ah, now let’s see how far and where the road
beyond it will go
and what is present in the way
Now

Adventures in letting go, following the flow

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

Today I followed the Spirit and went for a drive, to nowhere in particular for no reason other than to go for a drive. I had not planned on going for a drive, but I left the church and thought, I think I’d like to go to the park and sit by the water for a little while. So I went there and watched the sunlight dance on the water, little sparkles of sun flitting across the water as the wind rippled both water and light …

And then I decided I might sit somewhere else so the sun would be at my back, but when I stood up, I realized, Oh, I’m done here. Whatever I needed there, I had found – or it had found me – and so it was time to move on. But to where? Home? I didn’t know … yet.

But when I got in the van, it came to me – I know, I’ll go for a drive! And it was just me, and nowhere else I needed to be, and nowhere I was needed to be, so why not? (And how many moments like this are there for a mom of four with a full life … so if the opportunity opens up, follow it! 🙂 )

So I headed south out of town and down a county road, and just let the miles roll under my wheels. My window open and the soft, spring-smelling wind rushing in and ruffling my hair. The sunlight making the corn stubble gleam gold. The valleys and the turns in the road. Another world, it seemed to be. The sun and the wind and me.

It felt like one of those journeys you don’t know you need to be on until you are on it … and sometimes miss because you resist the whisper-nudge in your mind and soul that says, let go and just follow the flow of life, and see where you might go, just today, just for now. Let go and see where you go!

Sometimes, it is okay to go where you know not, to go without knowing yet where you are going, to let plans go and just go, to follow wherever your heart, your soul, follows the Spirit. A free-spirited following of the Spirit, a free flow …

Aimless? Reckless? My little adventure might seem a bit of both, but really, it was neither … it was an intuitive letting go, and it ended up filled with purpose and purifying peace.

It was like a driving meditation, instead of a sitting meditation or a walking meditation!

Because I found a rich stillness, a worshipfulness, and an exuberant liberty I could not have found, and the Spirit spoke to me in ways I could not have felt or heard if I had stayed where I thought I ‘ought’ to stay.

If I had resisted the simple impulse that said to me, Go, let go, just go? Then I would have missed the gift of the simple, pure freedom of just being, and just being with the Spirit as it was being with me … I would have missed what my heart, mind, and soul needed, today. I would have missed the lessons and the answers waiting for me on that journey …

To summarize them simply:

If it is a question of letting go, the answer is … let go!

Surrender to the flow of spirit in your life … wherever it may lead, follow with trust. It’s okay to let go of the need for certainty and control, to accept not knowing fully, and to follow without knowing. Find the comfort that there can be in uncertainty and impermanence.

If it is a question of loving, the answer is … Love!

Love hard, love deep, love whole-heartedly in a whole-souled way, love fiercely and fully … and if heartbreak or soul-ache comes from it, do not fear to grieve the same way. Be willing to grieve as deeply and fiercely as you’ve loved. Better the grief that might come from loving and losing, than the grief that comes from not letting go of fear and just loving …

If it is a question of being, the answer is …. BE!

Be free, be truthful, be love, be grace, be courage, be compassion, be peace! Do not so much act or advocate for change, as BE change. From the right being, the right doing will follow, the right change will follow.

 

 

 

A healing journey

/ Lanae / Leave a comment

I would like to try to reflect upon my recently completed yoga teacher training experience … but I have no adequate words to express the journey. Sometimes there aren’t words and all words are adequate for is to say that they are inadequate to describe the immensity and intensity of an experience …

I suppose I really want beautiful words, the most beautiful words, to paint the most heart-stirring and gilded, evocative and fluid and flowing, picture possible … I feel that the experience is worthy of the most beautiful words that I could find! But what I carry forward is gratitude, for the journey and for those beautiful people, beautiful souls all, with whom I shared it!

I would not have imagined the big-ness of the spiritual journey upon which I was embarking … the layers of my soul that would be exposed to me, the depths that I would plumb, the magnitude of relational shifts, to myself, to others around me, to closer friends and family, to the earth herself …

Oh, like the unfolding of a lotus, a thousand petals opening infinitely outward! There it is, one image to illustrate it …

But perhaps I have to return to the spiral … like that in the trinity labyrinth tattoo that I have on my inner left ankle. Three spirals seamlessly flowing into a center and back out and around in an unbroken line, this labyrinth represents a spiritual journey, re-creation, awakening, transformation …  spiraling in, spiraling out.

As much as the lotus ever unfolding outward even while the tight bud seems to remain at center represents my feelings about this yoga journey, so does the labyrinth, spiraling in, spiraling out.

Sometimes you must fold in on yourself to open outward and bloom, sometimes you must go deep inward in order to find your way back out.

Sometimes you must walk through the darkness and the fire to find light and peace and stillness … be burned to nothing to find cleansing and purifying and wholeness.

I feel that this is not only what happened in the actual teacher training weekends once a month, but also over the entire seven months in the midst of the training …

Did the experience of beginning the teacher training begin opening my heart to an even deeper searching for truth and deeper willingness to live it, regardless of the cost to my ego and my comfort, or did the searching of my heart for truth and my soul for a voice lead me to the teacher training? Perhaps both. Perhaps it matters not.

All the threads were unfolding as they were meant to unfold … as I walked the path, the path opened itself to me, and as I embraced it, it embraced me.

I began the journey with the conscious thought that I needed to learn a deeper physical practice, to know the asana aspect of yoga better … perhaps to bring a balance to mind, body, and soul that I have always sought and craved. I began knowing that I was not in balance … I knew meditation, contemplation, reflection. Well, so I thought!

Those spiritual elements were my focus, perhaps I should say, my idol … ego was in my spirituality. Ego was in my meditation …

Even though I loved to exercise, to run, and found it a spiritual thing, I still did not have what I would call body/soul integration. There was a disconnect, an imbalance in the way I lived with my body, used my body, thought of my body, shamed my body for being a body, for being an imperfect body. For being less important than my soul.

I didn’t live in a soul-ish way in my body. I lived with much ego in my body … a prideful discipline, not a compassionate discipline.

And going through the yoga teacher training, I learned that deeper and more compassionate body discipline, I found that body/soul connection. I found the soul in the asana practice … and it brought me back around to the meditative elements, but deeper into them, deeper into the soul.

Because I learned to find the soul in the body and the body in the soul, and to know that the soul and body need to have a loving relationship … and I need to have a loving relationship with both …

And as I came through to the end of my training, I found myself back where I had begun … where I had never left, having but gone deeper, through the body into the soul … using the body to let go of ego, and in the letting go, finding the soul. In the letting go, the self-surrender, the surrender to the sacred, finding the stillness …

I learned the art of stillness.

I learned that I want to teach the art of stillness.

I learned that I CAN teach the art of stillness. But only if I stay in the space where I am willing to keep surrendering ego and surrendering to the sacred, to the light, to belovedness …

And I want to show that stillness is a safe place … that it is a safe space to be, to see the soul and know it.

May I teach, may I live, may I be with others in such a way that people can see stillness is a safe and beautiful and healing space to be … a safe space to wake up to the soul and find wholeness and healing in the stillness,  and then live awake and whole!

I am grateful that I have found wholeness and safeness in stillness. That I have come to know stillness as the safest space to be and to become anew, to always be becoming anew …

And coming, becoming, from that place of stillness, to be in my body and my soul in a new way, to be in my relationships and in this world, in a new way, a deeper way.

Resting in the posture

/ Lanae / Leave a comment

The blog has been quiet again! That is what happens to the blogging life when the demands of grad school loom large in the form of two giant research papers. Fifty-odd pages later, I can come up for some air … and take final exams. Then start all over with two more classes promptly starting, two days after these classes end … keep breathing!

Oh, and add yoga teacher training classes into that mix: intense, full weekends once a month, and two of them close together, right in the midst of the rush of the research papers and the exams! Just keep breathing, yes …

Well, this is the life and the workload I chose, and so I am not complaining! I am still learning how to breathe mindfully through it all, however. Still learning how to ‘rest in the posture,’ as it were.

Resting in the posture is something I’ve learned from yoga, a way to sustain, settle, stay in strength,  to find strength to stay in a challenging posture. (To give credit where credit must be given, I learned the phrase ‘rest in the posture’ from a lovely book called Meditations from the Mat, by Rolf Gates. )

In yoga, to rest in the posture is to be able to stay in the pose, deepen into it, even to surrender into it, when the temptation is to bail out of it instead.

But to be able to stay in it, to find strength, means first pausing, stepping back out of the pose a bit, adjusting, and then moving back into it again. It means letting go of tension, letting a softness and lightness flow through bones and muscles and mind instead, surrendering stubbornness and surrendering into the struggle, into the challenge, into the pose in the moment.

Challenging, difficult poses or postures aren’t just found in yoga, though! They’re found everywhere, in parenting, in marriage and friendships, in the workplace, in going back to school, in taking on a new adventure, in suffering the loss of a loved one, or even in the most ordinary-seeming everyday days … and in a sense, the posture never ends. It changes, but flows on, like a river to the sea …

Learning to rest in the posture then, in some way or another, seems essential to having the strength to sustain the posture, to handle whatever the challenge is, to embrace the struggle or the suffering. To sustain and be sustained, to embrace and be embraced through it.

So, sometimes I am struggling in a pose, or struggling in a yoga class, and I remember, ‘rest in the posture,’ and I feel something in me, in my body and in my heart, shift and melt … and I realize, the strength and will and joy to endure are there!

And other times, like when I felt overwhelmed with life happening all at once, research papers, yoga class homework, kids out of school for the summer … I think, wow, how can I manage all of this?! And I remember, ‘rest in the posture.’ And something in me shifts, settles into acceptance, and vital grace is there again.

Let go of tensions, let go of resistance to the challenge, struggle, or suffering, let go of what is not needful or helpful. Pause, rest, surrender, re-adjust, find the grace and joy and strength of this moment! And be amazed at how much grace and joy and strength there is in you, to tap into when you rest in the posture. And be in awe at what postures (of life) you can rest in and how much rest you can find there.

In writing this, I realized that this phrase ‘rest in the posture,’ is so much like a phrase I used in an earlier post, ‘take refuge in surrender.’ They really are so much alike, but yet different, perhaps, too. Instead of me explaining what I think that means, I think I’ll leave space for you to decide whatever the meaning is for you!

******************************************

And,  related to the idea of the posture never ending, but shifting into new forms, and finding grace to rest in the new posture …

I find myself moved to do something that is like shifting into a new posture, something that seems scary to me, because it’s perhaps making myself vulnerable in a way I haven’t before, opening up my heart-space, my soul, to you all in a different way …

And that is to share on this blog, in a section of its own that I will set up soon, a statement of faith/spirituality that I wrote after a dear friend said to me, you should write a statement of faith; I would love to read it!

Sharing it feels sort of like a posture that I might rather avoid because of fear I’ll fall out of it or embarrass myself, but something says to me, just take refuge in surrender and rest in this posture, too. And who knows what grace will come from it!

So, check back soon! 🙂

 

 

Reflections about my blogging …

/ Lanae / 5 Comments

I have felt rather quiet recently … and without much idea of what I might talk about in another post.

Well, maybe some of that feeling is related to the unkind little flu-bug I have been dealing with the last while that left me feeling like a trainwreck, muddle-headed, with fire in my joints and muscles! That’s probably as good of a reason as any to take a time of rest – and let some things go, let others wait … well, except graduate students do still have to get their schoolwork in on time, muddle-headed and all!

And some of that feeling is related to evaluating what I am doing with this blog … or what this blog is doing with me, too! Looking at the desires and intentions, the vision, I had for this space to be a space of connection and conversation and looking at whether it really feels like a comfortable and inviting space to you all … is there a significant divergence between my intentions and vision and my actual creation? That the direction I wanted to go, stated I wanted to go, is not exactly the direction in which I find myself having gone?

Well, divergence happens, direction changes happen … and then perhaps direction corrections are in order, but perhaps sometimes not! Perhaps sometimes the “right” direction is the one you find yourself having gone, whether it was the one intended or planned. And it’s good to remember that often the destination can be approached from many different directions … there isn’t only one right path all the time!

And is it the precise direction or path that matters most – or the vision? Which leads? Perhaps the vision creates the right direction for itself …

I know sometimes I have written in a much more scholarly or teacher-ly (yes, I make up words sometimes! 😉 ) tone. Or sometimes maybe too abstract! And possibly this isn’t the right direction to go to create a ‘connection and conversation space,’ a relatable and vulnerable space. Then again, there really are many ways to create connection and conversation, to engage in connection and conversation!

And so perhaps I’m learning from this blog and what it’s doing with me that I need to be more mindful of my style of connection and conversation … to be mindful of how I can clarify and simplify the vision and the message I want to share, how I can clarify and simplify the way I share it!

And yet, I have been writing with my heart, my heart and my mind both, my soul and my intellect, with my own voice, offering authentic offerings … my blog itself is an imperfect, but authentic, offering. And I say ‘authentic’ because the messages I share and what I offer of myself there is not tailored to fit what I think anyone wants to hear or what I think anyone wants me to be … but it is coming from what I believe, what I belove, who I am seeking to be and to become.

But beyond the intention to craft a ‘connection and a conversation space,’ my deepest desire and vision is simply belovedness. Belovedness, I believe, has been in everything I’ve shared here … have the echoes of belovedness always been clear, have the bells of belovedness always resounded clearly? I hope so, oh how I hope so, because belovedness is my deepest intention, my clearest direction, my abiding vision …

So what vision is leading, then? Oh, the vision, the spirit, that is leading is Belovedness! That’s what this blog will always be most about … so that is what will create the direction.

Sometimes, though as I’ve been learning and learning and re-learning, just stopping and being still for a while, taking a rest, a Sabbath time, is the necessary thing to bring clarity … of both direction and vision. Being still, being patient. Letting things unfold. Letting the vision lead. Letting the journey, the direction fall into rhythm and harmony with the vision …

And perhaps what this blog is doing with me is teaching me simply to surrender … to take refuge in surrender.

To surrender my fears and fretting about the direction of this blog, about the direction of my life … to surrender my doubts and my discomfort with uncertainty … to surrender my overthinking and my impatience. To surrender my insecurity and my striving to be significant or influential …

Just to surrender to being vulnerable and to being humble …

To surrender more to mindfulness and to Belovedness!

Then, clarity and simplicity can come … and vision clears, the “right” direction, the “right” path, opens and unfolds.

On that note, I’ll sign off with a little poem I wrote this past November:

The stillness is heavenly                                                                                        
a November autumn day
gold still hanging on a few fine branches
like rare pendants adorning the trees
Gentle letting go still happening
as the colors of fall
drift from tree to grassy
resting places
A stillness today
And all the letting go
seems so gentle
today
Surrender, not loss
Surrender is triumph
in stillness
today
The light fresh and free
flowing still
flowering the air
with cool calm
Heavenly is the stillness
in the world and in I