On Not Waiting for the Perfect Moment ... Or How I Came to Write This Blog

An ongoing theme in my life has been waiting for everything to be just right ... Perfect ...

Exactly how I envision/want/need/dream (please insert any number of words carrying high expectations).

I am a Capricorn by chance, American by birth, and a goal oriented, perfectionist by virtue of my upbringing and my culture. Right. Perfect. Exact. This is how it has to be before I will ... open a yoga studio, get on my mat, bake a cake, start running again, sit down and meditate, get married, write a blog ... this list could go on and on ...

When I look back at the times in my life when I have felt the most unhappy, fearful, anxious, angry, sad ... there has been one thing common to them all - ME! Or to be more clear - my created and rigorously adhered to set of expectations, self limited ideas, rules that I’ve imposed on others or on the events in my life. If I dig a little deeper, something else I notice common to all these times of challenge is that the rigid rules that guided me rarely led to an experience of happiness, joy, or delight. More often than not, I would find myself sitting in the box I had so carefully constructed feeling alone and exhausted.

A word that comes to mind is STUCK. I was always inbetween things. Full and ripe with inspiring ideas but unable to manifest any of them because the timing or circumstances was never how I wanted it. Pregnant with possibility yet unwilling to give birth. Ouch.

SO, how did I get here and to this blog that I am presently writing ... ?

“Make More Beauty” is an idea that has been cooking for quite some time yet due to (please see above) ... thus it has been waiting rather lonesomely but patiently on the shelf. While I haven’t been writing about it, I have been trying to live it. In fact, this little phrase has been the mantra around which I’ve been slowly and patiently organizing my life.

About this time last year I had the privilege to attend an amazing weekend retreat in Sydney with Carlos Pomeda, one of the top Tantric scholars and teachers of our time. Over the course of those three days, we rose early for 60 minute meditations, practiced yoga, ate divinely prepared vegetarian meals, and dove into study of the beautiful scripture - the Pratabhijna Hyrdym.

Though PH is rather short, the level of beauty and insight which it unfolds in layers and layers of depth is unending. In this text, the process of enlightenment or awakening is invited to happen in an instant. And continuously, a marvelous mala strand of moments linked together through the thread of ongoing practice. This act of awakening is akin to making the choice to “open your eyes” (unmilayati). It is an invitation and a challenge to view everything that happens to you as having the potential to deepen you. Every single experience becomes an opportunity for awakening.

Lightbulbs went off. This was the teaching it felt I had been waiting for and that I so desperately needed. What I took away from that retreat was that my experience (as it occurs - imperfect, scary, and “untimely”) is where my work is - and it is through the choosing to fully engage the ordinary moments of my life exactly as they offer themselves that I step into my highest dharma as co-creator and artist of my life experience. WOW. 

With this perspective - waking, cooking, eating, walking, talking, meditating, writing, gardening, etc. - all become the material by which I can create ART. 

I wanted to share these ideas and the process that unfolded in some way. I imagined a blog, an article, innumerable teaching themes, even teeshirts (why not?)...

And, as I was waiting (surprise surprise) for the “right” moment (Wordpress or Blogger? what template? what format? what publication? part of my website or separate?) to share my thoughts, the universe offered me an opportunity to cease procrastination and indecision.

Beautiful soul - Bindu Wiles - writer, yoga teacher, creativity coach, buddhist (and on...) devised a most marvelous idea: a 21 Day Writing & Yoga Challenge. 800 words a day on anything, anytime. 5 days of committed yoga practice. Participants from all over the world connected together by commitment, internet, Facebook, Twitter. Fabulous!

So here we are - the first day of the challenge and first entry of my new blog! Today I renew my commitment to yoga, to writing, and to making more beauty.