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VIL
USA
586 Posts |
 Posted - Dec 09 2008 : 11:38:01 PM
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I just started to practice AYP seriously. I went through all the lessons, up to the breath, and have began the breathing exercise and I AM meditation. For just this short amount of time I have had a wonderful experience of bliss and also the breath stopping.
I'm just need to reconnect with people, like I used to. I think I'm overthinking everything. I'm feeling better grounding, meditating. No more blame.
Bye,
VIL
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Edited by - VIL on Dec 11 2008 08:03:44 AM |
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Ananda
3115 Posts |
Posted - Dec 10 2008 : 03:10:38 AM
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hi Vil ,
good to see that you gave the thing a chance.
it has it's ups and downs like everything else but trust me it will get better... (mostly ups)
by the way i share the same tragedy as you do, until yesterday my brother has been gone for 4 months.
i'd like to share this quote with you if you may:
"Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come." Rabindranath Tagore.
light and love,
Ananda
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VIL
USA
586 Posts |
Posted - Dec 10 2008 : 04:40:16 AM
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I'm really sorry, Ananda. It's hard when we lose someone we love. So I know what you mean and I appreciate you sharing that with me. I definitely believe in the afterlife and know that are loved ones are in a much better place. It would have to be.
Anyway, thanks for the encouragement, I'm looking forward to some positive change in the right direction. It will take some time and I'm sure it's going to be work, but I'm okay with it.
Thank you for the quote too. I appreciate it.
Namaste:
VIL
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Shanti
USA
4854 Posts |
Posted - Dec 10 2008 : 08:58:44 AM
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Amazing post VIL.. straight from the heart and honest. This was an opening you know.. every bit of fear you expose.. every bit of light you shine on fear.. every bit of mind story you realize and expose .. makes it dissolve. Once the light shines on it.. once it is exposed, it cannot hide any more and the grip it had on you will never be the same again. When we keep something in us.. the mind builds on it and builds on it.. but if you can just speak it out once.. it will dissolve and it wont even be as big a deal as the mind made it out to be in it's imagination. Your honesty is amazing. I am touched and blessed by this.
I went thru a similar thing that you have described above.. but at the other end of the spectrum.. I added every practice AYP could offer when I began.. and believed I could handle it and thought I was doing great. But it was only after I stopped it all and started doing only DM and SPB did I experience the silence.
Sorry to hear about your relationship with your friend. And please take whatever steps feel right to take.
Yogani had once told me:
"If we choose to let others use us as a doormat, they are not to blame. We are! Practices gradually build our strength to overcome such things."
As we continue with our meditation and experince outpouring of divine love.. people around us change... and even the ones who are extremely negative and make life miserable cannot affect us. A lot of the ego battles happen when we are in ego. When we are transparent.. it all just flows thru us.. and the other ego cannot dance on it's own for long. The ones that try to control us the most or get us most upset are our best teachers. I am not saying live with her so you can learn.. but all the mind stories that she has added to you will be wonderful tools to use for self inquiry. Things always happen as they do.. we can decide if we want to be victims or learn form it.
Any form of control is finally a way of seeking love. People generally either try to control others (as in your friend) or try to control themselves thru addictions, feeling they are less than others, etc. because they fear if they give up that part of their personality, they will lose their identity. And it is such an ingrained part of our self image, that it takes complete breakdown of our mind stories to get over this. This breakdown comes naturally as we continue with meditation. It is such a wonderful experience to realize, everyone can be exactly how they are, it has nothing to do with you. They are living their stories.. and by us being conscious and centered.. they learn too. I had one such realization that I had talked about here:
quote:
http://www.aypsite.org/forum/topic....D=2794#25395
Originally posted by Shanti
In my own experience, the term "Love" has always been attached to many emotions and sentiments (mind filters:)). I had no idea there was something like pure love.. a feeling that is not associated with any emotion.. It does not feel like romantic love for a partner, or caring, protective love for a child, or grateful, respectful love for a parent, etc. It is just pure feeling arising from the heart with absolutely no emotions/labels attached. We have all experienced this at some time or the other, however they may have been very fleeting feelings that we have not realized existed, and that we may not have recognized as Love.
Yesterday I was reading the Alchemist by Paul Coehlo.. and there was a part where he says "He tried to deal with the concept of love as distinct from possession, and couldn't separate them". Later during meditation a though arose "you can love without possession". This thought started expanding.. it was spreading and automatically being applied to people in my life.. a feeling of just pure love with no stories attached. I stayed with it for a bit.. then finished my meditation.
Later I was driving alone when the thought of someone who has been a very negative influence on my life came to me. I saw her in my mind.. and before last night , any time I thought of her, my emotions took over and I would get sad and depressed and drown in self pity. But this time was different. I could see very clearly.. I realized that she really did love me and all her possessive, controlling, trying to change me, was her own distorted way of showing me her love. That is the only way she knew how to show love. When that filter of all the mental and emotional abuse she put me through dropped, all I saw was the love behind it. I am not saying what she did was right or it was OK for her to treat another human the way she did. All I am saying is when I saw the story, I could drop it and become free from it. I realized that it was not how she treated me that kept me imprisoned, it was the story my mind made around the situation that kept me imprisoned.. and when I drop the story, all that is left is love.
I realized what the statement, "you can love without possession" meant. Possession does not have to mean physical possession.. just holding on to a mental story is also a kind of possession.. and dropping this mental story is really loving someone without possessing.
You are doing great VIL.
Thank you for sharing this with us. |
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CarsonZi
Canada
3189 Posts |
Posted - Dec 10 2008 : 2:47:16 PM
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Hi VIL,
I would like to echo Shanti in saying thank you for your open and honest posting. I too am sure that letting things like this out is helpful to the healing process. Gotta let go of that stuff and sometimes the best way is to talk about it. Why do you think I have 500 some posts in like 6 months or something on AYP ? Got a LOT to let go of! haha. Anyways, I wanted to say something about your relationship issue. I have been in a complicated long term relationship in the past where I think I may have been the controller like your friend. So my relation to this is from the other side. Hopefully I can shed some light on how to diffuse the situation. Not sure if this person is just a friend or if you are in a relationship with them, but either way you need to set some boundaries. Real boundaries. You can't avoid dealing with this unfortunately. Not watching certain TV shows around them is taking the "walking on eggshells" approach and it never works for long. Your friend will only escalate. He/she is looking for confrontation/conflict. This is what will dissolve the situation as well. You and your friend need to sit down and TALK. Openly and honestly and you need to be prepared for a battle. It isn't always ugly, but it often is. That is what they are looking for so it usually happens. What needs to happen is you need to let this person know that a line has been crossed with you, and you are not going to allow yourself to be stepped on like you have been recently. Taking cheap shots at your race is done. Trying to control your freedom of expression is done. Talking @#$% about your family is done. If it isn't, your friendship is done. This may end your friendship or it may totally fix it. This person has a chip on their shoulder about something. It may be related to you, it may not be. It doesn't matter. What matters is that you stand up for yourself and let this person know that you are done with the attitude(or whatever you want to call this persons actions) or you are done with the friendship. Shanti and Yogani are right in that YOU are allowing this to continue so only you can make it stop. The process of making it stop can be excruciatingly difficult for someone like you, but it is worth it. When my ex first stood up to me and moved out it was a BIG wake up call to me. And I learned real fast not to tread to closely to the boundaries because I loved her and didn't want to lose her. So take from this what you need and leave the rest behind, for you are on a journey my friend and nothing can stop you but you. Best of luck VIL, you deserve it!
Love,
Carson |
Edited by - CarsonZi on Dec 10 2008 3:49:03 PM |
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CarsonZi
Canada
3189 Posts |
Posted - Dec 10 2008 : 11:00:21 PM
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Well VIL,
We are all creators of our own destinies, so create away. Make it as beautiful and expression-filled as you desire. You will go far my friend.
Love,
Carson |
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VIL
USA
586 Posts |
Posted - Dec 11 2008 : 07:05:18 AM
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Thanks, Carson, the same goes with you. I changed my original post, because I'm just going to work on reconnecting with my family. I was going to head up to my sister's house today. Spend some time with her, my neice and her baby, but we're getting like 15 inches of snow today in NY. So, I'll have to wait on that.
I used to be pretty outgoing, had a lot of friends, but I've become depressed and isolated from kundalini. It's going to take some work to get back to the way I used to be, but it's worth it.
Anyway, I wanted to let you know I appreciate your imput, btw.
Namaste:
VIL |
Edited by - VIL on Dec 11 2008 10:16:22 AM |
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gumpi
United Kingdom
546 Posts |
Posted - Dec 11 2008 : 11:26:25 AM
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Hi VIL,
Off topic here. I went to NY in christmas/New Year 1991/1992 and it snowed there then. It was really nice. What a crazy city in the centre! Car horns beeping all over the place. I was unhappy with my Dad for making us walk all the way up 5th avenue freezing our butts off. He has a dark complexion but by the time we got to Little Italy he had a purple nose!
I remember we hired a taxi to take us to the Bronx because we had an old relative who had lived there since the 50s, and the cab driver really didn't want to go!
Grand Central Station was memorable. Walking around NY and looking up at the skyscrapers feels strange like if you don't stop looking up you will fall over backwards. We went into the WTC but it was so packed we decided not to go up. Went up the Empire State Building though which was nice. It's such a huge place, NY, that 2 weeks is just not long enough to visit.
I don't know what to say about feeling isolation due to yoga practices. I think the yogis in India devised these methods for renunciants to go into the forests completely isolated from other people. It's a completely different culture and mindset compared to us here in the modern world. They thought of it as escaping suffering and rebirth and perhaps we think differently to them. COnditions of life have changed so much we may feel more out of touch with nature than they did. So is it practical to try yoga in this way for the modern person in the west? I don't know. I have a suspicision it might not be.
Having said that though, i think that when it comes to things like depression and anxiety a lot of it is mentally based. Depression is much more complicated than anxiety i reckon and i don't know how much of that is due to chemical imbalance, physical stuff etc. I have been feeling a lot of depression lately which i never did in my life before and really i think it is definitely a habit of mind. REinforced thought patterns that keep surfacing. It really does just need one thought to change all that, and each person will find it whichever way works for them. As to kundalini causing depression i don't know anything about that so i can't pretend to offer advice where i have no knowledge. When i have felt low i have thought to myself, "everything will be alright in the future so why worry now?"
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Starting Over
