I had this beautiful experience the other night. We were practicing together, and it had been a really long day for me. My brain was not working that well, although I was happy to be there, feeling full and present.

At one point, I did an asana backwards, and we had to start again. They all laughed, and the laughter was very warm. I realized that most of the class has been practicing together for a while now, and there is a lot of ease and openness in the group energy field.

Then I forgot the name of one part of the body and they laughed even more, not ‘at’ me but really ‘with’ me. It felt so good, as if we were really playing together in that field that Rumi describes:

“Out beyond wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field,
I’ll meet you there.”

I realized that practicing in that field is so much more important than anything we think we are doing. I’ve always known that, but that night we were all right there, resting and playing in that space of innocence and no-striving.

I just wanted to keep playing and laughing with them. I started thinking, “Maybe I could become a yoga clown. That could be the next evolution of Soma Yoga.”

My intention in writing these letters is to speak to you, my friends and readers, from a transparent and authentic place about what I am learning as we live here together on this planet--all of us, participating in this infinite web of life. And life on this planet is not easy. It’s not neat and tidy, and the lessons we are given are often overwhelming, heartbreaking and chaotic. That’s just the way it is. 

I’ll be 60 next year, and I’ve passed through some of the toughest  learning  in my whole life this year. I’m realizing that it actually takes a long time to really grow up, a long time to become capable of sharing genuine wisdom and compassion with others.  In the process life shakes us up, burns us, tenderizes us, until we are open enough, free enough, strong enough, to stand on our own two feet and see what  really moves us.

So if I speak to you honestly about what is unfolding for me, and for the people I work with, and the people I know and love, I have to say that I think we are all being pushed by some kind of evolutionary force right now. I really don’t know what this force is, but I feel it pushing us, calling us to move beyond all our safe and familiar places. It seems to be taking us, like a wild river, into a way of being that feels radically new, strange, disorienting, and very awkward at times. That’s all right, and it’s much easier to bear if we don’t take it too personally, if we realize it’s happening to a whole lot of us.  Whether we like it or not, whether we think we asked for it or not, it’s still happening.

A few months ago my daughter went to Kelowna, a city 5 hours by bus from our town. She went for a short visit, and was returning on the night bus, arriving the next morning. I went to pick her up at the bus station at 5:30 in the morning, and there was no sign of the bus. I waited for a while, not really concerned at all, because I knew that nothing much can happen to anyone on a Greyhound bus. While I was waiting, I called my partner Jonathan, to see if she had phoned him.

He told me about a story he had just seen on the news. It happened  the night before, the same night that my daughter was coming home, on a Greyhound bus travelling in Alberta,  the province right beside us.  A man who was on the bus walked to the back, pulled out a machete, and beheaded a young fellow who was asleep on the back seat.

I was shocked and horrified by this piece of news, and very glad to see the bus from Kelowna roll in a few minutes later, with my daughter on it safe and sound. But I couldn’t seem to shake whatever that story had stirred up in me. I realized that my thoughts about what could happen or not happen  anywhere in this world are just that-ideas that have nothing to do with reality.

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My intention in writing these letters is to speak to you, my friends and readers, from a transparent and authentic place about what I am learning as we live here together on this planet--all of us, participating in this infinite web of life. And life on this planet is not easy. It’s not neat and tidy, and the lessons we are given are often overwhelming, heartbreaking and chaotic. That’s just the way it is. 

I’ll be 60 next year, and I’ve passed through some of the toughest  learning  in my whole life this year. I’m realizing that it actually takes a long time to really grow up, a long time to become capable of sharing genuine wisdom and compassion with others.  In the process life shakes us up, burns us, tenderizes us, until we are open enough, free enough, strong enough, to stand on our own two feet and see what  really moves us.

So if I speak to you honestly about what is unfolding for me, and for the people I work with, and the people I know and love, I have to say that I think we are all being pushed by some kind of evolutionary force right now. I really don’t know what this force is, but I feel it pushing us, calling us to move beyond all our safe and familiar places. It seems to be taking us, like a wild river, into a way of being that feels radically new, strange, disorienting, and very awkward at times. That’s all right, and it’s much easier to bear if we don’t take it too personally, if we realize it’s happening to a whole lot of us.  Whether we like it or not, whether we think we asked for it or not, it’s still happening.

A few months ago my daughter went to Kelowna, a city 5 hours by bus from our town. She went for a short visit, and was returning on the night bus, arriving the next morning. I went to pick her up at the bus station at 5:30 in the morning, and there was no sign of the bus. I waited for a while, not really concerned at all, because I knew that nothing much can happen to anyone on a Greyhound bus. While I was waiting, I called my partner Jonathan, to see if she had phoned him.

He told me about a story he had just seen on the news. It happened  the night before, the same night that my daughter was coming home, on a Greyhound bus travelling in Alberta,  the province right beside us.  A man who was on the bus walked to the back, pulled out a machete, and beheaded a young fellow who was asleep on the back seat.

I was shocked and horrified by this piece of news, and very glad to see the bus from Kelowna roll in a few minutes later, with my daughter on it safe and sound. But I couldn’t seem to shake whatever that story had stirred up in me. I realized that my thoughts about what could happen or not happen  anywhere in this world are just that-ideas that have nothing to do with reality.

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In the Buddhist tradition, they speak about something called our true nature, our unconditioned being. Other traditions call this ‘soul’, ‘essence,’ ‘pure consciousness,’ or ‘spirit.’ If we take away all the names, and relate to this as a direct and simple experience, actually accessible for us all, what is it? How does our true nature express itself? How does it move in the world?

For me, one of the simplest ways to approach this is through the term ‘basic goodness.’ There is, in the deepest part of every human being, a goodness that is absolutely natural and uncontrived. This understanding is about as far away from the notion of ‘original sin’ as we could ever get. In our western world, the notion of original sin has gone so deep that it permeates many of the basic structures of our thought, belief, and perception. We see things that are wrong, broken or evil in ourselves and in the world, without any awareness of a deeper ground, a more fundamental nature that is always available.

To awaken to basic goodness engages us in a radically different kind of life. Poets like Mary Oliver glimpse this new way of living:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting,

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

How do we begin to see, to recognize, this basic goodness?

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Real change, lasting transformation, is something human beings long for, deep in their hearts. It’s the reason we go to workshops, look for teachers, take courses, repeat affirmations. And it’s something that doesn’t come easy.

I remember many years ago, watching a woman on T.V. who was facing the death sentence in America. She and her boyfriend had been on a drug spree when they were much younger, and had killed someone. During the ensuing years in prison, she had undergone a radical transformation. She described it as opening up to God, discovering who she really was.  When I saw her speak I recognized her as one of the most radiant beings I had ever seen. She wanted so much to live and be able to share the deep love and joy in her heart. They executed her a short time later, and I was very sad about it.

What is it about us humans that makes real transformation such a rare and precious thing? Why do our efforts at self-improvement and moving forward so often come back to where we started? Why is the road to hell paved with good intentions?

We need to understand what it is that stands between us and real change. It is our beliefs, fixed attitudes and self-images, our deepest sense of who we are and what life is. These beliefs and attitudes are so fundamental to who we are that we are usually unconscious of them. They are like the air we breathe, the ground we stand upon. They motivate our actions, give rise to our emotions, and create our lives. And the reason they are so hard to see through is that they make up our survival system. We picked them up at a very early age in order to survive the challenges of our early life. Our deep and visceral need to survive can express itself as the need for security, the need for approval and the need for control. The one who has these needs is experiencing him/herself as a conditioned being, separate and alone, trying to get by in an unfriendly universe.

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Tomorrow is the Equinox, a time of movement, clarity, and breakthroughs—a time to allow what you really value to manifest in the world. It’s also the time of the harvest, of gratitude.

In a coaching session this morning, a client of mine spoke about her ‘glass ceilings,’ those places of inner limitation and constriction that have been with us so long they are mostly invisible.  In order to meet the immense challenges and complexities in our personal and collective lives right now, we need a real willingness to become aware of these glass ceilings, and then to move right through them.

I said to my client:
“I see that one of my key roles as your coach is to keep reflecting back to you the gifts you hold, so that you can fully recognize them, nurture them, and offer them into the world, knowing their full value. I think this is one of the keys to busting through our glass ceilings. It’s also one of my deepest knowings that our most powerful gifts are what come so naturally to us that it takes a long time to fully appreciate them. It’s like a fish trying to taste the ocean.”

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I spent five days in August at a retreat in the mountains. Our theme was Everything Changes. We engaged in a number of different contemplations, meditations and inquiries. One of my favorite questions was, “Do I really know that I will not die today?” As you can imagine, to sit alone and really open to such questions can be deeply challenging.

One night I was sitting beside a young man about 30 years old. I was right in the middle of a very difficult experience, when I heard him softly say ‘Help’. Immediately a strong sense rose up in me that I was in no position to help anyone. It was one of those moments that you’d like to wriggle right out of, if you could. I sat there, wishing that I was in a more balanced and grounded state, and hoping that I had not really heard what I had heard.

It was very quiet. And then it came again, just a soft voice, out of the darkness: “Help.” I realized there was no getting out of this one. My mind was telling me that I could not do anything for this person beside me. I was not feeling well at all. I didn’t know what to do, so I sat there and allowed myself not to know. It was not easy to allow that, even though it was the plain and simple truth of my experience. And then, right in the same moment that my mind was saying, “I can’t do this,” I felt another kind of energy move me toward him, quite effortlessly.

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The whole pleasure/pain response, that instinctual mechanism, is embedded in the body. We resist pain, and we hold onto what feels good. What could be more natural? And yet what could be more mechanical, conditioned and reactive? We cannot ask the deep survival patterns of our body/mind to disappear. They are very powerful, and quite essential on a certain level of our being. But if we allow this kind of conditioning to dominate us, then we cannot discover our deeper nature, which is presence-- completely open to everything as it is.

We can work with our conditioning in a much gentler way when we are already resting in presence, in an open space of non-judging awareness. This awareness is our foundation. It is simple, open, unstructured, innocent, natural, and right here.  With this kind of awareness we can begin to become intimate with our own experience, with the totality of our experience. Not separating parts out and saying, “This is me, and this is not,” but opening our arms and accepting it all.

Accepting my body just as it is in this moment, listening, breathing, moving, and letting go. When I allow my breath to mirror the openness of my awareness, then the nature of my experience begins to change. I can approach the feeling of discomfort without pulling away or resisting. I can allow myself to open to this feeling, listen to it, respect it, work with it. Not looking to a book or a CD or a teacher, but opening to the wisdom that comes through the body, from moment to moment, that emerges and then disappears. Heart beating by itself, lungs moving by themselves, resting in the simple feeling of being alive.

Some kinds of yoga emphasize the willful, effort-full aspect of the practice, as if, by trying harder, we are going to gain some control over our body. I want to look a little deeper here, because this lies at the heart of everything we are doing. 

In Soma Yoga we begin in a place of deep receptivity, with a willingness to listen to the intelligence that lives in every cell of our body, to listen and respond. Sometimes we are strengthening our core muscles, sometimes we are working with our flexibility, sometimes we are grounding our energy, sometimes we are working with the energy meridians, sometimes we are working with our brain patterns.  But we are not trying to control the life force in the body. We are opening, creating a much wider container so that the life force can flow freely, spontaneously.

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Notes from a non-dual coaching session

I was speaking with someone this morning on a non-dual coaching call. My client, whom I’ll call Bob, said to me, “I still feel separate most of the time. So I have this idea that something should change, there’s another place where I could be that is better than this. I’m just never clear about whether I exist or not.  Sometimes I lose my sense of separation, but a lot of the time it’s still here.  I’ve been wondering about this question for a long time.”

“Okay, “ I said to him. “Let’s stop right here for now. In non-dual practice, one of our main pointers is “What is natural?” Unconditioned awareness is the most natural state of all—totally uncontrived and unstructured. If I really appreciate this, then I can align my practice with something that is quite spontaneous and authentic, something arising from within me, rather than a set of instructions from outside.”

“If you, Bob, are experiencing this as a recurring question, then I hear that life is giving you this inquiry, offering this question to you as your natural koan:  ‘Am I separate or not’?

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Last week I spent a whole day out in the Slocan Valley, sitting and writing with a group of women. We sat on a porch, looking over a pool, fields full of trees and flowers, and the green mountains across the valley. The silence got deeper and deeper. We sat, we wrote, we read out loud, and worked with each other. We walked, stretched, and wrote some more. The whole day passed like this, and it was good. All my life I’ve noticed this—that when we allow ourselves to be creative, a deep contentment fills our being.

The first thing I want to say about creativity is that is belongs to all of us. We are deeply embedded in a relentlessly creative universe. The most natural way we can be is intensely creative. That’s our authentic nature. But we started to believe something else: creativity is for the gifted, for the special, for the other person, not for me.

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Cultivating Inner Qualities

Now that spring is finally here, even in snowy Canada, I’d like to share an exercise that is a great one to do in the spring.

In the Sufi tradition, students work on cultivating and nourishing what are sometimes called ‘soul qualities.’ These qualities come from our core, from presence, from the most authentic and natural part of our being.  As we grow up and become conditioned, we lose track of some of them, while we develop others. Part of what it means to grow into wholeness is to learn how to access these qualities that have been covered or hidden.

One way of doing this is to think of them as seeds you are cultivating and nourishing inside your own being.  Find a pot, fill it with good soil, and plant a seed, or more than one, in the pot. At the same time, choose a quality from the list below, or find one of your own. As you water and care for your seed and watch it emerge and grow, imagine that you are doing the same thing with this quality. Be curious, be playful in the way that you do this. Try thinking of it as a flame you are fanning, or a seed you are watering, rather than something you are lacking.

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I’m writing this in order to encourage you all to let inquiry be an organic and natural process, instead of something that you feel you have to ‘get done’ or impose on yourself.

What I suggest is that you really allow your heart and body to discern which are your questions, which ones are alive and full of meaning for you. And then it’s not about finding time to answer them, it’s about allowing yourself to live with them. For example, Echart Tolle’s question is “What is life asking of me right now?”

Write your questions down and put them on your computer, bathroom mirror or fridge. Carry them into your day, drop them into your body and your heart, and listen to see what emerges. Engage in dialogue about them with anyone else who is interested.

You are not looking for an answer with your mind. There is no answer to these questions. Your whole life is the answer. But if you really live with them, it’s a bit like being on a treasure hunt, and clues will start to appear, as you follow the living thread of your own inquiry.

I hope this helps.
love
Shayla

I’m always on the lookout for questions that can awaken, inspire and transform the whole way we relate to life. Because what I believe about the nature of existence is how I will be experiencing my life, moment to moment.

In his dialogue with Oprah, Eckhart Tolle speaks of a question we can all ask ourselves: “What does life want of me?” Instead of “What do I want of life?” turn it around and ask, “What is life asking of me right now?” If you really ask this question, not just with your mind, but with your heart and body as well, it acts as a
gateway to a whole new way of being in the world.

The other one I love is “What is my relationship to this moment? Am I fighting it, resisting it, arguing with it? Or I am open to it, one with it?” and “What do I want my relationship to this moment to be? Do I want to fight with it, or hope for a better moment in the future? Or do I want to rest here, as I am, and allow this moment to reveal itself to me?”

The way I relate to each moment is the way I relate to this vast mysterious thing we call life.

Enjoy your day.

Love
Shayla

Dear friends: Understanding that we are all interconnected is something that could change the way you experience life in a major way. These discoveries are now emerging in every field, from medicine to quantum physics. Helping you open to a deep sense of interconnection, and your ‘invisible network of support’ is now an integral part of my work.

Here is a great example from Adam Dreamhealer, in response to someone who asked him what he actually sees when he is engaged in his healing work.

Indra’s Net

This universe is like an endless net of invisible threads of energy, of life.  The vertical threads are time, the horizontal threads are space.
In every place where the threads cross, there is a living being, shining like a jewel in this vast net.
The light of Being shines through and penetrates each living point.
And every being shines, reflecting itself, and also reflecting everything -all the reflections of all the reflections in the universe.
We are not separate (Adam Dreamhealer)

There is a wonderful website called livingthefield.com (Lynne McTaggart) that has a lot more information about the field of non-local energy that connects us all.

with love
Shayla Wright
‘Barefoot Journeys’ coaching, courses, workshops & retreats
http://www.barefootjourneys.net