http://blog.barefootjourneys.net/ Shayla Wright Weblog musings about yoga, writing, spirit, communication en shayla@barefootjourneys.net Copyright 2012 2012-05-17T14:47:00-08:00 http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/coming-home/ http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/coming-home/#When:13:47:00Z Coming Home To Yourself, Free Introductory Telecall--Sunday May 27, 10am pacific Coming Home To Yourself “It’s not your job to love me, it’s mine.”-Byron Katie Imagine freely loving who you are now. Imagine being deeply grateful for everything that has ever happened to you. (Yes, everything) Imagine living without the fear, or insecurity of what anyone thinks of you. The Transformation of Consciousness 2012-05-17T13:47:00-08:00 http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/the-untamed-you/ http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/the-untamed-you/#When:12:34:00Z When I was studying the indigenous teachings a few years ago, I heard a great description of what happens to us as we grow up: we get domesticated. In learning to adapt to our family, our culture and our community, we align ourselves with something that is not really alive, a way of being that has been tamed, controlled and managed. Of course we need to adapt, and learn the ways of our culture. But most of us lose something quite precious in this process. The good news is that it’s not really lost. It can’t ever be really lost-we’ve just forgotten about it. ‘Coming Home To Yourself’ The Transformation of Consciousness 2012-05-15T12:34:00-08:00 http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/taking-off-the-pressure/ http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/taking-off-the-pressure/#When:21:22:00Z There is a tremendous wave in the world right now, of people wanting to move forward, to express themselves authentically, to contribute, to participate with love and freedom in life. Why does this feel so difficult to live? It’s because of all the ways our conditioned mind tries to make it happen. It’s because of our polarized beliefs in success and failure. It’s because of the energy we give to the images in our head, instead of reality. Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together If I’m good at something, I don’t give it to the world. I give it to my daughter, I give it to you. I give it to the one in front of me, because I’ve received it myself. I have the ability to do that. If I have the most wonderful thing in the world, it’s not for everyone, it’s for the one in front of me—it’s for me first, and then you. That’s all. That’s all that’s required. No push, no pull. Suppose I had the thought, “Oh my God, I’m not doing my job. I’m a failure. I’m not enough.” Who the hell do I think I am? It doesn’t move until it moves. ( Byron Katie, from Who Would You Be Without Your Story) The Transformation of Consciousness 2012-05-07T21:22:00-08:00 http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/the-heart-of-commitment/ http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/the-heart-of-commitment/#When:16:16:00Z Dear friends: I’ve been exploring the power of commitment in my own life and with my clients and students. I think this is something that is often misunderstood. We confuse commitment with bondage, duty and obligation. There is a deep commitment that awakens in the heart, from our natural desire to be at home, natural and at ease.  In order to awaken and evolve, we need this deep and ongoing commitment. It’s our connection to what really matters, and it allows us to relax, to trust and to let go of striving. Below is something from Lena Stevens of the Power Path work, that speaks of this coming full moon as a precious opportunity to deepen our commitment. with love Shayla The Transformation of Consciousness 2012-05-05T16:16:00-08:00 http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/lifeletter-55-the-choiceless-choice/ http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/lifeletter-55-the-choiceless-choice/#When:14:54:00Z When Rilke, the great German poet, was young, he already knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to write poetry. And he didn’t know how. He had written some poems, and they were truly mediocre. But he couldn’t give up the desire, this living impulse, that burned in him. Between the desire and his actual capacity, he was caught. Right between the rock and the hard place. Then he went to Paris, to visit Rodin, the sculptor. He was going to write an article about him. At this time, Rodin was at the height of his creative power. Writing about him was difficult; it was like writing about a volcano, or a hurricane, of creative energy. Rilke was just hanging around the studio, trying to write, and failing miserably. Sometimes he couldn’t even write a word. He was frozen, paralyzed. One day Rodin got fed up with him. He sent him on a special assignment--to the Paris zoo. He told him to go there and find an animal, and to study that animal deeply. He instructed Rilke to stay there, to keep connecting with the animal, for three, four, five days, until he had to write something. Rilke’s animal was the black panther. He did stay there, with the panther, for days. In the panther he recognized a being as trapped as he was. And in the recognition of this, and the clear expression, his creative energy began to flow, at last. What emerged was his first great poem: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-panther/ I can see Rilke sitting there, outside that cage, whenever I feel stuck and immobilized. I can feel how the direct, sustained, intimate contact with this creature opened up something deep inside his being. It wasn’t clear sailing for Rilke after that. He had to confront that place in himself, over and over throughout his life, in order to bring forth the great gift of his poetry. But he never abandoned his life as a poet. It was something bigger than his mind and his ideas. It feels like the force of creativity chose him. And he stayed true to that choiceless choice. He didn’t try to wiggle out of what his heart, his authentic being, was most deeply drawn to. The Transformation of Consciousness 2012-03-27T14:54:00-08:00 http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/how-i-am-with-you/ http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/how-i-am-with-you/#When:23:50:00Z An email to a coaching client We have all been waiting a long time for this kind of connection, this tenderness, this yes. Dear Sara: I am writing to you about this whole issue arising for you around friendship, and the big questions we are all asking right now: What is love? How do I relate to myself? & How do I really want to be with others? Just like you, I find it difficult when people I think of as good friends do not come through for me when I am sick. This has been one of my biggest challenges, because it’s such a vulnerable, helpless place, where we actually do need love and support. So I’m not speaking to you as though I expect you to rise up one fine morning and not have these feelings anymore. But there is a big sea change coming over us all right now. I have actually seen radical transformation happen in my closest relationships, over the last few years. I know now what is possible. But only when we really see that the way we have been is no longer sustainable. Only when we take complete responsibility for how we create our own suffering, moment to moment. Only when we really get tired of blaming anyone else for our difficulties. I see myself falling back at times, into familiar and habitual places with the people in my family. I know now that I can’t stay there. I am committed to calling on awareness itself to allow me to see what is going on.  I am willing to let this suffering be released, through the power of awareness and the power of inquiry. I can’t control what arises inside me, and sometimes the feelings are very intense. I feel hurt, abandoned, misunderstood, separate, invisible--all the feelings I’ve been trying to avoid my whole life can be right there in front of me in such moments. I can’t control these feelings and I can’t control what the other person is doing or thinking or feeling. But I can choose what I will make important. And I can choose to judge, to push away my experience, or to welcome it.  Everyday Awakening 2012-03-18T23:50:00-08:00 http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/lifeletter-54-the-place-of-no-pity/ http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/lifeletter-54-the-place-of-no-pity/#When:13:10:00Z This Lifeletter continues from the previous one, where I wrote about the retreat in which we brought together practices from the nondual and the shamanic teachings. There’s no need to go back and read Lifeletter #53, unless you want to. This one is complete in itself. I left off at the place where I called out to Heather for help. When she came over to see me, I told her about the intense physical distress I was in. After I went into some detail about my suffering, she simply looked at me with a look of great lucidity, a clear and tranquil gaze. “Yes,” she said, “sometimes it happens like this.” This was not what I was expecting from Heather in that moment! I experienced her as being fully present, completely open, and utterly without pity. There was nothing coming from her, not even in her expression or the tone of her voice that said, “Oh that’s too bad Shayla. I know how hard that is. I wish it wasn’t like this. I’ll do something to change this for you.” Nothing. Just a recognition that this is how it is sometimes. It was only then that I realized I had been hoping for something else. It was only then that a window opened in my perception and I saw that I was actually feeling sorry for myself. I had no awareness of this until I received the shocking clarity of Heather’s response. The Transformation of Consciousness 2012-03-14T13:10:00-08:00 http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/sex-and-the-nondual/ http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/sex-and-the-nondual/#When:19:29:00Z I love this topic. I love contemplating the connection between this openness where all polarities dissolve, and the realm of sexuality, full to the brim with hot and cold, dry and juicy, hard and soft, yes and no. Since I left the celibate ashram where I was a great failure at being celibate, I’ve had many people ask me for help in relation to sexuality. So the learning I’ve done, the research I’ve engaged in, has been a rich and surprising part of my life for the last ten years. What I have discovered is a way of being sexual that is as radically different from our conditioned notions of sexuality as the nondual is from traditional spirituality. The parallels are quite striking. I don’t yet know what to call the kind of sex that I’ve been discovering. I don’t want to give it any fancy names or make it seem at all esoteric. So I’ll just call it slow sex. Slow sex, like nondual practice, is effortless. When we engage in slow sex, we are not trying to get anywhere. When I look back at my lifelong spiritual practice, so full of striving, I see now that I was holding the idea of enlightenment or realization like a great big shiny object, an explosive experience that would deliver me into a place of no more self or struggle. Couples coaching & mentoring; “Waking Up To Love” (This painting is by Lasha @ lashamutual.com) Everyday Awakening 2012-03-10T19:29:00-08:00 http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/the-loving-nudge-breaking-through-the-taboo-on-uncondional-happiness/ http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/the-loving-nudge-breaking-through-the-taboo-on-uncondional-happiness/#When:19:00:00Z We’ve all heard about this, haven’t we? That outer events do not determine our inner experience. That we are never really at the mercy of happenings and situations. Something in us responds to this. We feel some kind of instinctive recognition that this could be true. Until something challenges us and we collapse into our reactions, our stories and our beliefs. Then the notion of unconditional happiness sounds a bit far fetched, like something out of a spiritual fairy tale. What happens when we make a strong commitment to living this way? When we actually get serious about recognizing this well-being that is unconditional? How do we encourage this possibility in ourselves and the people in our lives? I have been wrestling with these questions deeply during the last while. I’ve written about the Dalai Lama as a living example of someone who has found an unshakeable sense of well being, undiminished by everything that has happened to his country. Does it seem arrogant, to open myself to the possibility that I could live like this too? Is it possible that this unconditional happiness is not just reserved for special people, like the Dalai Lama? Whenever I really get deeply engaged in this question, all hell seems to break loose in my life.  It’s as if life is nudging me, saying, “Do you really want to know how to be unconditionally happy? Then try this on for size.” In retrospect I can feel the nudges as loving. At the time they seem anything but that. For quite a while now, I have been dealing with some major difficulties in my life, connected with my family, that won’t go away. It makes perfect sense to my conditioned mind to get very unhappy about these things. And this just perpetuates the whole illusion that I can only be happy when things are going ‘my way.’ I don’t want to live like that anymore. It’s just that simple. Everyday Awakening 2012-02-23T19:00:00-08:00 http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/free-expession-inquiry-the-nature-of-authentic-being/ http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/weblog/comments/free-expession-inquiry-the-nature-of-authentic-being/#When:01:39:00Z In my work as a coach and teacher, I’ve been exploring free expression and inquiry for decades. Free expression is our capacity to express ourselves fully, without holding back. To speak from a space that is unconditioned by our fear of other people’s judgements, and even our own. Free expression is spontaneous, natural and uncontrived. It’s a flow, and it can be bumpy, challenging, and ultimately deeply enlivening and full of joy. The nature of free inquiry is similar. In order to inquire, to question, to deeply investigate, we need the kind of innocence and freedom a young child has. We need to be able to ask our real questions, the ones that are alive and compelling for us, without caring about how this looks, without needing to be seen as intelligent, or wise, of kind. What stands in the way of our capacity for free expression and inquiry? Our self-image. The way we want to appear, and the way we don’t want to appear. Our self image is not who we really are. It’s constructed. Our authentic being, the transparency of our true nature, has no image. It is open, and without any need to defend or protect itself. The self image is defensive, and touchy. It is built on a deep sense of inadequacy, a feeling of not being good enough. Everyone feels like this. Every single egoic being struggles with this, whether they recognize it or not.  Sometimes it is fully conscious. And sometimes all the things we do to compensate for this sense of inadequacy cover up this aching hole, for a while. Maybe for half a lifetime. Until something happens and our sense of being flawed or lacking comes to the surface. Without being confined to a self image, we are naturally, effortlessly authentic. The Transformation of Consciousness 2012-02-22T01:39:00-08:00