Managing Your Vibration
Is each individual on Earth responsible for their own life experience? Or are other people to blame when they are angry, tired, tedious, envious, rude, selfish and just down right mean? How do you make space for other people's roll through the rollercoaster ride of life when it bumps right up against your happy day at the park?
The truth is that you really are responsible for your own experience and that you cannot control the way other people treat you no matter how hard you try. It's easier to sit back and judge reality by saying that people should treat you a certain way and that they're wrong whenever they don't. However as long as you sing the tune of should or shouldn't you set yourself up on a righteous path towards the vain attempt to change other people. When you want someone in your life to act differently than they are, you create resistance to them and the way they are acting. The old statement that the more you try to change it, the more it stays the same hits you square in the face. The more you tell yourself that your friend shouldn't speak to in that way and get angry and frustrated about it, the more your friend continues to speak to you in exactly that way. You could in fact spend the rest of your life issuing moral dictums about the way other people should or shouldn't treat you. That would be an awful waste of the rest of your life, especially since you have absolutely no control over the way other people act.
The only thing you have any control over is yourself. You have the power to change your actions, reactions, thoughts and emotions. In fact the only real source of transformation lies in the ability to manage your inner world. Much as you would manage your choice of food at a deli counter by scanning the possible choices and choosing what suits you based on your likes and dislikes, you can manage the full scope of your thoughts by choosing consistently better feeling thoughts about yourself, your life and all the beings in your life. It is how you think, feel and act on a moment to moment and day to day basis that amounts to what's often called your vibration. What you think right now shapes your experience of reality.
What's often called the "Law of Attraction" is the organizational rule of the universe and it's what orders your experience of reality in response to your vibration. It works in a similar manner as when you're asked not to think about the pink elephant and all you see in your mind is that very pink elephant. Dealing and interacting with family, friends and coworkers is just the same. When you stand in front of a loved one and think that they shouldn't be so selfish, hurtful and ignorant all you see in them is evidence of their egocentric, stupid, heartbreaking behavior. Now you might say that it's really true that they are acting in this way. Yet another person standing in the exact same situation might not be bothered at all. At some moment the finger that points at other people has to turn and point back an its owner. The teaching of Abraham which comes through Esther and Jerry Hicks states that "you cannot restore someone to their Connection with Source by belittling them or by punishing them, or by being disgusted with them. It is only through love that you can return anyone to love."
As long as you remain committed to complaining about other people, fighting with politicians or reacting in outrage at a traffic jams, you remain committed to a helpless struggle of trying to change other people and outside situations. Setting the tone of your thoughts, feelings and actions to the tune of what's wrong with the world simply gets you more of what's wrong. Just as you sort through the junk mail in your inbox to search for the good news from colleagues and friends so too must you manage your inner vibrational world to search for better feeling thoughts and emotions about your friends, colleagues and family members. No thought is absolutely, incontrovertibly true and no emotion is permanent. Every person on Earth has the power to bring you immense joy and immense pain and you hold the key to deciding which it will be.
by Kino MacGregor
Copyright 2009 Kino MacGregor |
All rights reserved
The Muddy Drama of Life
From Top Chef to Judge Judy’s Courtroom Theater to the Tragedy of Tosca drama sells. At its best drama entertains, teaches and makes people laugh. At its worst it brings out division, hurtfulness and hatred. Yet human beings are somewhat enthralled with the ups and downs of their own emotions. You might even venture to say that we are addicted to them. It is all too easy to get dragged down into the habit pattern of the mind’s sometimes sordid past when emotions flare and all too hard to choose the higher, more peaceful ground above. There is truth to the notion that our inner world is a kind of jungle in need of healing. Freud and Jung sprouted a whole field of study dedicated to untying with the knotty landscape of our inner world.
Yet the choice to practice yoga is a chance to step outside the realm of our penchant for tears and venom. It is no coincidence that the opening mantra of Ashtanga yoga includes the invocation of a jungle doctor to clear out the poisons held within the mind. Drama as a permanent state of being can be toxic.
Yoga at its best represents an invitation to live a life of inner peace. In such a world peace and empathy take precedence over drama and grievance. When you learn to maintain your composure even when you feel under attack you have learned one of life’s hardest lessons. That is, that drama cannot be solved with more drama. Instead only a peaceful, caring response heals the wounds of the past. Peace, compassion and wisdom have to supplant righteousness, justification and narcissism as the highest priority in any given situation. There is a vigilance and due diligence that you must learn in order to accept the invitation to life without getting caught in the juiciness of humanity. By training the mind to focus on chosen points of attention you develop the strength of character necessary to break the deepest, most restrictive patterns in your life. In doing so you become a true player in the magical game of life.
Yet be clear in understanding that there is nothing wrong with drama itself. Understood as a play in the field of life it can be entertaining and amusing. When given the full weight and importance of your attention emotionality is heavy, binding and tragic. One of the great paradoxes of life is that the muddy waters of human drama contain the seed for ultimate awakening. Never is there a moment when your heart aches for peace more than when you are under emotional or physical attack. Never is there a moment when you yearn for freedom more than when you feel most constricted and bound. So in a sense the very presence of drama in any form in your life is a request for peace and a signal asking for reconciliation. Every situation no matter how filled with immaturity or insanity has the potential to enlighten your consciousness to a new level of being.
Sometimes in moments of great need, intensity or doubt I feel like the world responds to me with a guidance that I can almost read in everything around me from plants to clouds to situations as though all of life really is not separate from me and really conspires to lead me towards new realizations. When time slows down long enough to break the pattern of the past, then clarity, connection, wisdom and grace arrive to trumpet the dawn of a new day. With daily spiritual practice your inner world relaxes into the beauty of life, whole, complete and totally at peace.
by Kino MacGregor
Copyright 2009 Kino MacGregor |
All rights reserved
Navigating Stormy Emotional Seas
Emotional vulnerability seems to snowball at all the most inappropriate moments. When you're feeling down the most insignificant comment can send you deeper into the darkness. On days when you feel torn open by life, your heart is raw, exposed, and injured. In this space everything hurts. Is it just chance and coincidence that dishes up misery for no reason or is there some hidden cosmic force that answers to a pecking order higher than your melancholic feelings?
I find myself constantly at odds with the ever-changing screen of my own own feelings. They get hurt too easily when I least expect it only to toughen at moments when softness would better solve the snag. On a good day the years of yoga and the spiritual life pay off in the form of emotional distance, higher perspective and grace. On other days there is the all too familiar taste of sensitivity and reactionary words on my tongue. It would be easy to cast the so-called negative emotions as antagonists to a peaceful life and begin searching for a solution, a quick fix or a lasting medicine to correct the problem. However, starting a war with your emotional world won't lead you to a clean, clear mathematical proof for a true answer. For emotions themselves are neither good nor bad, but simply are what they are.
Whenever your thought process holds judgments about what you're experiencing in the emotional realm, you create patterns of action in your life that hold these emotions around you. For example if you wage a war against sadness with excessive activity, a majority of your life energy nevertheless remains rooted in exactly that which you seek to fight. Similarly if you think that anger is good and can create results in the world, then you will seek to fuel this fiery tempest when it arises. Regardless of how much work you do to train your mind to be in particular way, you cannot control your emotions with brute force. For the emotions belong to the sphere of nature and will arrive in waves and raging torrents in situations where you would otherwise prefer a dry spell. Just as weather patterns change, feelings pass and new ones come to take their place. A more honest parameter for navigating the emotional world is the compass of increased awareness, wisdom and acceptance.
One of the highest perspectives achieved along the spiritual path is an acceptance of the prevalence, persistence and temporal nature of emotions. In this sphere beyond right and wrong, you are the witness to what arises yet not drawn into fighting for or against any particular way of being. Emotions range from strong, heavy and tough to light, airy and free. Your role in steering the ship of your consciousness through the sea of feelings starts with the clear light of objective observation, that is, stopping the fight with yourself and your emotions. Your daily devotion to your practice opens a door to cultivating the kind of higher awareness that will guide you through the maze of your life.
by Kino MacGregor
Copyright 2009 Kino MacGregor |
All rights reserved
On the Language of Yoga
Yoga has an almost addictive quality to it. If you start doing yoga, it starts doing you too. The search for knowledge, wisdom and truth morph into numerous shapes and forms along the inner journey. When you enter the world of yoga sometimes you'll even find a whole Indian performance awaiting you: harmonium, chanting, flowers, pujas, small women demonstrating yoga postures, deities blessing you, henna painting and vegetarians--it's a Bollywood show that draws you in.
The experience of yoga is intricately tied to an experience of culture and a new culture is sometimes so exciting that you can develop a kind of fascination with it. When you interact with the yoga world be careful not to sell your Western soul for cross cultural eye candy. Yet it must be acknowledged that there is something real about welcoming the powerfully transformative elements of the authentic yoga tradition into our practice and our lives. The question is then, what exactly are the truly authentic elements of this 5,000 year old tradition called yoga? What knowledge, wisdom and teaching are available for you to integrate into your life right here and now?
Living in the global marketplace, we are all entrenched within our given paradigm. No matter how much henna you paint on your body, how much Sanskrit you study, nor how many sarees you wear you will never be Indian and you will never be as culturally complete in your yoga as our teachers in India. You can, however, find elements of another tradition that speak to you in ways beyond society. You can also integrate, learn and grow from the Far Eastern world from which yoga originates. You can have a truly authentic yoga practice and you can authentically put your heart into what you do, whether its chanting, henna painting, Indian music, yoga or being a vegetarian. It just won't come as part and parcel of your environment in the same way as it does in India, for better or worse. You will have to make a conscious choice to integrate portions of the yoga world, now a five billion dollar annual industry in the U.S. alone, into your life. In other words you can make it yours if you want to.
Sanskrit to yoga practitioners represents authenticity, connection to an ancient past that gives us a taste of real long term history. It is also one way for the Western mind to begin learning about the yogic tradition. The first time I attended a guided group yoga class I was awed by the chanting and repetition of this very old language. To be honest with you, I still am. After years of searching I can say that the Sanskrit language, chanting and the Yoga Sutras are an intimate part of my spiritual life. Most traditional yoga classes use Sanskrit chants to invoke the specific tradition and offer blessings. Although it's new and different for most of us when we first experience it, in relation to the yoga tradition, Sanskrit chanting, OM and the Yoga Sutras are as simple and ordinary as hearing the Bible quoted in a Catholic church or hearing the Latin language used in a church choir, punctuated with Amen. Yet studying Sanskrit can help place your experience of yoga within the historical reality of its past, present and future.
Sometimes I wonder how much our fascination with yoga is just another form of occidental mystery taking us by the heels of our own imagination. People are in love with what they're not. And lithe, flexible, super strong, Sanskrit chanting, henna painting, auming, deep breathing meditators most of us here in the Western world simply are not. But we love it and the Japanese love American baseball and Indian families love Domino's Pizza for their special Friday night dinner. The truth about globalization is that it allows the best of each culture to reach across the world with a quick double click. When you can watch a yoga master on youtube, trade mutual funds for your retirement, google your way to enlightened dialogue and get a pedicure all in the same day, you have to ask what is' real and begin your own search into lasting meaning. What is authentic and what is just a sound byte of another culture? Don't just buy into the myths and iconographies of someone else's heritage for the sake of their difference. If you dig deep enough what you might unearth in these ancient traditions of the Far East is a way to honestly connect with a part of yourself that was always there in the first place.
There is no "need" to learn Sanskrit, chanting, paint yourself in weird symbols, be vegetarian, twist yourself into strange postures, meditate or breathe deeply--unless of course you're drawn to it. If it happens naturally in your life and if your desire comes from a balanced and genuine place inside yourself, then the situations, teachers and events in your life will lead you effortlessly toward the path of yoga. I once had a friend say to me that you don't choose yoga, it chooses you, grabs you by the head and draws you in. Along the way remember that it is not the accoutrements of yoga that make it holy, it is the space inside your own heart that creates an opening to the divine.
by Kino MacGregor
Copyright 2009 Kino MacGregor |
All rights reserved
One Breathe at a Time
This year's political season in the U.S. highlights some of the most monumental achievements and pitfalls of the past century and inspires a renewal of the dream of peace, hope and change. Yet in such an atmosphere we must also ask ourselves where the realization of such broad specturm dreams is to be found if these ideals are really to be more than just a dream after all is said and done. We know now that the ultimate resolution of the seemingly eternal problems of humanity is not to be found in a battle between nations fought with weapons of mass destruction, nor in a war of words among politicians, nor in the battle of the sexes. So where and to whom do we turn to answer the most difficult questions of our lives?
The very heart of the spiritual path is a search for inner peace and when you practice your daily discipline you help translate your individual realization to the larger whole. Society is comprised of its members just as your body is composed of its cells. When you take responsibility for your actions, words and deeds you build a gateway towards the slow, steady realization of true peace one breathe at a time. If a united global consciousness is to succeed each person on Earth must live, act, feel and think with the highest level of awareness possible at each moment. That means you and me too. If you cannot live for one full week without letting your anger get the best of you, then how can you expect whole nations to remain peaceful for any length of time? Simply put, your state of mind matters to everyone.
It seems that there have always been wars between nations, lover’s spats and family feuds as long as humanity has been on Earth. Where humans go, drama is soon to follow. Yet underneath the soap opera emotional rollercoaster is the enduring dream of final and lasting peace. Sometimes it is those who are the most deeply entrenched within the drama of their own lives that most desperately search for salvation. For centuries humanity has turned to organized religion to answer the deeper questions, yearnings and aspirations of life. Now the search for spirituality takes prominence in the public domain and your participation in activities like yoga and meditation heralds a major spiritual revitalization of society.
Living life on the spiritual path allows you to tap into the magical underlayer of existence and it is in this space that the dream of unity and peace exists. The real fabric that hope is made of comes not in careless absent-mindedness but in patient, heartfelt dedication day after day, week after week and year after year. Practicing yoga is not some panacea for all your personal problems and certainly not the ills of the world, however, if you practice yoga you may just find a way to live a more peaceful and meaningful life before your time here is over. What unique and valuable contribution you make to the world is not always measured in terms of grandness, but sometimes in terms of how many smiles you share each day.
by Kino MacGregor
Copyright 2009 Kino MacGregor |
All rights reserved
