Robb’s Blog

Imagine your life, your yoga, as a choreographed ballet of breath, flowing movement and complete and total awareness of everything and everyone around you in this flow. Imagine that this flow is not prescribed in its choreography but spontaneous in its creativity. It is not a ballet that you nor anyone else has ever seen so it is whatever you imagine it to be. It is a dance of emotion and circumstance that you discover as it is choreographed by you and for you. Imagine this world and how you might feel if you could achieve this ballet in every moment of your life.

To me, this is the vision of yoga. It is that destination that some call enlightenment and some attempt to reach through Zen. It is what I imagine heaven to be. A place of pure movement without effort or friction. Almost as if you are fluid within fluid. Mixing yet separate. Combined with All yet One.

It is a difficult vision to express in such a way as to have a “non-yogi” understand without thinking you odd. But if you give yourself completely to who you are as a human, who you are in the center of your being, just for a moment, you can feel it even if you don’t completely understand it.

We have war. We have hate and crime. We have things that I don’t even want to imagine but know exist. We have all these horrible things that I don’t and will never understand. And then we have yoga. I am not so blind as to believe that any one practice, yoga included, can eradicate these things from our reality. It takes a discipline I think that humans have yet to fully define. But yoga is definitely a stepping stone. It is a helping hand for those that take its Path and pay attention to its details. It may not wipe these horrible things from this reality, but one person at a time, it can being to heal what may be the root of our condition.

I believe that creativity and beauty are practices that can also serve as stepping stones. When combined, I believe they produce a vibration in the creator that begins to harmonize with the divine.

Yoga is a creative, beautiful practice that brings us closer to that divine harmonic.

When I counted up my demons
Saw there was one for every day
With the good ones on my shoulders
I drove the other ones away

So if you ever feel neglected
And if you think that all is lost
I’ll be counting up my demons, yeah
Hoping everything’s not lost

When you thought that it was over
You could feel it all around
And everybody’s out to get you
Don’t you let it drag you down

‘Cause if you ever feel neglected
And if you think that all is lost
I’ll be counting up my demons, yeah
Hoping everything’s not lost

If you ever feel neglected
If you think that all is lost
I’ll be counting up my demons, yeah
Hoping everything’s not lost

~ Coldplay

I often look back at my life and at many choices I’ve made among many circumstances I’ve experienced and wonder about some of the regrets I have about some of those choices. I wonder what would have been different if only I’d chosen a different path or made a different decision here and there. Where would I be now? How would I feel? And I wonder about those that my choices may have impacted and how they feel now but also how they might have been impacted differently had my choices been different or not involved them in the first place.

Thankfully I don’t have a ton of regrets. And the ones I do have are not so horrible that I wake up thinking about them but they are significant enough that I do often wonder about them. Especially those from when I was much younger, from that time before I had sufficient experience to always know that I was creating my own future regrets. Mostly stupid human tricks they were admittedly. Picking on and making fun of other kids when I was in grade school. Taking risks that I considered fun but were really actually very dangerous when I was a teenager. Getting reckless in my pursuit for excitement when I was in college. You know, things many of us did before we learned to “know better.”

I try to live my life now consciously enough to feel as though I will not have regrets in the future. Unfortunately, the future is the only thing that let’s me know if I am successful in this and I sometimes find that I am not once I get to that future. Regrets are, regrettably, part of this life. It seems that no matter how hard I try, I can’t consistently and continuously act with such integrity and consciousness that I find my self regret-less in any moment. I have learned techniques that I feel have helped me achieve a less regrettable state of being, however. Yoga is one of them. I’ve found that the physical practice of yoga actually dampens many of my more physically related regrets. I believe the right kind of breathing can heal much more than we may realize and much more than science has yet to discover. And of course, the physical practice brings strength and health which makes up for much of the abuse my body has endured in the past that I now sometimes regret.

I’ve also found that Faith - and I never refer to faith in any particular form in my writing because all that counts is that you have Faith - is another rather amazing tool. Having Faith seems to me to lead to explanations for many things. The simplest way for me to personally express this is through the expression that “everything happens for a reason.” I use the word expression because I believe there is so much behind those words that is of a deeply personal and spiritual nature that no two people can say that and mean it in exactly the same way. Viewed in this context, regrets are just a thread in the fabric of this life we are weaving.

I think that I have come to terms with this in that way by choosing to believe that the Universe uses regrets as one of many ways of reminding us to pay more attention to the moment. Regrets are part of the energy that moves the needle and pokes us as it weaves the life we are living. Reminding us that we need to pay attention so that the weave is straight and true and the pattern one that pleases us once we’ve completed it. Reminding us that if we are not careful, things can become unwoven and the pattern in the fabric unattractive. And that we need to practice consciousness in every moment because if we don’t, we’ll end up with holes and weak spots as we look back at what we’ve woven and realize that we regret much of the pattern we’ve created. A pattern that we then can’t fix.

I often wish it were easier or more straightforward to set the design for my life. Set a path that I know will only lead to the kind of weave that I know I will be happy with when I look back at my life’s work. Unfortunately I can’t because I’ve also realized one very important thing - circumstance, although having reason, is not predictable nor generally avoidable. Circumstance in all it’s vastness and in whatever form it presents itself is often thrust upon us unconditionally. The larger fabric that each of our own experiences contributes to has such a complicated weave of circumstance that we can never see it’s pattern. That pattern is what creates circumstance in each of our individual lives - be it sudden death or sudden wealth - and contributes to itself in a way that we cannot imagine. That sudden death for example is of course impactful to us individually but may also impact someone we don’t know and never will know in a way that leads them to their own purpose, their own reasons. And so on and so on, each life circumstance weaving together with other life circumstances to create the grandest weave of them all.

Ultimately the reality is that I can only set a path into each moment that I know will prepare me for whatever that new moment might bring. I can only take it one moment at a time. One breath at a time. Remembering to breath and consider instead of just reacting as all that circumstance manifests in my individual life. There is really no other way I don’t think.

OK, so after much experimentation and deliberation, I have decided that my creative endeavors are best served in this space rather than in the previous three separate spaces I was writing and posting to. Going forward, this is my home on the web. It will allow me the most creative flexibility and will NOT be just about my Yoga Journey or just about my photography or just about my spiritual search. It will now be all encompassing as I have found that all these endeavors are related anyway so I might as well bring them together in a more cohesive space.

Namaste.

If I only had more time to write. More time to consider what I am able to even write in this space. If there is one thing in life that I feel is NOT abundant enough, it is time.

I am reminded …

Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.

~ Delmore Schwartz - Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day

It seems to me that we are taught the right lessons at the right time. Taught them when we are required to learn them. Taught them when we need them but more often before we need them. Lessons about ourselves and about the meaning of This for each of us. Lessons about how to be better at this life. How to refine our enjoyment of and our progress in this life.

It’s often everyday little things that are presented in everyday moments. Things that are sometimes easy to miss or more likely, easy to mischaracterize as nothing. Or worse, as something negative.

The ultimate lesson learned though is to act with enlivened consciousness of the fact that it’s all about reaching new levels. New levels of understanding. New levels of appreciation. New levels of knowledge. New levels of feeling. Higher levels than from where we begin each moment so that each moment brings with it something new. Something worth paying attention to. Something worth remembering.

The beauty of this process is that the universe is constantly thrusting us into the future with these lessons and that we can use our own vision, our own faith, to shape that future. Sometimes you learn the lessons you need faster than other times. Strong faith propelling you forward. While at other times you learn more slowly either from lack of sufficient faith OR because that’s the way it’s supposed to be for some future state that you haven’t yet reached. That state being far enough out that the Universe knows it can take it’s time with that particular lesson. Knows it can allow you to struggle a bit with your own faith so that the next lesson is that much more meaningful.

The down side to this if you don’t believe that each moment is a lesson is that each moment will go right by you and in so doing you will go right on with your ignorant ways. Feelings of dissatisfaction, feelings that life has treated you unfairly, and most importantly, feelings of stagnation.

And all that I have held in life, has brought me to this day,
A day of soft remembrance, A day which holds me dear.
If all these things that I have known, and held within my life,
should not have happened Or occurred in any other way.
I may well not be standing here, upon this hill and gazing down,
warmed by the Sun, In light and love today.
To choose our path, or to be chose, I know not which is true,
but ne’er regret, nor Lose the love of all the things we do.
To live our life by natures code, to give more than receive,
to help and understand in Life, and see all we believe.

~ Maelwys, The Rainbows End