In psychology there the idea that “it’s not your fault that you…”. We did not personally create many of the dysfunctional parts of our life. Many of our struggles are rooted in early events and our of our control.
But that’s not the end of the conversation of change. In yoga philosophy, not your fault is only part of (half of?) the conversation. The other part is – now what? Once you realize that you didn’t create these situations, one option is to take responsibility to clean it up anyway because it will likely make your life better to do so.
This dichotomy and the tension in the dichotomy is an aspect of life – it’s the dance of action & embodiment, of being & doing, of masculine & feminine, Shakti & Shiva. In yoga philosophy we need both – we need to accept that it’s not our fault, yet we have the capacity to shift, renew, embody our own experience.
In this episode I’ll tell stories and give examples, and then a 3-step process to navigate from doing to being.
Can awakening and tending our dreams help us be creative enough to solve our greatest global issues? And if anyone can and should get involved with constructive dreaming, isn’t it those seekers of transcendence, the yogis? Can dreams help yogis save the planet? Stephen Aizenstat, Chancellor of Pacifica Graduate Institute, thinks so and I have to agree.
I’ve always been a pretty good sleeper (well, until menopause but that’s another story). For most of my life, I’ve slept the dream-free sleep of the dead. Close eyes, relax, zzzz, open eyes, off we go. However, as I’ve journeyed through life with a sleeping partner who truly struggles (he’s inspired by my ability to go offline so quickly and completely), I’ve become more curious as to what is happening during sleep consciousness, and if I am as dream-free as I think. So just what are dreams and why do we have them?
It’s great to be human. For so many reasons. One is that we can change our consciousness. We can go through our day be our beloved distractable selves, but then we can slow down, shift and drop into a meditative state – we can and do change our state of consciousness. Waking, sleeping, dreaming, meditating. While just what dreams are and why we dream is still a bit of a mystery, those of you who join us end of April for Yoga & The Global Dream Initiative, will be in the know after a weekend with some of the nation’s foremost thinkers on dreaming, yoga and consciousness.
I am endlessly curious as to what helps us realize who we truly are, and what gives us the clarity and courage to move toward that life. When I met Dr. Stephen Aizenstat at Pacifica last year, and heard him speak about the possibilities that waking up to our own dream consciousness has for our own and global healing, it was a “this is it!” aha for me. I have been concerned with how challenged we are with the global environmental crisis, and how even the most engaged vacillate between despair and delusion. Might this be a practical way for us to shift from despair to creative action? Don’t you want to find out?
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