PranaBeing blog: Show up

This summer I spent 113 days riding a bicycle around the Rocky Mountains. And I do mean around. You can check out my Facebook feed to read about the journey. I spent the first five months of the year helping my mom through a severe health crisis.

Sometimes we have a choice as to whether to show up, and sometimes we don’t.

Sometimes we’re just in it.

The challenge we are facing might be the obvious result of our own choice—as in my case with the bike adventure—or it could be a culmination of unknown variables resulting in a dire and non-negotiable situation, as with my mom.

Some things I learned over the last few months:

• The choice in any given moment is to show up or give up.

• Even if we give up, the experience at hand will still play out (i.e. have its way with us). This means giving up does not guarantee escape.

• We don’t have to be perfect, happy, have our shit together, or be superlative in any way in order to show up.

• When we choose to show up, something happens. Life responds, inside and outside.

• We can give in and show up. Surrender is not the same as giving up. Sometimes giving in is the only way we can show up.

Showing up is the opposite of avoidance. With practice, tools, and support, showing up can teach us how to stop disassociating in the face of things that scare us. As we explore in the practice of asana (postures), showing up is coming to your edge. Breathing there. Not backing away; not pushing.

The breakthrough can only happen if you show up.

In my experience, when we show up, the breakthrough will happen. It’s only a matter of time.

PranaBeing Blog: Information vs. Awareness

Information does not equal awareness.

Having read or heard or seen something, knowing how to do something, or even going through the motions of what we know how to do does not guarantee awareness. Even experience itself does not guarantee awareness, though all of these things (reading, listening, learning, experiencing, and doing) have the potential to awaken awareness within us.

Awareness has to do with conscious engagement. The more aware we are, the more present we are to what is happening now.

Awareness requires sentience. As we become more aware, we become increasingly conscious of the myriad stirrings aroused within our being in response to this moment.

It is only through awareness that skillful action becomes available. Skillful action is an expression of integration.

yogah karmasu kausalam - Bhagavad Gita 2.50

Yoga is skill-in-action

Without awareness, we are like a blindfolded person equipped with every type of headlamp and spotlight known to man, thrashing about in darkness.

We have gotten very good at generating, gathering, and exchanging information. Let’s get better at becoming more aware.

Are you using the tools, knowledge and practices (i.e. what you do regularly) in your life to help you become more aware? How does life change when you do?

PranaBeing blog: Start Where You Are

This moment is the only moment of life we have to live. Our past exists as memory in the present moment. It doesn’t exist anywhere else.

Our future exists as imagination in the present moment. It is made of probability and potential.

Here, now, is where the body lives and breathes.

Here, now, is where action happens. Where we choose. What we choose in this moment creates the ground from which the next moment will arise.

Lest this type of reflection send you in paroxysms of anxiety and self-judgment (“Here? NOW? Oh God, what if I f*ck this up??”) , I invite you now to take a deep breath…and exhale. Go ahead. No one will even notice (except you; and since you happen to be the center of the known universe, it matters).

Your mental-emotional palate thus cleansed, consider that because this now moment IS the moment of life, here is precisely the place where you can effect change.

Life is the original “come as you are” party. You’re here! Congratulations. Now recognize there is nothing between you and moving toward what you want to experience in your life.

What is one step you can take toward what you deeply want for yourself? Do it now.

Start where you are.

Leave a comment below and let me know: What do you deeply want for yourself? What’s one step you can take toward creating that?