What a wacky and wild ride, this being human.  

To attend to our humanness, at Kripalu we’ve initiated an eighteen-month training for staff, to drill down into the six core values of the community.

The first value—Presence.

It was an easy winner for number one.  You gotta be here before you are anywhere else…….

The practice of being present?  

What does that even mean?

Aren’t we already right here, right now?  

Yes, we totally are.

But we forget. 

We keep forgetting, you guys!

This is truly the human dilemma—we forget that we are already home.

Again and again, we forget.

Our practice is to remember, to notice, to return, to come home.

Without judging the forgetting,

Without making ourselves wrong.

Over and over again, 

We practice returning to presence.

Here is a twelve-minute reminder, a video of my teaching about Presence.  Walk with me around the Kripalu grounds—excuse my huffing, which I find slightly embarrassing.  Yet, despite the huff and puff, let the grounds, the trees, the emerald-ness of everything remind you—

Of the beauty of the return.

Dear Friends,

How can you practice presence with a bit more intentionality?  For one week, between the reading of this blog and next week’s, what riverbanks can you bring to your practice?

Examples:

• At every red light, I’m going to take three breaths.
• At noon every day, my phone will remind me to stop, look around, and see what is there.
• On my daily walk, I’m going to listen to and focus on the sounds around me.
• When I wash dishes at dinner, I’m doing to consider the temperature and feel of the water and the soapsuds.

Any other ideas?  Keep me posted. I am aruni@rnetworx.com

Thanks for joining my Presence with Intentionality Practice.

Oh, the beauty of the return—
All blessings,
Aruni

I woke up on the floor of my 5th Street apartment.
Humidity had glued my face to its wooden floor.

I didn’t know what time it was.

Wait,
I didn’t know what part of the day it was.
Then I realized, I didn’t know what day it was.

Everything hurt.

I knew I could never get up.

I got up.

It wasn’t me who got me up.
Left to my own devices, my own desires, I would have kept lying there
In that pool of sweat,
My sweat.

Something else moved me.
The power of that empty pain?
The force of that hideous despair?

Something moved me
Up
Toward the telephone,
To the hotline.

Something moved me
Up,
To find keys, 
Birkenstocks,
To open heavy, heavy New York door,
To walk into street.

Humidity oppressive like a wet-heavy-hot-blanket
Surrounded me.

New York summer grit biting my face.

Something moved me
Up,
To walk across the noisy churning trafficked street,
To the church that was always there
Waiting,

To the people
That were always there 
Waiting.

One block away,
Starting in a few minutes,
I walked past the church.

No.

I am different.
Not going in.
Not going in.

I went in.

Everything they said about themselves 
That day
Were things about me,
I hardly knew.

Things I had yet
To meet
In
Myself.

Everything changed.

They called themselves “grateful alcoholics.”
I snickered.
Grateful?
For that despair?
For that pain?

They said, as the day begins, 
Be grateful for everything in that upcoming day,
For
It was all
A gift.

I thought,
A gift?
What if shit happens?
Shit will happen.

They were right.
Shit happened.

They were right.
The shit did compost.

They were right.

Eventually
Grace
Unfolded.

Eventually
The
Miracles
Revealed.

Now
Everything continues to change.

As I continue to go
To those churches,

I continue to say
In the mornings
Yes, I’m grateful,
No matter what happens,
I’m in,
As best I can.

I am grateful.

I wake today 
In my bedroom
Most resembling
A comfortable treehouse.
Branches all around
Supporting me
Holding me
In their arms.

A morning storm lights the sky.
Thunder rumbles in the throat
Of the morning’s darkness.

For every single part of this day
That has not yet happened,

For every single moment of my life
Especially the heartbreaks

For whatever I am given,

I am grateful.

Eventually.

Eventually.

As I outlive the pain,
As I breathe into and through
The despair,
The gifts await me.

I am grateful for August 27, 1986.

I am grateful for August 27, 2019.

For the pain and the joy,
For the fear and the pleasure,
For the despair and for the hope.

It is all grace.
It is all inevitable.
It is all sacred.

Dear Friends,

It’s a hard one, this “gratitude for the difficulties, the unknowns, the heartbreaks.”  I am here to remind us: gratitude changes the chemistry of the brain. As we outlive the feelings, so much becomes possible, all eventually relaxes into perfection and ease.

Do you have something in your life you did not choose?  Something that, as it approached, you railed against, fist to the sky.  You tried to halt its arrival. Let me guess—it happened, anyway. With hindsight, can you look to that situation, can you see the gifts that emerged?

I do not write this to take away the pain.  I do not write this to eject ourselves from the human experience, the inevitability of the pain of living.

Pain is mandatory.

I write this to remind us, to give our hearts courage, to give us the strength—to keep going.

Suffering is optional.

Please send on your leap of faith, your situations that eventually opened into the next gift, the next iteration, the next unfold-mend of your life.

All voices welcomed!  And experiences, beyond sacred.  I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

All blessings

*Thanks to Ed P. for his extraordinary pix of his first Kelvin Floodlight dinnerplate dahlia of the season.

I’ve been thinking about writing it weekly, the lessons, the gifts, in the writing, the lessons, the gifts in the releasing it into this, our shared world.

I’ve been thinking about you, about me.

I’ve been thinking about the gifts of sharing.

From the I-to-the-we, how everything becomes easier, lighter, maybe even possible.

Dear Folks, to you, all.  

You who are faceless to my eyes; yet you who live deep inside my heart.  

You who greet me in the halls of Kripalu with big, conspiratorial grins.  

You who reach out to me with sweet, shy emails. 

You who reach out to me proclaiming the bridges of connection between our experiences.

You who reach out to me in silence. 

You who simply delete the email.

Every single one of you. 

Every single one of us.

We’re in this thing, this moment, this journey together, whether we know it or not.

And that’s the good news.

This last year of my life has been filled with such transition, so many gifts, so much loss, propelling me into the most fiery, most urgent of practices of my life.  I have chosen to share some of the more tender details of my transition with you (see last few blogs below), because I believe in this practice.

I believe in the yoga of faith.

That’s my practice.

Not faith, like this religion or that religion.

Faith, like, I am equipped to step forward.

Faith, like, evidence-based data that tells me, I can outlive this and blossom.

Faith, like, If it’s happening, no matter how heart-wrenching, no matter how belly-shaking, no matter how terrifying it lands on and in and around our skin, it must be life giving us more life.

To grow.

To become more of who we really are.

I believe that if we dare to step toward life, life will meet us.

If we dare to step toward truth, we will be supported.

If we dare to step toward parts of ourselves that we have run from, more wholeness and authenticity will emerge.

And here is the good, good news; we are in it together.

And here is the good, good news; we share it together.

In the sharing, in the bridges built between our hearts, everybody wins.

As I claim my resilience in this fantastic moment in my life, as I declare that I am finding my way, as I share it with you, everybody gets healed.

As I choose life and vitality and truth, so do you.

From the “I” to the “we.”

That is the so much of the journey.

In this time of such cultural and national split, it is imperative that we find each other, that, from the platform, the home of our-selves, we find others, to make this world the place we want to offer our children.

Nobody says this better than the poet, Naomi Shihab Nye.  Please join her as she reads her poem, 4-A:

As Naomi affirms:

This is the world I want to live in.
This can happen anywhere.
Not everything is lost.

Dear Friends, what would a shared world look like to you?  What elements would be in place? Where did this blog land in you? 

Please, share your thoughts, your heart, with me.

All voices welcome; all experiences sacred.  I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

All blessings, 
Aruni