Remember this great song?  I never quite got the lyrics, but was mesmerized by and strangely committed to the ch-ch-ch-bit:

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don’t want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time

Life just keeps coming and oh, it keeps growing us!  It comes to melt away all the parts of us that we no longer need.  What is this moment but yet another profound and damn opportunity to grow?

Big ch-ch-ch-ch-changes in my world.

The Inner Quest Intensive, one of the three massive commitments/tethers in my life, has been unmoored.  It will no longer be offered at Kripalu Center, its home for several decades.  I am slowly recovering from this surprise/trauma, and realizing that nothing, NOTHING was taken from me.  I was given by the universe that which is truly mine.

A new freedom emerges, along with its surrounding terror.

The Inner Quest will morph into an even more magnificent, even more empowering process for folks up ahead.  Of this, I am certain.  Its essence will live on, through the commitment of its brilliant core team, in forms yet imagined.

Keep tuned.

Other ch-ch-ch-ch-changes tumble behind this one.

My profound loyalty to the organization that has grown me shifts into the zone of liability.  I need to imagine myself and my work outside those walls.  Hence, this site will be renewed and reinvented.
As will I.  Kicking and screaming, I leave the nest.

David says, “…gonna have to be a different man”.

Aruni says, “…gonna have to become more of who I really am.”

Well.  What is there to say?

Keep tuned.

Like the wicked witch of the west, the mounts of giant snow/ice/frozen mush seem to be diminishing, revealing beneath itself muddied earth. Looking a tad battered but resilient nevertheless, the earth emerges, readied for this springtime, convinced of the possibility of renewal.

The mommy herons sit on their nests, high up in trees in their rookery,convinced too, it appears, of the inevitable springtime.

New life, new birth, new warmth, new possibility hover in the air.

Less convinced am I, more battered by the losses of winter. Still I choose to take my lead from the heron, from the earth,and allow the cycles of change to unfold.

Allowing myself to be exactly where I am seems to be the practice of the moment for me.

The effort and energy and misery that come with expecting myself to be “further along” or “more evolved” is such an energy drain.

Some days, I just feel stuck.

Some days, I feel bored and lonely.

As I allow these feelings to be just that, just feelings, they loosen—they shift—they release.

Judging them, making them wrong, efforting to change them dig a deeper hole.

If you want to get out of a deep hole, stop digging.

I rest my case.

I relax into this day, into this moment, which I would label as about a 6.2.

No blogs?

No words?

Silence from Aruni!

Ahh…..spring returns.

Perhaps, my voice does, too.

I really am a worker-bee. The longer I live inside my own experience, the older I get, the more I see how driven I am by external tasks.

I’m surely not saying that I don’t get credit for what I do. Actually, more and more, I receive acknowledgement and credit for my actions. But/and, despite that acknowledgement, I continue to do more; I continue to look to tasks outside myself into which I can lend my energy.

Guess what? There are always next things to do. The list of cosmic to do’s is eternal and never-ending.

This month my work schedule has radically slowed. I have no teaching, nowhere really “to go”. This blessed freedom and wild slowdown has opened up a Pandora’s Box of self-awareness.

Who am I if I am not teaching?

How can I live a “beneficial” life if I am alone and not doing?

Where can I mindfully lend my energy in house-tasks, to move us into spring?

What if I can no longer write; what if I have nothing to say?

How can I take actions, while surrendering into that place of non-doing, in the midst of the task at hand?

After a week of wild erranding throughout the width and breath of Berkshire County, I made a pledge to “stay home” yesterday. I did stay home, not counting car-pooling the dog to and fro to doggie day care (he does not yet have his driver’s license).

I “stayed home”.

I wandered about.

I breathed.

I read.

I hemmed.

I hawed.

And then I noticed: the oven. Oh, the oven. When was the last time anyone cleaned that poor oven? How many ovens have I cleaned, in my sixty-five years on earth? Zero? Two? Unclear.

So I cleaned the oven. As an experiment in non-doing, an inquiry in being centered and quiet in the midst of the action (spray, wipe off, reach into those unreachable places), I breathed and relaxed. It was—okay. It was—several hours. And the over got cleaned.

And I practiced. Wholly imperfectly. But I practiced.

Maybe it’s okay to not have a lot of words.

Maybe it’s okay to not write.

Maybe it’s age appropriate to be tired.

Maybe it’s developmentally timely to struggle into pausing.

Maybe the silence is a deeper doorway home.

I really don’t know.

I am just practicing.