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5787

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5787

Hi, folks. As the sun sets tonight, the year 5787 begins. No wonder I’m exhausted.

Just kidding! That number represents the Hebrew calendar year, welcomed in by Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. It begins the Days of Awe, ten days of deep introspection and contemplation, culminating in Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement.

It’s a time to quiet down, look inside, and rest comfortably.

I am leaning in that direction. I don’t have many words right now. I am settling in from travel, reestablishing almost-practically-normal-ish sleep patterns, and savoring this change of season.

The days are shorter. Leaves are beginning to fall. Wow, autumn, how I love you already. I find the cooler weather such a blessed gift.

Wishing you an easy and rich week,

And a blessed new year, no matter what you celebrate—

Softening into change,

Opening into possibility.

~~~

Music! I loved listening to this Playing for Change song. Their mission is such a gift to us all, weaving many voices into one voice, many nationalities into one song. Enjoy, enjoy.

 

Blessings to all,

From Aruni

~~~

 

Remembering Resting

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Remembering Resting

This was to be my not-so-busy day.

How have I managed
Yet again
To keep
Steaming 
Onward?

Lightly scheduled,
Not much to attend to,

Yet again.

How have
I managed
To keep 
Moving?

I’m tired.
So tired.

Wait.
Is that even the word?

Weary?

Spent?

I don’t know the word.

But
I do know,
Stopping
Doesn’t 
Come
Naturally.

Is a sub-group emerging amongst you-reader-folk?

It keeps me going.
All of it
Keeps me going.

The habitual.
The schedule.
The commitments.
The process.

The responsibility!
Real and assumed.

The heat.
The
Humidity.
The good stuff.
The
Not
So
Good
Stuff.

I keep going.
I push through.

OHHHH.
I Remember Resting.

TIME 
IS
NOW
TO 
REST.
~~~
To
Remember
Resting.

To remember
Stopping.

To remember…
Putting down
My 
Phone
During 
Lunch.

To walk away
From email…

Remembering
To stop
~~~
Dear Friends,
When I remind you,
I remember.

When I tell you,
I remember.

When I lead you,
I benefit.

In the giving,
There 
Lives
So
Much
Radical
Resting

So much
Radical
Recover
Of me
For me.

Thank you.
~~~
Here is a guided meditation.  Please take this into your world, however it might fit.  It’s about ten minutes.  At night?  Getting home from work, might it be a bridge back to your life?  Mornings, to start from that place of Stop, that place of Ease, that zone of Grace?

Please do experiment–consider how this meditation might support you.

Listen Here

~~~

  • Are you a Worker Bee?
  • What does Rest look like in your world?
  • How do you shift out of the momentum of your daily grind?
  • What helps?
  • What is your commitment to yourself about Remembering Rest?

~~~
This song quiets me:

 

~~~
Dear Folks—
Strong back.
Soft front.

One step
At
A
Time.

May our time
Alone 
And 
Together
Benefit 
All
Beings.

Stay blessed,
Aruni

“The Nobility of Retreat”*

by

“The Nobility of Retreat”*

This blog post is also available on my Facebook page to make sharing it with friends and family easy for you to do.

I completely forgot about this quote by Swami Kripalu.
I love this quote.

Oh!

Come to think of it,
I forget about this,

I forget about
This entire practice 
All the time.

Let’s see:

  • Nobility  demonstrating fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals
  • Retreat   withdrawing, retiring, or drawing back, especially for shelter or seclusion

Especially for shelter or seclusion.

Oh.

~~~
I am
A
Worker
Bee.

I come from
Worker
Bees.

I am
Married
To
The 
Queen
Of
All
Worker
Bees.

I learned
Early on
Work
Was
Home.

Well, it was.

My dad’s
Corner grocery store,
The Colfax Market,
Was 
Two blocks
From
Our house
On Arthur Avenue.

They were
Always there,
Mom and Dad.

Coming home
For lunch
From grade school,
John James Audubon
#42,
Just a block away,

I went to the store.

Nobody was home.
Work was home.

When he wasn’t busy
Smoozing with customers,
Slicing meat,
Or
Worrying about something,

My dad would
Cut 
Open
A fresh
Hard roll,

Slathering it
With mayonnaise,

Slicing turkey roll,
Oh, so carefully,

Tucking it 
Lovingly
Inside 
The awaiting
Bun,

And
Adorning
A sheet of butcher paper
With this delight,
His
Finished creation.

Extending
It to me
On a paper plate—

It could have been
A plate
Of
Gold.

Prasad.
Consecrated.
Mana.

I would sit on
The magazine shelf,
And have 
My
Blessed
Lunch,

Loving it, 
Recognizing
The 
Blessing
Of it,

The being loved,
Being specialness 
Of it…

But:

 I wanted to go home.
Real home.
Like everybody else.

Another reason
To feel different.

They worked 
All the time, 
My people.

They worked,
For us.

For me,
For my sister.

I didn’t learn 
To rest,
To pause,
To relax,
To nap.

Napping was
Passing out… 

Like my dad,
Every night 
After our six o’clock dinner
On the couch,
To go back
To the 
Store, 
At 7:00.

Not to come home
Until 9:00.

Only to do it
Again,
The 
Next
Day.

I didn’t learn
To rest.

I learned
To
Keep 
Going.
~~~

Rest is Resistance—A Manifesto

This is an extraordinary book by Tricia Hershey.  Check out this quote:

“Rest Is Resistance is rooted in spiritual energy and centered in Black liberation, womanism, somatics, and Afrofuturism… Rest Is Resistance is a call to action, a battle cry, a field guide, and a manifesto for all of us who are sleep deprived, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of Grind Culture.”

Grind culture.  No kidding.

This short interview gives interesting insight:

Read Here

~~~
Locating rest in relationship with the political and cultural demands of capitalism, of racism, of classism puts a powerful new frame around the issue.

Oh.

~~~

Friends, how do you rest?

How do you work against the push?

Against the efforting?

~~~
Here is Beautiful Chorus, an extraordinary group from Orlando, Florida.  Their music offers me a sheltering, a deepening of my relationship with myself, a soft seclusion from my busy mind and my self-created busy world.

Family Mission Statement:

~~~

May we be healthy.

May we
Be present.

May we ride
The waves
Of our lives.

May we
Live 
In
Peace
No matter
What
We
Are given.

May we rest.

Oh, dear friends,
May we rest.

Stay blessed,
Aruni

~~~
*Bapuji, Swami Kripalu

Breathing & Relaxing

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Breathing & Relaxing—

A Meditation

This blog post is also available on my Facebook page to make sharing it with friends and family easy for you to do.

Dear Folks, 

Words float around me.
So many spoken—

So
Few
Appear
To be
Left!

Is it possible
That I am
Talked
Out?

Doubtful.

What great
Cosmic irony:

My greatest trauma,
Being a 
Childhood
And
Young adult
Stutterer,
Has evolved 
Into
My
Greatest 
Gift,

The gift
Of
My
Words.

~~~
I will attempt
To keep
My written words
Limited
This
Week.

~~~
Can you think of any situation on the planet, in your life on the planet,
That would not be supported
By breathing and relaxing?

I cannot.

From 2021, here is, Meditation—On Breathing and Relaxing. 
Please enjoy.  Keep it.  Return to it.  Let it return to you.

Listen Here

~~~
How can you weave into your life
More intended time
For
Breathing
And
Relaxing?

At every red light,
Take three breaths?

At every subway stop?

With every email you send?

What do you think?

What might
Work
In
Your
World?

~~~
Dear Friends,

You MUST listen.
Simply said—
LISTEN TO THIS:

Stunning.
Emotional.
Devotional.
Alive.

What a presentation.

How did it land for you?
~~~
Let’s imagine
As October
Opens
Her
Arms
To us,

Let’s imagine
That 
We
Are 
Held
In
Safety
And
In
Grace,

No matter
The externals.

No matter 
What is happening.

Let’s imagine 
That no 
Matter
The
Heartbreak,
The
Trauma,
The
Challenge,

There
Is
A healing
Door
Waiting
To 
Open.

Eventually
And
Inevitably.

Let’s
Imagine
This,
As we 
Can.

And when
We cannot,

Let’s
Breathe
And
Relax.

Stay Blessed,
Aruni

The Nobility of Retreat*

by

The Nobility of Retreat*

* Swami Kripalu’s Words

Aren’t we just such busy little bees?  Don’t we just get so very busy, doing like everything?

Oops, perhaps I should utilize the more spiritually correct “I” version of that statement:

Aren’t I such a busy little bee?  Don’t I just get so very busy doing, like, everything?

I work so hard these days, at working less.

WTF?

I work so hard these days, being in the moment, staying present, not getting off my wave.

I work so hard at teaching anyone who might listen how to stay present, not getting off your waves.

WTF/squared???

I think of the brilliant and beautiful quote by our Bapuji, Swami Kripalu, who taught about the nobility of retreat.

The nobility of retreat.

We must get off the wave.

We must renew.

We must retreat.

I have thought about this quote for forever-now.

I don’t think he was suggesting my diving into a troth of Ben and Jerry’s, bungee-ing the remote control to my dominant hand and retreating into deep mindful relaxation.

That’s probably more an off-the-wave technique, which, by the way, works for about 90 seconds for me.  The ice cream is wonderful, FOR A WHILE, the binge-watching is fun, FOR A WHILE. Yet the outcome isn’t relaxing or renewing, but, for me, probably has some physical consequences (headache is a good guess), some emotional consequences (feeling dulled, etc.), and spiritual consequences (disconnection, rather than connection).

So how do we practice the nobility of retreat?

How do we relax to let go, in order to ready ourselves to be more alive and more present?

How do we look outside the habitual check-out behaviors that settle into our brains, our lives and our behaviors and consider retreating with nobility, with discernment, with choice?

First, let’s consider that fun-conversation, how do you get off the wave?

Experiment #1:

When I count to three, everybody scream aloud your three favorite exit doors, your m.o., you way outta the moment, outta the huge day, which you deserve (if you had my day), which you grant yourself without choice:

One….

Two…..

Three!

I heard:

  • Eating food that isn’t even food
  • Eating food that is food, but, oh, too much of it
  • Reaching for sugar (no more need be said)
  • Drinking one too many glasses of ___
  • Continuing to work even when work is not working
  • Wandering social media, looking for feelings
  • Roaming Amazon Prime, searching for deals
  • Diving into recreational drugs even when they are not recreating anymore
  • Grabbing people!  Sex! More people!  No people! Never sex.
  • Indulging fantasy
  • Collapsing into nothing-land

And so on, folks.

Big announcement: there is nothing, nothing wrong with any of these processes.  I believe, however, when they become habitual, when choice isn’t available to us, we deprive ourselves.

Our lives are so full (even when they aren’t), the world around us so toxic, the challenges so evasive yet so real……how can we retreat and calm, renew and restore?

We deprive ourselves of choice, of freedom, of true and deeper connection to ourselves.

Okay, Experiment #2:

When I count to three, shout out the things you do that bring you true retreat, true renewal.

One……

Two…..

Three!

Okay, I heard:

  • Yoga
  • Meditation
  • Walking in woods
  • Animal companions
  • Yoga nidra
  • Animal companions
  • Did I say, animal companions?
  • Journaling
  • Any arts, crafts, creativity
  • Movement!  Dance, walking, running

Like that

Using discernment, considering, making a choice, I believe these are the key concepts that offer us the nobility of retreat.

To release from the habitual,

To soften the patterns that bind us,

To offer our hearts choice,

To remember that we can

Always

Make a choice.

Those are the blessings of the nobility of retreat.

Here is a stunning 30-minute Tibetan chanting and accompanying video, which describes itself as, “Tibetan Healing Sounds: Cleans the Aura and Space.  Removes all negative energy.”

Listen to part of it, play all of it—experiment and explore.  And, savor its doorway to retreat.

~~~

Dear Friends, 

May you be healthy,
May you be happy.
May you ride
The waves of your life.
May you live in peace,
No matter
What 
You
Are 
Given.

May you savor
The 
Nobility
Of 
Retreat.

All blessings,
Aruni

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