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

At their awesome concert this weekend, Sweet Honey in the Rock reminded me.

They reminded me of something so helpful, so right.

They reminded me of my parents.  

No, my parents are not an all-woman, African American a cappella ensemble, with a forty-five-year history of performing history.

Sweet Honey reminded me of my parents’ love.

Sweet Honey reminded me of my parents’ caring.

I come from two ordinary yet remarkable people.  

Their lives and the family they together built weren’t perfect; of course, there was dysfunction.  Of course.

They passed on what they received; silence, assumption, and unresolved pain.

Of course, they did.

And they passed on love.  Yes, it was, smothering love; it was merged-and-morphed-into-one-unit-of Jewish-family-blob-of- love, but love, nevertheless.

It counts.

My dad used to say, “When you’re happy, I’m happy.  When you’re sad, I’m sad.”

Ouch.

That was a pretty big burden to carry.

Yet he was the guy, upon whose lap I sat, as a pretty traumatized and frightened little girl, who said to me (a direct Sidney-quote), “Honey, you can do anything you decide to do.  You can.”

He was right.  Sixty-five years later, this morning, right here and now, his message is beyond-relevant.

Sixty-five years after being spoken, his words are a blessing, guiding me forward.

Almost twenty-years after his dying, my dad continues to breathe life into me.

It’s all true; dysfunction walks hand-in-hand with blessings, benign neglect travels together, woven into lovingkindness.

My mom was silent.  Her job was—well, everything.  She ran the Entire Futuronsky Show, indeed, working in my dad’s neighborhood grocery store next to him, six days a week to his seven, feeding us, managing the house, and most significantly, taking care of him, her primary focus for living.

My mom was eighty years old when my dad died.  We had no idea who she was, who she might be, if she would jump into the grave after him.

Her whole life literally had been in service to him.

She came alive.

For the five remaining years of her life, she chose to create her life anew.

She created herself anew.  

She manifested a dear little apartment in a new state, started an arts and crafts club in her senior citizen home, organized the regular knitting of hats for the Ronald McDonald House, went on every trip, every foray offered, was present in our lives with a silent depth, with a deep resiliency, in a new and different way.

She became a voracious reader, swallowing books whole.

“Daddy didn’t like it when I read,” she confessed to me that first year post-dad.

She read.

She came forth.  

She chose to rebuild her life.

She continues to breathe life into me, fourteen years after her dying.

As my life events these past months conspire to blow my heart into smithereens, banishing me from familiar architecture, FOR MY GROWTH, FOR MY EVOLUTION, FOR THE HEALING OF MY BODY, MIND, AND SPIRIT, for upgrade of my usefulness on the planet (I fully believe all of this), I must say:

I feel my parents’ strongest qualities buoying me up and guiding me forward.  

I am my father’s soft, kind connectedness.

He gave me that capacity.

I am my mother’s steely, grounded resiliency.

She gave me that capacity.

They live inside of me.

Their prayers live inside of me.

This is the magical song Sweet Honey sang that opened me to this gift of this claiming, this remembrance. 

Check it out, perhaps with a tissue nearby:

 

 

 

 

 

My folks weren’t the type “to pray.” They were too busy, too stressed, too focused on keeping it together.  They went to temple on the big holidays, they did their best to be good people, good parents, good Jews.

Most importantly, they loved.  

They loved me and my sister, wildly, fully, unconditionally, as best they could.

And their love became their prayers.

And their actions became their blessings.

And their legacy became their best qualities, 

His gentle tenderness

And 

Her strong deep resilience.    

And I got them.

I got them

Both

Deep

Inside of me.

I am them.

And that will get me through.

Somebody did pray for us.

Dear Folks, who thought about you?  

Who prayed for you?  Who cared for you enough to get you through? 

Did this song touch you?  What message can you take from it?

I believe my life instructs me and informs me.  The people, places and things I encounter are the path of my healing.  I’m looking around, calling in the blessings, to get me through.

They are right here, breath after breath.

Please let me know—how are you?  How did this week’s post land? I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

All blessings
In all forms,
Aruni

“There’s a common misunderstanding among all the human beings who have ever been born on the earth that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and just try to get comfortable.”

That’s Pema Chodron, the awesome, uber-kind Buddhist teacher, from her book, Awakening Loving-Kindness.

Announcement: I am not comfortable.

I am seriously not comfortable.

I am fine, and I am not comfortable.

Through a series of remarkable and blessed events, in this past year, so very much has been both given to me and taken from me.  The details do not matter. What matters is my commitment to believing that I have been given exactly what I need to continue to heal, to continue to become more of who I am.

I pick Pema’s perspective, I’m trusting her, she who tells me that to exile this pain would be to miss the doorway to so much more of my own life energy.

I choose all of myself.

I choose to embrace Aruni and my ever-growing, always-evolving self.

Here are the headlines:

I was a profoundly lonely child.  Because of a series of life issues about which I have written books (please do read!), I was pretty sure I wasn’t like you other Earth People.  

To name a few “issues”, we all have our own; I stuttered, which was Hell on Earth, every word a potential breaking of the silent denial of my family, that “nothing was wrong.”  There was a lot wrong.  

I wanted to kiss girls.  I really wanted to kiss them.  A lot. Especially Audrey Hepburn.  That was bad in 1958. Really bad.

And, my daddy was going to die at any moment.  He didn’t die, but—he was going to. Any day now.  He lived to be 85.

To survive, I retreated into fantasy, 50’s television and movies, my parakeets, my monogamous friend, Gladys, building model cars, and being in my room.  
ALONE in my room

With the ‘60’s and college, I found drugs and alcohol, of course.  That story could have had a hideous ending.

And it didn’t!

I have been blessed, blessed with recovery.  

I have blessed with yoga, blessed with healing upon healing upon healing, a bounty, an abundance of healing.

In these passing years, without knowing, I continued to run from my child’s loneliness, becoming super-hyper-uber-independent.

I GOT THIS.

A personal, silent motto.

Truly, I did.

No loneliness here.

I wrote books, taught and taught, got slightly successful professionally, had a home, had a marriage.

Decades and decades later, I knew something was so wrong.

Running from my loneliness was so futile.  It was all so exhausting, so draining. 

What was missing?  What was wrong?

And then life got my attention:

Miracle upon miracle, this last year, I fell in love.  

I came to life.  

I awakened.

I played and shared and hugged and loved and snuggled and adored.  

I was adored.

And then, a year later, it ended.  

That which I knew would never end, ended.

That which I loved was taken from me.

I am beginning to see and surrender into the appropriateness of this ending.

Bottom line–now I am alone.

At 70!  

With heartbreak.  With disappointment.

With my lonely, frightened ten-year-old child as my companion.

And I’m fine.

I cry.

Then I don’t.

I worry about being alone.

Then I’m alone and I have perfectly amusing and enjoyable time.

With myself.

I wonder what’s going to happen, with a puzzled terror.

And something happens beyond anything I could ever construct.

NEW BEHAVIOR:

I welcome her, that scared little lonely girl.

I invite her in.

I’ll take care of her, as best I can.

And when I can’t……

I’ll be back.

Pema says:

…”to lead a more passionate, full, delightful life, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is.”

I’m going with Pema on this one.

Let’s look to that other spiritual sage, that wise one, Bing Bong, the hero from Inside Out, the amazing Pixar movie, set in the mind of a young girl, as she learns to navigate her emotions.  I’ve shown this clip before but, damn, it is perfect. If you have seen it, watch again—give yourself the gift of these 2:36  minutes.

 

Thank you to Pema and Bing Bong, for leading the way.

Dear Friends, what parts of yourself do you run from?  What might be hiding behind that wall? How can you relax today?  What kindness can you give yourself?

Please do keep in touch—all emails are celebrated.  I am aruni@rnetworx.com

All blessings, Aruni

In an odd and fluid way, this moment is like a nanosecond in a twenty-nine-hundred-hour-movie- marathon called Our Lives.  We have our noses (I’ll use first person), I have my nose squashed up against the details; I can’t see around the corners.

I can’t see the bigger picture.

I am evaluating, dissecting, analyzing, and pro/conning the moment from this tiny, most limited perspective.

Nose squashed against the tree trunk, I have no conception of the forest in which I stand, the forest of possibility, of manifestation, of grace, of possibility.

I stand, nose squashed, wanting it to be different.

What an odd and funny thing it is to be human!

I occasionally look to my Archangel Oracle Cards, by Doreen Virtue, cards that draw upon the archangels and their core teachings, for validation and reassurance.  (Ha, I’m laughing at that sentence. If you told me that I would be That Person who just said That, I would have not believed you.) The other night, in a frenzy of Wanting the Moment to be Different, I picked up a card.  As I turned it over, it said to me:

Divine Order
“Everything is how it needs to be right now.  
Look past the illusion 
and see the underlying order.”

Those damn archangels.

This is exactly what I need to hear—not necessarily what I want to hear.

I sat with this message for a bit, considering, digesting.

As is my practice, I put the card on my altar and lit a candle.

As is my practice, I wrote the message on a sliver of index card and carried it in my pocket for a few days.

I took some time, as I considered breathing into it, considered living into it.

Yep.

I can hear, I can feel its truth.

Look past the illusion, the archangels tell us.

What does that mean?

For me, the illusion is what I want to be happening, what I think SHOULD be happening, the moment according to Aruni Nan Futuronsky, me, the Great Author of Life. 

It’s an illusion—because it ISN’T happening.

It’s a delusion, a mental desire that has not manifested into reality.

REALITY WINS.

Reality is relentless and in the bigger picture, no matter how it feels or how it smashes our hearts asunder, reality is here to bless us.  

I do not say this to take away any of the suffering, the heartbreak, the devastation of real life, life on life’s terms, as we say in Twelve Step.

I say it to give us courage, to remind us what we already know, to remember—no matter what, we can be okay with what is happening.

Eventually.

No matter what, we are okay.

See the underlying order, the teachings tell us.

Tricky, indeed.

Seeing the underlying order takes time.  Often, I must simply (and sometimes it isn’t simple) outlive my feelings of rejection, my own wounded, injured self.

I can report that every time (yes, every time), I have outlived my feelings, and eventually surrendered to life as it is, every time, what I am given is beyond anything I could have created for myself.

Life’s plan for me is so much vaster, more gorgeous, more glorious than my own.

Can I imagine that the highest will unfold for all, as life unfolds?

No.  Not when I’m sad and frightened.

But I can feel sad and frightened, and lean toward that possibility.

Can I imagine that there is an order, a perfection playing out, that is protecting and caring for me?

No, not when my broken heart is wailing and my stomach is aching.

But I can feel those feelings and lean toward that possibility.

I have decades of evidence-based data from my life, from my sobriety, that tells me reality is here to bless me, to protect me, to care for me, for love me.

Most of the time I can’t feel that—but I believe it—and I practice it—and I will outlive my feelings.  I will outlive my feelings.

I am outliving my feelings.

Tweaking life’s rejection to life’s protection, a sigh of relief and possibility, tiny-teeny-weeny, emerges in my belly.

Tweaking I’m not getting what I want to I’m getting what I need shifts my constricted belly toward more relaxation.

Imagining that life is not here to hurt me, to take from me, to deprive me of what is mine—but to imagine there is protection and care, in all of it, ALL OF IT, especially the pieces of life I do not want—as I do that, as I lean in that direction:

I am freed.

Dear Friends, not an easy teaching, this one, but surely, it is an essential one.  Life on life’s terms. How do you practice this? What do you notice? What parts of your life to you wish to be different?  Where do you tussle with reality?

Please do keep me posted.  Your emails are a gift. I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

Best,
Aruni

I have a reputation for being a Teacher of the Morose.  

It’s odd, because both you and I know that I’m fairly funny.  

These long lonely summer days, I’ve actually begun having an occasional and randomly amusing time with myself.  

This is good news.

Yet I do think I have a bit of a yogic rep (in the tiny yet vast Kripalu world) for being a “deep diver,” leading introspective programming.

Ya think?

It’s probably true, and for that, I am grateful, forever-grateful.

My boss is a good enough guy; he’s committed to light and feathery outdoor programming, like the yoga of standing paddle boarding while chewing gum, under a full moon, possibly smeared in oblong patterns with menstrual blood, if you have any, while playing jolly Beach Boy music.  

Whatever.

A few years ago, he sat me down, looked me in the eye and told me to create a workshop on “joy.”

Without saying “Lighten up, babe”, pretty much told me to lighten up, babe.

I contained my internal response (“GRRRRRRRRRR……..DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO…..) and created a workshop on joy.  It’s been a powerful springboard, this workshop, into some rich learnings for me, about joy, yes, and about moroseness, about pleasure, yes, and about pain.

After leading this workshop for a few years, with initial reluctance along with a tiny slice of holier-than-thou-ness, I’ve eventually relaxed into it and learned a lot.  Here are a few blog-ish headlines:

You want joy?

Cultivate the capacity to be present with your moroseness.

You want happiness?

Practice being with your heartbreak.

We get it all.

Our part of the process is to strengthen our container of being here, of noticing, of feeling.

Joy is a practice.

It’s not a lump, a thing, sometimes bestowed upon us, like fairy dust sprinkled on our heads.

We practice.

We partner with the universe, creating the circumstances in which we are available to the joy that is already there.

We practice expanding our capacity to feel.

We practice cultivating our capacity to be here, now.

We practice cultivating our capacity to notice without judgment.

We are not the ones who give ourselves joy.  

We are not the joy-givers.

We are the joy-receivers, the vessels through which joy surges.

Yet we have a responsibility, a relationship to create the circumstances for joy to flush us open and alive.

Here is a tiny yet hopefully impactful Two Minute Experiment in Joy.  You’ll need somewhere to sit comfortably, a pen and paper, and two minutes.

Ready?

Let’s begin.