Snowdrops!

First signs of spring in my garden showed up the same day I took an online course from TBG: "Big Ideas for Small Gardens." The Tattooed Gardener walked us through photographs of his front garden and all the different plants, whetting our appetites for the coming season. 

In my own garden, I saw the white snowdrops first, poking up amidst decay. The next day, ice crystals melting in the sun on the yellow petals. Since then I have been on the hunt for any signs of green.

 

Full Hunger Moon: Moon of Longing

My hunger is longing for spring, for the end of lockdown, and that all manner of things shall be well. 

The groundhogs made their predictions on February 2nd for an early spring. The worst of winter is over! The days are getting longer, snow and ice are starting to melt. 

Celebrations of light embedded in lunar calendars all around the world.

Free Weekly

Our upcoming week is filled with celebrations, which lightens our somber Lenten season. Friday is Purim, the Jewish Festival of Queen Esther who saves her people by telling the truth. Some people call our present crisis as the “Purim moment,” as the darkness (Dark Forces) allowed in this Kali Yuga is being revealed. Purim celebrates truth and freedom. The Hebrew people were suffering and soon to be destroyed under King Cyrus’s cruel magistrate, Haman. In order to save her people, Queen Esther, who was secretly Jewish, had to “reveal” her true identity to her husband. In telling the truth, and due to the love of King Cyrus for his Queen, Ester saved her people from death. The sweet-filled cookie called Hamantaschen, celebrates this festival.

Saturday is the Chinese Lantern Festival, highlighting the two-week celebration of Chinese New Year. The lantern festival, always occurring under a full moon, originated in the Western Han Dynasty(206 BC-AD 25), where the lighting of candles and lanterns marked the return of peace. Later, Emperor Ming heard of monks lighting candles to honor the Buddha’s Eight Noble Truths, and he ordered the palace, temples and citizens to light candle and lanterns in the villages. During the Ming dynasty, the Lantern festival lasted for an entire month.

Saturday is the Pisces solar festival full moon. Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac before the new spiritual year in Aries begins. At the Pisces Solar festival we recite the seed thought, “We leave the Father’s home and, turning back, we save.”Great Teachers, called Bodhisattvas, come to the Earth and remain here until all of humanity is enlightened. I posted the Bodhisattva prayer on Night Light News last Saturday. The New Group of World Servers, training to be Bodhisattvas, is called to the task of educating and thus saving humanity. Often, they work unrecognized. This is their sacrifice. Sacrifice (from the heart) is the 1st Law of the Soul, the heart of which is Love. This “sacrifice saves the world.”

February full moon is Saturday February 27, 2021 03:17 EST

Turn Your World Around

Today I participated in the last online meditation for the six week online retreat Turn Your World Around, with Pema Chodron. In a true retreat you can remove yourself from your regular routine and daily cares to focus on more spiritual matters, but I was taking in the lectures while working at home and going about my regular business, albeit under pandemic restrictions. I had ample opportunity to apply what I was learning every day.

Group meditations were scheduled for two half hour sessions each week. These were not guided meditations so much as a chance to drop into an online space where everyone was sitting to observe their breath. Otherwise, daily meditation was encouraged.

Although the online meditation sessions are over, I'm still progressing with the lectures and reading. The resources, including Pema's lectures, remain online, so I can go at my own pace and return to materials.

I enjoy her teachings because she is so accessible. One of the student monks in a dharma talk said she puts things into kitch-y terms but I don't agree that making a complex topic more simple to understand is necessarily kitch. 

For example, when she talks about observing klesha, she says, "it is not about getting rid of them but getting to know them." Very approachable.

Similarly, there are the 3 Rs:

• Refraining (taking a mindful gap)
• Reframing (so much depends on how you look at things)
• Relaxing (becoming "One With")

Of course, this seemingly simple approach is really not so simple at all. I find the lectures extremely helpful in shifting perspective.

Recommended readings for the course will keep me busy for quite awhile. Rather than a book a week I prefer to digest a chapter or two, with time to absorb the lessons. Now on my reading list for the year:

• Emotional Awareness, by the Dalai Lama and Paul Ekman
• Sacred Path of the Warrior, by Chögyam Trungpa
• The Myth of Freedom (Section IV) by Chogyam Trungpa
• Cutting Through Spiritual Materialsim, by Chogyam Trungpa
• Emotional Rescue, by Dzogehen Ponlop
• Taking the Leap, by Pema Chodron
• Welcoming the Unwelcome, by Pema Chodron

Of course it will take me at least a lifetime or two to get close to a deep understanding, so for the present I am just trying to take it all one breath at a time.

Ocean Coral

Splurged! 

I had purchased a smaller ceramic piece from the same artist a few weeks before and was loving the colours of blue and copper. The bowl is lovely, but a bit small and the mantle was calling for something larger. Then on my Instagram feed, my old friend John had a gallery spotlight on some new pieces. Before I talked myself out of it, I'd sent off a text inquiring.

When I picked it up I realized how fragile it was and worried I might drop it before I even got it home. "It's not a question of if it might break, but when," I thought somewhat philosophically.

It started off in the yoga room where I could see it every morning, but it seemed precariously close to my headstands. Why tempt fate? 

Then I tried it in the home office, the neck of the blue vessel looking like it was capturing sky. I can see it there every day too, but it blocks access to the paper files below.

So for now, it has found a home where I first imagined, reflecting itself in the glass for double the pleasure.

Marlene!

Four months ago I wasn't sure if I would ever be able to take another class with Marlene when she suffered her stroke. Now she's back to teaching online and has made a strong recovery. Yoga was a part of the healing journey. In the classes I have heard her say, when she couldn't do asana, she could still focus on her breath. Inspiring. 

In January I took her asana classes and in February I have been enjoying the pranayama class. Guided practice is recorded and I go back to it at least a couple of times throughout the week until the next class. It is scheduled Wednesdays at noon - such a perfect time, smack in the middle of the week.

I emailed Marlene with some questions and she suggested we set aside a phone call. So good to hear her voice! I asked her to please write a book about what she was doing and learning on her recovery from the stroke, but she said she's too busy with the other two books she has on the go - one about the 100 days of practice that was published on the Yoga Centre Toronto site during the lockdown.

I have so come to appreciate that the yoga poses can be modified not just to your level of practice, but how you are feeling on the day. So my question to Marlene was about the challenge of knowing how far to push yourself. I don't want to consistently under-do, nor do I want to overdo. How do you find that balance in the moment? There are no easy answers as she says that is also her biggest challenge these days.

She asked how much time I was spending in front of the computer, certain that one of the contributing factors of her stroke was the time she had spent hunched in front of the keyboard. It's true that working from home I'm not taking as many breaks from being in front of the screen, whether it is typing away or being seated for Zoom meetings. It really is such an unnatural posture, and not good for long uninterrupted periods.

In addition to taking a break from sitting at least once an hour, Marlene recommended Vipirita Karani a couple of times throughout the day; leaving the bolster set up for ease of practice and as a reminder. The pose is an antidote for tired and achy legs and the time out a good opportunity to take 20 breaths.

Dry January

Toasted the end of Dry January with a Negroni that was much anticipated and hugely savoured.

Dry January was well timed this year as I am taking a course with Pema Chodrin on Buddhist philosophy that asked us to sit with our discomfort and observe our kleshas, and craving is big one. So, a good opportunity to feel the craving without satisfying it. 

Ride the wave of tension and longing. What does it feel like in your body? What is the storyline? What other paths are there? Make a conscious choice. 

I tried tasty substitutions: Seedlip cocktails, kombucha, and tonics. I mixed up one for myself with apple cider vinegar + ginger + tumeric + lemon + honey that was quite refreshing. A nice cuppa tea. Water infused with cucumbers or lemons or ginger.

In 2020, I listened to a documentary that referenced the World Health Organization claim that alcohol was a Class 1 carcinogen and unsafe at any level. However, I enjoy my wine and spirits too much to eliminate them altogether,  so now curtail my consumption to the weekend. CAMH defines low risk drinking for women at less than 10 drinks a week, and no more than 3 drinks in one sitting (1.5 oz. spirit; 5 oz wine; 12 oz of regular beer). For the most part, that's my habit now.

Cheers!