spiritual fitness

we just want to be loved.

       we all do.                                 

it's been this way for lifetimes really... wanting, needing, yearning... romantic love gets close... but even in the heat, and excitement, and flurry of being the single most important thing in someone's world... underneath all that yummy comfort... if we are really honest with ourselves.. is this aching yearning for something more... and that something more confuses us.. how can we wonder beyond being loved in a way that seems perfect? How can we be that screwed up?

Thing is, we are not screwed up when we touch this emptiness that lies underneath our perfect love.. we are finally touching our perfection when we get honest with ourself that there is something more than what lay outside of ourself....

Most people don't dig deep enough to even get there.. as soon as it is touched we jump away from the feeling as if it were a hot stove and our finger might get burned. We are so afraid to feel what lay beneath the layers of the feeling that goes beyond how the world thinks and feels about us. 

When we do, suddenly the chest becomes tight, the solar plexus locks down, our tummy twists in anguish... satisfying love, is something no one teaches us how to attain. That is why Valentine's Day is so cherished, it is the day we assess our value in the world.. our value  with another, society says so..Hallmark says so... we get red roses and chocolate, dinner's for two... union. Isn't that what we want, yes, union. And so when we do, why is it fleeting? Why do we need a day to say I LOVE YOU?

I think it is because we forget how to know I love you on the inside first, so we look for it on the outside. And the world tells us, the outside is very very important. For you will be measured in value and assessed in this world by how you present. Look at the magazines, size up the latest look and integrate, assimilate, copy and paste it upon yourself.. and the world will welcome and embrace you. 

Get busy enough and you will not notice you don't fit in with your heart and soul for the outward reflection makes sense to the world around you so you fit in and that is all that matters right?

I notice when I teach traditional group exercise classes. If I stick to the regular verbal protocol of "burning fat", "toning muscle", "shaping the body" type of encouragement... my classes "get me" and they get into their workout.. after all that is what exercise is for, right, melt what is unwanted, build more of what you don't have enough of, come exercise yourself into a better looking body. Is this bad? Certainly not. But, in class... I find that personally, I do not care about teaching about empowering the body so much in this way. So yes, there is a little of this concept of bettering the body parts to a degree.. but more often I like excavating what lay beneath our superficial layers of mind and heart. I find that intense cardio like indoor cycling gets one to the core of their emotions quickly. 

I find when teaching classes that create almost immediate exhaustion, people can't hold their "image" up and go that deep physically at the same time. As people in class would physically melt in sweat, their faces began to tell me a story about their deep seeded emotions. An empathetic energy rises in the room and as the work out gets more intense, emotions run higher, angers rise to the surface, loss, uncertainty, worth issues, pain body, self worth vulnerability... I can see veils drop that are otherwise in tact unless people are brought to the brink of being able to hold it together which indeed indoor cycling can crumble even the most impenetrable of image holders. 

As I taught these classes, I realized, this is a great time to rummage through the layers and get to the deep knowing underneath the layers of our worth and perception of our value in the world. No Hallmark holiday can reach into these stores. If we want to feel our value, we have to dig deep... underneath our image oriented self, is the self that needs no outside validation, it simply is. 

So in these seemingly conventional "spin" classes (indoor cycling)... I began to speak to the inner person... a language of empowerment, pushing beyond the obvious where we all meet and allowing the body to allow the inhibitions to fall away, when the frustrations arise from meeting such an intense part of ourself floats up from the push of going deeper into the ride, to allow it to come up. And what I found was that there is a lot of pain body inside us that exercise can get us to when we allow it bubble up. And under this pain body is bliss. And it feels euphoric to reach. Endorphins surge and float through the channels and eddies of your body. Suddenly we touch on a love that is not outside of us at all, but deeply inside of us... needing to be tapped like water running underground. This is only one way to reach the bliss of what lay beneath the obvious layers of your mind and heart... it is one simple way to reach your soul love. But when you reach this soul love, you deeply connect with the essence that this love you wanted on Valentine's Day is not going to come from someone outside of you until you can touch it inside of you.. And the deepest love, is not sitting just in the stores of your heart, although the heart is a catalyst for how the soul love enters into your physical, emotional, psychological and psychic body... your ephemeral body of your Soul is always connected to your Essence... your heart is the gateway way. There are many layers inside the heart center of who you are... and breaking through the layers of self protection is something that takes time. Why I love intense physical exercise as a means, is because it is so incredibly innocent in its approach. You just have to use your body to begin, and push it hard enough to push past your mental control. What I mean by that is the mind has a lot of dialogue in the beginning of exercise until you let go and the body keeps going but the mind can catch up anymore-- so it starts to fall behind, and slowly begins to give up because it can't keep up its chatter while the body is pushing so hard.. that finally the body leaves the mind in the dust.. when this happens, there is a sudden quiet for a little while, and this is the time when the heart gateway opens. At the gate, there can be a lot of suppressed emotions. Anger is a biggie. As  I teach, I can see that anger is one of the first emotions to pop up on the faces of my students, fear of failure is another popular vibration that comes into play. 

As I see and feel these emotions floating to the surface, I begin a new class dialogue. My indoor cycling instruction changes to a dialogue about fueling breath. Feeling the energy of empowerment to rise up in the body-through feeling the powerful confident, loving perfect self within. Encouraging each of us that this is our birthright, to feel and know this deep love within us, but we must have courage to let the lesser vibrations express themselves so the higher vibrations can fully flow free. Harnessing the trapped emotions and breathing through them instead of letting them defeat the workout, using the workout to allow them to rise up, but also provide an energetic exit so they can leave the body in a healthy and good way instead of getting trapped again underneath in that mysterious hard to reach place they get stored. 

As these feelings rise, and have a safe way to process and exit. I see a "glow" shift in my students. I can feel that love I know we all crave, rise up in their body in self confidence. I smile inside that this is a way to reach the soul love inside us. And although it is base and fundamental.. it provides a tool or a way into that realm where the love that we are remains not contingent on whether someone "Sees" us but that we "Feel" us, and when that happens.. the love that comes from us on the outside does not feel so vulnerable because we do not risk being destroyed by it when it changes form, or we are not loved as we wish.. We allow the outside world to change and grow because we have found ways to stay connected to the bliss that lay beyond where we get stuck in the fear, anger, hurt body that lay directly above the bliss body. We can pass through that fear body through our intensity in a safe way, and not be emotionally destroyed by it. Our image on the outside becomes a reflection of that deep inner radiance instead of something contrived off the popular trend of society's idea of style and standard.... to Something that is much more filled with grace.

A beautiful way to feel the love we all wish for is a work to experience what moving through the layers means, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Dive deep into the willingness to swim into the waters of you, and the layers that have made you who are are for all time as you know it... 

Namaste, my dearest sisters and brothers... 

What lies beneath...

Layers... upon layers. You can feel it inside you when you are very quiet inside. In the stillness of your own inner realm... the reality of the layers of you silently creates of feeling of the many levels of consciousness existing within you all at one time....
Many of us, stay with the surface layer... the easily tillable soil I would call it... the immediate feeling... which presents as the "rational" way.. sound thinking... you know. Operating mostly without our feeling sensors.. but achieving a kind of practicality that helps us get things done.
Beneath that just slightly is the feeling center...layer. The unconscious directive of conscience ruled by the heart, that is influenced by our immediate surroundings, immediate past, or hopes for the future, also laced with our deep past brought into current circumstance. 
I suppose I would liken one to the sun,  as an image we understand as blatant and blaring, warm and safe, secure rational thinking about our directive. It satisfies productivity. Don't look too hard, you might miss the obvious kind of directive. The layer of making good sound use of your intellect, using your head energy. 
And the next layer, something like the image of the moon as it often represents our unconscious directive, something mixed with feeling,  unconscious hopes and fears, what we long for, and wish to manifest, and also our fears of not achieving what we most desire, empathetic knowing, extra-sensory and intuitive. Trusting your gut, instinctive. Using your heart sensor energy. 
And lying there in the next layers, our awareness of its existence based on the degrees of our own self introspection,  is a whole bunch of layers of the mixology of of both head and heart intertwined.  I would describe this as Earth we walk upon in our daily reality.. the ground we walk upon, the waters we swim in.. the changing weather patterns of our moods through the patterns of our daily life...the mix of the landscape that creates our everyday living breathing reality. Within this mix of head and heart, is both the intellect and rational of the head mixed with the empathic heart... Each a wild card of sorts, for both the head and the heart are a mix of our higher and lower vibrations. Our higher vibrations attuned to love and our lower vibrations infused with fear. The varying degrees of each that have been shaped by our experiences creates layers within us which for the most part are where our reactive energy comes from when we are sorting out how we instinctively operate in the world. As there are many layers here, some deeply imbedded  in our unconscious, the layers begin to communicate a  general operating system of a way of navigating the world. Our own unique mix of a combination of layers that creates a survival mode of sorts, a modus operandi. 
Underneath all this is a stream of all the unsorted debris, what I would call the fall out and the fire. The image of the inner core of the Earth comes to mind. A place where the yuck muck merges with the undeniable divinity we are within...  the great fires, the transformer, all in one, boiling for our ascension, boiling for our demise...we choose, yet when it arrives, no matter how hard one fights against it, it's Eternal power seems impossible to withstand, sweeps us inevitably into its throws and flows.  A place of volatile life force... so mighty we have built moats and layers so expertly around it to avoid the possibility of experiencing the reality of its existence until some experiential opportunity thrusts us in flight over its eternal fires. A flight where most feel the heat and find every possible avoidance to inaugurate themselves into the die cast of being consumed in these inner fires or transformed by them.   A molten boiling mix, the inner core of that Earth of our daily walk through life, and the sum of our karma we can no sooner conjure up for its fires rise in and of its own accord and timing. We feel its heat within our major life transitions, but its truest eruption comes in the form of our own kundalini awakening. 
For most, it lays boiling deep in the psyche,  transformation yet to behold, all the fires burn ready to transmute what is unsorted back into usable energy.  This river of  fears and angers mixed with pure love essence our Essential Self, is the transmutable self, the veil between worlds, where our highest and lowest natures churn awaiting integration, from unsorted influences that have become a part of our physical, psychic and emotional bodies that the other layers could not make sense of, yet remain unworked out, unhealed..only to burst forth with such intensity, when erupted, flows through all our energetic channels filling even the darkest back alleys of psyche with our Eternal power merges with our physical self. These fires burn all that is outmoded within us, seeking to transmute that which does not serve our Eternal Self. Our everyday self often experiences these burning fires as a mix of sheer terror, anxiety mixed with intense feelings of yearning for soul union, connection with a soul counterpart, sexuality, sensuality, often presenting soul connections of shared karma or mirror reflections to us of the very issues being worked out within our own process..often the very thing that drives you toward each other is the very essence you have come to transmute or slough off. So as these fires burn, feelings of deep aloneness, sadness, uncertainty of love, being loved, worthiness of love arise- coupled with intense familiarity toward the other, love unlike you have known before, intense knowingness of the other. These fires, match so many aspects of how we seek to be loved in the world as our sensuality bursts, expands, floods, our being. Often people experiencing these fires mistake the love, for opportunity to make these fires about this new discovered "other" instead of the journey it is meant to be in Self LOVE... unfortunately setting the self up for pain body and loss.. So within these fires of transformation, a focus of surrender is essential... If in surrender, when our lower natures try to latch on to what feels like the promise of love everlasting in another, we are gently redirected to the love, grace essence of our own Divine Self..where we resonate perfectly within our own bliss not based on another, perhaps enhanced by a divine counterpart but not dependent upon it, releasing the urge to lasso it as a guarantee that we are worthy of love, transforming it into the understanding WE ARE THE LOVE.... This love is a transmuting love that has come to burn away that which makes us feel separate from the "other" or that love exists outside of ourSelf. If we try to make it anything other than what it is, we suffer. The secret to surviving this internal volcanic eruption of so much intensity is breath. Knowing these fires are fanned and fueled by our own life force, yet they are integrated by our own life force as well, through our exhale. On the other side of this inner transformative fire is what lies beneath....
What lies beneath, lay BLISS.  Our kundalini fires bring us to our bliss, with its rise through our body this fire transports what feels like an intelligent energy that rushes through a mind blowing energy that pays no heed to our rational natures. Sometimes, this journey into bliss can feel painfully short...We must know and take comfort in the understanding that our Essential Self resides here always. It is a glimpse into our Divine Self. Experiencing this bliss, is our true reality. Sometimes people become pained in its transitory nature, but in truth, the more we align to allowing the fires to burn away false belief systems, distortions and schisms, the more the bliss flows as the river of Love that IT into all of our deepest channels and eddies.  This bliss... It is what I would call the Night Sky, the Cosmos, the All.. where the planets, moons and suns are not separate, but One.. Duality obsolete. The planes and dimensions unified, all possibilities One. Where the layers meld into acceptance and surrender so profound, there is not a schism mechanism to piece it out part and parcel. Eternal ecstasy, the fires of our kundalini burning up through every cell of the Universe, atoms spinning bursting to create more of ItSelf . The place where we remember all is unified, everything has always been One. Our place of Grace. Forever and infinite, our Divinity. Our awareness of this divine energetic aligned and perfect within us... all ways, always. Kundalini brings this essence through this fire into our bodies and transmutes all that needs healing. 
How do we get to this Night Sky within us where our inner cosmos is awakened to the birthright of our outer Cosmic reflection?
WE STOP.  Yes, I said, stop. Stop everything. Become silent again. Utterly still on the inside. Let go of micromanaging your path. Exhale, and let go of the reigns. Drop them and everything but what your Essential Self needs to survive. Say no to the doubt that creeps into to tell you this leap of faith will burn you up, the very heat you have covered up with layers of the mix of heart and head, and leap into your Soul. And your Soul will move through your heart and it will expand so wide, you feel the Universe stretch its borders so vastly the only thing you can do to manage such a strength and power in your body is to breathe. And so you do, and you take this great inhale of All that Is into your physical body and this head that rules the first layer, becomes dizzy with release, and the exhale that comes from this breath, begins to soften the tension of the rigidity a body that has been in the exclusive bondage of the mind.  And the heart rushes into the places in the body compassionately assuring that everything is going to be just fine, if you just keep breathing... And the heart and the head begin to work through all these layers together sorting things out, what feels good and what feels bad... Until great rivers of molten fire surge from your inner core in waves of kundalini fire gurgling up from the root of your being, fires of transformation, the sum of your karma mixed with your innate eternal essence to experience and know more of itSelf, erupts in a volcano of kundalini fires transmuting the very things you have avoided, hidden, made secret, into your ascended Self. 
The energy exhales and the bliss surges through. You feel the unity in your body of the Oneness you are... you feel fertile and expansive. Your breath increases inhalations exhalations, and it makes more of yourSelf. Your sacred sensuality oozes, yearning to produce, procreate, recreate, creation. And you are there, it may last a moment, it may last an eternity.. but it lay beneath you forever, constant, never knowing in and of ItSelf that you ever felt separate from IT. This intelligent force seeks only the go-ahead that your surrender brings, and It's treasure trove is eternal. Namaste.