Ever feel on edge? Most of us do from time to time, it is part of our natural reaction to stress. Do you feel on edge all of the time? If you answered yes, like most people, that's where things are not normal.
Let's call this the disease of the industrialized nations: disconnected from spirit.
Today I want to talk about getting off the edge. This can be achieved through many practices, yoga and beyond.
I hear from many students that they are concerned over their ability to manage stress, which makes them even more anxious. Problems that I work with clients on are: restlessness, anxiety, lack of confidence, poor self-esteem, depression, fatigue, IBS, insomnia, chest pains, shortened breathing- all of the feelings that we don't want to feel.
I am here to tell you, there is nothing wrong with you and that you are not alone. If your counterparts tell you that from time to time they do not feel the same, they are likely hiding the truth for fear of appearing weak.
What is WRONG, is the way we have been told to live. The way we are seemingly very strongly connected with eachother through social media is leading to greater gaps in our ability to hold relationships. The fear mongering news leads to a sense of hopelessness and international chaos. Our electronic devices hold the entire world in their sleek silhouettes.
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This is overstimulation. We believe that we need to produce more work, create more opportunity, build more strength, and become UNSTOPPABLE. Can you imagine that pressure? Well, we live it every single day.
We need to minimize (read The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris).
This is not what we were created to do. This is what is making us sick and anxious. We are living in a society based on fear- fear of not being enough at someone elses financial benefit.
However, if we boil down all of these fears, they really always come back to the inevitable event of our own death. This is largely because no one can actually prove what happens to us after we die, and we are extremely uncomfortable with the unknown.
As a society we should be embracing the unknown- and be satisfied with sometimes not knowing. Consider how much we dislike not knowing, for instance technological advances. We dislike not being able to control our enviroment, diseases, transportation- we are constantly try to bend the rules of nature. We must start asking, just because we can do something, does that mean we should? We must look at all the implications- not just the band-aid "this solves that problem" instantaneous solution.
With being uncertain of outcomes, aren't those some of the moments that are most exhilarating? That first moment you set your eyes on a potential mate. The first time you try something new, travel someplace foreign, whenever you take a leap of faith.
Faith is what we are lacking. We must develop faith as a society. Faith that there is more and that it is going to be great. Be okay with not knowing for certain what it is just yet.
Most indigineous people celebrate death as a passage into the next stage of existence. We are not going to be able to cure ourselves of these ailements truly unless we can adopt these ideas. We need to shift the entire way that the we are doing things altogether. This is going to require unity, something that is quite foreign to a competition driven society. We need to return to our roots of simplicity and divinity.
We could start to change our perspective on how we think about loss and our own deaths as simply a beginning to a new adventure.
This human life is not all there is, and though the world and universe seem dark and scary, there is so much more light than there is darkness. Always remember that.
Once you accept that your time will come to an end on a deep core level, you can actually start living and appreciating each moment. If you live your entire life in the confines of your fears, you will never live at all. Imagine if when we saw people, we only saw their soul. How different would our definition of beauty be? We need to start loving that way. True peace comes when we see ourselves in every single thing that surrounds us, including not only our friends and our family but also our enemies and our enviroment.
It breaks the walls of protection down, it knows only compassion and empathy, where we are able to treat each living thing with the respect and divinity it deserves. We essentially are crapping all over life itself. We glorify war, destroy our rainforests (the lungs of our planet), defy nature- our entire source of existence, we compete for prize, and all of these things are a continuation of a life lived in our primal instincts. Desperate times call for desperate measures, well we created that phrase.
We can together create an alternative perspective on this life. We honor each day in this body as a chance to share and love. We work together to find sustainable solutions that will benefit all other living things. We are no longer the center of the universe, but a neccessary small part of it. Use your practice to honor the source that connects us all, our breath. Take walks in nature to remind yourself of the simplicity and spectacularity of life. Remember that you are a part of the cycle, like all things that have come before and will come after. As yogis we are constantly trying to give up the past and give up the future so that we can fully embrace this moment. Living in the moment, not concerned so much for figuring out an inevitable event that will come in the future. When you surrender to faith, that everything is going to be alright, it will. Believe it, live it, create it.
**In the remote Amazonas region of Peru, shamans are greeting thousands of ex-professionals each year for a special ceremony. This ceremony is not for the faint of heart- you will purge and possibly have very vivid encounters with your darkest fears. So why would someone do this to themselves?
Because- as best as we may try, it is extremely difficult to live in this society any other way than the way that is dictated by control and dollars. When we can't get out of our own way to make a change, we need to turn to the universe and ask for a figurative kick in the ass so we can get our shit straightened out. This ceremony is in a way meant to scare you out of the way you are currently living, so that you can return to your true nature. A spiritual, kind and loving being.
In that same ceremony in the Amazon, people are shown and comforted through experiencing and observing their own "death" through psychedelic Ayahuasca. What fuels fear of dying? Mostly it is because we are afraid of the unknown.
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