Where? Well, literally, at my sister’s dining room table while my nephew is putting on his shoes to head to the bus stop. But really, I don’t know. I am here, but I’m not sure where that is. I am in some kind of a gigantic transition period and have been spending time trying to re-envision my life (perhaps more accurately just to envision it).
One thing I see is that I really want to post more on this blog. Then I wonder what gets in my way. The usuals: time, lack of energy, choosing knitting. And then there is this other one that kind of sneaks around in the background: there are so many blogs and so many yoga teachers, people don’t need another person saying the same stuff, thinking that she’s having some big insight. Well, that’s not very nice.
My friend Molly lent me this new book by Rod Stryker, The Four Desires, that is all about finding your dharma (life purpose). Dharma is one of Molly’s favorite topics, but it has never really clicked with me. I resonate more with Cheri Huber when she talks about how much suffering people experience feeling like they don’t know their purpose when maybe the purpose of life is life. “As if being alive isn’t enough,” she says. And the Buddhist saying that is something like, “Trying to find the purpose of life is like trying to ride a horse on top of another horse.” Which I take to mean: just ride the horse.
So what’s happening for me now is that all of this is fitting together. Each one of us is a completely unique manifestation of life (or consciousness or God or whatever), so everyone has the same dharma in a way, which is to completely be that unique manifestation. (The fact that it is unique is what makes everyone’s dharma seem to be different). I know some of you have heard me talk about something like this before, but I'm having some new understanding of it (mainly, that it actually applies to me, rather than being a nice idea or true for everyone else).
Owning that life is expressing itself through me in a way that is different from anyone else means I don’t need to worry about anybody else’s blog or even if anyone is reading mine. So I’m going to commit to more frequent posts (and see what happens).
(p.s., I hate to advertise on the blog, but I am also working on a book and if you’d like to help me, I’m doing a “guided self-study” email class on ahimsa (non-violence)—click here)
