The 2018 Shift

The 2018 Shift

If you were a flat lander, had only 2 dimensional referencing, you would have no idea of the 3D perspective. Map vs on the ground terrain experiencing. It is the same with contents vs context, wave vs ocean, and as Martin Buber cites, I-Thou.

We have a tendency to float in our current habituated perspective until something jars us free or beckons on. It could be a challenging event, serendipitous encounter, or the continued inner quest. The question arises of what am I missing, or what is to be understood here now?

Yoga gives us tools for this inner inquiry but we have to apply them. Then after consistent practice and strong inclination to be free of shackles of misunderstanding and ignorance we begin to see from a higher level. It is like looking out from a tall building at the bottom floor into a park. You see kids playing there. Then you take an elevator the to 86^th floor and look down at the park where the children are still playing. Both views are valuable. One is more centric and the other more expansive. When both are considered the viewer's awareness of balance, unity and wholeness becomes more greatly appreciated.

So, the opportunity of 2018 is to shift and bring a new perspective to what is arising in you, for you, and as you. It could be considered a mountain top view, higher up vs low down. Low down is necessary but so is higher up. Can you live as comfortably in the known as well as the unknown.

Can you find individual sanctuary and stillness time as part of the shift?

What are some of the important practices that you might bring to bear? They might be learning to ask the right questions, some of which might be universal and some uniquely individual to you. They might be asking for help, admitting at long last that you need a higher up view.

The opportunity is to hold the yin-yang perspective and energy, uniting with it and being it. The work before us is to be creative, contributory, adventuresome, and satisfying. It is to reveal what is wanting to be seen and witnessed. It is us showing up, cherishing the journey, and doing the work.

Writer, poet, thinker, activist Joanna Macy sees us being in the potential of three epochs:

  Business as usual

  The Great Unraveling (breakdown)

  The Great Turning (turning to love, wisdom vs on each other)

Author of World as Lover, World as Self, she writes “It is my experience that the world itself has a role to play in our liberation. Its very pressures, pains, and risks can wake us up -- release us from the bonds of ego and guide us home to our vast, true nature.”

“The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.”

― Joanna Macy

~~~~

How might you open you today?

You can listen to her talk with Krista Tippett in 2016, or read the transcript, at

https://onbeing.org/programs/joanna-macy-a-wild-love-for-the-world/

Richard Hammer, Present Wholeness Yoga, 1-1-18

Christmas 2017

Christmas 2017

May joy come to you as easily as the next breath.

May peace and love abide in the

abode of your every thought.

May the causes of happiness

grow in the coming year.

                                                       -  Richard

The Path Ahead

“ …the long pilgrimage of spiritual work demands a commitment to wander

into a life of authenticity and truth.”  - Mark Nepo

    The Path Ahead

What happens when

  the impossible becomes possible

  the closed door opens

  the constriction becomes flow

We each have agency, authority

  to make change happen

  to see things differently

  to uproot stagnation

When change happens

  there is insight and evolution

  there is beginning again but differently

  there is a welcoming joy and light

This shift is an acknowledgment

  that all is well

  that wonder exists

  and that grace is operating.

       richard hammer

            12-5-17

      Cape Coral, FL

Balance, Flow, and Integrity

Balance, Flow, and Integrity – Wholeness in Motion

How will you move through life today?  Is it mindfully and with love?

"If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself, if you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give, is that of your own self-transformation." – Lao Tzu

"The transformative process is our job, so that we are not ruled by fear but by love." – Ram Dass

"Through an open heart, one hears the universe." – Ram Dass

“If there is love in your heart, it will guide you through your life. Love has its own intelligence.”

- Sadhguru

"The first thing you discover is a kind of emptiness, a silence, a presence which doesn't seem to have content to it, like looking up at a limitless sky. That boundary-less place inside you is your own consciousness, your awareness. When you relax into it, you realize that it's also full - it is everything. You realize this presence is what you really are: Love." ~ Arjuna Ardagh

"There's a voice that doesn't use words. Listen." ~ Rumi

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ 

लोकाः समस्ताः सुखिनो भवन्तु

lokāh samastāh sukhino bhavantu

May all beings in the Universe BE HAPPY AS HAPPINESS!

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ 

A Note from Richard - 11-27-17

I use a free online journal for a short weekly writing. Titled Penzu  (penzu.com), it is easy to access and save, and go back to rewrite on occasion. It prompts me in my email on Mondays to write something for the week or day. Here is part of today's jotting:

Title: Gratitude, Grace, and Guts

The title may same a little unusual. These three words don't seem to fit together.

When we have gratitude we flow into grace. And when we are in grace, that feeling and awareness of perfect wholeness in action and activity, we find the courage, the "guts", that lies beyond fear based consciousness that is a cheat and error of thought, to do the work that is waiting for us to do in the world today.  Our work that is absolutely unique to us to perform.  That which is waiting for us to do.

Embrace the three G's and step into your day.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ 

And then two weeks ago as part of my morning penning was this -

At the beginning of the year 2017 I was drawn to create, embody this:

Purpose Declaration (aka Mission Statement) -

I am here to use my voice and talents to elevate humanity.

(to make the planet a better place).

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ 

So, on this Monday I ask you to create a short Mission Statement for yourself that is beyond the ego's prompting of “to compete and survive”.  Take time, perhaps on the space below to write out what it means to you, at least today, to thrive meaningfully. Keep it simple.

Ram Dass, author of Be Here Now, encourages us with this -

Love, Serve, Remember.

The Invitation

Last month when hurricane Irma came up the west coast of Florida I elected to stay and ride it out.
This gave me time to sit, journal, observe, and be. It is always a choice - to stay in the quietness of centering presence or to dwell at the fluctuating edges of storm turbulence. It became a time of personal gathering in and evolving. So, here is an invitation to you dear reader. Pause. Breathe. Center. Find and cultivate a time of stillness .... not waiting for storms to push you into it.

     The Invitation

There's an invitation in stillness

  to rediscover what has always been.

The ever active mind and ego protests,

  requesting doing over being.

Before the sunrises each morning,

  there is stillness upon the land.

 

Before the bird takes flight,

  there is preparation of spreading wings.

The inner quest is a cherishing of deep truth,

  the action of centering self care.

Pause now, and then again, until

   balance appears as mindful presence.

This is the open heart greeting the world,

  connecting mind with wonder, grace,

  and the mystery of your being.

                 richard hammer

                       9-30-17

Artist of Your Own Life

You Are An Artist Of Your Own Life

There's a time for knowing.

And there's a time for not knowing.

  Both are sacred.

Just as there is wisdom as foundation in stillness,

there is wisdom as active creative, intuitive energy.

  Both are needed.

Knowing can be a referencing point on the horizon.

Unknowing can be an allowing for discovery of what is there.

The important qualities that are generative

  are trust, courage, and fidelity to Self.

Cultivate a sense of Power, Presence, Passion, and Purpose.

Align with love, service, and your individual unique expression.

There will be challenges.

There will be learnings.

There will be you living as active wisdom.

The right and perfect path is the one you are on.

The gift you have been given is Divine Agency.

The gift you have come to give

  is in this breath,

  is in this turning inward,

  is in this saying yes to life.

            richard hammer

                 8-5-17

The Layers - Poetic Openings

The Layers

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

— Stanley Kunitz from The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz

                     -------------------- 

Stanley Kunitz was in his seventies when he wrote this poem, and he still had many changes to traverse before he died at the age of 100 in 2006. With great dignity, he speaks here of the losses he has known and what it is that survives when all else is gone. Everything passes. Is it sad? Is it a relief? Sometimes one, sometimes the other. Is there anything, then, that abides? For Kunitz, there is “some principle of being” from which he struggles not to stray. The enigmatic lines near the end of the poem –

Live in the layers,
Not in the litter

came to him one night at the end of a terrifying dream, a voice from out of a cloud speaking a riddle as strange as any from the Delphic oracle of Greece. He woke immediately and wrote down those lines. Soon afterward, the whole poem flowed from these two lines.

Warmly, Roger Housden

roger@rogerhousden.com

-------------

From Richard:

Daily be aware of your guiding principles. Are they in the rear or in the front? Do they pull you  forward or hold you back?

Is the liter of past actions and events an attractor factor for this day's mental focus? Regrets, recriminations, and could have beens?

Release yourself from this bondage with your next breath.  Perhaps say to yourself in coordination with the breath cycle “Letting Go”  --- with the inhale saying “Letting” and with the exhale “Go”. Do this for the next 5-10 breaths. Then sit in silence for a moment and feel the release.

Self perceived baggage from the past is like having to carry around a large, heavy backpack.  Every time you think of something of later days with a negative view it is like putting another weighted object in that already over stuffed, supper heavy pack. It is hard to breath carrying so much weight.

Why not sit down for a moment and unpack it. Leave some, or all, of it by the road now. And when you are ready, stand up and renew your journey with a lighter load.

As Kuntiz writes in the poem, come to live in the layers of the forward journey and not the liter of the past.