Sunday, November 18, 2018

Living By Moments As Blessings



Living By Moments As Blessings

Gratitude is the practice of opening your heart so others can see it.

Fearless gratitude is the desire to be authentic, present, and fully alive.

As in yoga it is a practice. Practice does not “make perfect”.
It opens the door for all good to enter in.   

Gratitude is the remembrance that you are Oneness in expression.
Even with all your seeming flaws, quirks, challenges, and conditions
know that you are “perfectly imperfect”.  
There is no one else like you and that is a gift to the universe.

Each moment is a gift to take in the next breath.
Each moment is a gift to say yes to the day.
Each moment is a gift to be inspired by the beauty all around.
Each moment is a gift to create and share.
Each moment is a gift to reach out and touch another with love.
Each moment is a gift to feel grace and gratitude.

What are you saying yes to in this moment?


richard hammer
11-18-18 







Tuesday, October 9, 2018

A Witnessing Presence


A Witnessing Presence

There is an opportunity to engage, to be present with witnessing authority
and acceptance over you and what is arising, staying, and leaving.

There is oneness, agency, and sovereignty in this,
in this mindful acceptance.

The cultivated opportunity is that of exploration
and allowing the right and perfect action to occur as a result.




Endless Knot Karma 


Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Spiritual Master




   Spiritual Master

Can you live with paradox
  and still find peace?

Can you live at the edge
  and still know the center?

Can you live between the seasons
  of rising and falling and know flow?

Can you live with the ache to know beauty
   and yet push nothing away?

Can you live with the universes, both inside and out,
  and still practice your dharma with ease?

Can you live with paying love forward
  without attachment to the results?

Can you live with a sense of stillness inside of tumult
  and know spiritual freedom?

Can you live in the state of presence being available
  for the next breath, step, thought, act?

Can you be the peace, love, beauty
  that you are without control?

Can you touch and be touched and
  live with the mystery of it?

Can you be a fearless blossom of grace
  open to both giving and receiving?

  Then you maybe a spiritual master.


            richard hammer
                 9-19-18
            Cape Coral, FL
                  ~~~~  
“We have nothing to offer the world
     except our spiritual integrity.”

         – Joel Goldsmith


Saturday, September 1, 2018

September is Yoga Month




September is Yoga Month

How will you celebrate it?

There is so much worthy of my sharing at this time on this blog site. Last month I spent ten days at the Kripalu Center in Stockbridge, MA attending three programs –

Todd Norian, Ashaya Yoga, https://www.ashayayoga.com
Dr Roger Jahnke, QiGong and Tai Chi, http://www.feeltheqi.com

I create handouts for my yoga classes, sometimes on yoga, mine or others, sometimes on things floating across the screen of my mind. Here is part a handout dated August 30th -

Practice your yoga with integrity. Never hurting, always creative.
--- 
Let the practice live in you.
Let the practice be a purification so you release into a sense of your innate, true wholeness.
~~~
Share your light.  Don’t hide it.
Find the stillness -  And let it speak to you.
~~~
Can you say “I am here.”
with a sense of conviction and strength,
with a sense of authority and authenticity,
with a sense of willingness to explore unknown territory?
Then walk forward allowing presence to light your path.
~~~~~
Question:  If your purpose was to live in alignment with your highest truth what would that be?
~~~~

In the rawness there is light, truth, and opening.
In the breath there is the way.
~~~~ 

Mastering your energy is coming into alignment and coherence with it.
It is energetic intelligence.  Reality comes to us in levels and layers, waves, and rhythms.
We are an expression of the infinite in the here, now.
The quality of your life is how you are experiencing it here, now.
We are playing in the relative field of time.
~~~
The path of effortlessness is through effort. The universe is a collective dance.  Effort and effortlessness are part of it. In the state of integration there is effortlessness.  The challenge is the path.  There is intelligence in the challenge. Do what life is asking you to do.
True wisdom is beyond evaluation. (The Path of Radical Self Mastery program – Sattva Yoga).
~~~

Yoga is the investigation of purpose, meaning, and path.
It is coming into the understanding of the imperatives of being.

~~~
“Find that place where your deepest joy and the world’s hunger meet!!”
~~~

Enlightenment is understanding that you are love.

~~~
My current major Living Teachers (some):
Yoga: Anand Mehrotra, Sally Kempton, Todd Norian (Ashaya Yoga), J. Brown, Sadhguru,
Ram Dass, Dr Baxter Bell (Yoga for Healthy Aging), Yoganand (Pranakriya Yoga)
Others: Gina Lake (Radical Happiness), Jonathan Gustin (Purpose Guides Institute.),
Ekhart Tolle, Marianne Williamson.
----------------------

Resources for your awakening and enjoyment.

Sally Kempton had us repeating a mantra during my weekend with her at Kripalu. Here it is:
OM AIM HREEM KLEEM CHAMUNDAYE VICHCHE
https://youtu.be/RsvKnNzqWsk – 20 min youtube version - It continues to echo in my head.

Jim Gelcer gave a wonderful evening kirtan at Kriaplu when I was there. See his info. and music -
See Todd Norian practices at https://shri.tv/maestro/todd-norian (Or at Ashaya Yoga)

If you have not discover the Tao of Dana, take a look at http://www.fengshuidana.com/

Also visit,The Epic Self (free) - https://www.theepicself.com/
450 guided meditations for all and you can sort by subject.

Listen Well – Listen to the short monthly archived audios of Spoken Word Exploring the Divine

If you have not yet discovered Gina Lake take a moment: ttps://www.radicalhappiness.com/index.php
She also offers a 60 Meditations for Greater Happiness program on Daily Om that is excellent. https://www.dailyom.com There are many excellent courses t

here!

Check out UPLIFT Media Channel. A community of positive change-makers bringing you positive news and events from around the World. https://upliftconnect.com

As J. Brown ends his weekly podcasts “Let's be kind to ourselves. And let's be kind to each other.”


Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Sadhguru




Sadhguru

In 2017 when I visited south India I stayed for a few days at the Isha facility that Sadhguru calls home. It might be called a combination of ashram, temple, school, gathering place, center of enlightenment, or service opportunity.  Sadhguru, the author of Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy, has a very large fallowing, both in India and in the U.S. where he has an ashram in TN.  Find our more   https://isha.sadhguru.org/us-en/isha-usa/
He has an easy fluid speaking style and many talks posted in youtube.

Here are Sadhguru quotes that I like:

There is no such thing as having achieved your fullest potential. As a human being, 
you are a limitless possibility.

If you evolve within you, there will be no pride, no prejudice. 
You will perform action out of pure, absolute sense.

If your goal is Ultimate Liberation, every breath, every step, every beat of your heart 
should become conscious.

How effective you are in life is essentially determined by your level of clarity and balance.

  
Yoga is about attaining to absolute Balance, piercing Clarity, and an inexhaustible Exuberance. With this, you are immensely fit for life.

You come into this world with nothing and you go empty-handed. 
The wealth of life lies in how you allow its experiences to enrich you.


The source of creation is subtle. Only if you make your body and mind shut up, it will speak.


When sounds are in tune, they become music. Out of tune, they become noise. It is the same with you. When all aspects of you are in tune, you become music. Out of tune, you become noise.


Truth is not hidden – you are hiding from it.


Our lives become beautiful not because we are perfect. Our lives become beautiful 
because we put our heart into whatever we do.


More Sadhguru Quotes

Whether you experience stress, anger, fear, or any other kind of negativity,
there is only one basic cause – being ignorant of your inner Nature.

Yoga is the technology of upgrading, activating, and refining your inner energies
for the highest possibilities.

If you break the shell of your personality, you will simply be presence – as life is,
as God is, just a Presence.

Once you go beyond the compulsive, cyclical nature of existence, life becomes spectacular.

Hatha Yoga should not be taught as an exercise form but as a live process;
then asanas will lead to ecstatic states.

A fundamental flaw in human nature is we try to enshrine our differences without being aware of the essential unity of existence.”



Monday, May 21, 2018

The Question


  The Question

 There are transitions,
  borders, and territories.

There are memories,
  inclinations, and intentions.

There are shifts,
  contexts, and foundations.

Each has a divine intention for you -
  to be with, learn from, and move on.

Can you feel all of it?
  the cosmic interplay
    delight and sorrow,
    beauty and desire,
    purpose and pulse,
    chaos and creation, 

A tapestry of threads,
  a tensegrity of wholeness,
  a life in discovery.

Beyond descriptions and definitions,
  in the language of wonder,
  there is an arising.  
Can you feel it?

What does your body love like
  the wild geese where there is a calling
  for connection to all things alive?

Can you live and the love the question?

With fearless abandon can you fly to the horizon?


             richard hammer 
                   5-11-18

(Inspired by Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese”)

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

A Flow in All of Life



There is a flow in all of life that invites opening.

It seeks a balancing and thriving.

It knows itself as energy and presence,
as dynamic form and formless creation.

You are that flow.
Breathe. Feel. Be. Know.

~~~

Practice Qigong and open to the Qi in you and around you.