Blog in the Background

Obviously, aside from the last post, it has been quite awhile since I blogged.  Adult life (almost) affords less time to such frivolous activities (haha). Much has happened! It would take be seven chapters to describe the events of an entire two years so instead I will skip to the most important parts:

Dec 21st 2012 (end of the world) -or as I know it - beginning of  true love! The threads of the sweater, Ravi and I, have finally come together to create something magnificent.

You know what they say, "you just know"? and that is the worst piece of advice any single person, or person who doesn't know can receive. BUT, it's true.  I have finally found that "you just know" feeling. And we are happy being nerds together :-)

Fast forward: a bunch of awesome stuff happens.

June 2014: We went to Brazil and watched 4 World Cup games! Adventure of a life time with the love of my life Ravi! - and his father. Wouldn't I like to spend a lot of time typing out the details? Perhaps a different day. That's a lot of details for my fragile patience.

Anyways, here I am at my internship, working in the IT department (I am now in my second year of completing an IT diploma in software development - yeah. A lot has happened!).  I decided to re-read many of my blog entries going back several years.  I have made leaps and bounds of progress both professionally and personally!!

Yoga

Boy, am I ever excited to start yoga! "Real yoga" - at a Hindu temple. My nerves are up as a I wonder if it will be different than the hot yoga I'm used to. So decided to research the difference between "standard yoga" and Hindu yoga thinking I might find a simple explanation like "Hindu yoga is more intimately entwined with the spiritual practices  of Hinduism, while 'standard' focuses on the physical positions and relaxation, with no specific religious references." Instead, I came across articles like this one:

It is wrong to deny yoga's Hindu origins.

While I do respect the concern about the commercialization of religious/spiritual beliefs, or even any beliefs that are not fully understood by the "taker" (this is an entire book on it's own), I was also appalled by how quickly such a question could turn into heated debate or become focused on bashing other religions.  Disgusting (Note: avoid the comments section of most articles). The content of some of the posts actually outweighed the question at all - clearly those commenters practicing yoga, either "truly"  or as Western "buyers" have missed some foundational lessons of yoga, or at least  the lessons that I have understood from the practice - calmness, tolerance, acceptance, and discipline.Take a deep breath and reflect before you start writing negative comments in an article about yoga - or maybe - go do some yoga!

Anyways, this is my response to the article and the comments:

Yoga without spirituality is like kneeling without praying. Both are useful sometimes. 

I thought it was witty...

A Meditation Playlist

I awoke, startled by the sound of rain falling all around me. At first it was frightening, like a loud TV screen gone fuzzy. Then suddenly I felt the rain drops falling on the back of my body. The rain fell all over. Minature stones tapping the back of my skull. Everywhere inside. A storm was inside. I listened and tried to feel the drops. Invisible in the darkness, and then they slowly faded away into silence. A voice told me to relax and to imagine going into a light in my solar plexus.

There was lightening inside a dark cloud. The voice said "dive into the light" and I was swimming through a dark grey cloud that lit with green billows when the electricity shot through it. Then I was in a cave. It was a smooth cave with hardly any rocks and a very clear, very still, shallow, stream running through it. The silence was peaceful. The voice was telling me to find my soul's purpose but the image was not particularly useful to the question. I looked into the water and touched my hand to it causing it to ripple in all directions. I could not make out my reflection clearly but I could see the smooth round stones on the bottom of the stream.

The voice began speaking about following a light deeper and deeper and to become filled with light. The stream seemed to flow down a smooth blue lit tunnel on the far end of the cave. I put my hand on the wall as I began going into the tunnel. My hand was lit with indigo and I smiled at this. It as a different kind of rock, almost like ice or marble and it seemed to have its own light. Beyond a certain point, maybe 3 m in, I could not see anything but swirling mist. I began to feel anxiety and peace at the same time. I focused on the swirling mist - green, white, and blue. My breath made it swirl as I exhaled, but I was stuck despite the voice telling me to go farther.

Then I was back in the cave looking at the water. Back in the tunnel with my hand on the wall. Withdrawing from the mist. Back in the cave.

Stay here I thought and I focused on the water. I still could not see my reflection in the water but suddenly I was thinking of roses and me smiling with roses. I felt a deep desire to have roses and a flow of memories associated with connotations of roses filled my head. What about roses? I don't know. Finally the voice told me to come back and I began to feel my body.

I was so fucking mad.

Today I am feeling very out of control. The whole day has been a rollercoaster. There were a few laughs but they seem to fade into the distance as they are replaced by anger, irritability, and depression. This just sucks. I feel like I'm going crazy and I don't understand what I'm supposed to learn from this garbage. Saturday is my birthday which I was excited for at one point but now I'm just frustrated and overwhelmed and I don't feel like planning anything. I was invited to a surprise birthday party for a friend who's birthday is the day before mine but I don't even want to attend. Why can't things be simple? Why is it all a big fucking mess right now? I just want to sleep all day and all night but that's boring so now I have to attempt to keep my mind occupied in some other way. All the space inbetween my occupations is just annoying and filled with anxiety. What to do what to do what to do.... I'm just so mad. I feel like that Little Critter book - except if I were little critter right now I'd have a machine gun, some gasoline, and a cigarette and the scene would be me walking away from an exploding... and exploding something.... pointing the machine gun directly at the "camera" and smoking a huge cigarette. That's how fucking mad I am. And this fucking computer can't go any slower. For fuck sakes, it's like PMS x856.

To My Beloved Creature

I wish I could tell you these things, and that if I did, they would mean as much to you as they mean in my mind. I wish that they wouldn't be the words of a sad or desperate girl but words from one spirit to another - or maybe, from one spirit to a person.

First I want you to see yourself as the person I have seen you as for the last few years. Through my eyes you are a very intelligent, confident, gentle person and these qualities found in someone of your stature, your profession, your background, etc. allow you to stand tall above others. You are like strong eagle soaring through a peacful sky or a lion gazing across a vast kingdom lit by golden sunshine. Solid like a rock, your peace, your justice, your power is impenitrible.

But you do not see this. You worry. You are the lion who trys to be a lamb. Why? I feel you are unable to see, or perhaps accept that you are as perfect as you can be. Perhaps you are sad, or maybe you are unable to see that a lion boasting to any other animal is foolish of him because he need simply to be alive to have his throne. The Lion is not meant to walk the low road. Loneliness is the price the lion pays to be the ruler - but he is really never alone because all the creatures want to be in his presence. It is only when the lion loses perspective, that he becomes a pathetic creature.

I see the lion and the eagle as synonmous. Both are lonely creatures because they are born to be above everyone else. They have power and we all know that, "with great power comes great responsibility". Sometimes being at the top is tiring because you are expected to always take the high road even when others choose not to. Sometimes you must fly between frigid cold mountain tops, or fight in a blistering serengeti and no one acknowledges your pain. There are others who scavange your hard work, who take for granted your loyalty and freedom. Maybe you are angry, and if so, then you have lost perspective. You have flown too low to the ground and envied the easy life of the lower creatures without ever living it. You have watched as they graze together in large numbers and felt you were by yourself. Sometimes the lion and the eagle forget who they are. They cannot see through the eyes of the rabbit, the mouse, the wolf, the zebra. They do not see themselves as something to be respected. They cannot see that all the other creatures wish to be them. And of course they do not see the resent that the other creatures have when their leaders abandon them.

This is what you have done. You have taken for granted the admirable position you have been granted with undue privlidge. You have used you broan to salughter the herd's young. You have killed the fish's brother and left him to dry in the sun. You left your home behind, allowed your pride to starve and whither away. The creatures no longer fear you. They shake their heads in shame, embarrassed of their leader.

Longest Days

The first night, I lay awake in my old room listening to my dad playing the guitar in the next room. The darkness englufed everything except for the slice of light from the door which lay across the blankets. I tried to empty my mind of everything except for those facts I just listed. I listened to the song. I tried to join the darkness as I lay perfectly still, as though I was trying to convince my body that stillness was equivalent to comfort. When my thoughts began to stray I started saying a little prayer of thanks for my family and my support - without it I would still be lying next to him wondering if temperature was really the reason he slept under a different sheet and never wanted to close the space between us. At least this bed was warm, and it had been set with love by my concerned mother. Despite my efforts, I fell asleep with a frown and a type of peace inside that is more comparable to death or emptiness than the image of flowers, hymns, or beaches.
The following day passed slowly. I kept checking the clock and spending minutes thinking of ways to entertain myself as though somehow the things I would usually do at that time of day were different when we were in the same house. I waited for the sun to finally set (it took its time that evening) and sadly, realized it had only been one day.
Even though I had plans, it seemed like all the space in between them I spent looking forward to the next one and and every hour was an eternity of waiting. I read a very depressing book for school which occupied my mind for awhile but I finished that book quicker than any book I have ever read before.
Today I kept thinking it was Wednesday only to become angry inside when I remembered it was only Tuesday.
Everything feels surreal like I am part of a movie and there's nothing I can do to change the ending and I don't know what is to come. I am on the edge of my seat wondering how my own life is it turn out. I don't like this feeling.

The Edge

It's 10:46am and I've only been awake for an hour and a half but it feels like it's been three hours or more. I read a few chapters of a book for school about a lonely young english girl and her affair with an english man that seems like prostitution but in her mind is a little more meaningful. I'm trying to get up my courage to say "we need to talk about something important later", and I have been rehearsing in my head the points I want to make, but it seems like there is never a good opportunity. I have been told there never will be so I ought to just say what I have to say. My problem is that whenever I feel good for more than a day I feel I can let everything go and keep on living and it is hard to "ruin" the present with feelings from the past and worries of the future. I feel inclined to wait another day because I know sooner than later he will do just the things I intend to speak with him about. Wouldn't it be easier to say "don't you think you can treat me like this! I've been doing a lot of thinking and I've come up with this...." right in the moment instead of in a moment when the last example of bad behavior was two days ago instead of today... It's almost like he senses I want to call him out so he acts nicely for a few days so I have only examples from the past and look foolish for holding grudges. This is an example of an argument that plays in my head because the counter argument would be, "the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior" and it's not like the past was that long ago and also, how will the cycle be broken if I don't make any changes? "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." I guess I never applied that piece of wisdom to relationships before. I always thought it applied mostly to the trial and error of inventing and math problems.

Another thing that's bothering me is that I received a message from his sister just before her phone died, so I replied in a facebook message telling her that I received her text but her facebook status indicates her phone is broken so I thought she probably wouldn't have received the reply I sent on the phone. She still hasn't responded - maybe it was an accidental message.