What is your inner lion telling you? How will you break your heart open to reveal your courageous most loving self? Leo has been with me for the last year, but I have been seeing him every where this past week. My inner Leo is rearing his head telling me to face fears. What is stirring from your past that is asking you to rise up and do something different than you have in your past? Leo tells me not to let your fearful karmic tendencies get the best of you.
What fear is it Leo wants you to face so you can roar with a heart wide open? Letting go of outcome and surrendering to the unknown space is my struggle, I want to know all the answers and why, how, when? In our 8 limb yoga practice it is called Isvarapranidhana, surrender to God. This is a really hard practice because it requires faith, trust and one of the deepest forms of love called courage. After working so hard to learn, to create something, to put your time and energy towards something, to see something different, to grow, we naturally have an idea of what we want the outcome to be, to be rewarded for our hard work or for getting to the next level, or for someone to say "YES! I see you and I still want to share this with you." We have a picture in our minds of how things should go, and we want it to happen and happen NOW of course! But what happens if we work really hard and it doesn't happen how we thought? What if life moves slower than we think it should? What if someone doesn't see it the way we do? Or if God has a different plan and timing in mind? What happens in our mind?
I know what happens in my mind, I feel defeated, rejected, and not good enough. And I want to fight and prove that I am good enough and that I am worth it. Oh goodness, that is karmic history in its finest! When you feel these not at all empowering feelings, Stop! Do not pass go and do not to follow this clouded mind, it will not lead you home. The lessons of Isvarapranidhana have really been slapping me in the face this week and the signs I have been receiving or inviting in perhaps, have been all about this lesson, supporting me along the way to have faith and love deeply.
The sign that has been in my path this week is Leo, the lion. The north node of the moon was passing retrograde recently, which means it appears to be moving backwards, through the constellation Leo recently. The North Node of the moon represents our karmic paths and the lessons we came here to learn—or the language we are learning to speak. If I look to my karmic tendency, it is to take control of the situations and relationships I want and pursue them until I get what I want. I am not proud of this behavior. It is not built out of love, but rather lack of love or the perspective that I am not enough. I am aware of these feelings and my intentions are about not letting those fears control my actions, but rather they point me towards what I need to heal within myself. Because the north node is moving in retrograde, I am asked to look at how I have handled these tugs to control in the past and how did it work out for me. As you might expect, it has not worked out so well. Negative karmic tendencies are tough buggers. They make you feel weak, unloved, and rejected. And its in those times that we are asked to love deeper, have courage, faith, and trust that we don't need to follow the path of fear any longer. I have been reminded over and over this week to have courage, to be brave and to let go of trying to have all the answers.
This is how I have been letting go to trust. It's a simple remedy really, but not always easy. For me, it is continually turning inside to my voice. To feel the real me. The real me is different than the me that is trying too hard to make someone accept me and who is striving to have all the answers. It is about tapping that love I have inside of me that flows like music. I watched a movie called Lion, yes Lion, I told you the signs were everywhere. The movie was about a young boy who was separated from his family at a young age and for 25 years was being pulled to go home. We are all being pulled to go home, but it takes courage, it takes a Leos ambition, and strength of purpose to really go home to our hearts and accept who we are and all we have to offer this world despite outcomes we can not control. Once you get there a Leo's warmth and enthusiasm will seep from every pore, making you a pleasure to be around. Leo's do love pleasure!
While my inner voice is sending me messages to be a Lion this week, I was also being given a clear picture of what going home looks like for me! I received a book call The Wander Society by Keri Smith. A huge mirror that reflected back to me... HELLO! Remember who you are! I am a wander, not because I am lost, but because I love to take the path untapped, I am deliberate in my desires to experience the depth of life and not just stay at the surface, an explorer of the heart and spirit. I want to take all that life has and experience its magnificent beauty and love through my heart. Many experiences may break us or turn us to show us where we need to grow, but when this happens we are reminded to be torn open by life is to know the roar of love.
When I live like a lion with love roaring from the heart, it comes out of me in many ways to connect and share with the world. Ooh, kind of like a Leo who loves pleasure! What are your pleasures, how do you hear the music? I read, write, wander, play, sing, dance, taste, touch, and smell. I sit still and I look at in your eyes. You may hear me in class expressing a little "mmm" sigh. It's my expression of being in my place of love. When my heart is open I feel life vibrate like electricity through my body and when I am near someone or experiencing something that vibrates equally in the same state of love a closed circuit of connection is made. All of these connections lead us home and are everywhere around us.
It is magical, it is nothing words can describe, a pure knowing that we are exactly where we are suppose to be to grow and live from love.
As I was getting ready to write this blog, I opened to a page in this book of poems "Rumi the Book of Love", translated by Coleman Barks that was given to me (yes, another perfect sign pointing me home.) The page I opened to said this:
Philosophers have said that we love music because it resembles the sphere-sounds of union. We've been part of a harmony before, so these moments of treble and bass keep our remembering fresh. But how does this happen within these dense bodies full of forgetfulness and doubt and grieving? It's like water passing through us. It becomes acidic and bitter, but still as urine it retains watery qualities.
It will put out a fire! So there is this music flowing through our bodies that can dowse restlessness. Hearing the sound, we gather strength. Love kindles with melody. Music feeds a lover composure, and provides form for the imagination. Music breathes on personal fire and makes it keener. The waterhole is deep.
A thirsty man climbs a walnut tree growing next to the pool and drops walnuts one by one into the beautiful place. He listens carefully to the sound as they hit and watches the bubbles. A more rational man gives advice, " You'll regret doing this. You're so far from the water that by the time you get down to gather walnuts, the water will have carried them away." He replies, " I 'm not here for the walnuts, I want the music they make when they hit."
You that come to birth and bring the mysteries, your voice-thunder makes us very happy. Roar, lion of the heart, and tear me open! - Rumi
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