The Ordinary Extraordinary

Photo by myself: Crater Lake, Oregon. Unedited mobile click – what is so ordinary or extraordinary about this picture?

It helps to blur the line between ordinary and extraordinary, whichever end we think us to be on. When extraordinary strength is required for everyday life during challenging situations that seem to be present for a long term, it helps to remember that even ‘normal’ life feels the same periodically.

I realized this when I dealt with a difficult illness for some years with no break of ‘normalcy’. I decidedly trained myself to accept my new normal and then the days that felt really hard became just like any ‘normal’ life. It lifted the burden of Why Me-s and made it somewhat more acceptable to live through the ordinary pain of a seemingly extra-ordinary situation (or vice versa).

And when we think of us as ordinary and normal it helps to remember that we hold the potential for extraordinary. When life is ‘normal’ we take it for granted that only some special people have strength. We forget that they are choosing to be strong. All of us have the choice to go a bit beyond our comfort zone, with integrity to our well being.

I love and admire people who have, what I don’t have in me yet. We need all shades of capacity, resilience and joy in differing measures from time to time. I keep learning to love myself more and more with all my perceived shortcomings. It gives a renewed taste of newfound freedom continually.

All things big and small when dropped to the felt sense become our internal experiences. No experience is ordinary or extra-ordinary, in some ways. Just because it happens to everyone and is normal, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be affected. If our thoughts and emotions are taking over that means our experience is real. It is affecting the quality of our life. Acceptance is being aware of all of that.

When fear grips, it means some perceived and real experiences have left us with no control over how we feel and choose. It becomes a struggle even when we have had a taste of divine faith before. We now seem to have lost the ability to be congruent with the core of our original being. When our system is out of balance the fear might bring up some pain or symptom in the body. We might feel agitation or confusion in the mind, we lose the capacity to connect with divine faith.

It is helpful at such times to create experiences to influence our system in the direction of balance. This can be done in various ways. A breathing practice that brings the body and mind to a calmer & clearer state of being, time in solitude or nature with nurturing activities. To me sometimes I just need honest conversations with people who can act as authentic mirrors to me. Either a friend or mentor who reinforces and channels that sense of trust, faith or divine connection back in our system.

I have found tremendous rich value in this process of intentional shifts between imbalance & balance, ordinary & extraordinary, and fear & faith. I am blessed to be a receiver of such reinforcements from friends and teachers that I reach out to.

I am also grateful to have opportunities to facilitate such shifts through the yoga classes that I teach in group and private sessions. If you are curious check my humble yoga website: http://www.YogaSaar.com

This post is from a train of thoughts that I had saved in my drafts. I would be honored to know what came up for you and if we are able to exchange perspectives.

Advertisement

Solitude

Photo Credit : Vikram Phale (along with the words Solitude imprinted)

The challenge is to truly breathe
&
Be alone in the mind

When in Solitude

 

P.S. This quote had come to me in response to a blog post by The Chatter Blog I love this blog and you will too. Her illustrations are just awesome. Her message profound yet full of lightness, simplicity & often fun.

Image designed and published by Scene & Heard – a publication on Medium

Of Journeys & Happiness

Photo Credit : Pragalbha Doshi “Happy Birthday DH”

You love driving great distances
On roads with seemingly no ends
Taking me along, you in the driver’s seat
Record trips, some unthinkable adventures
That map across the states, thousands of miles
Sometimes no difference days or nights

Those travels just represent
The real journey together we transcend
You endeavor to create a splendidly simple life
You live though with challenging choices of your poetess wife 🙂
You are indeed a skilled driver to me
Giving me a ride on this rocky life road
All the way we traverse through eternity
On your special day, Happy Birthday dearly

 

P.S. Dedicated to my Dear Husband on his special day 🙂

Finding My Balance

Golden Sunrise at Sea by Atanu Chakraborty

I find a place…for my elbow to rest on. A platform that is a good space to give me relief. My elbow finds balance on a solid surface, my head rests in my palm sideways. My mind finds some moments of peace.

The platform turns out to be a floating piece. It starts to shift, putting my elbow and my rest, out of balance. I could rely on it but only for a while.

Pulses of life, stir through the surroundings of the iceberg where I was resting my elbow. The solidity of the iceberg now seems shaken.

Shock of the coldness hits my face as the elbow slides off. I am thrown out of my comfort space.

I have been seeking concepts and beliefs and relations and interactions to depend on, for balance. To rely on, when challenged. Only to find out that they are all floating icebergs.

Lean on anything a bit too much, and you plunge into the cold deep abyss of the sea of truthful revelations, eventually.

Some icebergs are memories that we escape to. Trying to find any semblance of joy or pleasure or balance or support that we felt at a different time. As all icebergs, this one too, serves only for a while.

I have sought it in persons and relationships sometimes. Only that I am an iceberg for others too, sought out to balance some need in them. Oftentimes, each ends up blaming the other iceberg, for not staying steady and still, for them to lean on.

I decide to walk on to dry grounds, with none of the unreliable icebergs around to entice me. There are trees to rest under and the lush grass on solid ground, looks fulfilling. I will now depend on the nurturing Mother Earth to hold me, to support me. I find rest in the shade under a vibrant tree.

It seems like I have found my solace and semblance of balance that I can finally rely on. Only until …the winds start howling and the skies turn dark and shower me with piercing drops of revelations, leaving me drenched in the cold again.

Sometimes it wasn’t even the furious weather that left me all lost on the face of the planet. My own thoughts could create a tornado within, that left me as if, there is no ground to stand on.

“Where do I really rest? Mother Earth! Where on earth can I just rest?” I cried in despair, kneeling down with my head hung low.

Mother Earth, as if smiled, while continuing her own journey through the void, around the sun, not knowing what, comets and storms and humans, might hurl at her, at any time.

Nothing seems to be at rest. Relentless movement. We go on while coloring our perception with the illusion of support and stability.

At times, memories of someone and the conversations, color our days or months. Giving a sense of balance to the emptiness in the place we call home. The home that stands on the compassion of the planet and it’s time bound stability.

There are times I am totally present with those physically with me. And I become aware of the hurricanes within them, uprooting my sense of balance.

I also often become dependent on other people for my soul nourishment and direction to my human mind. Every time I become completely dependent, that iceberg plops under.

In my sane mind I realize that they have gone away seeking their own nourishment, or might have faltered their own of self depletion. In my human mind I sometimes blame them for not being there for me anymore.

After many such hurricanes and toppling under of icebergs, I finally realize there is this vast ocean of space within me. The more I dive into the center of it, the more stability I find.

I begin to sit with myself more often, without leaning.

I feel more grounded as I allow a deep breath in, into the expansiveness of my being, and empty it out from the core of my being, as softly and smoothly as I can. The more I rely on my own ability, to glide on the current of the life force, flowing through me with the breath, the more rooted I get in the stability of my own being. The platform I lean on is not tangible yet so plausible.

A sense of trust and surrender and choices of possibility and tremendous courage, gives me an easy resolve of steadiness, and the experience of innate balance.

I wobble at times, escape into known comforts sometimes, fear the unknown darkness sometimes, and then find my balance again, as I recognize it all for what it is.

The darkness is pure nothing until I fill it with something. Its spirit is illuminated with each breath and awareness that comes. The silence is rich with the knowing and the perceiving and the feeling that guides me, unless it is purely divine silence.

A warmth develops within me, that balances out the coldness of any sharp revelations. It flows through me, which feels like love in some form or kind.

That’s how, I find my center and balance, time and again, until I fall off, time and again …

 

Originally published in This Glorious Mess on Medium

Are emotional beings fools?

Are emotional beings fools?
While all others delightful cools?
Tears on one come more easily
While make the other fidgety

It seems emotionals never
Appreciate general humor
It seems they prefer suffering
As if that’s life in buffering

For them the roller coaster’s in the mind
Terrified of the amusement park kind
One rides them with eyes and hands open
Other squeezes shut & clenches tight often

Pick on experiences & words said
Take them to that corner of the head
Dissect and digest and juice
Wring it out for what is of use

Simple joy of Being is that for these fools
What an exhilarating high is for the cools
Time again both strive to reach the place
Beyond thought and action, of solace

Fools look up with amazement at cools
Cools look down with amusement at fools
Nodding their heads in nays
About the other’s weird ways

But once they sit down to talk together
To their surprise they enjoy each other
As they share their own living adventure
Realize the point of both Inner and Outer

Inner adventures make you alive to life
Outer adventures make you alive at life
It’s each of their challenge
To break the walls they make and manage