IN

FO

Heart News

Align - Love - Thrive

Our heart team proudly curates a set of teachings, practices and information each month and season to help you live the life of balance and alignment: yoga! Click through regularly to explore, learn and grow on the path.

Subscribe in the contact form below to get email notifications!

Dissolve Your Fixation with Self

Hello dear-hearts,

Just recently, I had a friend point out some of the subtleties of my language and speech. She said, “do you notice when and how you use words like ‘totally’, ‘so’, ‘always’, when you speak?” “Do you believe that to be true or accurate?” What a gift! This prompted me to slow down and pay closer attention. I found that I was hearing the use of language with others as well. I heard, “I am the kind of person who…”. “I never do this” or “I always do that”. “It’s always like this/ that.” “They are always/ never like this/that”. Many of you have heard me replace the word BUT with AND. This is the same idea. There are sneaky ways that we tether ourselves. This tethering can keep us from living awake, free and with access to joy.

Right now, there is potential to shift so that we may become more engaged and in tune with who we are, with how we feel moment to moment and all without attachment.

Before you sit down to meditate you can actually reflect on the fact that you don’t have to hold on to a solid identity of yourself: as someone who can’t meditate, or as someone who can. You can release your expectations of the whole thing. You may set an intention to give up expectations for yourself. This begins to release notions about who you think you are or should be in the practice, in life and in that particular moment. Allow yourself to revisit this intention during the course of the practice as you need. Know that in this process of creating new neural pathways that you’re going to see much internal dialogue about how right or wrong you are. There's a chance you'll spend much time, on autopilot, in mental states of worry, strategy, planning and striving to achieve. Stay kind and stay the course.

In your quiet and kind seeing of yourself, you may begin to have doubt about being just one way; you’ll see that who you are and how you are continues to change. Example: You sit down and and at first feel eager to go and do something else, you’re frustrated with the pull to abandon your practice, then a few minutes later you’re feeling joyful and to breathe, then your timer goes off and you realize that you’re reliving a remembered version of your life from 5 years ago! Meditation is an incredible means of seeing how you continue to change. Thoughts, emotions, mood, molecule, are ever changing.

Next we play with the notion of meditationlessness (I like to make up words). This is about giving up expectations of the practice at another level: it’s not a grand event, it’s not religious, it’s not even sitting down and just being cool and natural… get it? We let it all go! Seriously we sit down and empty ourselves: no expectations of ourselves and no expectations of what the practice is. We follow instruction, without any notion of it being this way or that. The whole training is unbiased. This is what is meant by letting go. It is as it is.

Lastly: we release the result. If we allow ourselves to practice with hope and fear or if we practice in order to become what we think we should be (i.e. more calm, more loving, more compassionate…) we are actually setting ourselves up for disappointment. So what happens if we finish practice and observe what feels like a result? We simply look at it and then let it go. BAM! When we cling to results they are actually of little use to us. Take a moment and think about that... ANY qualities that we cling to have the potential to become obstacles.

The more you practice this on the cushion, the more accessible it will be to have no expectations about who you (the always helpful, always selfish, always whoever). Let’s make space to let go of freezing ourselves in time and space. Let’s let go of believing that we live in extremes and in solidness. We were born to be completely open and free! Let us realize that truth, together. Let’s dissolve our fixation with self and flow!

See you soon,

Meg and Team Heart

Past Newsies:

August 2021: Dissolve Your Fixation with Self

July 2021: Let's Linger

June 2021: I am in the Flow of the Universe

May 2021: Lighten Up

April 2021: We Travel the Path in Good Company

March 2021: Om Mani Padme HumM

February 2021: Embodied Dharma

January 2021: "Everything can be a 'that'; everything can be a 'this' "

December 2020: I Am a Sanctuary