Sunflower: Breathing. Beating. Beauty. Awe.

Is there anything more amazingly beautiful than a seed sprouting.
The slightest leaf of green emerging from the soil.
Days pass.
Growth measured in spurts each morning.
A new day.

Sunflower reaches for the ball of fire that fuels it.
Reaching towards the sky
Taller. Now above my hip.
Greener.
Beating stronger every day.

Breathing.
Exhale oxygen.
I Inhale awe.

My ongoing list of likes and dislikes (in my everyday life)

To be added to every once in a while.....

Like (or attracted/enjoy) - 
Snowflake - loving him & learning how to own a deaf/seeing impaired cat; feet in the sand and walking alongside the shore; watching sunrises and sunsets at the edge of a body of land; the gloaming part of the day; kirtan; toasted gluten free bread with goat's cheese and grape jelly; juicy mangoes; yoga w/ Ti Harmony; coaching running & anything wellness related; watching my plants grow each day, especially the ones from seed; using stamps instead of pens/typing; a vanilla americano; driving or biking on Orange & Alamance country roads; the feeling of sweeping my hardwood floors; reading the Carrboro paper at a bench under the Weaver st. trees. redbud trees; morning hot tea; reading a yoga sutra to start the day; the smell of lavendar; shiva; forward bends;  excel (yes, I'm weird); public journals in secret places; unicorns......

Flow states
- running , biking, yoga
- gardening - flowers & herbs
- altered book making
- kirtan

Dislike (or resist) - 
Summer trail running (deer flies); silence in my house; chickens that dig up my plants to roost; meditating; waking up late; doing the dishes; spiders; the Morgan creek greenway; the dying hemlocks in the NC mountains; having the TV on in the background; children crying or being loud in public places; hunting; I-40 and driving in general; vishnu; fish; headstand; flakiness; apathy; working on the weekends.......

Tapas - the catalyst for expanding the boundaries of being fully alive?

To comment on my last post - I believe that exploring- including actually doing-  the things that you dislike is a way to reduce the energy expended by the effort of avoidance and resistance and fear.  I also think it's a learning experience to understand why what you dislike you dislike.

Why do I hate the fish pose and feel like crying when I do it? Why can I not be disciplined enough to  do the dishes when I also dislike having dirty dishes in the sink? Why do I avoid running in the summer do to measly deer flies and a dislike of running on the road?

What is there to learning in putting myself in a place that is outside my zone of comfort?

Maybe I'd find the root cause and/or move through the aversion to a place of ok-ness or even enjoyment of.....

• Did I have previous bad experience,
• Is there fear here or an emotional element manifesting either consciously or unconsciously, 
• Do I feel inadequate against the something I feel is a challenge,
• Is this one of the gunas raising it's head - that makes me feel unmotivated and lazy?

Or, perhaps I'll learn there good reason to not enjoy certain things, task, people?

• That it is really a benign preference for something else and accept that I just dislike it. Is there pain - physical or emotional
• That is not the sort of pain that it is good to work through but is actually to do violence to myself or others.

What could happen:

•  Worst case - I bit of discomfort is experienced  --> an opportunity to be more compassionate to the suffering of others who do not have the option to avoid that which I dislike (ex. a person who washes dishes for a living)
• Another - I bit of discomfort is experienced and I --> clarify/ learn more about myself in the process even if just understanding what and why I do not prefer or avoid or resist things in life.
• Another - Tapas works it's magic and adding practice with some discipline is the catalyst that transforms my relationship with the items on my dislike list. ---> Over time maybe there is an "okayness" there or a purging of the "dis" from the like such that it moves at least some towards that which I seek to do and enjoy.
• Best case - I expand the boundaries of the experiences that come my way in the ebbs and flows of life --->  I can handle more or great depths what life offers without the added "ugh" , the resulting negativity or wasted energy of putting up walls of resistance. 

Hmm....something to ponder at least as I'd think most would like to feel more free and maybe this is a door.  This being said,  it's simply that.  There are many ways to have a more expansive and fully alive sense of living including doing what we like in the moment. Wouldn't it be cool though for that to happen more often as the moments present themselves. There are many ways to get to this place, maybe what I am suggesting is one.

Dislikes will set me free

I am composing a list of things I dislike today. In preparation for tomorrow's yoga class of doing everyone's least favorite poses, I thought I should extend this list of dislikes to off the mat.

I will post this list later and commit to doing or exposing myself more to the items on the list.

Why? --->Well, for the same reason we all submitted our least favorite pose for class (fish by the way):
because removing our aversions and resistances will set us free.....or at least a step in the direction of freedom, I should say.

What is on your list......?

Freedom, part 1: Commitment

What does commitment mean? What does freedom mean? How do they show up in our lives? What is the opposite of each idea and the tangible ways each manifests?

Does commitment have to do with "tapas": with discipline, with practice, with the notions of purification and the clarity that comes from cleansing actions?

Committing to what? Possibilities:

• to doing a specific practice - running x 3/week, attending Kirtan, cooking a local, fresh, nutritious meal for dinner
• to a person - a friend, a family, a relationship
• to hold yourself up to your values or follow a certain way of being - kindness, honesty, compassion -in its many manifestations
• to focus your discipline specific towards observances - from a wide concept of non-violence in your actions to particular way of focusing on "right speech" by having a day of silence each week.

Some thoughts / questions as they relate to liberation and freedom as Independence day approaches

• When is the relationship between commitment and freedom? Do any of the above commitments promote or lessen one's ability to be free?
• What is the relationship between commitment and attachment? Consciously practicing or being disciplined such that one focuses or directs actions, speech or finds the manifestations of a commitment to interweave throughout the day --> can this occur while still practicing non-attachment?
• What attachments are binding and which are a letting go that is liberating?
• Can the confines or bondages requisite to holding oneself to a practice or an attachment actually be the key to freedom? 
• Or, are discipline , commitment and attachment antithetical to what it means to be free?
• What limits our potential and what opens us to it? Can commitments to living moderately or the result of commitments that are limiting be that which releases us? 

What opens us and expands the boundaries of our lives - our potential and our lived experience?

What does it mean to be free? How, literally, does one be free?

(Feel "free" to comment,  in fact I'd encourage you to commit to exploring one of these questions in some way..... if part of that is being disciplined and open enough to share your experience, that would be very much welcomed)