A LIFE OF CHARITY I am about to head down to St. Petersburg, Florida where I will be performing to headline the St Pete Yoga Festival. So think of me next Saturday night, October 22nd, and send lots of happy thoughts of fun and delight. I will be sending you the very same. The following day, I will be teaching a YEM: Yoga as Energy Medicine workshop, then a full day workshop that week. Performing is a great joy of mine, sharing the love I have for music, singing through a vibrant array of colours, movement and sounds. I am happy with my show and thoroughly enjoy it. I can’t wait to share the new costumes with you. They are stellar! (Big thank you to Sunanda for that!) Throughout the week, I will be in rehearsal with dancers/yoginis I will meet there. I have never met them before, let alone worked with them. They have been reviewing the choreography for my show, which we will go over and weave together this week, in preparation for the big night. So this week will be full of rehearsals for me, directing, blocking, coming up with alternate choreography, supporting technical lighting work and art directing. Then, on the night, I let all that go and step into the role…
PART 3: THE SOURCE OF CREATIVITY: EGO OR SELFLESSNESS (Continued from The Power of Intention) Some people create art through pain and tension. Some thrive on tight deadlines and panic. Others need relaxed quiet in which to create. Though I can meet a painful situation and create, I tend to use the creative force to move through the pain towards expansion. Though some artists rest in pain and seem to need it to create, pain to me is passing. At best, it is a catalyst to propel me towards healing. It is not an end in itself.When I wrote the song for 9/11, the pain I witnessed and the compassion I felt cracked open a well of goodness and interconnection. I could have written about injustice and anger, but more sincerely for me, more powerful for me was the call to rest in the field of interconnection. I have written angry songs, judgmental songs, indignant songs, sad songs and happy songs, but if they do not come from a place of sincerity and honesty, they never make it past my song book and into a recording. I am very picky that way. For me, art is a spiritual practice, a way to challenge my ego and grind it down, so that it dissolves back to the…
After I posted my last blog entry, I noticed a comment asking me what “return to the One” meant. Thank you for the question. I loved and appreciated the interest and will happily answer what I do know of this in a blog post very soon. In this post, however, I feel it more apropos to contemplate what illuminated action means when transiting through a solar eclipse. This past Sunday, our planet experienced a solar eclipse. This happens when our Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth. The Moon fully or partially eclipses our view of the Sun. The effect of an eclipse can be felt a few days on either side of the eclipse time, so we can still feel the effects right up until Wednesday of this week. Traditionally it is considered an auspicious time for introspection, meditation, spiritual practice and soulful evolution, a time in which progress in these areas can be made. It is not considered a time where it is recommended to pursue worldly affairs and business. How come? Most of us identify with our world through the lens of matter, form and physical substance, filtered by our field of emotions. We are attached to our egos, our will, our emotions, our bodies, our thoughts, our perceptions believing that they are…
Through my spiritual practice, I have come to understand that consciousness – is. Yet in each moment, we have the possibility, through deepening our awareness of what is, to co-create with the consciousness that arises in each moment. In this process, there are two primary directives or energy tendencies. One is a movement towards the Positive Possibilities, the other towards the impossibilities. In this blog, I would like to share briefly what I understand it means to live in the Positive Possibilities and what it means to live in the impossibilities. I hope you find the information useful. I welcome your questions and comments. May all beings everywhere be happy. Lokah samastha sukhino bavanthu Parvati Living in the Positive Possibilities: Living in the Positive Possibilities is not about “being positive”, an attitude that willfully conjures up a state of mind to overcome, with effort, a sense of adversity. “I am feeling lousy but I will try to feel positive.” A world based on the Positive Possibilities is a world where each one of us knows that we are a loved, welcomed and an integral part of a much greater intelligent whole. Our very essence is experienced as love, which is the essential energy of life itself. What is meant by “love” is neither the common notion…
That which we see and experience as life is pure consciousness arising. I find the space to witness that arising in my meditation practice. My spiritual practice is the source of wealth and richness in my life. It is what brings and nourishes my experiences of joy, ease, rooted expansion and abundance. The words I share in this blog are to me like light sprinklings, the flutter from the joy I feel in my practice. All entries may not be about joy per se, but they will be a reflection of my inner world, which is fueled by my spiritual practice. The creative impulse and expression that move through me, be it in song, writing, composing, producing or performing are also a reflection of my practice. They arise and descend through this body/being in the internal/external experience of space developed in meditation practice… in that which is. Through this “isness” arises a creative voice, to which I am of service. To me, all is Yoga. There is no separation. All situations and circumstances in my daily life are opportunities for transcendent awakening and the flowering into “I am” consciousness. It is not to say that I continually meet those opportunities. At times I do. At times I don’t. The more I practice being open, ready and…