A week ago, I encountered Deepak Chopra. I was feeling especially alive on that day, with an especially spirited spring in my step on my way to meditate at his center in New York. I've been going to the center for five years now and have never met him. On this day, I felt as if I trusted the universe with all the faith in my cynically-stripped bones. I had been experiencing (and continue to experience) synchronicities affirming that I am exactly where I am supposed to be in support of my ultimate destination. On my way to the Chopra Center, I articulated to a friend how grateful I was for how accessible the center was to me and POOF! DEEPAK CHOPRA! There he was, in the stairwell with his tea and a smile! I caught his eye as he looked back over his peace-carrying shoulder and said hello nonchalantly, and then I asked him if I could make a more official hello, supplicating that I might experience his energy for longer than a fleeting salutation, even though it's mid-town in New York. He obliged graciously and asked me my name, what brings me to the center, and how often I visit. I gave him a very brief character sketch of myself as a creative person looking to create more passion and peace in my life. He embraced me warmly with an emphatic hug, and although he seemed open to a bigger conversation, I felt too humble to make that assumption and scurried off to my meditative corner in the sanctuary across from his office. Upon getting situated on my cushion, I began to frantically do the very opposite of meditate. I began texting everyone I knew who would care and understand, that I had just been in engaged in an embrace with Deepak Chopra.
After texting about four friends, noting the audibly subtle, syncopated and potentially sacriligious pulses I was making on my blackberry in the space relegated for silence, I decided to get quiet. I started thinking the following thoughts: "That wasn't enough. I need more of Deepak. If I share with him, Deeeeepak, my quest for clarity, will it more suddenly be realized in my life? Won't my mere communications with him make all the difference?" And then, gratefully the following came to me: "He is a man, just a man. You are here, because you already know and appreciate what he might suggest. He can't help you put it into practice, YOUR practice. He is not YOUR heart or YOUR mind. He can only stand as a representation of what is possible with the meditative practice." I was able to get to this place in my mind, but my body would not follow. I had ants in my peace-seeking-pants. It wasn't but a few minutes that I decided to collect my things and leave the center. I felt lucky and exuberant and wanted to move around to honor this.
Only a week later and I've been through what seems a dozen full-circles of contradicting thoughts around my life plans. The most imminent knowing I've arrived at since that walk on my way to the center when I was gratitude personified is that I am a singer. When I sing, and incidentally in alignment with what I choose to sing, I experience my most heartfelt meditative expressions.
In my performances I ask people to be still with me for a moment while we explore a lyric and a melody and its interpretations. And while I'm the focus and the vessel superficially, I do authentically and insistently intend for people to experience their own journeys while listening. THIS, feels purposeful and powerful to me, no matter how many or how few people I connect with in my musical career, this feeling is quite real to me. The day-gigs or side-gigs or giggawatts are the support I gratefully endure to get to the place where I am with my voice and my friends.
Written January 15, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Welcome to My Blog, My Journey Online
Hello! Happy 2010!
My name is Michelle. This is my blog, part of my blourney, a journey of self-discovery online, with you, my cyber-witnesses.
I've called the blog "Lake and Maple: A Journey from Non-Judgment to Joy," a tribute to the poem by Jane Hirshfield, which has inspired a heartfelt shift in my thinking. The poem is about accepting all without judgment, the good, the bad, and even the beautiful disappointments, the things that create the pits in your stomach, mere reminders of your desire for growth, glorious desire and glorious growth. How lucky are we that desire and growth are our privilege on this planet? I've posted the poem at the end of this entry.
Intermittently, I will insert a poem on the blog or quote an author. I am often inspired by great poems, song lyrics, writers' or creators' passages and love to share them.
This blog is a tool for the acknowledgment and articulation of what I have, what I am and what I'm always becoming. I'm kicking off the new year with some old friends, family, some new friends and a new home that I absolutely cherish. It feels like the first real home in my adult life, actually, and so essentially holds me, warmly, allowing me in its intentful design, years in the making, while purging and propping what stops me and what soothes me, to inevitably wish and dream. And in the manifestation of this place, this heart-center and home-base, I know I've learned some big lessons on the importance of self-care and self-love, the underlying foundation for any great dream.
The dreams for 2010 are big -- a show at the Metropolitan Room, more body awareness through yoga and dance, more writing, more reading, work on a life design that is optimally autonomous, and, of course, love, true love, the pursuit of my life partner. I'd rather call it "the welcoming" of my life partner, a more organic experience honoring all my inspired movements in what's curious to me, the way I'd like to achieve all things in general. "Pursuit" is such an American concept and I feel it triggers a toxic idea application for me -- a blogsubject for another blogtime. Incidentally, I'm passionate about language, and am in the on-going process of researching and defining the language that supports me. Importantly, I feel I've made some real strides in recent weeks in my understanding of healthy intimacy and look forward to my commitment to these findings and the beauty they could reap.
Thank you for following my blog. I hope it helps you get to know me a little better as I get to know myself, and in kind, helps you to discover yourself as well. And do let friends know about the blog if you think I've articulated something that could support them. Now....Lake and Maple...
With Love, Hope and Patience,
Michelle
Lake and Maple by Jane Hirshfield
I want to give myself
utterly
as this maple
that burned and burned
for three days without stinting
and then in two more
dropped off every leaf;
as this lake that,
no matter what comes
to its green-blue depths,
both takes and returns it.
In the still heart that refuses nothing,
the world is twice-born --
two earths wheeling,
two heavens,
two egrets reaching
down into subtraction;
even the fish
for an instant doubled,
before it is gone.
I want the fish.
I want the losing it all
when it rains and I want
the returning transparence.
I want the place
by the edge-flowers where
the shallow sand is deceptive,
where whatever
steps in must plunge,
and I want that plunging.
I want the ones
who come in secret to drink
only in early darkness,
and I want the ones
who are swallowed.
I want the way
the water sees without eyes,
hears without ears,
shivers without will or fear
at the gentlest touch.
I want the way it
accepts the cold moonlight
and lets it pass,
the way it lets
all of of it pass
without judgment or comment.
There is a lake.
Lalla Ded sang, no larger
than one seed of mustard,
that all things return to.
O heart, if you
will not, cannot, give me the lake,
then give me the song.
Written January 1, 2010
My name is Michelle. This is my blog, part of my blourney, a journey of self-discovery online, with you, my cyber-witnesses.
I've called the blog "Lake and Maple: A Journey from Non-Judgment to Joy," a tribute to the poem by Jane Hirshfield, which has inspired a heartfelt shift in my thinking. The poem is about accepting all without judgment, the good, the bad, and even the beautiful disappointments, the things that create the pits in your stomach, mere reminders of your desire for growth, glorious desire and glorious growth. How lucky are we that desire and growth are our privilege on this planet? I've posted the poem at the end of this entry.
Intermittently, I will insert a poem on the blog or quote an author. I am often inspired by great poems, song lyrics, writers' or creators' passages and love to share them.
This blog is a tool for the acknowledgment and articulation of what I have, what I am and what I'm always becoming. I'm kicking off the new year with some old friends, family, some new friends and a new home that I absolutely cherish. It feels like the first real home in my adult life, actually, and so essentially holds me, warmly, allowing me in its intentful design, years in the making, while purging and propping what stops me and what soothes me, to inevitably wish and dream. And in the manifestation of this place, this heart-center and home-base, I know I've learned some big lessons on the importance of self-care and self-love, the underlying foundation for any great dream.
The dreams for 2010 are big -- a show at the Metropolitan Room, more body awareness through yoga and dance, more writing, more reading, work on a life design that is optimally autonomous, and, of course, love, true love, the pursuit of my life partner. I'd rather call it "the welcoming" of my life partner, a more organic experience honoring all my inspired movements in what's curious to me, the way I'd like to achieve all things in general. "Pursuit" is such an American concept and I feel it triggers a toxic idea application for me -- a blogsubject for another blogtime. Incidentally, I'm passionate about language, and am in the on-going process of researching and defining the language that supports me. Importantly, I feel I've made some real strides in recent weeks in my understanding of healthy intimacy and look forward to my commitment to these findings and the beauty they could reap.
Thank you for following my blog. I hope it helps you get to know me a little better as I get to know myself, and in kind, helps you to discover yourself as well. And do let friends know about the blog if you think I've articulated something that could support them. Now....Lake and Maple...
With Love, Hope and Patience,
Michelle
Lake and Maple by Jane Hirshfield
I want to give myself
utterly
as this maple
that burned and burned
for three days without stinting
and then in two more
dropped off every leaf;
as this lake that,
no matter what comes
to its green-blue depths,
both takes and returns it.
In the still heart that refuses nothing,
the world is twice-born --
two earths wheeling,
two heavens,
two egrets reaching
down into subtraction;
even the fish
for an instant doubled,
before it is gone.
I want the fish.
I want the losing it all
when it rains and I want
the returning transparence.
I want the place
by the edge-flowers where
the shallow sand is deceptive,
where whatever
steps in must plunge,
and I want that plunging.
I want the ones
who come in secret to drink
only in early darkness,
and I want the ones
who are swallowed.
I want the way
the water sees without eyes,
hears without ears,
shivers without will or fear
at the gentlest touch.
I want the way it
accepts the cold moonlight
and lets it pass,
the way it lets
all of of it pass
without judgment or comment.
There is a lake.
Lalla Ded sang, no larger
than one seed of mustard,
that all things return to.
O heart, if you
will not, cannot, give me the lake,
then give me the song.
Written January 1, 2010
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