It’s not so much about what’s new as it is leaving the old year simmering in the dust. Looking at the past to see where I am today. Checking back on the flight plan with a sense of bewilderment and awe. Who signed off on this journey anyway???

Leaves turning. . .

It was the Fall the leaves stayed on the trees longer than usual. Some speculated that it had been because the summer was sooo rainy. But I knew it was because of me. I needed the leaves and all of their glorious fire to cool me back into life.

Week after week I was surrounded by colors so brilliant they put the peak of spring blossoms to shame. And the sky blazed overhead  just about as blue as the whole big sunny ocean. A perfect azure backdrop for all the yellow, gold, and amber leaves fluttering on their skinny petioles.

These were my personal prayer flags strewn up, my personal supplication and praise to the energy of existence. Praise to the pain that had leaked away, sometimes in torrents last Spring. That was pain, generalized but constant  angst and anger at me, you, the world.. . .stored up over my entire life and probably over many lifetimes. What Eckhart Tolle calls the pain body.

I know you want me to be more explicit here, but, well, it’s a long long story and mostly vague anyway. Wish there was ONE THING that I could point to, one incident that contained my anger, but that’s not what it was. Which is why I question whether it drew upon several lifetimes of miserable existence. Which is why it is pretty much miraculous that IT  is gone. And hallelujah for that.

Now I am filled with endless gratitude for my life and all life.  The turning leaves, brilliant and dying, can fall now. Fall to the ground, free for the slow burn of decay and the purity of snow.

The day I signed my first blog post – a whopping seven months ago – was the day I dropped into another universe while birthing LaughingYogini. Then week after week spun on the single question WHERE AM I?

The first months of L Y’s teething pains, I kept tinkering with the site, posting, screaming for help from LY’s very patient tech team and feeling VERY INSECURE in the new social milieu. Navigating through the etiquette of comments, copyright, and asking WHO AM I? about every five minutes.

I foundered in freefall.

Slowly and surprisingly, an online identity began shaping up though. I was becoming laughingyogini and laughingyogini was becoming ME.

One day I was friended by a hip Aussie writer on blog catalog, a blogging community I had sent an automated “join” to months earlier. As I checked out Svasti and delved into bc I fell into the virtual blogging community.  What a trip it’s been!

The community has helped me find my place. I have new friends, sources of inspiration, tech advice, and old fashioned support. Reading their posts helps LY create her voice, question her calls, raise her standards.

In the brief history of the WEB, I am a newbie. In my personal history, the WEB has literally given me a life, a community, and education, and most important to you, my readers, it’s given me voice.

With such dramatic changes in the last twelve months, I cannot begin to project into the future, but only create aspirations and intentions for HOW I AM GOING.  My intentions focus on lovingkindness and awakening. Which are really the one and the only way for me.  HAPPY 2009!

READ MORE:

A New Earth.

In O Magazine, Oprah describes her experience with A New Earth and why she began a tele-class with Eckhart Tolle:

I’ve read hundreds of books that have helped me become more spiritually attuned. A New Earth resonated so deeply with me and caused such a shift in the way I perceived myself and all things, I couldn’t not share it.

It’s been the most rewarding experience of my career to teach this book online with Eckhart Tolle and witness millions of people all over the globe awaken to their lives in such profound ways. The book is essentially about recognizing that you are not your thoughts, and seeing, then changing, the way your ego-based mind dominates your life.

The Power of Now.

I received this book years ago as a gift from longtime yoga student, J. Lyons. Really didn’t know what it was all about and thought the title was rather hokey…..until my guru recommended his tele-class on OPRAH, then it all began to fit together and I *discovered* Eckhart. . . . and fell in love!

Practicing Presence: A Guide for the Spiritual Teacher and Health Practitioner.

Honestly, I am not familiar with this particular source, but it looks really worthwhile, so I put it on my wish list!

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The morning sun shines a luminous shower upon my face and the coolish breeze softly combs through my hair. Kitchen baskets of apples, tomatoes, squash, and peppers overflow. Mike made elderberry jam with fruit from a bush planted two years ago. We smile in abundance. Western New York September proliferates in fecundity.

And when a writer can gather and share the sense of the season’s days, every reader whistles in delight. Every yogi merges into the essential nature. It’s been a pleasure to spend some time with longtime friend, Penelope writer, artist, mindfulness practitioner, and wild gardener, Sara Baker Michalak’s collection of essays, THE GARDEN WITHIN, published by FOOTHILLS.

Sara’s writing is saturated with the essence of a life embracing the earth. The strength of her vision has charged my own. As soon as I step outside, the echo of her voice resounds within my own. How deep was my blindness before reading TGW? It’s through seeing that our boundaries dissolve. Our vision widens and penetrates ever finer levels, so we grow richer, connected in wonder, joy, and spirit to all beings.

From “October 18″ by Sara Baker Michalak

October’s declining has drained the creek. The higher channel, described a few short weeks ago by rushing waters, is marked now only by water’s channeled way, by dust.

In a slightly lower spot, a lone water bug – moored, stuck, dead, whatever – hangs at the scummy edge of a puddle’s remnants. I think: wouldn’t a lush place be pleasant now for focusing my spacey staring; and bugging, not not bugging, nice to marvel at?

Yet, when I really see scum’s variations – crust, skin, foam, froth – it, too, describes this creek’s floody life, apart from the meanings, or no-meanings, I construe. Seeing leans on wanting, watching, waiting.

Raindrops, then more, enough for water bug to boogie her way about the small sea. Enough for me to wonder at drizzle chiseling such abundance out of this dry day.

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