Ashram

I'm going to the Sivinanda Yoga Ranch in the Catskills. It's an Ashram. I'll be there for NINE days. Ahh, nine days at an ashram, so much better than nine days at an asylum. I can't wait. I'm giddy...in between packing for Rachel to go to Chatauqua Ballet Camp and the two little ones to got to their respective camps. I will not have e-mail, tv, phone (well, I will have my cell phone, in case), no meat, no caffeine, no alcohol, no garlic even. Just yoga, chanting, meditating, karma yoga and satsang. Oh, joy. I will be completely blissed.

I leave on Fri and return the following Sun. :)

More Random Thoughts

So, it's been a year since we moved into this house. I struggle with patience in making this house completely our home. I realize that for much of this year I wasn't living in this house but instead, I was just barely surviving but I sometimes feel bad that the bathroom faucet still needs to be replaced (the faucet is under the sink, btw), the rooms still need paint, we want to replace carpeting, etc, etc, etc. The list is very long. We've done a lot in the few months that I've been a participating member of the family--landscaped some, dug a trench and insulated, built a window seat, started painting Celia's room, ripped out a wall and unpacked. Remember I started chemo 10 days after moving into this house (check out post from one year ago- I'm grateful, so grateful for where I am). Oh, sometimes I mourn the lost days. I've done so much more in these two short weeks since school let out then I did in the entire summer and fall. I was out of it. I've come so far but sometimes I feel bad. Especially because few people know what I've been through unless I tell them, and I still sometimes judge myself based on others. I end and you begin...you end and I begin. What someone thinks of me, my home, my family has nothing to do with me. You end and I begin...yet we are connected on a level that does not have anything to do with things or thoughts but rather a deeper connection. I choose compassion. There was a time when I choose anger, confrontation, stress, judgement--as my MO. So many in our world do. Being busy can seem a badge of honor but what really matters is nothing about those thoughts or the things in our life. What matters is that we take the time to tell and show the people who matter in our lives,a nd that includes the self for how can we love others without first loving ourselves, that we support and love them. I love you all and I hope you feel it.

Random Thoughts

Perhaps it's the child's joy that bothers him so. Refined and learned he observes the painting listening to the commentary, pursing his lips in approval or disapproval for all is either right or wrong, good or bad,...the pain can be overwhelming and when it becomes so bad the reward is defeatism. He ain't got a way to let that valve, pressure valve release. I observe this as a stranger, watching the man I don't know down the hallways of the museum. Though I've seen him or those like him everyday in every city I've ever been. They roam the earth bitter and pungent settling in their homes and growing roots only long enough to hold on. They protect themselves with thorns and vines of judgement and negativity.

I open my home and heart and remember compassion. Love makes everything alive and conscious. You have to have love and give love and when you don't and choose bitterness and find yourself taking it out on the world it hurts us all ... our only defence and offence is to love. Love every angry, bitter, negative statement as a mother loves her ill behaved child at the toddler's birthday party. Because they are only children, asleep to a greater consciousness.