A Long Day

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I left the house this morning around 7:30 to go up and teach my regular classes at Willow Street, Takoma Park. In the afternoon, I led a restorative workshop. It was delightful to be with two dozen yogis who decided the best way to spend the last Saturday in July was to take a mini-break from the heat and the bustle resting deeply and exploring inside. I felt wonderfully supported, having had amazing assistants, an excellent work-study helping at the desk and with clean-up afterward, and truly enthusiastic students. I could not have asked for more, especially given how long a day it was following an intense return to work immediately upon traveling back from the retreat with Paul Muller-Ortega all in the same week. After the workshop, I went out for an early dinner at Woodlands (Indian food) with a friend who had taken the workshop.

When I got home, feeling ready to do my own deep relaxation, I found tall ladders leading up to the roof. I had been warned by the project manager for the solar panel installation that I am having done that the roofer who was working on putting up the parapet structure to hold the frame might be here today. I hadn’t expected the roofer to be here at 7:30 pm, though. As long a week and day as I might have felt that I had, these guys, whom I am sure worked hard outside all week in the heat, were really having a long day.

This Week in the DOL’s Elevators

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Cloud on Cloud

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At first glance, it might appear that there is just one fluffy white cloud in the sky. A more careful look shows one strangely sunlit cloud amidst a skyful of thunderously gray clouds. How often is what we think we see or experience not reflective of what is actually there?

This Saturday–Summertime Yoga Extravaganza (website version of emailing)

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Dear Friends,

I’ve just returned from a wonderful meditation retreat with Paul Muller-Ortega out in Sedona. Every time I go on retreat, I am reminded of how essential it is to take time out from my busy life to rest deeply so that the inner light can be sweetly revealed. (If you want to see pictures from the week, check out my blog entry “Outrageous Light”).

When I got home last night after the hectric travel home day and before returning to work this morning, I took time out for restoratives, so that I could bring back into my home and self the sense of renewal that I had before the travel. Sometimes, there is nothing like a good session of restoratives to bring back a sense of balance and harmony with life.

Needing a retreat yourself? Please come join me this Saturday afternoon, July 31st at Willow Street Yoga in Takoma Park for a mini-retreat from the summer heat with a “Summer Restorative Extravaganza.” For more information or to register in advance, please visit: www.willowstreetyoga.com.

Looking forward to seeing many of you.
Peace and light,

Elizabeth

Outrageous Light (and Sadhana)

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I just spent a week looking at the celestial realms — inner and outer. Fifty of us spent a week meditating and studying with Paul Muller-Ortega at a retreat center in Sedona. It might seem from these pictures that there was not a moment when we weren’t exclaiming in awe over magnificent visions. The truth is that many times of the day, the sky was not spectacular, but I was always looking and always had my camera in my pocket, whether the sky was dull or flat when I left my room or whether it was engaged in some outrageous display of light. The photographs below are in chronological order to show the pulsation of night and day, the progression of the moon from almost full to full, the shift in mood from day to day. But, the images show a completely edited view. There were the views for which I did not take out my camera at all. Those were the majority, but I was still looking. There were the views I photographed, but deleted from the camera memory, choosing not even to save them. There are the photographs that I downloaded onto my computer, but did not even enlarge to get a better view. There are photographs I enlarged, but decided not to edit. Then there were the photographs I chose to edit by making decisions about cropping, brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation. The photos below are a subset of the last group.

If I were doing a show where I printed and framed the work, I would have worked from at least ten times as many images and would have done multiple prints of each image before choosing what to display. In this persistency and discrimination, photography teaches much about meditation practice. To show what is seen in a way that shifts the soul of the viewer, the photographer has to look over and over again. For example, Robert Frank took over 20,000 images for “The Americans.”

Anyone (especially these days with the technology available) can take an extraordinary picture or two if in the right place at the right time with the camera. But to have a body of work takes consistent devotion, work, and presence. So too, with our meditation practice. Some days exquisite visions arise. Sometimes we are pulsing with extraordinary energy that fills us with a sense of the very fullness of being. Other times, old issues or the to do list or even feeling trapped by sitting still is what comes. If we sit consistently over a long period of time, though, we will witness — just as the camera did — the extraordinary. We will know from being consistent that it is our very consistency that reveals bliss.

We Love Having You Here

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The Insistent Dawn

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The morning light calls here with great urgency. Wake up, wake up!

At the Airport

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This delightful working dog is sitting near while I wait for my plane to Phoenix; I am traveling to Sedona today for a weekolong meditation and study retreat. As part of the retreat, I will take myself away from phone, internet, and email. The airport, though, cries out for electronic communication.