life is a playground. tag, you're it!

My plan is to play through life!

Play through work. Play through "responsibilities." Play on holidays. Play through the smooth times. Play through trouble. Play through sadness. Play like a child, laughing, trying, flailing and falling, growing silent in concentration, using my mind to solve a problem and sharing. Helping others, everyone is a potential friend, and asking for help. I know I don't know everything.

I never want to strive to "work hard" again. I vow to no longer listen to those who tell me that success in life is achieved by working really really really hard (as though I must suffer difficulty and strain to be worthy of success!). I want to work soft. I want to work gentle. I want to work easy. I want to work playfully.

When something takes me in a flurry of interest, I want to get caught up in it, involved in it. I want to be passionate.

I don't plan to beat myself up for anyone or anything anymore. I don't want to fight. I like to play nice. This is my one beautiful life and I plan to love all of it.

A lofty goal. (at least you can see I'm not without ambition!)

Play is a way of interacting with the world that sees everything and everyone as inherently on my side. We are all friends in a schoolyard. We play different games and in each game we play different roles, but it's always just for fun. Nothing is so serious because this too shall pass.

Have you ever looked at your corporate job and thought, "these guys are taking this game waaaay too seriously"!? They are fighting and being rude. They talk to their mates as though the organizational structure is a real thing. They hurt themselves by getting stressed out and neglecting their health and their loved ones!

Can they not see that life is made of tiny moments of ecstasy? Can they even feel ecstasy any more?

But I don't hate the player nor the game! I say, if you can find a game you want to play, get into it! Enjoy! Sweat! Push your limits! But only for the love of it. Only if you can feel your soul delighting as it pours forth through you into the task. If you wake up at 2:30 am grasping for your phone so you can record the dream-load of ideas that was just gifted to you and email your future self at the office ("oh what did I mean by "create pyramid spreadsheet for Alberta possums" anyway?????").

Yes, do it for the love of it. Else, don't put your attention to it at all.

But my process of play doesn't just extend to the workplace. I am playing while I drive my pick-up truck (yes, that's me singing and smiling with the breeze in my face). I am at play when I hang the washing (getting immense satisfaction from using the least number of pegs on the most number of clothes), and when I cook (talking, of course, to the carrots and eggplant as I chop, "you little guys are going to join the other veggies in a yummy curry now and be loved and enjoyed by us all!").

But play isn't really about turning everything into a game. It is more a quality of being that invokes lightness, curiosity, and good humour. 

Play says, "I am open."

As in, "pass the ball, I am open!" "What do you want to do tonight? I am open!" "What do you think about this first draft? I am open!" "How can we resolve this issue together? I am open."

I am open to receive. I am open to feel. I am open to you. I am open to life in all forms that it shows up.

So waddya say? Wanna play?

Love,

R

some things never come clean

I had a dream that I was in a beautiful hotspring in a secluded mountain. There were some friends with me and we all sat on a rock ledge, our feet dangling over into a deep cavern below, up from which swirled bubbles of soupy endothermic heat. Not a watery hell. A great cooker of life. An earthly birth canal, which bathed us in subtle energizing tranquility. 

Small creatures and deep-sea fish swam around us, exploring us. A long pink fish with a wide-open mouth and blue gills came close and tasted each of our bodies. Some observed calmly in curious union with the stranger, but some were startled and splashed it away like frightened animals.

I took a large bowl and dipped it into the pool, filling it with salty life - small fish, sea plants, strange bits of organic and inorganic matter. I began to wash them, one hand in the bowl agitating lightly the suspension. I rinsed and rinsed, each time pouring out the cloudy liquid, as though washing the chickpeas before cooking them. And each time filling again the bowl with water from the hot spring. Patiently and gently I washed. Then someone said to me, "some things never come clean, Rikki."

The dream ended and I woke up in a beautiful peace.


Love,

R

this path is a tight-rope

I have been walking fine lines lately.

Fine lines between security and disaster, honesty and self-importance, coming clean and hiding it all away, stating my truth and giving in to re-activity, being kind and being a doormat.

Equanimity seems continuously just out of my reach. 

I seem to be forever saying things in the wrong way, losing focus, and blurring the boundaries of myself. A wobbly top spinning on its spindle, its balance of motion and weight, all centred and focused on one point - the point of action in the present moment. 

I want to be a good person but feel like I am failing miserably. And this obsession with perfection is what's holding me back from really experiencing myself. 

Despite all the work I have done on myself to clear the crud away there is always more. I think I am stable and that is exactly when something happens and I come apart again. Well, I don't really come apart. My self-image comes apart and then I have to painfully recall that that was all it ever was, an image. 

The real Me is very flawed, and perfect, and whole in its humanness. In my clearer moments I know I will never be perfect and that is perfect. 

When I really know this in my body, like an open wound, I come from a more raw place. But I have to watch myself because the sentiment can easily become an intellectual construct wherein the words are believed and repeated like a nice-sounding aphorism, but if they are not really felt in the body, they become a symbol or shadow of their real meaning. When this happens I believe that I've got it all figured out, and inevitably this is when something (disastrous) happens that shows me I am worshiping a false idol...again. My ego burns up in that moment and I begin again. 

Rumi says, 

Be melting snow
Wash yourself of yourself

Maybe it never ends - this cycle of breaking down and coming home, hardening and breaking down again. And so my path unfolds...

I suck at life sometimes. but I just keep practising. 

And I guess this is why we can never judge another's path. We all ebb and flow towards enlightenment. 

Love,
R

what is my gift?

~ Leonard Cohen

Only from the careful and ongoing deconstruction of our selves can we bring anything true, honest, and helpful to the world and our fellow humans. 

Each time I judge my personality as worthless, uninteresting, friendly, kind, spiritual, smart, special, different, inherently bad or inherently good, I must try to catch myself and remember that I am not a personality. I am not what I think I am presenting to the world. In fact, my very perception of myself as a personality is taking me out of the connection I have with my real (capital) Self.

If I then shed those already threadbare layers of words I have been identifying with, discarding them glibly like a towel tossed in a laundry pile, I can come back to focus. 

The focus is not to make myself into something. That would be a fruitless endeavour. That is, again, in the realm of personality.

The focus is a quality of being. This quality of being is known in my body already. I know it as that which feels good. That which feels right. 

As I focus, I allow that quality of being to grow within me and then allow it to flow from me/through me into what I am doing. 

Therefore the focus is to know what I already am. To ground myself there.

It doesn't matter so much what action arises out of that grounding. Implicit in the action will be my unique gift.

The gift is given through me to the world as the one and only thing of value I can offer. Quite simply, I am all I have to give.

My job in life is to toss aside artifice and give the most of mySelf that I can.

That is what those lines mean to me:

From bitter searching of the heart

we rise to play a greater part.

Love,

R

a conversation with my body

I really have been to that place where I love everybody. Lately I am there more and more often.

But today I am not there. I feel kind of out of sorts and that really bothers me because I really like to feel happy. So I go about the business of searching for the feeling so I can feel it and in feeling it let it go.

I sit quietly and ask my body what it wants. It says, "sugar." 

"OK, are you hungry?"

"No"

"Are you low on energy?"

"No"

"What are you really feeling that you are trying to sugar-coat?"

"Anxiety."

"Please tell me more."

"I feel a bit lost and I want to reassure myself. Hold myself and tell myself it's OK. I want to feel safe."

"You are safe. Remember how safe you felt yesterday?"

"Yes, I remember but today everything feels different."

"How so?"

"Today I feel frustrated at some people. I feel like they aren't respecting me the way they should. I feel like they are in a bad mood and want to take me down with them. Why can't they see the effect they are having on me?"

"The question is why are you letting yourself be affected? You know these relationships are mirrors. Darling, what is really troubling you?"

"I'm tired today and the house is a mess and everything is feeling a little out of control."

"And that is why you feel others have control over you right now."

"Yes, I can see that."

"Breathe. You are going to be OK."

"I am OK."

"Yes, you are."

...

...

...

"Now, release control entirely."

"Bless this mess."

Love,

R

"I, in humility" write this little note

This is a practice I got into, I don't even know how, during a yoga practice a while back.

It is so easy to get caught up in the chattering of the ego - the voice in my head that tries to convince me to judge myself and other people, to compete, to be perfect, to act a certain way, etc etc. 

I notice this in my yoga practice when I feel a bit wobbly in tree pose or my standing leg is burning through the longest balancing sequence known to God or man! The mind goes "come on, you could do this yesterday!" and "if you can't even do tree pose what kind of yogi are you?"

One day, out of nowhere really, I started to repeat what has become a mantra for me in my yoga practice and now in my life. I find that it quickly brings me back to my centre essentially by returning me to my sense of humour and lightness. 

This mantra goes, "I, in humility"

That's it, there is no ending to the sentence in words. It is given meaning by the action I am doing. For example, "I, in humility" *stand on one leg and look upwards*. "I, in humility" *attempt this unthinkable feat of strength in my burning leg*. 

Or, "I, in humility" *type these words*. "I, in humility" *attempt to communicate with the person I am with*.

When I invite humility into my practice with these words I am reminded that I am human, both strong and flawed. Perfect and vulnerable. Thoughtful and playful. 

I find that the result is usually first that I laugh at myself for taking myself so seriously. Then I am less hard on myself, my mind stops racing, and magically, whatever I'm doing becomes 100% easier and more enjoyable. It's like shrugging my shoulders and saying, "so what, I'm only human."

Why do I bring this up? 

Good question... I am searching for the answer...

I suppose I am bringing it up because in my own journey of personal growth, I am finding that there is a vast difference between sharing your own experience with someone and speaking from a soapbox, advising them of what they should do. I have been on both ends. I have both given and received unsolicited advice.

If I am being really truthful and honest with myself, I know only one thing about you. I know nothing about your history, your spiritual path, your desires, the other people in your life, all of the moving parts and endless dialogues you may or may not be running in your own mind. Even if you've told me, I can't know what it's like to be you.

The one and only thing that I know about you is that you are the same as me.You are a dynamic bundle of energy, growing, shifting, looking around all the time for the next experience, great or small. If I allow myself the pleasure of standing back and looking at (capital) You, what I will see is utter beauty unfolding before my eyes. I will see an incredible capacity to form opinions, make decisions, take action, be wise, exhibit qualities I didn't know you had, be unpredictable, and most of all, be human. 

To give advice from a soap box is to miss seeing that truth and beauty. 

So in my interaction with you I wish to stay in my humility, because only from there can I see the truth of the radiant being you are. 

When I apply the mantra to my interaction with you, "I, in humility" trust and know that you will find all the answers you seek; you will get where you are going; you are ok. The I who is in humility sees things as they are. 

"I, in humility" watch you dazzle the night sky with your shining light. "I, in humility" recognize the light that also shines from within me. "I, in humility" exist in this world as the only thing I know how to be ....me ...not you ...Me.

Love,
R

I'm no Buddhist Vegan Yogi Pacifist Idealist Left-wing Hipster, and I politely decline to be categorized

Yes, another rant about not conforming to labels.

But I am honestly finding a need to draw a dotted line in my life between what people are saying I am and what I actually am. So herewith my little manifesto...

What I actually am is so simple and clear, whilst not really being easy to define in words. 

I am spirit

I am raw experience

leading edge stuff

I am the listener

I am the being who seeks 

I am so large that I am actually part of you and you and you

and I am a facet of that wholeness looking at itself

I am 

just me.


Don't you feel that too when you sit quietly with yourself?

I feel very uncomfortable and anxious when defined categorically as any of the above or etc. and I think that this is because I have glimpsed my true self and I know it to be so much more than a string of labels.

So when I go to a restaurant and my companion announces proudly to the server that I am a vegan, my heart kind of reaches out its fist and strangles me before my mouth can go into any explanation of the particularities of my food choices and how they relate to what meal I might be ordering that night. 

I am NOT a vegan. If I tell you that I am a vegan, it is merely for convenience sake, lest I launch into the truths I've come to know that have led me to make this choice or that one and you, zoning out in boredom, come to conclude anyway that I am a vegan, albeit with some weird fundamentalist beliefs that nevertheless make me feel I have to defend myself in the face of that accusation.

I do eat eggs, for your information, but only when I either know the chickens, or the chickens are friends of a friend. 

I am opposed to consuming another's suffering.

I will also turn a blind eye sometimes when chocolate is involved if I think that the chocolate will nourish me more than fundamentalism will in that given moment. (sometimes fundamentalism does win, but it's really on a case to case basis.)

And I enjoy honey! I have a couple of sweaters made of wool and 2 pairs of leather shoes, purchased before I read about some of the practices involved with producing these materials (don't worry, I say a little prayer of gratitude each time I wear them...no joke). I also wear silk. It gets to the point where we are splitting hairs and I lose all interest.

The essence of what I am saying, using the example of my diet, is that in any decision I make these days, whether about food or politics or spirituality, I hold that choice up to my heart's eye, like a little pearl, and turn it around, feeling its weight, its unique texture, its particular shade. I allow my mind to weigh in with some opinions it might have and then when the knowing is there in my heart I move forward. 

I think this is another way of describing intuition.

I will, therefore, not be bound by the label 'vegan' to eat in a certain way, or to make 'difficult choices' like whether or not to eat honey, or wear wool, or all of the numerous fundamentalisms I can get shoved into if I subscribe to that category.

I will not be found making statements like, "hey guys, I'm a vegan so can we eat somewhere that serves vegan food?" I rather stick to, "let's go anywhere you enjoy because I can always find something on the menu I like!" (p.s. I LOVE food!)

I will never never never call myself a Buddhist or Christian or Yogi, because all those labels mean to me are that I couldn't be bothered figuring out the truth within so I will subscribe to someone else's truth. However, I will save a rant about religion for another day (or maybe I will give it a miss...)

I am not saying that great and profound wisdom doesn't come from Buddha or Patanjali or John Robbins (author of my favourite pro-vegan book The Food Revolution). These teachings are tools that allow us to see and know. 

We can pick up each little pearl of wisdom we find amongst the sand and hold it to the light of our soul to see if our own image is reflected back to us in the radiant opalescence there.

We can wander blithely along the beach uncovering pearls, gathering them, admiring them, leaving one behind here or there, all the while keeping our vision turned up toward the horizon. 

Love,
R