Hearts Wide Open

How are you living? Are your shoulders curved around your body, protecting your heart?
What are we all so afraid of?


I just recently finished reading a book about a woman who traveled through Italy, India and Indonesia. It was a book that made me laugh out loud and think, a lot. It brought me back to this question “am I living my life with an open heart?’ Am I protecting myself from people or from events? Who exactly is this “I” that “I” might be protecting? Is it an illusion to believe we could really do such a thing as protect ourselves? Is there really that sort of control? Or are we running uphill only to find that at the top is a meadow of vast nothingness?

About a week ago I heard of a horrible accident that occurred which resulted in the death of a small child. I found myself wondering how it is that we could believe such “freak” accidents could be prevented. If only we could lock what is precious to us up in a closet, keeping the precious safe and under our control. Is it wrong to lock my nieces and nephews up in the closet, feed them through a slot (only organic food of course) and watch them 24hours a day? I love them that much. I love them so much that I can’t bear the idea that I can’t keep them safe. However, I know as the 3 year old twins get out bed at night and attempt to make microwave popcorn and the 12 year old is doing 12 year old things and the 10 year old is doing 10 year old things that I can’t keep them safe. I could trust in God, or trust in the Universe, or trust in something to keep them safe. But what about the death of the small child last week? Where was God then? How was the Universe keeping the little one safe? How can we keep our hearts open when tragedy might be around the corner and the Universe might be taking a siesta?

Tonight before I taught class I had about thirty minutes to practice. I turned on the CD called Songs from a Secret Garden. I really love this cd. It is the music that my instructor played in our last class during IYT teacher training at the ashram in Pennsylvania. There were forty of us who had spent fourteen, fifteen hour days together. There was an openness, a connectedness in this room that I can’t begin to describe. Although I went to learn how to teach asanas (postures), most of us found that we learned way more than how to describe trikonasana. Our shells cracked open, our secret gardens opened. So, anyway, when I listen to this Secret Garden music I am transported back to a warm, muggy, overcast day in June that likely can’t be forgotten. So anyway, I am on my mat today practicing, focusing on breath and an open heart. I stand on my head with an open heart. I walk across the room with an open heart. As I was teaching I began to see the trees swaying a few lots away and it is as if there is not a separation between the tops of the tree and my-self. A moment of recognition that there isn’t a difference.

After class, I meet for a few minutes with the master mind and project manager for our care package for Adam, yogi in Iraq. It occurs to me that I have spent time talking with Adam about how to be in Iraq with an open heart. It occurs to me that I don’t know anything about anything. It occurs to me that sometimes staying alive and functioning might mean closing off your heart. It occurs to me that living with an open heart actually implies that I choose to live this way. It implies an “I” who makes decisions….yep, I’ll stay open to the moment when I feel like I am a tree and yep, I’ll close off when an emotion freaks me out and sends me running for the hills. How completely ignorant and narcissistic. Who did “I” think “I” was suggesting to Adam that he try to stay open. What do I know about living in a war zone in Iraq? Ugh. I am so embarrassed. Where did this idea come from that I have control of how to live my life? Where did this idea come from that I am in the driver’s seat? One might think after my brother’s illness this year I would have recognized I am most certainly not in the driver’s seat. What was the thinking behind the idea that Adam could control whether he was open to what he was experiencing in Iraq? Arghhh. And I call myself…what? Who oh who is this “I” who thought she knew something? Why oh why does this character named “ami” keep forgetting who she is? Will she ever remember? What will it take? Will it happen when she gets her feet behind her head in supta kurmasana? Will it happen once she has traveled around India and not died of dysentery? Maybe she will have to have taken the leap to working full time at the studio to see it? Maybe she will have to be a mother to see it? Maybe she will have to have been deathly ill to see it?

You see, anytime I am giving advice to myself or to someone else, I am believing
I know something. That should be the first key there is a problem. Anytime we think we know something….we are in TROUBLE. It could be the first sign that we have forgotten something important. It’s a sign I have forgotten that wisdom is not found in the intellect, but rather a wide open heart.