Waking Up

This blog is from my book, Oms From the Heart. Find it and its sister offering, Oms From the Mat, online here.

I was watching the Full Moon the other night with a friend and felt very small. We were sitting on a hill-top, looking over the cities of Tiburon, Sausalito, San Francisco, and Oakland. The bay was shrouded in clouds and fog, but still shone so brightly. The cloud cover added such a sense of majestic mystery to this eclipse that I felt like I should have been paying an admission fee to someone for the show.

This show, that I call my life. This movie that is full of infinite lessons, challenges, initiations, triumphs and epic transitions. This box office blockbuster.

I was looking up at the stars, and all the planes flying around in the air, going somewhere. And all the cars driving up and down highway 101, headed somewhere.

Did they know there was an eclipse? Did they know the moon was rising in all her glory? Did they know that there was a really cool event about to happen in the sky that wouldn’t happen for another eighteen years? Did they understand just how small their issues were? Did they get it? You know, that we are all one, watching the same moon and the same sky?

Or where they overwhelmed in their own drama? In their own story? In their own capsule of reality going... somewhere? I sat there staring at the moon and I asked my friend, “If you could wish one thing on this eclipse night, what would it be? What would you like to see on the other side of this moon?” He said simply, “I want more people to wake up. I just want more people to wake up.”

My heart stopped, literally. Yes ... that is what the world needs - more people to wake up; to remember that this is but a dream that we are creating; to know that we GET to live this life any way we want; to know that every person on this planet is a soul living their karmic destiny; that everyone is someone to somebody.

The reality is that most people on this planet are sleeping. They are sleeping through their life, through intimate connection, and through their lessons. Sometimes I look around and get so dismayed and sad, I cry. I witness so much unconsciousness and such an obvious loss of connection. I witness entitlement, separation, greed, and an overall sense of lack.

I have to be honest here and say, every single day, I thank God I do what I do. I thank God that I chose to share this love of yoga because in my field, at least people are trying to wake up. I pray, along with my sweet friend, that more people just wake the hell up. Because it’s exhausting to hit the snooze button over and over again. It actually messes up your REM, you know.

I know it can be equally exhausting being awake through your life, too. I know; I get it. Seemingly it is easier to sleep it off, medicate (not meditate), distract and blame outside influence, claiming that there’s “nothing we can do.” It is so much easier to stay asleep. Yeah, I get it.

But the truth is that once you wake up, yeah, you’re in. And the reality is that if you even try and go back to sleep, you’re in for a lot of suffering, confusion and unnecessary back peddling. So why don’t you just succumb and wake the hell up?

Get off your high horse and get in the game of life where it’s messy, and chaotic, and not so timely and epic and magic and completely unpredictable. That’s where we wake up. When things get a little hairy. And for once, just once, can you sit in it and be in it? Can you not avoid it, avert from it, distract yourself with some pathetic story of times gone by or fantasy of the future, and just be in it?

Be in the awakeness ... in the reality of awakening. Because, truth be told, being awake is amazing. And lovely, and the best amusement park ride ever. It’s twisting and turning and dropping you down to take you right back up.

Even when I close my eyes, I still feel every single bit of this ride. And I love it, every single bit. I might cry at disappointment, get angry at injustice, and become frustrated and impatient when I think I know better. But I can honestly say I am awake. I might not “get it right” in every moment. I might not speak with my yogi-tongue in every exchange.

But I can honestly say I am awake.

I see.
I feel.
I try.
I practice.
I fall.
I get messy.

I say, wake up people. Wake up to this epic journey. Step out of your phones, your distractions and other peoples’ stories and look up. Look at the stars, at the moon and at the sky. Get up high on a mountaintop and see how small you really are. Look in the mirror and recognize your beauty, your grace, your gifts - this miracle you call you.

Stop wasting your time on sleeping, on blaming, on separating. Wake up to the reality of Oneness. Wake up to the reality of Now. Wake up to the reality of Love.

Period.