Lisa Tilson

Why is committing so difficult? Whether committing to a marriage, a spiritual path, or myself there always seems to be an unbelievable amount of resistance to sticking with it. I find that the motivation I had in the beginning to do it, fades and I am just left hanging by a string at some point, battling with my ego on some stupid technicality. (I’m going to exclude the marriage question in this one, just because it involves someone else, which seems to be easier for my mind to wrap itself around.)

This morning I woke up to my alarm, after having committed to waking up at 5:30am. I laid there for a little while, my cat came in to say hello, I toyed with the idea of resetting the alarm, my cat left and I fell back asleep, music blasting. The next thing I knew, my cat was leaping around the room after a bird that had presumably been carried in by her mouth. HOLY CRAP. I was definitely awake. I jumped out of bed, hissing at my cat to stop, opening all the doors and window, when finally the bird landed on my dresser, safely above my cats reach. Shortly after, the bird catches its breath, and following a few near escapes, finally makes it out the window.

What does this have to do with commitment?

I immediately connected it to the karma lecture that the monk gave last week.

We were talking about karma and how it works. He explained the different kinds, which gratefully cleared up my bad / good karma assumption. To make it short, for those who may be thinking, “oh do share!” There are four types: Experience - tit for tat type thing, do something nice and something nice returns (but not quite so simple as that); Environment which the reality around you, be mean to everyone and one day you rely on those you were mean to; maturation which is emotional, act in a negative way, and eventually your world actually becomes negative - your karma is living it; action which is behavioral Karma. Basically when it comes down to it, all karma is a positive experience, because it creates the classroom you are meant to be in.

The connection with commitment lies within committing consciously to personal growth. When one wavers, or goes back on the commitment, the karma is much more intense than it would have been if they hadn’t committed consciously. I understand this not to be related to fear and sin, but to be an understanding between the universal energies and me. I want to be a conscious person on a spiritual path, and so when I commit, I am asking to be taken seriously. This means bigger karma - larger consequences but also larger rewards (if we are still in the “good karma / bad karma” understanding of everything).

Last night I committed to getting up at 5:30am because that has proven to be the best time for my body to wake up (obviously my ego doesn’t agree!) And by deciding to let my ego win by going back to sleep, I was awakened in a more painful gross manner. Neat. Its nice to know that karma even works at 5:30am. Lesson learned.

Now to remember this motivation when I am diddling around on the Internet at 10:30pm, or lying in bed, passively allowing the strength of my ego to beat me down. Perhaps the question is: Is the karma enough of a motivation to stay committed?

I just received and email from a friend that the mother of one of my dear friends has been missing since mothers day, Sunday, May 11, 2008. Her name is Hilary Sullivan, she is a wife and a devoted mother to four children. Here is a link to her picture and the story behind her disappearance, if you have any information please call the Vancouver Police.

Please keep their family in your prayers, they are wonderfully generous and kind people.

I was just about to leave the Yoga Center today when I got to talking with one of the regulars who had just finished a class.  It was an excellent conversation spanning such topics as why cooking makes people not want to go home, all the way to what doing and being truely mean, what God is, and what really happeneds when you die.  Basically the kind of interaction that is the meat and potatoes (s’cuse the expression) which nourish my soul.

What I really discovered through our conversation was the relationship between “getting God”, Lokiya and societal norms.  You know, regular tea-after-class kind of talk. People seriously wonder where I work to be having these peculiar revelations, but the space totally invokes depth. I love it

So the relationship.  Most humans have this “longing to belong” experience.  Some people end up in a tight knit workplace atmosphere, some hang with an activist group they identify with, or maybe join a gang, some become fanatically religious… all to find a home for their soul.  I am more on the religious side of things.

I did not, however, get fully into any particular religion, basically because I was only looking for what I call “the God feeling” and no religion / spiritual group satified it for long.  To make a very long story short (as my yogi tea buddy can attest to), I found god in a church when I was a kid, and from that point on I thought I would have to go somewhere similar to get the god feeling again.  When it came down to it, many years later, I realized that I didn’t need any one particular religions dogma to give me God, God was inside me.

Moving on, that’s what Lokiya is all about, and from what I have learned so far, is one of the differences between Lokiya and Abilokiya (tanslated as worldly and above worldly) - thinking that some external thing can give you a feeling.  (Wow!  The more I think about this, the more it makes sense)  So I traveled around from religion to religion looking for God.  I would find it, and then something adverse would freak me out and the god feeling would go away.  Abilokiya says that if something could really give you a feeling then it would continue doing so whether in adverse or pleasantly distracting circumstances.  Yup, sure enough: adverse circumstances = no god feeling .: place not= to god feeling. So then I find out, after many iterations of the same story, that the god feeling comes from inside me and I can create it anywhere.  Therefor thinking something can give me God is a very worldly way of experiencing life (check, right on track.)

Now how does this relate to societal norms?  WELL.  Society says that if you want something, you can buy it, or get it from somewhere.  People want a home, they buy one. Pre-made.  They don’t have to build it or anything.  People want food, they can live in a 29 story condominium with no balcony and get food from Isreal at the supermarket down the street - organic!  With all this buying and getting, we have perhaps been lead to believe that we can get God too.  So we got to some place, pay our dues and think that we’ve got God. In my experience, that’s the kind of feeling that dissapears in adverse situations, or when life is going really well.

Abilokiya is about process, not product.  Its not about the getting, its about the how. I realize that I get my God feeling when I am serving my soul.  NO one can take that away, because no one else gives it to me.

I suppose this is why it is hard to remember where the God feeling comes from in a society where everything else seems to come from somewhere else.

Full moon at 8:02pm tonight.

Since my moon cycle began to sync with the moon, I have gained a lot of wisdom. When I wasn’t working, and was able to put all my attention into preparing for the special time that the moon brings, my mood was great, I had no cramps and I truly felt like an oracle - or at least the beginning of one. Then, two months ago, I went back to work and since then I have been completely unprepared for the full moon. In fact, my stress levels just before the full moon has been out of control, not only because work has been stressful, but because I have been way more emotional from not giving myself space and time when I most need it.

Both last month and this month I have committed to being in the public attention on the first day of my moon cycle, not to mention that I have worked long days leading up to it. Both times, I have had to bail at the last minute due to incredible cramps (note that as soon as I bailed and gave myself space, I was able to relax enough for them to subside) and I was left feeling karmic-ally irresponsible. Is this weird? Should a woman have to shut her life down for a period every month? Can’t she do what she wants during that time?

My experience is that most women feel that way. Give me a tampon, let me keep going to the gym, give me a birth control shot that relieves me of bleeding all over the place for few months. How am I supposed to succeed as a woman when I am a crampy, moody, bloody mess for three or four days (or seven!) per month?

I write this and I know that the question is not whether the past couple of months have been weird or not. Or whether I should have to shut my life of for a couple of days every month, but weather I want to. When I slow down and sit with myself (alone in my house this cycle because Justin is at school) after two months of not, it is really uncomfortable. I feel like I should be busy, I should be getting stuff done! The thought of sitting and resting without television, or movies or books - just sitting and meditating or doing reiki feels pretty uncomfortable. I’ll bet other women feel the same way. I think that this is the real reason why it is difficult for a woman to sit down and think about herself, BE with herself for a day or two - because it is completely out of the ordinary for a woman to do so. She is either working, or going to school to get a job, or looking after a family or all of these things.

I work at a Yoga Centre run mostly by women and I didn’t even feel like I could limit my stress - not because I thought my boss wouldn’t let me, but because I didn’t think I had time. I thought I was so important that the world wouldn’t continue if I slowed down for a few days. Not to mention the fear of slowing down and uncovering all of the emotional goo I have accumulated and stuffed away under my business.

So tonight, I am going to go for a long walk under the full moon, I am going to come back and not turn my computer on, or watch a movie, or TV, or read a book. I am supposed to be an oracle and its about time I let myself take up that much space - whether its comfortable or not.

Wow, I haven’t written a blog post in a month and a day, well, two days if you count February 29th. I think it is time to step it up a little bit. No wonder no one comments!

Today I had the realization that I have been on the verge of for a couple of weeks. Are you ready? My highest purpose has to be bigger than me. I know this sounds simple, and theoretically it is, but in practice… no, it is not simple.

Having a purpose that is bigger than you means that you answer to that purpose, not to you and your ego. For example, my marriage. Justin and I are happily married, everything is going fine and then wamo, month 10 into our first year and we are looking at the baby idea. Now, if the baby thing was about me, or about Justin, we would have had an argument that went something like this:

“Justin, I want a baby.”

“Wow hon, I don’t think I am quite ready for that yet. I have just started my masters, last week I retired from the company and I am feeling like I finally have some time to really explore who I am.”

“Well ya, but I really want one. I feel ready. How come you get to have the final word?”

“It does take two to be parents hon, and I don’t feel like I am prepared to fully take on that role.”

“Alright, well, I am not interested in watching my cycle anymore, so if you don’t want to have a baby, you will just have to go without sex.”

Ouch. Ego’s clashing, claws out we might have just gotten one step closer to a divorce. If we have a purpose, or third thing, in our marriage that is bigger than us, then we can avoid hurting eachother in discussions like this. For Justin and I, we are still discovering and defining exactly what our third thing is, but we have decided that to make any decision we must first ask the question: will this bring us closer in our marriage. This is how the conversation really went.

“Hon, I think we need to have a conscious discussion about weather we want to start trying or not. I feel like we have been careless in watching my cycle, and I don’t want to get pregnant out of carelessness, even if we are ready.”

“I have been feeling the same way. Since we have started working with Don (a buddhist monk) and I have quit work, I feel like I have a pretty full plate with school and my own spiritual work. I don’t think I am quite ready, maybe in a couple of years?”

“A couple of years? Ack! I am soooo ready now. I feel like we could manage… I don’t want to be old when we have kids” (looking back on that now… this is me whining a bit - understandably.)

“Remember what Don said? (He mentioned that he had never seen two enlightened people have children together) I want that. I want to be those parents”

*I’m thinking - enlightened? But that could take years!

“I agree… I want you to feel like you have had the time to do what you need to do, but I don’t really think we need to wait two years. ”

“We are quick learners. But I want to finish my degree.”

“Okay. I agree that having a baby right now would be hard on us with the current circumstances. Can we revisit this conversation in a year?”

“Yes. A year would be great.”

I have a tendancy to think about me, and my needs, where Justin has a tendancy to be a little bit more global. He wants to provide a secure home with parents that are as karma free as possible for a child. Where thought I normally think along the same lines, I am feeling the maternal instinct, which makes me impulsive. I recognized when he mentioned Don’s comment that I was not thinking about our well being as a couple, nor was I thinking about the well being of a child coming into a stressfull home, no matter how maternal I am feeling. So I shut up and answered to our purpose as a couple: What is best for the marriage?

As I mentioned, today I realized that my highest purpose is bigger than me. Along with our purpose as a couple, I have my own purpose - to serve the earth and to serve the people on it by contributing to an elevated state of consciousness. This morning I had to get up really early and go downtown for a tv spot about our green wedding. I was being really victimy about how long it was taking, and how late we were in the schedule. As I tried to express my feelings about it to Justin I realized that I was being asked to go on TV so that people will be inspired to serve the earth. This opportunity was directly aligned with my purpose and I was whining about having to sit and enjoy my book for an extra hour! VICTIM!

After this realization, I felt torn between the way I had been carrying on - and the need to maintain it to try and justify my irritiation, and relaxing my grip on what I wanted to be completely humbled by what I really wanted. Eventually, (thank god before we went on tv) I dropped my ego trip and was truely humbled by the idea that our little wedding was something that inspires people to go green.

I get it. It’s not about me.