upside down

up
side
down

a few nights ago goddess tawney skyped me before she had read that last blog.
i had been thinking about her that night as i sat under the mozzie net and wrote that entry... she must have felt that her energy had arrived to me.
i LOVE cosmic connectedness. it rocks.
she sent me a link for a video called hammock enlightenment...

it took a day or so to buffer and then played to me just as i needed it.

i wrote down parts that i loved:

"that deep mystical love thats inside of all of us... that every single one of us has access to but we need to keep it central to our idea as a culture and that needs to be in mind inside of all of us.

what is love?
where does it come from?
and how does so much of it fit inside one small body?

love blurs the line between where you end and where someone else begins."


it made me think...

slowing down is pivitol.

me and my friend nick "wallaki" wrote a song about slowing down when i first got here.
i think it was a message i needed to teach so i could hear it myself. (much like all the lessons i teach... to myself)
As a firey zani-go kinda girl i know that i need to do this often.
more often then often.

ya kow how in life you hear stuff a lot? we have buzz words that ring to us... the thing that causes us to say "ya... i've heard that."
i always heard 'fire' and 'intense' and 'passion' when people described me...
and for the first time in my life, i am hearing people describe me as 'relaxed' and 'mellow' which is new for me.

i think that i have chemically changed... i have begun to sink into my soul and love even more then ever.

and i think its because i have slowed down significantly.

i think this is the point of the "vacation" for many.
i think this is the reason that guests come to stay at this island - Togat Nusa Retreat - the ultimate chemically altering, relaxing paradise on earth...

they come here to feel this slow pace... this love... this relaxed sense of unity and family and acceptance of all.

nothing is a big deal here


it reminds me back to the days of my yoga teacher training with annie carpenter.
she is this incredible teacher... obsessed with anatomy, and placement (she was a dancer too)... and yet, would tell us to let go of it all...
she'd say "it's only yoga" and "if you're not enjoying it... why are you doing it?"

i think this is something we could all live by in every mOMent in our lives...

if you are not operating in a state of love... if you are not feeling that expansive joy... then maybe its time to do something else.

a lot of times i fall out... i feel fear and frustration and want to scream or throw my computer in the ocean (like yesterday)... but if you can't change the situation... start a new project or distract yourself... or just consciously flip the switch... then it's time to make a big change.

Pratipaksha Bhavanam - this yogic idea of turning lemons to lemonade.

flip it upside down.


for me - i literally need to do a headstand and flip myself upside down.
(Mitch Hedgeberg says "I wear a necklace, cause I wanna know when I'm upside down.")

being flipped upside down gives me a perspective i need... and somehow it reminds me that everything can be turned on its head... lemonade can be made from ANY lemon... and it's OK to fall out.
it's okay to fall out of the love... the unity place and into frustration.
it's okay to fall out of a handstand and onto the ground.

we're human.

yesterday was a stormy day.
usually i really love a stormy day...
especially here on the island, i think its such a nice change of pace to stay inside... to cuddle up and watch a movie as the rain comes down on all sides of us in the driftwood castle.
i taught a yoga class to some guests and then had the idea to turn the uma into a movie theatre like birdie and i used to do...
pull the beds over... set up a laptop plugged into the surround sound speakers... make popcorn and just veg out... weather the storm.

buuut of course the cheap bali knock off DVD got stuck in my disc drive... which literally drives me CRAZY.
this made my computer totally die in bali a few months ago and i nearly had a mental breakdown. (a part of my personality i am working on)...

so there i am yesterday with the blood in my face, and my head throbbing from it... and im holding two butter knives prying open the disk drive about to drop my laptop on its head.
and Ainsley, the driftwood kingdom queen and my mermaid sister guru... came and just gently picked my computer up from me... confiscated it and walked away.

okay... okay... i realized.

i needed to calm down.

i needed to find that place of love... the expansion place, versus this skull crushing frustration place.

what would my mother tell me to do?

create.

i walked down the stairs and out into the rain... marching towards the gudang... stopping for 5 minutes to hold a handstand in the sand under the palm trees. i came down, let the blood drain down and pull with it my itchy, irritation...
releasing it into the earth just like the raindrops that were being abosorbed and swallowed up by the ground...
i found some pastels and paper and marched back up the stairs and said to the girls... okay y'all... let's collabcreate!

we started making collaborative mandalART like david block and i did for 7 hours straight on our way to burning man 2 years ago in the RV. (little did we know... we were doing exactly what burning man would be. --taking turns drawing our spirit onto a canvas.)

we sat there for four hours yesterday, drawing together on a canvas.
it was beautiful.

that piece of art (and direct illustration of pratipaksha bhavanam) is now hanging behind the bar as i write this.

it's funny, because the way that i saw it once we finished coloring in the whole page... is directly upside down from the way it is hung in the bar... its as though that piece of art is standing on its head. flipping the situation around as always.

the piece reminds me so much of a drawing i sat and created while tawney was healing post-surgery after our car accident before i left to come out here.
although i was the only one drawing, all the spirits that came through and played music for us and brought their gifts of love and light... josh hogan, clayton joseph scott, lukas nelson, avasa & matty love, the makepeace brothers, and others...

they were all drawing on this piece of art.
as they brought their gifts to us, i was infused by it and drew a collaborative drawing in the living room of the love compound... and i believe it might still be there.

i love this lesson.

i illustrated the message incase you need a visual.