neutralize

Inspiration for a craft day

I've come to realize that I'm only into blogging when things are going along in the neutral range of my life.  When things are going not so good I revert to journalling, and when things are going good I'm off enjoying life.
The past couple of months have gone from not so good to awesome and finally now just settling into neutral again...so I'm back to blogging.  For now ;)

I've just had 4 weeks off work, and I have a another week and a half off before starting back again.  As some of you will remember I was going to be off in the Bahamas doing my Advanced Yoga Teachers training right now...but life got in the way and I had to stay in Prince Rupert.  I was bummed at first, but now I can see the perfection in it.  Being here and getting regrounded and recentered is what I truly needed.

sewing up some love

You really get to find out who you are when you have this much free time to spend at/near your home and you're not worried about money.  Everyday I wake up and decide what I feel like doing for the day - I have no responsibilities.  Everyday is like a blank canvas and I get to create something new and amazing everyday.

When I first knew I'd be staying in town I started making checklists of all the stuff I had to get done now that I finally had a big chunk of time off.  You know, all the stuff that we put off because we don't have enough time?  Then I realized that all that was really doing was creating stress and setting my self to feel guilty for not getting everything done.  So I gave up the planning and decided to go with the flow.  Ahhh, that felt good!

hiked into this secret cedar sauna

So what have I been doing?  Skiing - lots of telemark skiing.  I built a bed in the back of my truck so I can stay up on the mountain and I have a pass to the pool in Terrace so I can shower up, and soak and steam away any aches and pains from the day.  I get to be a ski bum at my home hill!

I've also been hiking and running with the dogs, going to lots of classes: Hatha yoga, Niijonda yoga, cardio kickboxing.  I took a Marine First Aid course. I started Steps to Leadership again as an auditor, so I've been going to that and spending lots of time with my new "buddy". And just enjoying the comfort of my lovely little house, relaxing, watching movies,  reading/researching/studying, tea drinking, cooking, guitar/fiddle playing and visiting with friends.

my bed in the back of my pick-up truck

Now I feel recharged and balanced. I have a better sense of who I am, who my friends are and what I want out of life.  I recommend a staycation to anyone!  I'm surprised though by how many people have said to me "ugh, I'd be so bored after a week"  Really?  Not me, I'm so inspired and a bit sad my time is going by to fast!

What would you do on your 5 week staycation?

xo Bhargavi

New Years

 

New Years 2011 - what a blast!  I got off of a 12hr night shift at 7am on Dec 31, busted home to sleep for a couple hours before getting up to pack and meet friends at 11am.  A small group of us chartered a helicopter to take us on a 20min tour around Work Channel, Quottoon Inlet and up to the cabin on Mt Blaine.  It was a beauty day and the flight and sights were amazing.  I've done a lot of hiking in the areas we flew over so it was awesome to see the area from the air.

We landed on the mountain around noon and snowshoed all the gear, food, booze over to the cabin and started up with our first cocktail right away. We snacked on fried cranberry moose sausage, cheddar shipped from Holland and cinnamon goat cheese in the afternoon and made homemade pizzas for dinner.  We were right smashed by 6pm so we cranked the music up and danced our way all the way until the New Year, if we weren't moving around we probably wouldn't have made it...haha.  Super fun cabin dance party though, we had it all going on from full on 5 minute air guitar solos to romantic slow dances.

Next day we all felt good, just a tad tired - especially me, having not slept the night before.  We had smoked salmon eggs bennies for breaky,  lobster and salmon for lunch, smoked white spring salmon for dinner.  Mostly just hung out, read, napped and visited with some people that hiked up for the afternoon.  

We spent that night in the cabin as well, had another amazing breakfast the next morning before packing up and heading down.  

Good people, good tunes, good food.  

Happy New Year all  xx B

The view from the cabin window

Good Luck, bad Luck, who knows?

Good Luck, Bad Luck

A father and his son owned a farm.

They did not have many animals, but they did own a horse. One day the horse ran away.

"How terrible, what bad luck," said the neighbours.

"Good luck, bad luck, who knows?" replied the farmer.

Several weeks later the horse returned, bringing with him four wild mares.

"What marvellous luck," said the neighbours.

"Good luck, bad luck, who knows?" replied the farmer.

The son began to learn to ride the wild horses, but one day he was thrown and broke his leg.

"What bad luck," said the neighbours.

"Good luck, bad luck, who knows?" replied the farmer.

The next week the army came to the village to take all the young men to war.

The farmer’s son was still disabled with his broken leg, so he was spared.

"Good luck, bad luck, who knows?"

This week has been a battle for me, I'm really wanting to feel my way through this bit of bumpy road instead of just stuffing it down and forgetting about it.  But it's not easy.  Repressing our difficult emotions seems like the simplest thing to do during times like these - but that pain doesn't disappear just because we ignore it.  Nope, in fact it just festers inside us until it starts seeping out into our lives in ways we often don't even recognize.  By the time it gets to that point we've forgotten that we had forgotten about what ever it was we had tried to stuff down.  We're left feeling confused and wondering when we became so sad or so angry...so whatever.   Best to just feel the feelings right away, just burn right through 'em - afterall, they're just our emotions and our emotions can't hurt us. It only seems like they can. When we surrender and feel our way through we can turn obstacles into opportunities.

This whole experience has been quite the awakening though.  It's pretty mind blowing when I think about how fast I got knocked off track. Just when I finally had gotten to a point in my life where I wasn't taking myself out anymore, the universe gets in there and gives me a shove!  What gives?  Whatever the reason, I know the way through is gratitude and I'm trying to see the perfection in even this experience.  The little story above has been a good reminder.

There is more happening within us and around us that meets the eye,

Love B

Where do you go?

I am responsible for my emotional state.  No one else can make me feel anything.  No one can get inside my head or my heart and press my anger button, my sadness button, my guilt button.  I alone choose what my reaction will be to the situations that arise in my life.  I also know that situations don't just arise in my life at random.  I create my own reality.

I create my own reality.  This is an easy mindset to be in when life is going along 'great - pretty good'.
It gets to be a bit tougher when life is just going 'pretty good - not that great'.
Then there's the odd time when life gets to be 'not that great - really fucking terrible' and we have to wonder why the hell we would want it that way.  Why, if we create our own realities, would we create pain and suffering for ourselves?

I don't have the one answer to that question, I have a lot of ideas I could babble on about, but it's not really what I wanted to ramble about right now.  Besides it's a gigantic and complex question - it could be something we created on a conscious, subconscious, or unconscious level...or it could be some karmic debt from a past life.  I don't think we'll always get to know the "why."
Right now I'm more interested in the "now what?"

So...now what?  If we've created something in our lives that is "really fucking terrible" where do we go?  I don't mean literally where do we go - as in to the refrigerator or the liquor cabinet.  I mean which part of our minds will we identify with?  Our higher mind?  The part of us that can make the most of any situation, the part that will learn the lesson, the part that will accept our karmas?  Or our lower mind, the part of us that wants to keep us small and trapped, keep us as victims, keep us powerless?

Sure, for most day to day circumstances, it's no problem to stay connected with our higher minds.  But I'm talking about when it really counts, when the most terrible of terrible things happen:  Can we accept and take responsiblity that for some reason we created that terrible experience?

For the past couple of months I was the happiest I think I've ever been.  Truly happy.  Blissful even.  I was completey grounded, centered, living authentically and with integrity.  Life was just good, I was truly blessed - I thought nothing could knock me off my center, but also worried that something would.   When things get so good we have a tendency to worry about when they'll be bad again - that whole "what goes up..." thing I suppose.

Then it happened.  A painful experience that brought everything crashing down in a hurry.  I spent the first few days in sadness, guilt, fear and anger.   I was feeling sorry for myself and wanting others to feel sorry for me too.  Part of me is still there.

But I'm ready to take responsibility, to own this. To accept that I created this reality.  It's not an easy place to get to, but just like that I've taken my power back.  I feel a weight taken off my shoulders, I feel free and liberated.   If I am responsible for my emotional state and I create my own reality - I'm finished choosing pain and suffering.

I deserve better than that. We all do.

xo B

Snow! And the icy mountain trail

Today was my first snowy day of the season!  So exciting!  I think it snowed once here already, but I was out of town at RHIOT. It's hopefully going to be a big snow year this winter because of El Nina and I'm praying it'll dump hard now so I can get some skiing in before taking off for 2 months.  I can't believe I'm already leaving again in less than a month.

I finally had to get real and abandon my dream for getting new skis this year, there's just no way I can afford them with Christmas, truck insurance renewal coming up, the trip and the Advanced Yoga Teacher's Training course.  I'll only get to ski for about a month and a half this season anyways so really it would be pretty ridiculous to get new sticks this year.  Basically I'm just praying for a miracle to be able to pay for my ATTC course right now - I just trust in the universe though, I've made my commitment to do it so it'll work out somehow. 

I just sent an email to the Ashram in the Bahamas asking if I could do Karma Yoga for the 2 weeks after the course in February.  That means I would get to stay at the Ashram for free if I volunteer for 5-8hrs a day. I hope they'll say yes, otherwise it's going to be another pricey bill that I really can't afford - and my ticket is already booked! Haha, just putting my faith into that one working out as well!  But Swami Ambika from Val Morin did send a recommendation to them for me saying I was a good little karma yogi and they apparently had agreed to let me stay on - fingers crossed!

Hiked up my favorite mountain again today.  The steep trail is getting pretty treacherous these days, the water runs down the trail and has now all frozen into a cascading waterfall of death.  We had fun picking our way up and down the mountain just beside the trail on the less icy bits.  Did have a couple of close-call super slips but managed to save myself from wiping out each time (barely!)  Thank goodness for all the yoga I've been doing otherwise I might of had some seriously pulled muscles from some of the contorted positions I found myself in!

Then it was home for hot soup, a hot shower and a short nap before work.  I took my camera with me on the hike but didn't take any pictures - sorry!

Have a lovely day,
Love B

Steps

This Saturday I graduated from a year long Psychology of Vision program called Steps to Leadership.
This course is absolutely life changing and can catapult you to a whole new realm of consciousness, awareness and gratitude.

The Steps program was another one of those things that just seemed to magically show up in my life at the perfect time.  I was at a place on my spiritual journey where I was feeling stuck and needing guidance, spiritual community/connection and real, meaningful change - not just good ideas.  I wasn't necessarily drawn to the Steps program - I had heard about it and it had been recommended to me, but I was more drawn to the path of yoga.  But still, it presented itself in a way I couldn't ignore, so being a girl of big faith, off I went.

So over the course of a year, our group of 8 souls met 30 times to discuss, disect and investigate our minds at the conscious level, sub-conscious level and the unconscious level.  We covered topics like the psychology of emotions, relationships and family, the power of letting go, happiness, purpose and fulfillment.   We also attended 3 different weekend workshops throughout the year that were so unbelievably powerful.

I highly recommend this course to anyone - regardless of your beliefs, spirituality, religion, culture.  It's about "defragging" your mental computer - peeling back the layers of gunk that's been building up and veiling who we really are.  It's about showing up in your life, taking the reigns and making a difference on the planet.  If you live in Prince Rupert and you are interested in finding out more, there is an informational meeting this Thursday the 25th at 7:30pm at Cornerstones Wellness Centre.  Call ahead to let them know you're planning on attending 250-627-7255.  Send me a message if you have any questions.

Here's a great link from Psychology of Vision, the 3 card reading.  It's a quick online tool to help you see the truth, the way through and the gifts of any problems you may be experiencing.  Check it out.

Much love and light
xo Bhargavi

His RHIOT hat

Here's what I think is a cute little story of setting an intention and seeing it through.
It all started with this amazing man I used to date and a hat he used to wear.

On the last day of RHIOT school I bought a ball cap and a sweatshirt with the school's logo on it.  I just had to get one of those hats, but it took me about 20mins to remember the whole reason why I had to get one.

This story spans over about 7 years and like I mentioned it started with a man and his hat.  Said hat had an orange boat on it and said Rigid Hull Inflatable Operators Training, so I asked him what that was and he told me all about his RHIOT experience in Bamfield a few years ago, that the Coast Guard Auxiliary had sent him and that now he was a coxswain (pronounced cox - in).

In my head I'm thinking "Wow, this guy's so dreamy and amazing, what an awesome experience, he's so brilliant, I wish I could do something like that.....uhh, and what the heck is a coxswain?"  Actually, I don't think I did think that in my head after all, I think I thought it out loud.  But that's just how I roll.

So anyways, of course I had to get filled in on that one too; a coxswain is an advanced search and rescue crew member, certified to drive the fast response craft but more importantly, is responsible for the safety of the vessel, her crew, safely navigating to and from any incidents and a conducting a successful mission.

I decided right then that I was going to go to RHIOT school and earn myself one of those hats.

It might not sound like a big deal at this point - just sign up for course, and get the hat right?  Umm, no. This course was designed to train Canadian Coast Guard crew, Coast Guard Auxiliary crew and has in the past trained crew from the US Marines, US Navy, Navy Seals, etc.  It's like Top Gun school for Ferrari's of the ocean.

Another important piece of the story is where I was at in my life at this point in the story, I had just moved to the coast for the first time in my life and knew nothing about the ocean and I was managing a bingo hall.  So I had a ways to go if I really wanted to go to RHIOT school.

One of the first things I did when I moved to the coast was join the Coast Guard Auxiliary and I've been a member now for about 6 years.  It was through my involvement with the auxiliary that I received the training that helped me land my job with the Coast Guard.  In fact, I didn't even know the job I'm doing now existed until our auxiliary group toured the Seal Cove Coast Guard Base.

Now fast forward 5 years or so to 2010.  I'm still working for the Coast Guard as a Supervisor of Marine Communications and Traffic Services, I finished my advanced crew training with the auxiliary last winter, and I just got home from RHIOT school...with my hat.

So, the moral of the story?  Ask questions about things that intrigue you - you never know where your next inspiration will come from.  For me, this amazing journey started and ended with a ball cap.  Wow.

Here's to seeing things through,
B