Are you possessed?

I’m going to get really weird here so I hope you will bare with me.  First, let me say that there are eight branches of Ayurveda and one of them deals with exorcism.  Second, let me say that I am a firm believer of yoga and the identity of one God and try to keep it realistically grounded on that level.  Third, let me just say I saw a demon today and while I don’t want those guys to be real, it wasn’t my first, and I have enough spooky friends talking to fairies and gnomes, that I’m a (mostly hidden) believer in that other weird dimension.

While that is indeed a lot to start with, let me digress further.  A long time ago when I first met Deepak Chopra and started studying with him, he said one thing that completely transformed my life and how I live it.  He said that each morning when he wakes up the first thing he does is pray for more uncertainty than the day before and that I should do the same.  When I heard that recommendation, I thought the guy in the sparkly glasses and bright tennis shoes was crazy.  Are you kidding me?  Everyone hates change and desires stability.  You’d think a guy that smart would know that, right?  Well, in fact, he’s genius.

You see, if you wake up everyday and enthusiastically embrace change, you get used to change.  You learn to love change.  Change becomes your best friend.  You don’t fear it anymore.  Your life gets magical.   When the rug is violently pulled out from under you, you celebrate because it feels like, well, change!  Honest to God, if you were to come up to me and tell me that your husband cheated on you with your mother, stole all your money, and ran off to China with your sister, I would do all the right things like compassion and hugs and such, but I gotta tell ya, there’s a being inside of me that gets so excited for you because…you guessed it…you are experiencing change!

I’ve lived this way for so long, that apparently, I have forgotten this lesson.  The last half of 2013 was spent on “stabilization.”  Anyone who asked me what I was working on, I would tell them, “I’m stabilizing the studios, my home, and my life.”  All of my energy and focus has been on this.  Stability, stability, and more stability.  This weekend, on Friday, I cleaned my house as always.  On Saturday, I taught and attended yoga as always.  On Saturday night, lucky me, there was a Harry Potter marathon and I watched until midnight.  On Sunday, I went to yoga, as always, and came home and worked, as always.  As I drove to the studio this morning, I had no thoughts.  I drove in silence.  I stopped at the stoplights.  I went at the green.  As always.

As I got to the bottom of the exit to Lebanon at 123, and stopped and sat there, I stared ahead into the distance.  I realized that my eyes were foggy.  My soul quietly spoke to me in a whisper, “Pami…you aren’t seeing what is really there.  Look.”  At that news, my eyes cleared and the world got bright and I saw things at that exit I’ve never noticed…houses, flags, the horizon.  It was beautiful in this little town of Lebanon at that highway exit off 48.

And that’s when I looked to the car on my right and saw it.  It was sitting in the driver’s seat.  It was just staring at me intensely and not moving.  It was like a little old lady only the eyes were too big and the face was distorted and huge.  scary.  I looked away quickly and then back and not only was “that which should not be named” gone, so was the car.  The light was still red.  No car had moved forward, turned right, or certainly turned left cutting in front of me.  It has simply vanished in the time I looked right, glanced away, and then looked back.

And then I suddenly felt, well, better.

And that’s when it hit me.  A sneaky demon of depression was pressing in on me because I HAVE NOT BEEN PRAYING FOR UNCERTAINTY AND MY LIFE HAS GOTTEN DULL AND I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH PEOPLE TO HELP AND NOTHING EXCITING IS HAPPENING BECAUSE I HAVE PRAYED FOR BORING BORING BORING STABILITY.

And guess what?  My life is so frickin’ exciting and I haven’t been able to see it lately.  I’ve got great stuff coming up like the Sedona Yoga Festival and new workshops and trips and and and and and.

So, my recommendation to you on this day is to exorcise the demon of boredom with this morning prayer:

“Please God, thank you for all that you have given me in my life and please reign down on me more uncertainty than I experienced yesterday.  I love you and the universe and all the people and non people in it.”

Om, Pamela

everything contained in this blog actually really did happen.  weird.