Bits & Pieces

“You’re not,” he said.

“But I used to be,” I protested.

He looked at me intensely and unafraid saying, “Yeah, but you’re not. Not anymore. You’re not.”

I felt my chest tighten. Little waves rising in my eyes.

I stood up and walked out of sight. My chest heaved forward while the little waves began their descent, crashing into my cheekbones.

I have always been told what I am. 

Until this specific moment, no one has ever told me what I am not. What I can’t be.

Not anymore. I’m not.

..

There is a place that I find to be truly sacred.

This is the place I am most alone.

This is where pray. When I remember to pray, it is almost always here.

This is where I think about what is next or what just happened.

This is where I make the call.

This is where I scribble down what I want to remember.

This is where little pieces of my life lay strewn about.

This is where I have had deep conversations with distraught teenagers. And shallow conversations, too.

This is where I have been kissed goodbye.

This is where I sing.

This is where I try to practice silence.

This is where nearly everyone I love has sat next to me.

This is where I pack everything when I move.

This is where I stay to cry, or rant, or sleep when I don’t want to face the world yet.

This is where I roll down the windows and breathe deep.

This place takes me wherever I need to go.

..

One nice thing about enduring something sad is that it opens up the possibility to re-discover happiness.

When you’re sad, everything in you is saying, “Please! For the love of God. Let me find something happy. Anything. I’ll take anything.”

So you do. You seek out joy in every tiny thing.

You find yourself freaking out about how huge the moon is.

You laugh too hard at everyone’s jokes.

You experience genuine euphoria while adding toppings to your frozen yogurt.

You get overly excited about how kick ass your Excel spreadsheet is at work.

You fall in love with something about everyone.

You live for that first cup of coffee in the morning. Just the smell has you beaming.

You could cry about how adorable that baby is.

You become zealous about taking on any sort of project. All of the sudden you might want to learn how to play the ukelele or become an avid kite flyer.

The way the sun is shining or the wind is blowing could ignite sheer bliss in your soul.

When you’re craving happiness, you can find it everywhere.

Isn’t that great?

 

Love,

Taylor

 

 

 

 

Chitta Vritti

Chitta Vritti is the Sanksrit term for “mind chatter”.

Yesterday, this was brought up during my yoga class. I sat on my mat, eyes closed, “hands at heart center”, and I listened to something like this…

Acknowledge or become aware of its presence. The constant flow of thoughts speeding through your mind. Noticing the ones that flee after only a moment, and then ones that circle around over and over again. 

Accept that this is where you live most of the time- in your head. Accept that you are often cut off from joy because of this mental dialogue that can be so full of doubts, judgements, and endlessness. 

And then…quiet. Be present in this moment. Not who you were 30 seconds ago. Not who you’re going to be in an hour from now. You are whole and enough in this moment. Our thoughts and emotions are with us, they never go anywhere, but we can learn to quiet them. To practice stillness. To not let the chitta vritti conquer us.

Stillness can be scary. Its scary how difficult it is to get there. There is something alarming about the way your mind will unfold if you let it. If you stop the distraction and noise and truly enter in. For me, it is often associated with confusion and loneliness. But I am learning that it is okay for me to be still in the loneliness. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, maybe more. Maybe there is something waiting for me there. Maybe it isn’t so scary after all. Maybe it’s a gift that I can give myself and at times is given to me. 

I unintentionally get so wrapped up in the to-do lists of life that I forget to practice freedom.

I get so wrapped up in the values and “rules” that are ingrained in me that I forget to reflect and grow by questioning them. 

I get so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I forget to notice what is going on around me.

I get so wrapped up in knowing and seeing the counterfeit connections of media that I crave real relationship- real touch. 

I can get so wrapped up in the loving of others and forget that if I’m not loving of myself first, the quality of my love for others is certainly not at its best. 

What does your mind chatter keep you from being aware of? What does stillness have for you? 

Love, 

Taylor