Aparigraha- Letting go to open up

I woke up this early morning to the realization that my pup, Lotus, had had an accident in my bed. Not a major one- just big enough to rouse me to wakefulness based on the scent. Shoot!!! Not the time or manner in which I wanted to start my Sunday. Then I thought of all of the work that I’ve been doing on the Yoga Sutra’s yama of aparigraha, that is, letting go. I prayed the simple but powerful prayer that Tosha Silver suggests, “Let things happen as they are meant to, in the highest way for all involved.” (p. 114)*[Yep, this is a less religious take on Jesus’ request: “Into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” (Luke 23:46). Let’s face it- no matter what religion you are, or even if you do believe in a religion, the need for release, of letting go, is real…and needed.] So, despite the timing not being what I had anticipated for my Sunday morning, I got up, changed the sheets, did my morning yoga, and seized the opportunity of snowy early morning quiet to write this blog. Letting go of what I had anticipated and also still being mindful of my choices and intentions, I set out to describe the path I’ve been traveling with aparigraha these past few weeks.

Aparigraha: the term comes from the Yoga Sutras and is part of a guide for ethical living. It means "non-grasping" and invites us to let go in physical, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual ways.

For me, this month marks the four-year anniversary of moving to Denver and into my house here. That’s the longest that I’ve lived in one house as an adult! While I generally enjoy a simple life, prioritizing experiences over possessions, I also do a fairly good job of keeping things to remind me of poignant moments in my life, particularly my love life. It’s probably worth noting at this point that one of the prime movers helping me move to Denver was a love that I was pursuing…and that one of the prime movers for me to do some serious emotional aparigraha work now is a major love that has come into my life. I want to foster this new love with well- tilled soil, benefiting from previous loves and learnings, while also preparing the soil for the seeding of a new crop. As a result, these past few weeks, I’ve wanted to clean my emotional and physical house, to prepare the way for creating family in my life, to let go of that which is no longer serving me, and is perhaps, actually holding me back.

So I’ve cleaned out all sorts of places in my house: underneath my bathroom sink, my handbag, my bookshelf. My grad school program evaluation and assessment books? Let’s be honest- I’ve never consulted with them in the years since grad school nor do I anticipate needing (or wanting) to open them again. My Psychology resources from when I taught high school social studies? I haven’t used those texts nor VHS tapes (!!) for over ten years. Time to let them go. Yes, they were essential resources at one point for the life that I was creating, and now I am moving forward on my path. In the letting go, there is an honest acknowledgement that I will probably not return to teaching high school. In a way, the aparigraha work is letting go identities that no longer serve me. As someone who has enjoyed having had many different careers, it’s a bit of a challenge to say, <no thank you> to career identities that I’ve held in the past, particularly ones that I’ve enjoyed. What if I do decide to go back to teaching or find that I need those old social justice resource books? The fear and the grasping is evident here. Letting go can be tough. If I do go back to teaching, I would be different as well as the resources available would be different. (Again- VHS tapes?!)

And then there was the envelop at the back of my closet in the box of memorabilia, the holding of letters and notes from previous loves. They were the most beautiful, most telling notes that I had kept…and in my aparigraha emotional cleansing, I knew that I needed to let them go. To be honest, I think my keeping notes from previous loves was not only a way of holding on to the past but also holding out on the future. Those notes weren’t helping me be present in the moment or clear about what I am working to invite into my life. The letters instead were markers of grief and things gone differently than anticipated. Sure, in love, differently than anticipated is actually anticipated (but probably not accepted all that much) but these letters belonged to the heart/gut punch grief combo. 

And so, I created a ritual. One evening, by candlelight, I went through the letters, choosing to read some and simply acknowledging most of them. I found myself not wanting to further engage with the past and get snared by old feelings of hurt and fear. Then I took the letters out to my backyard and fed them into a firepit fire. The four elements: earth (paper & wood), air (to make the flame), fire (yep), and water…Yes! In the heat of this aparigraha fire, transformation was taking place. I found myself having the fearful wondering about what was preventing me from repeat relationship challenges that I’d had in these past relationships. I responded to this fear with gratitude, acknowledging all that I have experienced in past relationships. From my previous loves, I have learned much and have grown to be able to have the fuller capabilities I have now in my current relationship. By adding water to the embers to end the ritual and then adding the resulting slop to my compost pile, I nodded to the richness that previous loves were offering me to help me grow a lasting love at this time in my life. I’m not forgetting or ignoring my past, but I’m not having it hold me back. Instead what I’ve learned from the past is propelling me forward, towards new seedlings of relationship, dreams, and connection. What a blessing!

The heat of aparigraha...and transformation

The slop to provide nutrients for what is next

Which takes me back to Tosha Silver’s powerful book, Outrageous Openness, and her take on aparigraha. Tosha writes about Divine Source (that all have Divinity within) and Divine Order (that there is a cosmic map in place). She encourages folks to identify their values and their intentions and then also put it out there to Divine Order to help manifest what is best for us. How is this not The Secret? (Full disclosure- I can’t stand The Secret as I think it does an amazing job at victim blaming. Argh!) The key is that when we pray or lean into Divine Order, the response we receive in our lives may not be the exact vision of what we had wanted. This is where aparigraha comes in. For instance, I’m not sure whether I’ll be moving to Brooklyn or my love will be moving to Denver this year. Heck, we’re not even sure of the timing that we’d want for it. We’re being intentional about feeling out the various career options in each location, as well as the fit of each of the places. Both my partner and I are prayerfully invoking Divine Order and aparigrapha at the same time. “Let what wants to come, come. Let what wants to go, go. If it is mine, it will stay. If not, whatever is better will replace it.” (Tosha Silver, p. 71). I’m fairly confident that what will eventually happen regarding the move and its timing will inevitably be an option that we haven’t thought of yet but is also better than anything we have imagined. In this way, evoking Divine Order means putting our intentions out there and then getting out of the way of the Divine: aparigraha. With aparigraha then, we can have an intentional openness to what is present and also emerging in our lives. I’m all for that… and having fewer boxes of stuff to move if/when the time comes!

Opening up to aparigraha in your life:

+ What things- emotional, physical, cognitive- are you holding tightly? What does this holding serve?

+ What does letting go feel like in your body? Your heart?

+ What hopes or dreams do you have for your future that could benefit from aparigraha/letting go?

+ Try the aparigraha prayer this next week when you’re feeling stressed or concerned about how your intentions will play out into reality. How do things transform?

* From Tosha Silver’s book Outrageous Openness: Letting the divine take the lead. New York: Atria Books.        (I highly recommend this book. It’s been transformative for me. I hope it will be for you.)

                  Epiphany- Oh, now I see It!

Nativity scene in my house, brought to you by Calderon, Ecuador

Growing up, my family and I celebrated Christmas: festive lights, Christmas mass, and lots of family and food. This might sound like your family’s Christmas. Where your and my family may differ however, is that my mom was (and still is) pretty adamant that the Christmas tree stays up until at least Epiphany. Likewise, for most of my childhood one of my uncles hosted a family video-making contest (yes, it’s as good as it sounds with 1990’s camcorders involved!), with the screening of the videos taking place at an Epiphany party (cue in two different kinds of chili, frozen pizza, and cherry pie with ice cream). So, so far, we’ve established that Epiphany is some Christian feast/holy day that takes place after Christmas, but the question is- celebrating or commemorating what?

Officially, Epiphany marks the twelfth day of Christmas when the wise men, or magis, came to visit the baby Jesus. As the story is told, these men had studied scripture and the stars and had seen signs that the messiah was coming. They arrived in Bethlehem then, ready to pay homage to God.

<Great,> you might be thinking. <Nice Christian story, but isn’t this a blog for the religiously unaffiliated? Sure seems like this story is hard core Christian, right?> Well, in my current spiritual pursuits, I’ve been curious to put these well celebrated Christian traditions and feast days through my spiritual but religiously unaffiliated “translator” and see what wisdom there might be for me, someone who currently identifies more as agnostic than anything else.

So, in keeping with that intent, let’s break down the components of the Epiphany story to the archetypal level:

* Poor hetero couple (Mary and Joseph) are traveling far from home (per government order to be counted for a census). Aka: These two folks are nobodies, really. Nobodies, as there is nothing particularly unique or shiny about them.

* Pregnant Nobody has baby in only spot available to her: a barn (a place where animals take shelter).

* Wise people journey far and pay tribute to this woman’s baby, who no one in town seems to have cared anything about or noticed? (Shepherds came but they aren’t urbanites.) It seems relevant to note that the term “magi” used to refer to the wise men has connections to the word “magician.” What if these wise men could see things that ordinary folks could not see? That the magis were not tricked by the veil of illusion but saw through to a deeper truth about how the human psyche and world work?

A humanistic or agnostic translation of the Epiphany then? Maybe it’s my yoga background shining through in how I interpret the story, but what if the epiphany in the Epiphany is the realization that God/the Divine Spark/That Which is Greater Than Ourselves But of Which We are a Part- what if that Force was (and is) in the least of us? A baby? Think of how hard you are trying to move up the career ladder, or show up as more “lovable” for your love bug to be attracted to you a bit more, or how hard you try to prove that you are !Someone! Maybe it’s just me, but how I translate the Epiphany story is that the wise folks realized that the Divine is in us all, including a poor little kid who was born to two nobodies. The baby hadn’t done anything yet and was already considered revered! The baby simply was! Ah, the yogic namaste: the Divine in me recognizes and honors the Divine in each of you. What if the gifts that the Epiphany (and the wise men) has to offer us is the idea that our inherent being, who we have been from the moment that we were born, that that aspect of ourselves is sacred, worthy of being revered and honored? How would we treat ourselves then? How would we relate to others? My guess is that if I could hold this truth close, I would live my life in such a way as to see each moment and each person with whom I interact as sacred, not to mention I’d probably ease up on my perfectionism.

Still challenged by the concept of Epiphany and what may feel like Christian baggage? Check it out! Parker Palmer, in Let Your Life Speak, talks about our relationship to cultural heroes and in talking about Rosa Parks, reminds me of the nativity/Epiphany story. Listen to what he says about the Rosa Parks’ Refusal to Move to the Back of the Bus story. It seems that much of the retelling of Rosa Parks’ ultimate decision to defy segregation (particularly the retelling done by elementary school teachers, it seems) focuses on how Rosa Parks was anyone but us…

"But if the Rosa Parks story is to help us discern our own vocations, we must see her as the ordinary person she is. (Italics added.) That will be difficult to do because we have made her into super-woman-  and we have done it to protect ourselves. If we can keep Rosa Parks in a museum as an untouchable icon of truth, we will remain untouchable as well: we can put her up on a pedestal and praise her, world without end, never finding ourselves challenged by her life." (p. 35)

Right! I’m not saying that Rosa Parks is the baby Jesus but do you hear the similarities in these stories? What if our power and Divinity come from being just as we are- with nothing to prove and nothing to hide?! Talk about a counterculture idea!

Parker Palmer goes on to tell how Rosa Parks’ alignment with her inner truth and vocation led her to coordinate with the civic disobedience movement and ultimately, decide to sit at the front of the bus. When we pay attention to the Divine in ourselves- we, who are certainly not on pedestals but are nobodies, what are our paths of truth or vocation- the manifestation of that Divine presence in us? For Rosa Parks, it was civil disobedience. For me, it’s teaching and ministry. In these areas, my interactions are light and the Sacred easily accessible. May you, too, have an epiphany about your inherent Divine nature and shine that forth in your life.

Invitations to celebrate the Epiphany in your own life:

* Spend time with a baby or toddler. Delight in the Divine in them! They are inherently worthy, so are you!

* How do you recognize and/or pay homage to the Divine made manifest in the flesh (aka: the Divine in yourself/others)? Experiment with recognizing the inherent Goodness in yourself and others for a morning, evening, or day.

* How would the recognition of this spiritual truth impact your understanding and interactions with yourself and others?

* Who are the wise people or magis in your life who help you see things differently, to see beneath the façade to how things truly are? Connect with one of these individuals and notice the direction that you feel called to take based on their visions of you and the world.