Incoming

Weather: An epic picture show played on the grandest of scales.

©2013 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Sharing Is Shifting

       When I was a kid, I went to camp out in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts, not far from Kripalu. In my series of posts from years ago, called Concentration:Camp (Parts 1 & 2), I detailed my five year summer camp experience. I’ll sum it up for you here: It Sucked. Royal.
       Since then, however, I have actually enjoyed going back to Camp Becket several times over the years to visit. It’s a beautiful place, and I do have some powerfully good memories there. I’ve been able to put the whole experience in perspective. Overall, I have, as one woman at Kripalu put it, “turned poison into medicine”. I love the Berkshires these days, and take advantage of my opportunities to spend time in this magical part of the country.
       For the first twenty-four hours of practicing social silence at Kripalu, however, whatever medicine I had created was stuck in a child proof bottle. And I was the child. I felt ten years old again, stuck at a place in the Berkshires. Sad. Depressed. Lonely. Full of self doubt. Feeling like I was a defective model in a place full of well functioning ones. And I couldn’t tell anybody. Yup. This was a reliving of summer camp.
       In truth, however, my inner experience would have been similar no matter where I did this course. If I had been at a retreat center in California instead of The Berkshires, I would have felt the same internal strife. The fact that as a kid I had a similar experience, at a similar place not far from where I was now, just made it all a bit more uncomfortable, a bit more surreal.
       By design, when you do this kind of work, your stuff comes up. By design, not talking about it and being alone with it, thus removing distractions, forces you to look at it longer, and go into it deeper. The meditation, yoga, and environment provide new ways to frame your experience, new opportunities for learning and growth, and new possibilities for raising consciousness.
       But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m good at that. Sometimes I’m so far ahead of myself that I don’t know who I am; like driving too far in front of somebody you’re supposed to be sticking with. You turn around and they’re gone.
       Alone with all my own muck, I decided to share my experience during our  afternoon course session on Tuesday, just twenty four hours into my own social silence. Everybody else had been doing it a half a day longer, because I joined the course late. So I took the microphone and let it all hang out, getting really vulnerable and sharing how awful I felt. Looking at our instructor whilst speaking, I could nonetheless feel the eyes of everyone in the room on me as I articulated my painful inner experience.
       Then, something remarkable happened. Everyone’s head started bobbing up and down. They knew exactly what I was going through. They were all having a similar experience. I opened up. They felt me. And I felt them.
       Suddenly, I didn’t feel alone anymore. I felt part of a community. Part of a tribe. Part of a common experience. Part of something bigger than myself.
       That’s when things started to shift.
       More next week.

©2013 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Social Fucking Silence

       I had never heard the term “social silence” before, but I immediately didn’t like it. I was at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, taking a course on meditation. Social silence meant that, outside of our scheduled class, I wasn’t suppose to talk. To anyone. About anything. The phrase actually scared me. Within a microsecond of hearing it, my mind projected isolation, loneliness, depression, and despair. Plus, it had a bad ring to it, like the word “rash”. And it sounded like an oxymoron.
       After hearing that they strongly recommend I practice social silence for the first few days of this new course I had just switched into, something inside of me got triggered. I wasn’t completely aware of what, but I suddenly became incredibly uneasy. All of a sudden, I completely regretted my decision to join this class.
       In the confines of my own mind, I reduced the term “social silence” to the acronym “SS” and began internally calling it that. Fully aware of the Nazi reference, it felt appropriate, considering the amount of fear and dread I was experiencing from hearing it.
       Moments before, I felt great about my decision to switch into this new course, believing I had landed just where I needed to be. Now, I literally wanted to bolt. Out the door. Out the class. Out of Kripalu. Out of what now felt like an insane asylum.
       Over the next few days, what started off as a fear became a reality. And an even bigger reality than I had first feared. I experienced not only loneliness and isolation and depression, but lots of other great stuff too. Self doubt. Self judgment. Self criticism. Pain. Self flagellation. What the hell had I gotten myself into? I didn’t need to come to Kripalu to experience that. I’m perfectly capable of creating that on my own, back home.
       Not only that, but because I couldn’t talk about how I felt with anyone, it was getting worse. I have always processed things through talking. The more I talk, and listen, and converse, the more able I am to move through stuff. And the more I’m able to connect. Now I wasn’t moving through anything, and I wasn’t connecting. At least it didn’t feel like I was. So I’m not only stuck, I’m lonely. All this shit is coming up, and I’m unable to tell anyone, save for my time in class, which offered relatively little room for that. I just had to sit with it. To be with it. To experience it. To allow it.
       And it was precisely in the being with it, in the allowing of it, that I got what I needed.
       Please stay tuned.


©2013 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

The First 48

       If my first few minutes at Kripalu could be described as “extremely memorable” (as they were in my first post about my experience there, A Virgin Of Kripalu), then my first few days there could be described as “extremely uncomfortable”. And that’s being kind. Absolutely internally tumultuous is more like it.
       I came there to plug into a different energy source; to go inside and reconnect to something deeper; to recharge my spiritual batteries; to get back in touch with what was happening in my body and in my heart; and to quiet my very active mind. In essence, I came there to feel good. So why, after less than forty eight hours there, did I feel like shit?
       As our instructor put it, and I’m paraphrasing, “When you truly set an intention to be something, then slow down and quiet your distractions and really pay attention, you will see, in sharp detail, what’s not something. So if your intention is to be happy, you will see, in 3D, where you are not happy.” Which is probably why most people don’t do this stuff. Because when you experience that, it’s painful. And depressing. And difficult. And not what I bloody signed up for.
       I had originally signed up for a course called “Whole Being”. But after two sessions, by late Monday morning, something didn’t feel right. This course was interesting, but I noticed that I was anxious, having trouble focusing, and felt I was in the wrong place. Was this just my over-analytical, critical mind working overtime? Or was my body trying to tell me something?
       On my way to lunch that Monday, I walked right by the room where another course I had considered taking was being held. A course called “Still Small Voice Within”, which was about meditation, focusing, and developing intuition. It was actually the second time I had walked right by that room. The first time, the night before, I looked inside and felt something special going on. There was an energy coming from the circle of people gathered around the instructor. It looked and felt like powerful medicine was happening there. Now, the second time I walked by, the room was empty, save for the instructor. So I took a chance, walked up to him, introduced myself, and asked him what the course was about.
       He started to tell me, and within less than thirty seconds, I knew this was where I belonged. I felt it inside. Plus, the guy had a presence, an energy, a way of being, that I wanted more of. So I asked him if I could join the class after missing the first two sessions. He said yes. I felt something settle inside of me. I felt like I had just landed where I belonged. Then I went to the front desk and took the necessary steps to make my switch “official”.
       By the way, the instructor I had just connected with was a guy named Jonathan Foust. I called hime “Michael” for the first three or four times we interacted. He never corrected me, which itself tells me about the ease of being this man has. Later, I figured out why I thought his name was Michael. Weeks ago, when I was planning my trip, I considered taking his course. There was a picture of him online in the course description. He reminded me of Michael Schenker, one of the original guitar players for The Scorpions, and leader of The Michael Schenker group. So my mind made that connection, and he became, unconsciously, “Michael” to me, even though his name was clearly printed under his picture. A good little example of how our mind can screw things up.
       So now, I’m in the place I chose to be in, in the course I need to be in, with the people I need to be with. And I’m all out of sorts, with my insides doing cartwheels. What the fuck?
       Please stay with me as I take us deeper into my experience at Kripalu.

©2103 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Felt Sense Prayer

Whilst at Kripalu, our workshop was treated to this reading....

I am the pain in your head, the knot in your stomach, the unspoken grief in your smile.
I am your high blood sugar, your elevated blood pressure, your fear of challenge, your lack of trust.
I am your hot flashes, your cold hands and feet, your agitation and your fatigue.
I am your shortness of breath, your fragile low back, the cramp in you r neck, the despair in your sigh.
I am the pressure on your heart, the pain down your arm, your bloated abdomen, your constant hunger.
I am where you hurt, the fear that persists, your sadness of dreams unfulfilled.
I am your symptoms, the causes of your concern, the signs of imbalance, your condition of dis-ease.
 
You tend to disown me, suppress me, ignore me, inflate me, coddle me, condemn me.
I am not coming forth for myself as I am not separate from all that is you.
I come to garner your attention, to enjoin your embrace so I can reveal my secrets.
I have only your best interests at heart as I seek health and wholeness by simply announcing myself.
 
You usually want me to go away immediately, to disappear, to sleek back into obscurity.
You mostly are irritated or frightened and many times shocked by my arrival.
From this stance you medicate in order to eradicate me.
 Ignoring me, not exploring me, is your preferred response.
More times than not I am only the most recent notes of a long symphony, the most evident branches of roots that have been challenged for seasons.
 
So I implore you, I am a messenger with good news, as disturbing as I can be at times.
I am wanting to guide you back to those tender places in yourself,
the place where you can hold yourself with compassion and honesty.
If you look beyond my appearance you may find that I am a voice from your soul.
Calling to you from places deep within that seek your conscious alignment.
 
I may ask you to alter your diet, get more sleep, exercise regularly, breathe more consciously.
I might encourage you to see a vaster reality and worry less about the day to day fluctuations of life.
I may ask you to explore the bonds and the wounds of your relationships.
I may remind you to be more generous and expansive or to attend to protecting your heart from insult.
I might have you laugh more, spend more time in nature, eat when you are hungry and less  when pained or bored, spend time every day, if only for  a few minutes, being still.
 
Wherever I lead you, my hope is that you will realize that success will not be measured by my eradication, but by the shift in the internal landscape from which I emerge.
 
I am your friend, not your enemy.  I have no desire to bring pain and suffering into your life.
I am simply tugging at your sleeve, too long immune to gentle nudges.
I desire for you to allow me to speak to you in a way that enlivens your higher instincts for self care.
My charge is to energize you to listen to me with the sensitive ear and heart
of a mother attending to her precious baby.
 
You are a being so vast, so complex, with amazing capacities for self-regulation and healing.
Let me be one of the harbingers that lead you to the mysterious core of your being
where insight and wisdom are naturally available when called upon with a sincere heart.

Our instructor, Jonathan Foust, was amazing. I recommend you check out his website, podcast, and any of his material available on iTunes. I'm proviving his link below.

http://jonathanfoust.com