Transformation in the Embrace of our Bravery
We are absolutely certain of very few things in life: that we are born into a body, that this body will die, and that in between we undergo near constant transformation in body, mind, and heart. While we are rarely afraid of our own birth, our perception of future death is a deep and common fear. However, transformation is just as terrifying to most of us, though rarely do we understand how deep and pervasive is this particular fear. In fact, I believe that we are less afraid of death than we are of the process of life. Transformation, though is found in our embrace of our bravery in the midst of our daily lives.
On many levels we recognize that transformation always ushers in death. The death of the previous self, the churning of the living present into something new and unfamiliar. If we can understand transformation, begin to love the small daily deaths, and use the steps along the way of life to listen to the heart instead of to foster fear and closure, we may just stop avoiding life. Once this great burden is understood, we may even stop fearing that final transformation and see death as just one passage amongst many.
Death does not need to be crushing. Our changing needs, attitudes, and imperfections need not symbolize great failures. On the contrary, how can we allow the very wounds, fears, and insecurities of our inner being to provide exactly that fuel that the heart has needed all along? If each one of us is an aspect of the divine that dances as life, then why does that divine allow so much pain, so much imperfection, and so much raw challenge in this tiny and fleeting life?
Waking Us Up to Our Hearts
Here is the open secret of all
religious and spiritual teaching: it is not the shiny bits that wake us up. It is the hidden, the dark, and the uniquely wounded bits that wake us up to our hearts in an exploration just hard enough to remind us of the great power of that heart. Some of us need difficult reminders indeed.
The question is: Are we
paying attention to our imperfections, our difficulties, and our transformations? Are we paying attention to the imperfections of those whom we love? This is the way back home to the heart.
Imperfection, whether in our relationships, attitudes, or in our own emotional maturity, is a uniquely useful tool to notice. Because imperfection signals a need to change. That transformation might come, and that the heart may need to pay better attention to the pain or triggers it holds.
Some people historically have cloistered themselves away from life in order to protect the heart from its wounds and shields. Some have gone off to caves. But most of us are still in this dynamic, loud world, washed again and again by our interactions, our emotions, our schedules, our relationships.
If life is an ocean, most of us are not tucked away and hidden in a cove, but are rather out in the open and exposed waters of life where things show up- predators, boredom, trash, delight, and the harsh elements. So use the trash, and use the delight, and use the elements for they are our greatest gifts. Because they are bringing us back home to the divine heart.
Cynthia Abulafia
Intimacy with the Unpleasant
Some stormy wind has been cutting at the water’s surface, but we have been trying to ignore it because we know that if we go close to investigate, we will have to feel what we must feel on the other side of the wave break. And if we allow that
intimacy with the unpleasant, then surely we will uncover more challenge, more investigation of deep wounds, more feeling into old pains that were challenging enough the first time around. This time around, they promise that same unpleasantness plus a heady dose of fear. It’s like going in for an uncomfortable procedure more than once. The second time is harder because the element of freshness is gone and ignorance has been replaced with dread.
The heart is the beginning, the middle, and the expansion at the core of all human transformation.
We have all been here in friendship, in partnership, or in our family dynamic. It is never the shiny and polished persona that gets us in trouble. It is the variety of imperfections that we trip over in relationships, especially those relationships that we allow quite close to the deepest parts of our selves. We don’t like to admit it to ourselves, let alone others, but we are all deeply imperfect, are we not?
These exposures can either break us or they can heal us in ways that are unexpected, extraordinary, and transformative. But this happens only if we have the courage and the dedication to lean in to our uncomfortable places. Our relationships with others only reflect back to ourselves our great internal relationship with the heart.
It is critical that we accept our wounds. Not only accept the imperfections of ourselves, but actually see that these thoughts, patterns, and traumas are more like the bright gems surrounded by soft earth that shine and bring us reverence, clarity, and into the rich technicolor of being when they are unearthed.
If we are brave and if we notice without turning away, leaning in again and again to our process, we will at some point realize that the divine is not “out there” in the universe. The divine doesn’t stop at our skin. The divine does not ignore our small and hurried lives until we die and come up for some kind of measurement. God is this life. God is this heart, spiraling and sending tendrils outward, receiving tendrils back inward, especially from those closest to us. God is not only in here and never out there.
So we begin the arduous process of falling in love with our imperfections because this is the only way to remember the largeness of the heart.
And we all know the certainty at some level that we will have to contend with the heart sooner or later. We must not just talk about the heart. We must feel it. And we must not turn away from the heart when there is pain, but instead stop and notice its language. Why wait?
Let that point be now, and maybe we will see that our imperfections are made of the fabric of love itself. The heart is God. And our shields and imperfections are God’s knuckles knocking on the door. When we stop fearing this process we may just stop fearing transformation and even life itself. Maybe we will turn toward that which ushers in transformation with gratitude, welcoming, and joy. Let the heart knock. You know how to open the door. All it takes is to actually live.
Cynthia brings an eye for detailed instruction to her challenging and creative classes. Her attention to detail brings her class deeply into the experience of the body, breath, and heart in order to tune attention to its finest point– believing that the purpose of the practice is to simply notice ever deeper into the silence that is the root of all form.
Her passion for biomechanics, non-dual self-inquiry, and the beautifully rooted grace of the yoga asanas themselves shines in her classes. She believes time on the mat should be playful, fun, sweaty, and a celebration of this amazing dance we call experience.
In addition to teaching asana she teaches courses in yoga philosophy, subtle body, human anatomy for yoga and yoga ethics.
She has been instrumental in the creation and leadership of Yoga Soup’s 200 Hour Teacher Training, is E-RYT 500, YACEP (she teaches continuing education), IAYT (Yoga Therapy), and Pilates certified, and holds a Masters in Nutrition. She has over 25 years of study with world class teachers in several schools of yoga, including Yoga Therapy, Ashtanga, Iyengar, Vinyasa Krama with Srivatsa Ramaswami, modern flow blends originating at Yoga Works in Santa Monica, and many beloved meditation, Advaita, non-dual Tantra, kundalini-Shakti, and self-inquiry teachers.
Cynthia believes strongly in educating students about Kundalini energy (not to be confused with the system of yoga in the same name). The poses of Yoga are designed to wake up our subtle body, and yet when this happens- as it inevitably does for many people- we often find ourselves without a compass or a safe community. This site will offer writings and explorations on topics related to the body, the breath, the subtle energies, non-dual literature and self-inquiry, Kundalini energy, & meditation techniques in order to facilitate understanding and conversation around these complex and beautiful topics.
