by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys
Many years ago I was living in the Bay Area. There was a yoga teacher who had been cropping up in my life for a while. Friends had talked about him. I had read his book. Then I moved into a house where his photo was on the bulletin board. Finally I was going to a weekend program. I actually had the classic problems getting there. My car wouldn’t work. I had to take a train, a bus, walk across a shady part of town after dark to get to where I was going to stay. The teacher wasn’t there in person, but it was a great weekend and I felt like I had started on a path, said yes to Spirit, that in spite of the challenges I was willing to keep moving forward. I also felt that Spirit was in some way with me more directly after that.
Over the years there have been other teachers, other initiations, other times when I have said yes to Spirit. Some of these times have been formal, with a physical person from whom I was about to receive instruction. Many more of them have been between me and Spirit, when in myself I said yes, knowing that I need to keep walking towards Spirit and not give up. Sometimes there has been resistance, physical or emotional. Sometimes I am offering myself and hoping Spirit will say yes.There has been crying aloud in the night and soft entreaties, all the variety written by the Sufi poets a 1000 years ago.
Later that year in California I lost my job. I was working as a programmer then and living in Silicon Valley, which was in a recession. I had less job experience than was being required under those conditions and not having much luck finding a new position. One day I interviewed at a company that did military contracting work. I had studied physics and they had some pretty cool equipment. I don’t think they offered me a position, but I had already made a choice not to follow up, as it didn’t feel congruent with my sense of self. I said “yes” in a different way that day.
Probably you have said yes in various forms, yes to Spirit, yes to connection and relationship, yes to self, to Self, to following your heart. And perhaps you have wondered, like me, “so haven’t I done that already? why do I keep getting “tested”? why do I keep having to say yes so many times? Will it ever end?
Reflecting back I know I was always on “my path”, even before I knew what that meant, and Spirit was always with me, even when I felt out of touch. But over and over there have been times to say yes. To go to another level, to come back to a relationship one more time, to open to the divine, to take the job that your heart wants rather than one that pays more. To face fear and say yes to love, in so many forms, so many “initiations”.
Recently the thought came to me: Perhaps this is free will? that we have the chance to say yes with every breath, not once and its over like signing a contract, but choosing in every moment, every action to remember that we are connected to Source and to act from that place, rather than from feeling disconnected. Every moment the universe unfolds anew, and we choose again, to love, to be connected, to face towards Spirit.
We are not tested because we have done something wrong, but so we can build a new muscle and form new habits. Initiation is not a single action of mind, but the ongoing process of feeling it in heart and soul. You take a marriage vow but that only begins the process of co-creating the relationship. Repeated expressions of love for a partner are perhaps as much a way of connecting to Love as they are a requirement of insecurity. The masculine says, but of course I love you, I said so once didn’t I. But the feminine needs to feel it in the moment, and knows that it is an ongoing process that needs attention and validation or it fades away. We are all both masculine and feminine, the head that says yes and thinks we are done and the heart that needs to keep saying yes in each moment.
All the little places where we say yes to relationship, with ourselves, our Self, with others or with the divine, in spite of the busy-ness and the pressures. Rather than being frustrated with this, is this not a joy? to be asked to remember each moment, the easy ones and the hard ones, that we are part of creation; we are a manifestation of divinity, no matter how cranky we are before morning coffee.
Perhaps this is the reason that traditions use mantra’s connected with each breath; in others you remember to surrender before each action. This is the “price” of free will. This is devotion, a muscle we build. Not a slavish, unconscious devotion that we experience in the material world, but a devotion of joy and longing and bliss to who we are as spiritual beings. It is an affirmation of your Self, and as you drop more deeply into it, it comes alive, you come alive, the repetition feeds you in the ways you deeply long for.
“Saying yes” is not a mental action, figuring out the right answer is not how it happens, it is a feeling in the heart and in your being. There is a joy, when we know and affirm that we are connected to source, source affirms us back, and that we experience as some level of bliss. I invite you to find ways of saying yes to yourself and to Spirit, to joy and love, by making room for them in your life, moment by moment, and remembering always that you are part of the Divine experiencing itself. Let your heart and soul guide you in this. Know that you know how to do this.
(© 3/2010)
