We have reached the final month of 2020 and as I look around at loved ones, friends, community members…most often through a screen… I see the exhaustion behind peoples’ eyes.
This experience hasn’t been like most tragedies we’ve seen in our lifetime. Where in one day it sweeps in like the sunrise and quickly sets on the completion of tomorrow. The traumatic moment comes, goes and our time is spent picking up the pieces after the destruction took place.
In downstate New York we’ve lived through freak blizzards, 9/11 and multiple hurricanes that left our little bubble of a world looking like a warzone.
But once the winds shifted and a new day arrived we spent our time picking up the pieces, reorganizing, dusting off our jackets and getting into the work of healing. Just in the short life of our community at Revolution we have healed through so much together. Haven’t we?
This moment, as it presents itself now, is continually interrupting the healing process as we are still in the eye of the storm. That has a certain debilitating effect that’s causing some very defined reactions.
Some are constantly ready for a fight, others are in denial, others are in retreat and have popped off the grid, some push for things to be “normal” or the way things were before despite the impossibility.
But for all of us there has to be a recognition that the lesson hiding within the long haul has to be tolerance.
The yogi jumps into practice and makes heartfelt intentions like- “I want to be peaceful, I want to be tolerant, I want to be patient, I want to be present.”
Then when the universe sends us the perfect teachers for those exact lessons we resist. Oh you want patience? What is it like to get locked in your home with your family for eight months? Now practice getting good at patience! Ha!
Oh you want to get good at being present? What is it like to have all of your regular distractions and social engagements taken away so you are left only with yourself? Now practice being present.
There it is. That elegant design.
In the Srimad Bhagavatam it states that we must learn to be more humble than a blade of grass and more tolerant than a tree. This guidance has been ringing so loud in my mind through this whole process. Every couple of days a new difficulty, a new loss, a new discomfort is presented.
We are moving through deep waves as we experience this long haul of interrupted healing. So until the moment comes where it is over, where we get to come “home”, dust ourselves off, this is the big teacher glaring at us in the face. There is no other option.
It seems as though we have collectively called in a time to practice tolerance…as tolerant as the tree watching the world pass around it. Present, patient, steady, observing. Tolerating discomfort, disruption, inconvenience, fear, confusion, so we can come back to ourselves again.
Tolerance may look like…
Continuing to take precautions, to put on our masks, to social distance. Continuing to figure out creative ways to move towards thriving. Continuing to troubleshoot and practice patience when it doesn’t work as expected. To practice compassion and kindness towards every being, even the ones you don’t agree with. Continuing to do our yoga and meditation practice every day, even when it’s inconvenient because it makes the tolerating a bit easier. Aren’t we lucky to have the power of this incredible tool of yoga to make it a little easier?
This is the long game. We are all in this together. Keep on keeping on friends.
I pray that 2021 is the answer to the question of 2020. If it’s not I hope we will take advantage of every lesson that gets presented to us anyway. If we learn to tolerate it all, that super power reveals to us the peace that rests on the other side.
I wish you deep peace, contentedness and well being.
In love,
Amanda and the good folks at Revolution Yoga
Originally shared in our December 2020 newsletter.