"Grow, grow, woman grow" part II

I am perceiving in the air a strange density. My life is about to change yet again.
I choose to listen to the sountrack of Cinema Paradiso by Ennio Morricone. It seems like the perfect music to hear right now. Reflecting on my pass and witnessing my present as it transforms underneath my feet. Events are moving rapidly like a psychodelic type of mud that sucks me up, feet first, and I have no choice but to allow myself to enjoy this slurp.

Life is like a cigarrete, with every inhalation, a bit of paper and tobacco vanishes forever leaving behind only ashes.

I wonder what will I feel when, in twenty years time I find myself writing about this period of life, when I was 45 years old. If I can just imagine, how will I want this story to be? Perhaps I still have time to paint this masterpiece of my life in such a way that I will feel contented and satisfied by what I have lived.

For big mistakes I have made and I wish they could be erased with the stroke of a brush. But not, what is done is done and in each life we can only  paint that part of canvas that is still blank. Oh! Jesus, I did not intend to make you feel all sobby; Let's blame Morricone for this!

Sometimes my days slide in between my fingers without having done my best. That feeling, I don't want to have.
I know that each one of us in this planet has a soul purpose. A 'mission' you could call it. Do you know what's yours? Some people are lucky to discover what is it that they came to do at a very young age. Others never find out.

As a child I grew up KNOWING that I was made for the stage. Feeling that I was a performer. That I was here to deliver a script with clarity and beauty. To make people laugh or cry.
I have not acted professionally for a very long time but I have discovered, that this deep desire I had to become an actress was just a disguise. A little trick of the Universe. Now I know that, yes! I was to be a performer. "The world is my stage" it truly is. But the messages to deliver are of a very different kind. I am still learning to become a kind of prism that radiates and spreads whatever little bit of beautiful light comes into my path.

Grow, grow, woman grow!

And so one year and a few men later... Yeah yeah, it makes a good first line but I can happily anounce that dating was over for me about 7 months ago! Since then, my learning curve has increased dramatically with just one relationship!
You may laugh, for it sounds as if I am used to juggle several men at the time. It certainly felt like that at the beggining of last year when I was undeniably eating more than one cheese cake at the time.  Can I say it was boring? No way! Can I say it was exciting? Often. Did I hurt people? Yes, most definitely. Would I do it again? Oh, dear God please dont let that happen again!!!

I am a better human being now. I mean it.  It has not being easy! Some of us need to put more effort than others in order to be nicer, kinder! I keep going forwards and backwards in this spiritual journey that I decided to take a few years ago. It is a journey of love and love needs the pathway of discipline, a friend once said, and it is most true. Inner love definitely needs that and it is the first step we must take in order to truly love others. Hey hey hey! Let's dont go too preachy here or I can bore you to death or... inmortality!

And so, allow me to take you seven months back when after dating a nice guy that was far too old for me, I decided to click again on that screen full of temptation called Match.com.....

After the first date...

According to Hatha yoga, our mind, intellect and ego are operated at a gross and subtle level by what they call the three Gunas. These Gunas form together what constitute the world of illusion, also called Maya. They work in the physical, mental and emotional level and absolutely everything withing the kingdom of Maya is composed of these three Gunas.

But, how on earth has all this anything to do with dating?

I will go straight to the point.  Or no so straight because it is quite a dense subject really...

To explain this part in the simplest possible way, the Gunas control our behavior.  As plane as that. These qualities of nature are called: Satvic, Rajasic and Tamasic. One cannot exist without the other, but what differentiates one being from another lies in the predominance of the Gunas in each person at different times.

All you need to know here is that Satvic (white color),  manifests in us as purity and knowledge. This is the one that makes us calm, wise, loving to all, you know, truly holy. So if we eat Satvic food, ej, vegetarian and with no much salt or spices, and we meditate, chant or pray, do selfless service, all that jazz, ... we are likely to also feel truly happy. In the Satvic world, ladies and gentlemen,  we are fear-free and life is just wonderful, for even if we encounter problems, we gain a wisdom that allows us not to get entangled in them. Therefore boys and girls through this path, enlightening is nearly warrantied!

Then we have the Rajas (Red color, the passionate one!) that manifest in us as action and motion.  If we eat Rajasic food, ej: processed products, spicy and salty, garlic and onions, and, we gossip, dance requeton (a kind of porn version of salsa) and flirt a bit more than necessary, then we are swimming in the Kigndom of Rajas! We are bound to feel pretty unbalanced really.

And then, the last one (you really do not want to be governed by this one!) are the Tamas. Whose color is obviously black! The Tamas are those manifested in Inertia and laziness. If you eat any animal, or if you eat old food then you are bound to feel lazy, negative or behave cruelly to others, etc...

And so, from the minute I chose to feed my credit card numbers into the dating site, would you like to guess which Guna governed me?

rajas     Ra Jas     RAAAAAAA - JA - S!!!! 


I started swimming in the red sea of the Rajasic kingdom! A world full of lust and greed and excitement. The equivalent of having Las Vegas at your doorstep! I only had to log on and, there I was! ready to play:  Tinker tailor, soldier sailor, rich man poor man, beggar man thief!!

All of a sudden at the bottom right side of my screen a twinkling light: Mislof requests a chat with you... And it was like this that I decided to go on my second date. We had talked over the phone several times and this man made me feel comfortable and safe. His voice was warm and gentle, and yet expelled an air of self confidence that inspired respect.  I baptized him "Ascot boy"and when I first saw him there were no surprises, no fire works, no roller coasters, no adrenalin rushing through my whole body...  But his smile and hug reassured me that the man behind the voice was one and the same.  And so we went to a lovely Italian restaurant near Portobello Road were he devoured enough slices of Parma ham to feed a small village. Putting that aside, we had a lovely evening. And we both went home with the warm feeling of having meet someone special.

This is boring, you could say! It does not sound like enough material to write a blog. Oooooopppppsss!! Did I forget to mention that out of over 260 winks and I don't know how many e mails, I shorlisted 40 nice candidates? Yes 40. I know I know, greedy woman! Out of those I actually decided to meet five. Five during that same week that is! 
Calm down, calm down! I only decided to do that because I was getting all confused with all these names and it was better to start the eliminating process as soon as possible by just arranging a nice lunch or even a coffee (for those I did not actually get to talk to over the phone).

I had also received an e mail from a man who wanted to explain to me why his profile showed no photograph and wondered whether I would consider to look at his picture on my private e mail.  The reason he gave me made complete sense as his work is quite public. Like "Ascot boy", this man also lived quite a long way away from London and so we arranged to have lunch in a nice pub and then walk our dogs by the Thames in the country. I had actually told Ascot boy that I was going to meet this man the day after our lovely Italian dinner, and I told him that I was only doing it as a courtesy.

I felt that it was the least I could do specially when he confessed that he had only payed for a membership after he saw my picture and fell the urge to contact me.
He was older than my preference and so I kind of thought that it would be easy to tick him off my list quite easily. That afternoon the last thing I was expecting happened: I really liked him too!

Now I was swimming not in rajasic waters but in deep, deep deeeep  s...t!

It never occurred to me that these dates were going to go wrong because they went both too well!

And so, quite a horrible feeling inundated my body and soul for the next few hours, the next few days... Uncertainty, the biggest cause of stress a human being can face...

What happened with wanting to stay single? part two

Five months, I've lasted five months with the clear determination of remaining single.  Until fate struck: My American friend Rob, who 17 years ago introduced me to the man that changed my life forever,  got stuck in London for six days instead of a few hours due to the closure of Heathrow.
One cold morning, as we talked about the failure of my past relationship, he turned on his laptop and opened in front of me, the window to a world that I had heard of, but that I had never even felt the curiosity to see. The world of internet dating.

"Me Rob? are you crazy? " I said. To me internet dating was something that only desperate people use. If I have had  problems in my life, meeting men was never one of them. So, surely I would be the last person to want to expose myself in public in order to meet a man!
We surfed together for a good hour. He showed me a few of the women he had actually dated in NY. I was surprised to hear that in NY one third of all marriages happen as a result of internet dating.  There were very pretty and interesting girls on his site. I was also surprised to see that.
Anyhow, I refused to join and waved good bye to my lovely New Yorker. Feeling so sure about having taken the right decision...
And I chanted on New Years eve. I asked for truly important transcendental favors like: Please God, help me to be a good devotee. Please God, help me to be truthful in my heart.  Open the roads for me to become a really good yoga teacher. Oh, dear God! Help me to live a more modest life. Help me to forget about L.K Bennett dresses that seem to fit me so well.  Help me God to stop being such a hottie (those are the words of my ex boyfriend, not mine really). And so on, and so on...

Second of January. Cold. Real cold. The boiler is broken again. My teenage girls are doing their own thing and I am only happy under my duvet. Read a chapter of the Githa. Read part of the yoga Sutras. Visited the fridge a few times. Tamsin did not get walked. Back into bed. The laptop and me. Me and my laptop...Match.com. dot...Hoooked!

I remember going for lunch at my in law's that afternoon right after having become a member. I asked my brother in law to take a picture of me. I told him that it was for my profile.  At the time I felt too ashamed to say for which profile!! I did not say, it is actually for SeluGotier...my match.com nickname.
And so from that day onwards my spiritual life went doooooooooooooooonwn hill veeery veery fast.  A month later, I am happy to declare that I am having it back. Slowly but surely.

Stupidly I linked my mobile to the site. This meant that whenever someone viewed, winkened or wrote to me, I would know straight away. The first ten days were exhilarating, addictive, beyond exciting! This enormous sea full of men wanting to make contact with me! Where were they? How come they don't do any yoga? Why are there so many women looking for men when they are all here? Available.  Winking right left and center!!

And I saw the numbers raising....and raising.  After 1000 I stopped counting the views and in fact I blocked the link to my phone.  After 200, I stopped counting the winks. From every 10 winks, perhaps two were not scary, or disappointing. The nice ones went into my private list of favorites. I made myself unavailable as I had already quite a big stash of men that I wanted to meet. Many more that what I could possibly handle!

For those who know nothing about this cybernetic sociological phenomenon, these sites have been designed in such a way that you can store different lists: Who has added me in his favorites. Who has winked at me, who I have winked at, my list of favorites, my list of e mails... It even gives you an option where you can add the men you do not want to see again!! (quite useful this one I must say!).

What fun! What a game! What an amazing thing, to have all these lives in a fish tank... Ooooooppps! I realized, I was a fish in it too!

On the tenth day I finally decided to accept a date. A version of Ralph Fiennes was waiting for me in a nice restaurant. He, simply beautiful. Charming, intelligent, cultured, perfectly fragile. But,...half way through the meal he confessed that he smoked.

Silence...

- Occasionally, he said, as my face must have transformed.  And with this, he got up and planted a beautiful kiss on my lips.  Fireworks exploded! The world stopped and I forgot all about his vice. We walked for hours holding hands and kissing like teenagers in different corners of Belgravia.

       That night I tossed and turned, my skin still tingling, preserving the memory of his kisses. But discrimination inundated me very suddenly. I realized that I could not be with a man that smoked. And I realized that he smoked more than occasionally... And so I ended up this magical dream with a nice e-mail. I won't bore you with anything else about this exquisite fellow... but after a week we stopped seeing each other.
      You might think I am stupid for stopping a relationship with such a perfect match just because he smoked. But these things never come alone. Someone who is attached to an external thing like a cigarette, is someone who does not know how to control his stress, his feelings. Soon I realized his DAILY passion for good wine, coffee, restaurants and a life too full to think of another. A perfect bachelor. In my eyes, a forever beguiling bachelor.

From the top of the roller coster I dived deep and fast to the bottom.

I hit the shops trying to find cheerfulness inside new shoes. Knowing that happiness is never outside the self. Still, shoes and underwear seemed like a nice option to me at the time. And of course, I still had this list, this confusingly long and attractive list of men who wanted to meet me. There was hope still in my world...

What happened with wanting to stay single?

And so that girl who wrote the last blog, you know, that one who is looking for enlightenment and spiritual development.... any idea of who she might be?
She spent New Years'eve chanting and meditating... Hmmm. I have a vague idea, I seem to remember, it is me!
I had always being sure that if, right when the clock hits 12 from one year to another, we fully concentrate in what we want to achieve the following year, it becomes true.  The most palpable demonstration of this happened 17 years ago. I was still living with my parents in Caracas, Venezuela. As soon as the fire works started exploding in the sky, marking the beginning of the new year, I run outside my front door carrying two gigantic empty suitcases.  You see, for me traveling was my biggest desire! So, running around the neighboring streets with my two suitcases surely would have an effect on my voyages around the world.  And believe it or not, right after that,  I meet a pilot. I seem to remember that I traveled that year more by plane than by bus! (Not good for the ozone layer I know!).

But let's go back to the chanting and meditating. It was obvious to me that if I ended the year connected with my inner divinity, connected with the universal consciousness from within, I would for sure become pretty soon a holy girl. At least a little bit enlightened!
Being a yoga teacher is not an easy thing. It sounds easy, but it is actually a way of living. You cannot just turn up five minutes before a class and pretend to be all holly. You become transparent. Your students can read you...sort of thing! Perhaps you can go into 'automatic' and say the right words, know a few sequences, connect with the breath, exhale as you release any point of tension...all of that stuff that many yoga teachers can say. But the intention, the energy, the truthfulness must be there or you better become a fitness trainer in a gym.

Living a holy life nowadays tends to have it's complications.  The more you think you are holier the more temptations come along your way.
I remember vividly how I felt after my first two weeks at the Sivananda Ashram in Val Morin, Canada. I had been waking up every morning at 430 am (to go and meditate in a little hill before the bell rang at 530). I felt that at that time of the morning, before the sun rise, there was something in the air that made meditation much easier. The daily training was hard, challenging at all levels. Nearly everyday I would find a girl in tears. Questioning the meaning of our lives, facing that mirror of the soul that some of us hardly ever take the time to look at.
I had shaved all my hair from day two, looking like a little Buddhist monk and feeling pretty similar to Mother Teresa. My heart detoxed and loving everyone around me, my spirit lifted, my whole being purified. Not a bad thought came to my mind. I was experiencing pure happiness and peace. Two weeks building this Lego wall of sanctity until one day this gorgeous man with the deepest green eyes and the loveliest smile looked and me and said "hello".
Hello! Hellooooooo! All those Lego pieces of sanctity crumbled  to the floor with his "hello" and his smile. Why me? Why me? I asked God! I have shaved my hair, there are about 60 women here and ten men, why has he come to me? Why God do you put me this test?
 And so, the rest of my yoga teacher's training course was put under an even bigger trial. Concentrating  became harder as his French accent and sweet voice caressed my dreams and interrupted my meditation. The battle of the Githa was happening there and then in my mind. Open fire! Arjuna desperate not wanting to fight against his own family, Krishna commanding him to do his duty while I was very busy kissing this gorgeous man in my fantasies!
But I behaved! I had a boyfriend waiting for me in London and my encounters with this Adonis became very enlightening and pure. Lust failed. And in the battle of the senses I won. Well, I won that particular battle.
Soon after coming back from Canada my boyfriend and I split up. Don't ask why. Everyone of our friends knew that this would happen, except us.
I welcomed the changes as yet another step towards spiritual enrichment. Learning to be alone in this wide world for the first time since I was 17 was definitely a different experience for me.
An important one. Finally, I was going to have time to focus on learning to know myself better. Discovering my fears (I never thought I had any), facing my weaknesses, my defects, facing my big, Big, BIG Ego! And my God, it's being hard,... and therapeutic... and good.
I have grown as if I have been fed with 'Miracle Grow".
I only say this, because the plants in my kitchen have doubled their size after drinking this sensational green solution. I wish my parents had offered me a few drops!
At this point I must mention here my gratitude to my friend Raquel, (since I cannot do this at the Oscars I better commend her here).  I thank her for being at the other end of the phone every day with the patience of a saint.
And so as for being single, the most exciting part of the story develops in my next post...

Cleaning the window of my soul

Tacky title I know! But somehow "cleaning the window of my soul" it's exactly what I started doing this morning without it being my main intention.
Sunday morning. I gave myself license to have a big cup of Chai latte in bed (this large blue mug was only for my weekend boyfriend and now we broke up I can use anytime I want!).  Then I started reading again for God knows how many times, the first pages of The Githa (the book of all knowledge and wisdom) trying to make some advances in this book that promises complete enlightenment. The Sanskrit word Padmapatramivanbhasa called my attention immediately. It means: "For he who places all the actions in the eternal, abandoning all attachment, he that is as unaffected by sin as a lotus leaf by water." It's curious because in the last few months I decided to stop painting  and drawing all the feminist stuff I was interested on and started painting instead lovely little canvases with a lotus flower in the middle of a circle. I want to be a lotus flower. I want to be beautiful and unaffected by muddy waters. I want to raise my petals to the sky and bring happiness to others just with my presence. Of course, this sounds vane: After all it's all about me!!! But no. I do not mean it this way. We should all be like that. Our existence should bring happiness to others.
But, I have deviated from this window business, let's go back to it. Karma Yoga, the Yoga of selfless service, is very important for any spiritual aspirant. Now, as I was having my Chai in bed, I could see how dirty my windows were and how I had kind of resigned myself to see them through a veil of dust for years. After all, I could still see through them quite well and paying the window cleaner didn't appeal to me that much.
Suddenly I put the Gita to the side (I must say that once again I did not read more than 5 pages) and went downstairs to load myself with cleaning weapons in order to attack the dirt! Oh my God! I was surprised, I had not realized that there was mold on the window seal because all looked so uniformed that surely it was always meant to be black! But it wasn't! I went back for a toothbrush, for bleach (by the way, thanks to whoever invented bleach! I felt like composing an Aria to the marvelous cleaner that I had used very few times in my life). And with every stroke on the glass I started philosophizing. I realized that I had been looking at the outside world through a dirty glass. In yogic terms this veil that prevents you from realizing the truth about life, is called Maya, or illusion. And of course, then other thoughts came with it. I noticed that once one area was sparkling clean, the other, that did not appear that dirty at first, now looked pretty stained. And so, I realized why these lovely ladies "The Brahma Kamaris" only wear white clothes. They say that if they want to keep a clean life, then they must be able to see even the tiniest bit of dirt on themselves. I have dressed in pure crystal stainless white very few times, and believe me, it has changed the way I feel and behave...
And so, I couldn't call what I did Karma yoga, as now I feel I am enjoying seeing how clean my windows are, but I guess it was a good spiritual exercise. Let's hope is only the beggining of many! Om Namah Shivaya.