I’m surprise it wasn’t in India… but the next most logical spot: San Francisco.

Photo by Bay Cities News

I remember how delighted I was to see a sign for a “Meditation Room” in the Albuquerque airport; a yoga room is even better! I’ve been tempted to do yoga in airports before, especially with all the traveling I’ve done in the last year, but I never managed to summon up the cojones to do a downward dog in the passenger waiting area.

Photo by Bay Cities News

How did this happen? The director of SFO has been practicing yoga for 18 years, and after hearing someone make an offhand remark that they had everything but a place to do yoga, he made it happen.

And, it’s free to use! They even provide mats.

The world is a-changin’!!! I look forward to the day when it’s normal for everyone to meditate and do yoga, just like everyone brushes their teeth and showers.

LAX has gotta be next.

Official Yoga Pictogram - Photo by Bay Cities News

*Thanks to Mariana for sending me the article!

Photo from http://www.insightmeditation.org.nz/wiki/

A few years ago, I started meditating.

At first it was for 5 minutes at a time. It was hard. It was uncomfortable. It wasn’t enjoyable. My mind blabbered, my knees hurt.

Over the past few years, after numerous classes and stopping and starting again, I’ve built up to a practice of two hours a day – one hour in the morning and one in the evening (that’s on my good days; I don’t always hit the two hour mark).

I’ve experienced the positive effects in my life – less stress, less anxiety, a better feel for my emotions and my body, more awareness of the ways I’m crazy and destructive, a better memory, a stronger ability to savor and appreciate life.

In the society we’ve created, with its pressures and multitasking and addictions and smartphones and ADHD, meditation is the single most important thing a person can do for their well-being, happiness, serenity and sanity.

And more and more, there are scientific studies backing up the physiological benefits. Finally, science is starting to figure out why the spiritually-minded have been espousing meditation for centuries.

Check out the science here.

If you can’t find meditation classes near you (google around), you can begin with these free guided meditations, starting with the 5 minute one:

http://marc.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=22

But I’d really recommend classes. It gets you more comfortable with the practice, and doing it with other people is more motivating than struggling to sit there on your own.

Funny how terrifying just sitting there, breathing, can be…

Burning Man, 2010

It could be fake. But I feel it’s true.

A 12 year old Ethiopian girl, beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage, was found being guarded by three lions.

Photo by Mark Tiller (not the actual lions being spoken of)

“The girl, missing for a week, had been taken by seven men who wanted to force her to marry one of them, said Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo, speaking by telephone from the provincial capital of Bita Genet, about 350 miles southwest of Addis Ababa.

She was beaten repeatedly before she was found June 9 by police and relatives on the outskirts of Bita Genet, Wondimu said. She had been guarded by the lions for about half a day, he said.

“They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest,” Wondimu said.”

Story here: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8305836/ns/#.TxyajWNAa1_

Maybe it’s fake.

I’d rather read this than some bullshit about the DOW, Brangelina rumors, or politics.

Those are all definitely fake.

RAWR!

Holstee Manifesto

This is comprehensive and profound. However, my advice wouldn’t be to quit your job.

My advice would be to be so honest and authentic that they have no choice but to fire you; then you sign up for unemployment to support a minimalistic lifestyle while you heal your heart and learn to hear the messages it’s been trying to tell you all these years. Preferably in another country.

As I sit here typing this post at Baraka cafe in Palermo Soho in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a Ladybug landed on my table.

I’m sitting inside. What is a Ladybug doing inside of a restaurant? Maybe waiting to order. Waiters are slow in Buenos Aires, Ladybug. Hope you’re not too hungry.

I have blogged about Ladybugs twice prior to today:

once on August 8th 2010 (the date on the blog is wrong for some reason), and

once on January 27th 2011.

At the time, my research indicated that Ladybugs are supposed to portend the arrival of true love. I’m guessing in these cases it must’ve been true love for myself, as there aren’t any men in my life (not in a sexual way, anyways), I haven’t even dated anyone since November of 2010 (!!!), but I HAVE been working diligently the past few years on allowing true self-love.

Back to the poster.

I love this bit, and I feel like I’ve been following it:

If you are looking for the love of your life, stop; they will be waiting for you once you start doing the things you love.

And here’s one I’d like to start doing:

Ask the next person you see what their passion is.

Here in Buenos Aires, you meet a lot of travelers and nomads and expats. Inevitably we ask each other, “What’s your story?” to get a summary of where they came from, how they got here, what they’re doing now, where they’re going next. It’s fascinating but does get repetitive. I think I’ll start asking “What is your passion?” instead. More fun for them to answer, and more illuminating for me.

Back to the Ladybugs.

I just found this assertion of Ladybug symbolism that has nothing to do with true love:

When ladybugs appear they are a sign from the universe that you are being protected and that you are safe as you work hard to promote yourself and your ideas. Ladybug tells you to be cheerful in your work and to share the joy of your creativity with others.

Alright. That sounds good. And more suitable for what I’ve been doing since August of 2010.

Or there’s this:

Ladybug’s medicine includes carrying the golden strand that leads to the centre of the universe, past lives, spiritual enlightenment, death and rebirth, renewal, regeneration, fearlessness, protection, good luck, wishes being fulfilled, protection.

Damn. That pretty much covers everything. Also found this:

Though small in size the ladybug is fearless. As fear cannot exist amongst joy, the ladybug brings a message of promise, for they get us back in touch with the joy of living – we must let go of our fears and go back to our roots, to love. We are also taught to restore our trust and faith in the universe, we have to get over ourselves, our egos, and allow life to take its course going with the flow.

Ladybug showing up in ones life foretells a time of luck and protection, where wishes start to become actualised. Worries will quickly disperse when ladybug appears as they shield us from our aggravations, paving the way for new found happiness – aim high, you will get what you focus on. However, ladybug also cautions us not to force things or try to hard to fulfil your wishes, go with the flow and let things take their natural course. Your wishes will come true when they do – in their own time!

Photo by Iain Crockart

“The key is to listen to your heart and let it carry you in the direction of your dreams. I’ve learned that it’s possible to set your sights high and achieve your dreams and do it with integrity, character, and love. And each day that you’re moving toward your dreams without compromising who you are, you’re winning.”

- Michael Dell – this quote was one of the awesome daily quotes on www.TheDailyLove.com.

“It’s simple – we were sent to GIVE the Love we think we missed or that we think we aren’t getting from someone else. We see where the Love is lacking and so it’s up to us to fill that gap! The same is true for you. You were sent to give the Love that you think it missing in your life and in the world. That’s why you’re here.”

- Mastin Kipp – author of www.TheDailyLove.com; subscribe for daily love delivered!

“Every day is a microcosm of the larger vision and macrocosm of your life. For us to really live our truth, we need to insert the activities every day that mirror our priorities and goals.”

-Ashley Turner – frequent blogger at www.TheDailyLove.com (every day, besides sending you incredibly wise quotes and his own daily blog, Mastin has THREE guest bloggers that share truth and insight).

How are you living love every day? Living love means doing what you love, loving what you do, AND actually being and doing love; which means giving. I’ve realized recently that love = giving. Giving attention, giving time, giving affection, giving compliments and kind words, giving energy, giving inspiration, giving another person access to your fears and dreams and truths. Love is opening, expanding, sharing, trusting. Love is the opposite of fear because fear is closing, contracting, taking, doubting.

In every moment, in every Now, we have a Choice between Love and Fear. That’s the elusive thing that separates us from animals. That ability to make a conscious choice between the two. Love or Fear.

Which are you choosing Now?

How about Now?

And Now?

Dances with Fear

Really, I’m terrified of any partner dancing. Over the course of my life, aside from sleeping and eating, the thing I’ve spent the most amount of time doing is reading. The second is probably dancing.

But I’ve always danced alone. When I was younger I thought I simply wanted the freedom to dance without having to think about matching someone else’s movements. I was also afraid of not being good at dancing with someone, and of looking like an idiot. I later realized I had unacknowledged, deeply hidden fears of intimacy and vulnerability that kept me closed off. And, JUST NOW, I realized I was also afraid of having to set boundaries with men! Much easier to not deal with them at all than to go through the discomfort of having to express my feelings/wants/needs/don’t-wants (as in, I don’t want your hand on my ass).

So, despite having taken a few swing dancing and salsa lessons in my college days, and having one singularly fantastic night swing dancing with a man who was a master at leading, I became the queen of rejection. Among my friends I was legendary for ‘The Look,” a sizzling, emasculting, medusa-like laser beam that I would turn on any man who approached me. Eventually I reached a point where I just exuded a stone wall energy, which is what I did here in Argentina the first night I went out dancing at a soul and funk club with my friend, an Argentine who warned me that men would be all over me. I knew they wouldn’t, but I didn’t say anything, and he was surprised at the end of the night that I’d been able to dance for hours without having to shake off a single drunken man.

After that night, I decided I wanted to change. I wanted to begin lowering my stone wall. I’ve always secretly dreamed of experiencing the thrill of perfectly synchronized rhythmic joy on a dance floor. I know it’s going to take practice, willingness to be crappy at it, and a letting go of my need to control, protect and defend.

For the past few weeks I’ve been planning to go to a milonga to learn to Tango. Tuesday nights at La Catedral here in Buenos Aires, or to the outdoor milonga La Glorieta de Barrancas in a park in Belgrano. But the time hadn’t felt right yet. I’ve been invited by friends at least five times, backed out of a commitment twice.

Today, as often happens to me, what I wanted came to me. Call it synchronicity, call it manifestation, call it magic. I love it.

I was treating myself to some café con leche y medialunas at my favorite café, Bardepán, and chatting with my regular waiter, Roberto. Out of the blue he asked if I knew how to Tango. I said no, not yet, but I’d been planning to learn. His Russian husband is a professional Tango dancer, and it sounds like Roberto sometimes needs someone to Tango with while his hubby is entertaining some other pro-Tango dancers who are visiting them.

So, now I’ve got a partner and a teacher!

My plan:

1. Change my story; don’t go into it with my usual storyline of “I suck at partner dancing. I love to dance but I always dance alone.” Instead: “I love dancing and I’m so excited to learn how to Tango.”

2. Let go of my fear, perfectionism and vanity; be prepared to look stupid and not be immediately good.

3. Laugh. A lot.

4. Practice.

Here’s to dancing through fear!

“When you dance tango with someone, you don’t need to know their entire history in order to get a glimpse of their more ‘raw’ self, their human warmth or lack thereof, their ability to listen and participate in a dialogue, their ability to enjoy the music, open themselves emotionally and show their vulnerable side. It’s harder to hide our ‘raw self’ if we are not able to use words to conceal.” – Bora’s Tango Journey

“We need the Internet to remain free because it represents the emerging voice of humanity.” – Raam Dev

Check out the two excellent videos on http://raamdev.com/ about the Internet Censorship Legislation.

And then sign the petitions - any petition, like the Google-backed one – to Save Internet Freedom.

Craigslist on SOPA and PIPA:

Corporate supporters of Senate 968 (PIPA) and HR 3261 (SOPA) demand the ability to take down any web site (including craigslist, Wikipedia, or Google) that hurts their profits — without prior judicial oversight or due process  – in the name of combating “online piracy.”

PIPA and SOPA authors and supporters insist they’d only go after foreign piracy sites, but Internet Engineers understand this is an attempt to impose “Big Brother” controls on our Internet, complete with DNS hijacking and censoring search results. Incredibly, many Congress Members favor this idea.

<RANT>Try to imagine jack-booted thugs throttling free speech, poisoning the Internet (greatest of American inventions, the very pillar of modern democracy), and devastating one of the our most successful industries. Totalitarian, anti-American, massively-job-killing nonsense.</RANT>

Tell Congress you OPPOSE Senate 968 “Protect IP Act” (PIPA) and H.R. 3261 “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA):

• Phone your Member of Congress via nifty Progressive Change app
• Contact Senators who are refusing to meet with constituents about PIPA.
• Reverse Robocall pro-PIPA & pro-SOPA MOC + Lobbyists (More at Ars Technica)
• EFF Congressional Emailer – Oppose Internet Blacklisting (PIPA & SOPA)
• ECA Congressional Emailer - Don’t Censor Our Internet!
• OpenCongress Congressional Emailer – Oppose SOPA
• Generic Congressional Emailer (You’ll need your Zip+4)
• Petition Congress – Protect Innovation, Dump SOPA (Progressive Change )
• Outside the US? Sign Petition Opposing US Censorship of Global Sites (EFF)

Supporters of PIPA and SOPA: RIAA, MPAA, News Corp, TimeWarner, Walmart, Nike, Tiffany, Chanel, Rolex, Sony, Juicy Couture, Ralph Lauren, VISA, Mastercard, Comcast, ABC, Dow Chemical, Monster Cable, Teamsters, Rupert Murdoch, Lamar Smith (R-TX), John Conyers (D-MI)

Opponents of PIPA and SOPA: Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay, AOL, Mozilla, Reddit, Tumblr, Etsy, Zynga, EFF, ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Darrell Issa (R-CA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Ron Paul (R-TX)

One thing that came up repeatedly in response to the post was people – many of them friends I’ve known for years – saying: “It’s amazing how similar our stories/our fathers are.” That was one of the reasons I felt compelled to share my (I thought) unusual reaction to my father’s death – while I know I was risking seeming insensitive to the death of a family member by admitting I was relieved, and it made me uncomfortable sharing so much, I figured there had to be others who had the same experience that I did.

Actually, after he died and I downloaded a bunch of Motown music, I started googling around to see if it was ‘normal’ to have conflicting feelings at the death of an alcoholic parent. I didn’t really find anything that described what I was going through. The next morning, when I woke up at 6am, I started typing the blog post on my Droid. It was one of those pieces that just writes itself, that flows out of you intact.

The experience reminded me of the Elizabeth Gilbert TED talk, in which she brilliantly explains writing, creativity and our skewed take on genius.

The Greeks and Romans used to believe that creativity, rather than coming from humans, was actually a spirit that came to people from a “distant and unknowable source.” Some called it a daemon, some called it a genius. A person wasn’t a genius; they had a genius who would come and help them out with their work. To me, sounds like tapping into the collective unconscious. Anyways, Elizabeth points out that this takes the pressure off of artists. And, that the artist’s only job is to show up and work. It’s the genius’s job to make it good.

Ole, Allah, a glimpse of god. A glimpse, a remembrance of the truth we are each connected to.

“Just do your job, continue to show up for your piece of it… Ole to you nonetheless…just for having  to have the sheer human love and stubborness to keep showing up.”

While wrestling with the draft for my next blog post, I came across this mind-blowing video:

This is pretty much the deepest fuckin’ video I’ve ever seen. I get the feeling I’ll be spending the rest of my life trying to live the truth spoken here.

And don’t you just want to BREATHE that air!?!

“You are free. You are whole. You are endless. There’s not bottom to you, no boundary to you. Any idea about yourself appears in you, and will disappear back into you. You are awareness and awareness is consciousness. Let all self-definitions die in this moment. Let them go and see what remains. See what is never born and what does not die. Feel the relief of laying down the burden of defining yourself. Experience the actual non-reality of the burden. Experience the joy that is here.”

“Like a bird born of its mother encased in a shell, my first birth was shrouded in the darkness of deep ignorance. A bird’s second birth is its true birth – when it breaks the eggshell and emerges into the light. Just as the little bird blinks its eyes when it emerges from its shell into the sunlight, so was I astounded when the dark layer of ignorance was penetrated for the first time and I glimpsed the rays of true understanding. Indeed, the darkness of ignorance is darker than the absence of light within an eggshell or the womb.”

“Human life becomes meaningful only when one breaks the shell of ignorance and becomes established in wisdom, just as a chick breaks through its eggshell and emerges into the light.”

-S.N. Goenka, Vipassana teacher