08May 2018 by aryask@gmail.com

From meditation to laughing in tears

mindfulness, self-awareness
Mindfulness Meditation is a way of developing a felt-sense of being with the body and simply being present. It challenges us to step back from the mental chatter to reduce stress and regulate attention. It is a discipline of sheer focus, but we don’t have to take ourselves seriously to be committed to the practice. Here’s a story from some years ago. I’m in the middle of the desert for a 10day meditation retreat. Every day I wake up at 4am, step outside of my dorm and into the cold morning air. It’s quiet, and in the distance a rosy dawn is painted over the mountains. I walk over to the big meditation room with 60 other people - no speaking or eye contact for the entire 10 days. You just…
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05May 2018 by aryask@gmail.com

The journey of self-awareness

self-awareness
Self-awareness is a journey of becoming more of who you are. Finding what’s true, that’s when you know you’re on the right track, just place honesty as your highest value. A simple insight arises, an understanding of how things are, with many forces at play in a living orchestra, bigger than the sum of the parts. Then it dawns on you: empathy transforms us. Now that we’re untangled from shifty appearances we can inhabit the folds of something real, a bigger purpose, a heightened flow, a field of vision that optimally grows. Now grounded and laser-focused on the inner work, what was once a fish out of water, is now an eagle spread across the sun.
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23Apr 2018 by aryask@gmail.com

Undertow

self-awareness
The worst thing you can do when you’re numb and weary is to give up, yet it’s the easiest course of action. Everything seems out of reach and nothing works. Stuck in the undertow. You feel powerless. But deep down you know that it will pass. It always has. You’ve come this far with patience and gratitude. You know it well. But no matter, patience is a bitch equally as a noble virtue. Still, eagerly you greet your guests at the door, their names are Self-pity and Despair and you hear them play their songs all day. They play with flair. Gradually, and then suddenly, something shifts. A friend calls. An idea turns up. You go with it. Things develop on their own accord. To your surprise, you find yourself with…
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27Mar 2018 by aryask@gmail.com

Letting go from the mountain top

purpose, self-awareness, storytelling, uncertainty
He was hanging on the edge of the mountain peak. An eagle with flappy ears was standing at the very tip. It leaped around and perched on a stone just above him. It was leaping and perching, leaping and perching. Finally, it perched just over his head and its butthole was hanging just over him. He was terrified this bird would soon shit on him. He zoomed into its butthole which had feathers around it. He feared for his life and had to make a choice: either get shit on by this inappropriate bird or let go and die off the mountain. He looked down and there was a sea of clouds. He rapidly looked back up at the eagle, down, up again.  Somehow he decided it’s better to just…
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27Mar 2018 by aryask@gmail.com

How poetry adds perspective

poetry, self-awareness
“Poetry is a commitment to the soul.” – Gaston Bachelard I was 14 when I started writing poems. For some reason, secretly, I wanted to find that quality about myself. It was a way to cope with low self-esteem, so it became an outlet for daydreams. I struggled with speech impediment and depression so the written word was a place to spread my mind. Writing and drawing were therapeutic because it helped unveil my own voice. I'm still unlayering the folds, but every once in a while I know that I've found something through my audience. Eventually, I realized poetry is a way of being in the world, noticing a self-sufficient beauty that lives beyond "me." Poetry is an exploration of where "I" begins and ends. Poetry can be narrow as a…
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