Amma's New Year Message

"Give up all the clouds in your heart from 2011 and have the courage of a lion and a lioness for the year 2012".

Om Sarveshaam Swastir Bhavatu 

Sarveshaam Shantir Bhavatu

Sarveshaam Poornam Bhavatu
Sarveshaam Mangalam Bhavatu

Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah
Sarve Santu Niraamayaah

Sarve Bhadraani Pashyantu
Maakaschit Duhkha Bhaagbhavet

Auspiciousness (swasti) be unto all;

peace (shanti) be unto all;

fullness (poornam) be unto all;
prosperity (mangalam) be unto all.

May all be happy! (sukhinah)
May all be free from disabilities! (niraamayaah)

May all look (pashyantu)to the good of others!
May none suffer from sorrow! (duhkha)

 

 

My Sweet Children,

Shanti or Eternal peace is the ultimate principle that governs your life. Peace is the fruit of life. Peace comes out of calmness and the inner world. So child, search within.

Peace be to the East of Mother Earth.

Peace be to the West of Mother Earth.
Peace be to the North of Mother Earth.
Peace be to the South of Mother Earth.
Peace be above Worlds.
Peace be below Worlds.

Peace be to all creatures on this beautiful and great Mother Earth for a Happy New Year 2012.

My Children, I love you so much from the bottom of my heart.

Your Amma,

Karunamayi

 

 

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu

May all beings in all the beautiful realms be happy

Om Shantih Shantih Shantihi

May all beings everywhere be peaceful
  

 

 

 

 

All words and images courtesy of Amma Sri Karunamayi

Joy and Peace for the New Year

Courtesy of "The Daily Mutts"

Wishing all my dear ones a bazillion blessings for good health, joy, peace and equanimity this 2012...and I'm sending you much love and gratitude for your love and support all year through.  Happy New Year!!  Love, love and more love, kajal

PS ~ Ram Dass and Eckhart Tolle would get a kick out of this, don't you think?  :)

Almost There, And a Surprise For My (Yoga) Sister

I know I haven't written much in awhile, and I could probably write pages and pages about what has been going on for the past two months.  I really would rather not though.  I am so very blessed that once I got through a few days of antibiotics (see post from back in November), I finally felt the sensation of truly breathing.  Really, really breathing with no coughing, nothing to cough up (sorry, I know, ick) and no wheezing. 

What happened after that though, was pretty bad.  After being on prednisone for so long, and being on (way too much) anti-anxiety meds to tolerate it...I went through a really bad withdrawal from both as I tapered them down.  I was barely functional.  I'm not completely there yet, and am still having some trouble (and I'm still very weak and it's going to take some time to get my strength back) but I can say...I'm breathing!  And I drove for the first time last week, since September.  And I saw my oncologist at SK on Tuesday...and we are not replacing the Arimidex with another drug.  After we talked about what has happened to me, she told me that she thought that what I needed to cure this cancer was the surgery, and that she didn't think "that we would be hearing from this again".  That was such a relief to hear, because I was prepared to say, "You cannot pay me a million dollars to take one of those medicines again.  Seriously, you cannot.".

And I'll be honest...I got a little emotional talking to her about how I lost another year of my life.  And she knows I don't get emotional easily, through everything last year, breast cancer and a 10+ hour surgery, I stayed strong.  She knows I'm not the whining/complaining type.  So when I got a little emotional as I told her about it all, she knew I wasn't being a drama queen.  And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with getting emotional.  It just takes alot for me to get there, personally.

So since I've been off the meds, I can feel them slowly coming out of my system.  My hands aren't shaking as much.  I got a message from a very special customer, asking if I felt well enough to create a few wrist malas for her.  As I read it, I was thinking, well that's a good question.  I looked down at my hands, and well, they weren't shaking very much, so I said yes.  I didn't think I was ready to knot a full mala, but felt I could manage wrist malas.  And then I started to look through my stones to find just the right ones for her...and that's when I started to feel it.  Creative juices running through my veins again!  Oh that felt soooo good. 

It took me a little while to finish them (she wanted four), but once I was done, I felt I had been given that little bit of a "nudge" I needed to start creating again.  Slowly, I did some repairs I had promised long ago.  Each wrist mala I finished felt like such a triumph.  So I have to send out a special thank you to Niki, even though she has heard my thank you's already.  She gave me that push I needed.

Then one day I felt I was ready.  One of my beautiful yoga sisters had left with me, some time ago, a full mala that had broken and needed to be re-strung.  We had planned to maybe change out some of the stones, so it had sat in my mala making cabinet, very patiently.  I think there is another reason why it needed to wait for awhile...it had been created originally not by me, but by our former yoga teacher.  I'll just say she's not our teacher any longer, not for three years, but there was a real challenge for my sisters and I in removing ourselves from a hurtful situation.  So I think that when I say that one day I felt I was ready, it was not only ready to start knotting, but also ready to re-create something beautiful from what once was broken.

So, my beautiful sister Kathleen, here is your surprise...

Rose Quartz and Silver for Kathleen

It did take me awhile, and sometimes my fingers wouldn't cooperate, or I would get tired and I would need to stop.  But I finished it today and I feel I have cleared more than one obstacle, which feels beyond amazing.

I am so happy to say that many mala combinations have started to flow through my head, saying "make me, make me, make me!  I need to come into creation!"

It will be slow moving at first, I know.  Right now I am just so happy to give Kathleen her (newly) knotted mala.  It wasn't knotted before, now it's knotted and is a full blown Kajal creation...knots and tassel and all.

And I can breathe!
   

Spiritual Food For The Whole Year

Today is the auspicious celebration of the birth of Christ.  To celebrate, plant one seed of virtue, and do the things that help to awaken the Christ consciousness within you.  Let this one-day celebration be spiritual food for the whole year.

     ~ Yogi Amrit Desai (Gurudev)

Gurudev blessing, courtesy of The Amrit Yoga Institute

Restored

After another day long campout at Panera on Tuesday, as we hesitantly decided to start packing things up to return to our cold and dark apartment, I suddenly had this distinct feeling that I should call our home number.  I had been doing this every once in awhile, to see if the phone would ring instead of go straight to voicemail...what I thought was a sure sign that our power was still out.  And yes, every time it would go straight to voicemail.  But this time felt different.  So as Eric started shutting down his work on his laptop, I dialed home.  Lo and behold...ringing!!  The phone was definitely ringing, the normal number of rings and then to voicemail.  You can bet we started moving a lot more quickly then, straight out the door and straight home with bated breath.  And what did we find...warmth and light.  The electricity must have come back on at least an hour or so before, it was so nice and warm...and also to our amazement, our cable had been turned back on too!  As Eric set off to start a cleanup (that is still not complete) of the disaster that had taken over our home, I quickly called family and friends to share the good news...

And then I went to bed.

Prednisone, antibiotics, coughing, wheezing, no electricity for four days (cold!)...I just collapsed, completely collapsed.

I started to come to a little bit today, and even did a little dusting and straightening which is so sorely needed around here.  I haven't been able to do very much of anything since this whole respiratory problem started months and months ago.

But I am going to share what I think may be some good news...and I'm almost afraid to say it.  I think the antibiotics, along with the prednisone, have started to work.  That is all I'm going to say for now, just that there seems to be a clearing going on.  So I'm sending a giant thank you hug to all who answered my call for healing light, and the return of electricity to our home...one has definitely been restored, and the other is looking like a good, good possibilty...

Electricity, Antibiotics, and Equanimity

My backyard at about 5pm Saturday, with only about a quarter of the total snow that had fallen by Sunday morning, right before the power went out

We are still without power, but the good news is that we have just found out that our "estimated restoration" has been moved up from Wednesday at 11pm to tomorrow at 11pm.  That will make a world of difference.  The Saturday overnight hours were quite a challenge.  Because we basically live in a pine forest, and are surrounded by many, many trees, we spent the night listening to the continuous cracking of trees and their limbs breaking down all around us.  With every crack there was the tensing and the fraction of a second where you are wondering if a mighty pine will come crashing through the roof, and then the wait for the thud to get an idea of where it may have landed.  Since we did have a bit of damage from just such a thing from the big ice storm a few months ago, I guess you can say we have a little PTSD about it.  We woke to find four very large limbs down, very close to the house, so we feel very blessed to come out unschathed in that way.  We received at least a foot of snow when it was all over.

Our cell phone service also went out Saturday, not long after the power went out.  So, no communication whatsoever.  It was so eerie.  Sunday by early afternoon we were able to venture out, and the damage in my area of Dutchess County, New York was just unbelievable.  There were trees and limbs down everywhere, power lines dangling everywhere.  Really, in October?

We were able to drive far enough to get some cell service and to call our families.  A call to Verizon and we found that a major tower had gone down and they were working on it.  I had service back by about 8pm last night, which was settling to be able to be in touch with family and friends again.

We have been blessed with sunny, 50 degree weather yesterday and today, so our little brick abode has been taking that in and staying warm enough for us to stay.  Today we ventured out to our local Panera for hot food and tea, wifi and sunny windows (thank you Panera, you never let us down!).

And so you would think that the weekend I just described would have been quite a challenge just the way it was...but unfortunately I have to add the fact that as I started tapering down on the prednisone (again), my symptoms started to flare (again).  The combination of it all became overwhelming at one point.  I really started to feel I just didn't want to be here anymore, I could manage storms and power outages and even falling trees around me, but not being able to breathe properly since late January had really started to take it's toll.

And then, at some point yesterday, as I was coughing and coughing, in the dark, wrapped in blankets and hat and scarf...it all just, well...eased.  It is difficult to explain.  I thought of something Gurudev said during his birthday celebration...that Krishna was asked, what is the true nature of the yogi...Krishna replied..."...lives in state of equanimity under all opposing conditions".  And somewhere inside, I accepted that this was all I had to do.  Accept that these were my "opposing conditions", and they were all things I had no control over.  What I did have control over though, was how I would respond to them.  I would pull out my book light, immerse myself in a book (Aleph by Paolo Coelho, which was wonderful).  The word "equanimity" became like a mantra, and everything softened.

My mountain man was running around trying to charge battery packs using the car, to get us some bit of light and maybe start the electric heater, and was not having much success.  He saw me, calmly accepting the situation as it was, reading with my book light, and was inspired to do the same.  It was a calm, peaceful evening.

I increased my prednisone evening dose, called my doctor this morning, and we decided that the next step was for an antibiotic, to rule out the possibility that through all this I had picked up a bug that was not allowing my lungs to heal.  This will be my last step before heading into NYC to my friends at Sloan Kettering, so I would so appreciate any prayers and healing light that can be sent my way.  And, if you could add a power restore by tomorrow evening, that would be so appreciated too. 

Nothing is Missing

Feel the deep, deep contentment of realizing there is absolutely nothing that is missing from the Self that you are.  Connect with that Divine Self at this moment and let that energy spread through every cell of your body...and let go.  
       ~ Yogi Amrit Desai

Yogi Amrit Desai ~ Gurudev
courtesy of Amrit Yoga Institute