Taking What I Have and Making What I Want

I’ve been enjoying having a week out of the office, and I’ve been moving furniture around like crazy at home. Last month I gave away my little fainting couch and that opened up a whole lot more of the living room. I like to walk into a room and see big open spaces. I moved a white credenza out of the living room and into my room, since it it really the headboard that matches my bedroom set. I have several small rolling tables in the living room, and I rearranged those. I swapped out some tall lamps for short ones. I moved the bed to accommodate the headboard. One good thing is it gives me an 8″ buffer between my head and the west to east wall where the electrical wiring is. On the other side of that wall is the refrigerator. I usually sleep with my head in the corner, diagonally on the bed, to be away from the electrical outlets. Or sometimes with my head along the north to south wall. Mostly I sleep diagonally, head to the NE. It just feels better somehow.

Now that I’ve moved the couch and credenza in the living room, when I do my yoga I have lots and lots of room around me. I see I still have 7 chairs in there, as well as 6 sitting pillows, and 9 small tables, but now it’s more open. The more years that pass, the more I like to keep the spaces around me open and clear. I used to like to have all sorts of knicknacks around, my beloved momentos, everything looking very full and cluttered. Now I appreciate bare and sparse.

Years ago we’d have meditations and discussions here a few times a week. That ended in 1996 when I went to California. When I came back eight months later, I wanted a break from it. I stay a lot busier now than I did then. Now I like when the meetings are held somewhere else. Then I can leave when I want – it’s always easier to say “I have to go,” than it is to say “You have to go.”

And no clean up. I never care for eating during meetings, that’s my personal preference. I think people are distracted enough in ordinary conversation without juggling coffee and cookies, too. I do miss the camaraderie of attending different groups and meetings. My schedule the past few years has me home by 4:00pm so I can nap a few hours before doing evening and midnight phone sessions. That means I miss all evening events, everywhere.

One reason I book my schedule so heavily is because I love paying off my bills and I know these are my big earning years. Last year I took on helping two elder family members and I’m honored to do that. Only a few extra hours on my part, of work I love to do, allows me to help them out in what they feel is a big way. I’m thrilled they think so and I’m honored to do it.

It felt good to take time off last week. I’m still basking in the feeling of that. I love having time off to just play in my garden or do whatever I want to do. I like to bask in thoughts about the things I’m doing that feel good. I know that attracts more of the same to me.

Yesterday I moved more of the cut bamboo and potted plants to the east garden, just giving it all a new look. Since, due to the frostbite, it can’t look how it used to look, I can take what I have and make it look like something else. That way it doesn’t look quite so ragged and war torn until it begins to grow back in.

Like Alan Cohen’s teacher Hilda Charlton told him, “take what you have and make what you want“.

As my own beloved Ma Yoga Shakti says, “wherever you are , make a heaven of it.”

Andrea