A Year Full of Blessings, Challenges & Lessons to Learn

Nov 1^st 2016

2016 – Definitely a year I didn’t expect. Looking back at to how it was supposed to be, it turned out 360 degrees different.

It hasn’t been a flowing and easy year for me. Somehow my relationships this year were just out of control. I had and am still having a hard time trying to understand the reason of it all. I don’t feel I’ve changed that much to make my relationships turned around this way from one day to another. Have I?

Since the very beginning of the year: colleagues, really close friends, others not so close, men, parents, sister, brother, strangers… I’m not exaggerating, this year my relationships have really really sucked! Some have turned out great after touching rock bottom, and some are still finding its way, healing with time and slowly turning around.

I know there are no coincidences, and I know there is just way too much happening: with me, with people I know, with people I don’t know, with the world in general… It’s too much to blame somebody or something specifically. It’s the stars, it’s the planets, it’s humanity finishing with our Mother Earth 😦 It’s Karma and the Universe telling us to slow down & re-think the way we live our lives, the way we treat ourselves and the way we treat others.

Also, this year I haven’t done much yoga. I miss meditation a lot too and I don’t know why I just don’t sit down and get it over with. It’s taking way too much energy from me to do stuff related to what I love the most. Isn’t that weird? How do I change that? How do I go back to where I was exactly one year ago, feeling over the moon for how things turned out to be for me after taking the yoga road? Was that it?

Well no… this is now the real yoga I guess… these moments which make you feel like you’ve failed in everything and you still need to breath in and keep calm. I haven’t been able to do that though. I have had insomnia for the last weeks, not being able to shut my mind down (“Yoga Citta Vritti Nirodah” is what I keep repeating to myself). And after spending hours and hours in bed, going around trying to finally find some sleep, I find myself allowing my head to think way too much, sneaking in during a big part of my nightly hours. I think about the past (terrible idea) and I think about the future. I’m everywhere except here… in the present.

It has not been all terrible though – don’t get me wrong. I have been in wonderful places since the beginning of the year, and have met beautiful people too. Thailand, Bali, India, California, various cities & beaches in Mexico, Cuba, USA… anyone who hears this would say I’m just being ungrateful, complaining about my year when I have had amazing opportunities. I am grateful, and I have had beautiful times I wouldn’t change for anything in the world. Boy, I am blessed.

It’s just that for a few years now I’ve thought that it is not too much about where have you been, but whom have you been with in those places & have you deeply treasured them? What have you learnt? What did you bring back with you? Did you do good to others? Did you nourish your relationships? Could you have done something different? Did you take in the lesson? Did you live fully as if it was your very last day?

Samalayuca Dunes, Chihuahua, Mexico

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It is now December 31^st and I was thinking about writing something about my year, when I found the text written above.

I’ve realized I have passed the crisis of 2016, which basically lasted half a year (!) and thankfully I’m now moving on to the 2017 new energy that always comes with a new year. I’m excited for what is coming. Slowly I’ve been able to think a bit clearer every day and I feel that my relationships in general are finally good again (relief sigh….). I can even see the year with different eyes!

Yes, 2017 it’s a new year, and yes it does bring new energy BUT just as we experienced in 2016, a year can bring in unexpected things and unexpected energy with it. It’s an energy that is much stronger than any individual energy. It is a collective one that weights and carries much more than what we can manage.

So, even if this New Year has promising expectations (damn, I said the word)… I will remember that no matter what is happening for me and around me, I have to create my own year. I have to work with myself to embrace everything that comes, to see the simple things and to be able to look clearly at the opportunities that are presented to me, because even in the worst situations there is always ALWAYS something we need to take out of it.

I want to live every day and be able to be grateful of at least one important thing in my day, and to be able to take at least one lesson from it, every single day. I wont allow myself to feel sorry or self-compassion, because I learned that this only makes it worse. I will surround myself with strong and happy people whenever I feel I can’t stand on my own two feet. I will reach out for my loved ones and I will make them feel my love for them in every opportunity I can. I will stay out of the Internet as much as I can, I will stop asking stupid questions to Goggle, which only deviate me from going inside and asking my own soul what does it feel… does it feel right? I will live more in the present and stop worrying that much about the future, which I can’t control anyways. I will look into the future – yes, because that’s me, I create a collage every year of things I want to work on and materialize (and many of those things usually happen!); but I won’t cling in to my plans, and I won’t obsess about things not going “the way they were supposed to”. I will live every moment, take it in, and enjoy the people, the places, myself. I will accept me as I am, love me as I am, and love others, because without love we are nothing but ego, and I am ready to move away from mine.

I wish for whoever is reading this, a Happy and Prosperous New Year, full of Joy, Health and Abundant with Love ♥ We are all in this together… Let’s stay together.

 

Traveling different

I am a Taurus, Earth sign. Earth signs apparently don’t like too much change or move in their lives. They are happy once they’ve found a nice & beautiful comfortable space. All they need its just a place to go back to every time – a place where they can feel safe. I am a Taurus, no doubt about that: I ‘m stubborn, determined, practical. I have quite a character at times and yes I do like comfort (who doesn’t?). But the “changing” part is the one not quite clicking astrologically…

Lately my life has been all about changing and moving that I’ve somehow learned to settle temporarily in different places, making them my new home for a week, a month and sometimes more. So my biggest wonder lately is if I will ever be happy settling only in single place? Am I a rare Taurus or am I restlessness about something that I feel I need to get from all of this, that I still haven’t?

Because of these sudden ideas that came up to me, I’ve thought a lot lately about the purpose of my travels. At first I started doing it for myself, to heal my own soul and learn more about this magical and dream-like path that is yoga for me. But now it feels that this is not enough anymore. It feels a little bit shallow.

A few weeks ago someone was curious to know everything about my recent trips, especially India, as for yogis this is a place I believe we all dream about going to some day. “Was it transformational for you?” she asked, her smiling face expecting a typical (and obvious) answer like “OMG, yes, it changed my life!”; however, my reply was somehow different. I hesitated for a while, and after a few seconds told her that actually it wasn’t… that my real life-changing experience actually began when I did my yoga teacher training followed by the leap of faith I took at the beginning of the year: leaving everything behind me, – or at least the life as I knew it – and making a real change in the way I was walking through it. India, as absolutely an amazing experience as it was, has been just a consequence of all of this.

I thought I was happy with my reply. In fact, I actually didn’t even think about it thoroughly until yesterday while facing a little internal crisis (I still blame the last new moon for it). Something was bothering me and I didn’t know what it was. Something felt as if it didn’t fit. I felt completely out of place in my surroundings, with my friends, with my present, as if I needed to change something… but what could that be?

Today I have a clearer mind. The sun has come out again, and with it a new moon and a new way to look at things. I got inspired by a book I’m reading which was a recommendation a friend made to me when I decided to take this journey; its called The Promise of a Pencil by Adam Braun. He is an ordinary guy who has created an extraordinary change in the world. He started by having an itch, same way I did and I’m sure many of us do too. Just an itch, that’s all it takes. Intention.

He took his first long trip to several countries, most of them what we call the “third world”, and chose to not be just a typical tourist but to be a real traveller.

To make this experience real he decided that to every place he landed, he would ask at least one child what was it that they wanted the most in this world if they could have it. He got all sorts of different answers, all of them completely unexpected. What these kids really wanted was everything BUT materialistic things. Its not actually that surprising as these kids live close to nature and they have purer minds as they are not constantly faced with the “you-need-this-to-be-happy” philosophy. They don’t need things to be happy and even with their short age they have this very clear. So to cut the long story short, Adam realized that a common thing these kids wanted was to feel motivated, to be able to do the things they wanted to do without feeling limited or cursed to be born or living in these poor and almost unreachable places. So he gave them power… he gave them schools, but not only 4 walls but he actually created a space fo a sustainable education to happen.

While reading what a person like him could do in such a short time needing nothing but a compassionate heart and creative ideas, I suddenly stopped for a second and realized that this is exactly what I am missing. I have been doing something really wrong: I’ve been missing the most important part of travelling! I haven’t really been connected with people the way I would have liked to. I have not been asking people enough questions in order to get to know them better & understand their culture, wishes and believes a little bit better. I am not a big talker anyway but I have been so busy trying to find my own path and to enjoy every party of MY experience that I forgot completely that people actually make our experience.

They are our best teachers, our best opportunity to become a better person ourselves. I forgot that helping someone selflessly even if it’s just with a smile or an uplifting conversation its what brings us the greatest happiness of all, because it bring happiness to someone else.

Hmm, and I wondered why India was not as transformational as I would have thought. Shame on me! But now I know, I’ve opened my eyes to something I was not seeing or maybe I was deciding not to see… I want to make a difference somehow. Otherwise, what’s the point of all of this?

The year has just ended. 2015 had been incredible, a dream I didn’t even imagine could ever happen; but I’ve decided that I’m going to make 2016 a better one , one that really counts not only for me or for my own benefit, but also (and especially) for someone else, someone out there who might need exactly what I can offer, even if that is just being myself and opening my heart to them – because I keep forgetting that life its all about this: feeling and sharing love & compassion for others. At the end of our lives nothing else matters, does it? Not even the experiences accumulated do if you didn’t get to share your greatest happiness and tears with others, so… l will put that into practice and let’s see what happens.