Self Samyama

That first experience with Samyama encouraged me to deepen my practice. At that point I was doing inner process work twice a month with a facilitator, mostly Samyama, mostly in my sessions. I had proven to myself one of the really cool things about Samyama, I could do it by my SELF! Doing self-Samyama takes a lot of discipline, or at least that was the story I was telling myself at the time. I did it, but not longer than 3 or 5 minutes, and still it was phenomenal how it worked. My self-samyama sessions made the Samyama work I did with my Samyama practitioner deeper. I look at the time between these early Samyama experiences and Leah's death as dabbling in Samyama.

I had a moment of clarity soon after she died that I had been preparing for what was to come next for a long time. It was one of those moments that crystallized for me that everything that I did up until that moment happened exactly right at exactly the right time. It was also the first time I thought that my own experience is valid for me, but at that time it was still a head thought, it would be years before I knew this to be true in my heart. After Leah died, I knew intuitively that Samyama was the only thing that would take me from moment to moment in my pain and despair and grief. I dove into it, still wanting things to be different, and at the same time knowing that the only way through this was to be with the pain, devastation and grief as it appeared in each moment. Easy, no, necessary, yes. This was not a conscious, well thought out analytical decision, it was a heart decision, it was almost choice-less.

For several years, my Samyama practitioner extended the invitation to attend the Temple of the Sacred Feminine. (then called The School for Women Healers)
http://www.templeofthesacredfeminine.com/Temple/Home/index.html
The information I saw always intrigued me, but I thought I was not evolved enough. Now that was a big story! After Leah died, I was drawn to attend one of the portal weekends. I still did not feel evolved enough, but I could not stay away. Other grief support groups I looked in to did not resonate with me. This was not grief support, rather it was a community of women who welcomed me and supported me and loved me from the moment I stepped foot inside the Sophia Center. It was unlike any other community experience I had ever had. They did not try to fix me. They held me when I wailed. The were sacred witnesses to my broken open heart. I was able to just BE, for the first time in my life. I attended the Temple for 4 years, and entered apprenticeship for Samyama practitioners. I spent another 4 years completing my apprenticeship. As my journey in the Temple and my apprenticeship spiraled, my Samyama practice became my way of meeting each day. Living from my heart radically changed my life.

From where I am now I can see that the inner work I had done to that point prepared me to do the work I entered, willing to be with whatever arose in the moment, without wanting it to be different. I did not need to talk endlessly about what happened only to stay in the drama. Sometimes I think that would have been easier, to stop everything right where I was and be the victim , the poor woman who lost her daughter, I know I was tempted more than once to stay there. And each time I took the feelings to my heart and allowed them to be as they were, I gradually learned that I could feel the pain with out suffering. At times, I would receive an unexpected blessing. At first I felt guilty for feeling anything other than pain, for receiving a new insight, or a connection that would not have been possible under any other circumstances. The beauty of Samyama is we start with whatever is there, when I felt guilt, I would go in to the guilt in my heart and feel it, listen to any stories my head was telling me, witness the stories, and return to my heart, to the feeling, always returning to the feeling. The feeling by itself, with out the story of the feeling was/is always different. You and I may each have different stories of anxiety, we may each describe it differently, and it may hold different feelings. When we bring awareness to the feeling of anxiety to our heart, while dropping our stories of anxiety, that is where the alchemy happens. A shift may occur the first, third or hundredth time you bring this feeling to your heart. I was going to say 'each time you bring this same feeling to your heart' however, if you are bringing something to your heart in the moment in which it arises, it is never exactly the same. It is only when we think it is the same, when we tell ourselves the same story about it that we always have, that is seems like the 'same old thing' coming up again and again. When we are present in each moment, it is like we are starting at the beginning. It is the scrupulous devotion to being with what is, exactly as it arises in the present moment that has brought me from the moment my daughter died to this moment. Along the way, in each moment many wondrous things happened. I suspect some of them will be placed upon this altar, when the time is right.