Where is the love? Have we strayed so far from our hearts that we have forgotten what it feels like to love? We need to get back into connection with our hearts.
I wanted to reach out to you and see how you are doing right now. I feel the weight of confusion, suffering, and pain that people are experiencing right now. My American friends are tired, fearful, hopeful, depressed, anxious, the full swing of emotions. My International friends are overwhelmed with, as one of them put it, “the negativity that dominates” around the American situation. I want you to know that I am honestly concerned for how you are feeling right now. I may never have interacted with you personally, but you reading this message connects us in some small way.
An Indian Guru I once saw, Sri Karunamayi, used to say, “when you are sad, I am sad.” I feel that. It hits home.
On November 23, 2020, my dear teacher Rama Jyoti Vernon (www.rama.yoga) left this plane of existence. I have wanted to eulogize her for you, but every writing turns into 6 – 10 pages. I feel like Legolas in Lord of the Rings after Gandalf’s passing, of course death happens, but it seems inconceivable for someone like Rama. When asked what they Elves are singing, he says, “a lament for Gandalf…I have not the heart to tell you, for me the grief is still too real.”
Yet, her passing brought us closer as I knew it would. I’m not vocal about it because I do not care to hear others’ opinions about it, but one of my gifts in life is communication with the other side. On the day of her burial, I sat in meditation. Rama came to me and told me how I was to communicate with her; what I needed to add to my practice for that sacred communication. Since that time, I have dived deeply into my practice. I get up in the morning and I am excited to sit. I feel the accumulation of the practice energizing my practice. And it has been fruitful.
I am called to serve, and that call comes from love. One of my other gifts is to access deep love for others. Perhaps that explains why the quote above is so powerful for me – it speaks to my experience. My deepest wish for my own realization is simply love, to live in that place of love all the time. I called it Inner Radiance in my book, some would call it God, Hashem, Allah, energy, the Universe, and my best word is love, just love.
Why share all this with you? Because I feel called to share in the hopes that my sharing serves you. I know that I am to share something when it pours out of me, as this writing has. My spiritual work this past month and a half urged me to create the Where is the Love? series on YouTube. These practices are coming from my practice or have been gifted to me from a space of love. I share them with you in the hopes that they inspire love, release, softening, hope, connection, radiance, etc. I have spent days of my life on this project with only the hope that it serves