If you like our posts please see our blog of inspiration by Guru Rattan  here

​I don’t know about you but I have been feeling a bit restless of late - a feeling of being on the verge of a shift, of drawing the line in the sand that will ultimately pinpoint and set purpose behind my actions.  It’s a feeling of my inner Sat Nam (or true self) telling me to pony up and “walk it like I talk it!” Usually, this is a feeling I love, that prickly nudge of intuition that lights a fire under my britches, but this recent bought of restlessness feels a bit off course and undefinable ... uneasy. 

And it is this uneasiness that is befitting of today’s fiery Sagittarius full moon.  If there is ever a time we must work to direct our inner truth it is now. Perhaps this is the time to begin a 40 day sadhana - a daily practice to shift our habits and to help us make the conscious decision and projection of what we want our lives to be!   ​

While Sagittarius can represent the neutral mind and our ability to see the bigger picture and grander plan,  the  fiery elements of Aries and Leo in this full moon represent the adventurer and innovator in us, the fearlessness to go and grow. To use this fiery energy effectively, though, we must direct our action from the heart and our inner truth in order to shed the distractions, negativity and bad habits that cause us to veer off course.   In other words we need to act constructively and access our truth to gain a higher perspective and understanding of our goals and mission.  

This is the time to take an internal inventory of WHERE and HOW we wish to direct the arrow of our Intentions for our next stage of growth.  With this said, it’s one thing to be devoted to our goal but quite another to take that devotion to a higher level by experiencing it through the action of our truth! i.e., there is a difference between going through the motions and what are we are doing specifically to make those motions count for something.   

For example, if your Intention is to bring your business to the next level, how are you operating on a daily basis that works in line with this Intention? OR if you are just beginning this process with your business - then what does achieving this goal look like to you?  What are the ingredients that make up your success?  

And you can put the same questions to your daily yogic practice. If you meditate daily to release fear what is your purpose in doing so? Is it to help you step outside your comfort zone to raise the bar of your personal success? If so, what does it look like?  And if you are just now intending this then what does it feel or look like for you to release fear? List the attributes of this Intention in a journal.  Sketch it out.  

A great way to direct the trajectory of your Arrow or Intention is to Self-Initiate.  This is to define and declare not only your Intention but the specific actions that back your Intention.    A great way to do this is to act as though your personal goal or Intention is a Travel Destination. Visualize what that place looks like and how to get there.   What do your directions to this Destination (Intention) look like?? And what are the things that sets your “Destination” apart, what makes it recognizable? 

It is all well and good, for example, to say you are going to San Francisco but it will be very hard to get there (if at all) if you don’t know a.) how to get there, b.) where it even is or c.) what some of the identifiable landmarks look like at your Destination (e.g., the Golden Gate Bridge) so you know you have arrived at the intended place?  This is no different with a personal or professional Goal.  What does your success look like and how do you get there?   I AM A HUGE FAN OF MIND MAPS and use them to break down my goals ALL THE TIME.  Mind maps can help us see the itinerary of our goals, our inner truth and actions. ​

Combining Self-Initiating (identifying the actions of our Intentions) with the daily use & Technology of Kundalini Yoga is to claim your Intention as your own and to custom design the outcomes you want all while bypassing those pesky road blocks along the way!  Doing this doesn't remove our intuitive drive - rather it cleans the glass of our inner compass so we can see the multitude of possibilities before us. 

​Please be sure to read our reference blog by Guru Rattana here

Sat Nam!
​Amrit Shakti
"I am the Path of the Heart - I am Potential Manifested" - Margaret Lindgren, Unbeaten Path Tours

It’s interesting how clues reveal themselves in order for us to see more clearly.  That is, if we dare to look closely enough to notice them.  

I recently meditated to delve deeper into a nagging sense of disappointment I struggled to shake and upon opening my eyes at the end I found myself staring deeply into a painting on my wall. I have various paintings in my house, works from friends or local artists, but most are personal paintings from a “time-piercing” layer in my life as a younger woman.  The painting I found myself staring into was of woman standing naked and exposed, arms covering her chest.  With the exception of red lips and the pale tip of her nose, her face is obscured by a wild tangled shroud of indigo blue hair as bursts of fire orange color spray from behind the entanglement likes rays of light strangled by a black hole.  This painting always hangs near the deep inner chambers of my hive (my home). It’s personal to me because it is me.  A self portrait I painted almost 20 years ago at age of 30.  A woman struggling with her image and inner acceptance, her mind deep with intuition, her soul fire trapped and begging to emerge. 

Another painting bears a signature on the bottom right - that is, it bears the word Signature, cut sloppily from a magazine like a ransom note begging you to investigate the perpetrator. Yet another of mine that hangs more prominently is of a beautiful horse, painted half black and white, a photo negative of itself, turned on its back with a hint of crimson red that oozes from its heart center when the lighting hits it just right (see photo shown above). ​

Disappointment, expectation and feelings of betrayal can create a constant mental visual "flash-card" in place of our view of  reality.  It is no different than the “virtual reality” toy of the 1970‘s (and earlier years) known as the View-Master.  The View-Master was a hand held device that you looked through to view corresponding View-Master "reels", which were thin cardboard disks containing seven 3D pairs of color-slide images that each eye viewed separately creating the effect as though viewing real life through binoculars. As a child I recall how awesome yet weird those images seemed to me. They were real but not real, miniaturized, stunted, trapped and overly saturated. 

This is exactly how I conceptualized my recent disappointment which I initially experienced on a professional level after a serious let-down by a women’s group I personally held in high esteem. This disappointment somehow seeped its way into my personal world and took hold - tapping into my roots of femininity.  In business you move on if something doesn’t align with your Vision & Values but on a personal level our conditioning, those things that shaped us in our early years and which occurred before our professional lives, leaves us staring blindly into a mental View-Master, confused and let down. 

To help shed light and wash away the false colors of my disappointment I decided to do a meditation I recently taught during a Corporate Workshop I hosted on Setting Intentions.  I call the meditation “Emptying the Mental Garbage” and it helps to break down negative thought patterns, clearing our mental clutter to reveal (from a place of clarity) the true mosaic of what’s behind our false mental slides.  The efficiency of this meditation always astounds me! In just 11 minutes the breath technique used in this meditation calms the Mind enough to help us to acknowledge (and clearly see) what no longer serves our growth and personal vision.  

Just to give you an idea of how layered my disappointment was, I have provided a chronological breakdown of how my thoughts shifted in the course of 11 minutes. 
My thoughts went from: 

• Being angry that I was disappointed to 
• Feeling angry that I always feel let down to 
• Feeling isolated in this feeling - that I am on my own - to 
• Feeling that no one has my back to 
• Feeling unworthy of support to 
• Being disliked to 
• Having a profound sense of loneliness that I felt in my lungs to
• Having the ultimate need to expel this sensation of deep sadness and finally
• Knowing I was carrying a constant sadness of expectation that created in me a strong inner believe of rejection.

YIKES! The fact is, I know I am not alone in having these feelings.  This “profound sadness” I was experiencing wasn’t from this one example of disappointment that was nagging me but rather it was a recurring pattern of expecting disappointment from others.  LET’S READ THAT AGAIN! what I was expecting from others - was disappointment.  I was pre-ordaining it by constantly expecting it - and my own sense of rejection! 

So here’s a good answer to solve the problem --- Don’t expect anything! Problem Solved!  Right? 

Exactly!!! and this takes practice and understanding.  The description of the thoughts I experienced above might sound awful and sad - but getting closer to the truth can be such a relief. Most importantly it turns the focus COMPASSIONATELY WITHIN for deeper introspection -  rather than putting it on something outside of ourselves we can’t control anyway! 

The fact that I opened my eyes from this meditation to view my self portrait with compassion and understanding of my inner beauty, when for so many years it represented inner conflict, struggle and rejection was to finally witness my disappointment for what it was, A LACK OF COMPASSION FOR MYSELF, rather than what I wanted it to be ----> a failed expectation of someone else. 

There are so many things we can be disappointed in and when you feel this way ask yourself what is really nagging you!? Meditate, follow the breath and see where it takes you.  Join us in Kundalini class on Unbeaten Yoga Wednesdays to learn the tools and exercises you can use to clear the blocks and open your mind and heart.  Working our Heart and Solar Plexus Chakras can help clear feelings of rejection, disappointment and self worth issues. The bottom line is this: When we better ourselves - we better those in our life.  We lift them and they lift us and we interconnect as all things do in Nature, ultimately giving us Peace. 

And it's important to remember - the higher we put people on a pedestal the greater the fall and feeling of vengeance and disappointment. 

Yogi Bhajan once said, “To have no enemies is to have no friends at all” and the same goes with disappointment and betrayal.  These things are a fact of life and to live a full life is to have Compassion and to have Compassion is to be HUMAN. And to be human is to manage our disappointments by working to see some version of ourselves in those we accuse of letting us down. It is something that tests me all the time and, I confess, I struggle with it often but I would rather work toward living a full life of compassion than a partial life of confrontation.  Ultimately, though, each step helps me draw the line and to recognize what is skewed, what no longer serves and to make a decision for the compassion of myself in order to grow.  There are challenges everywhere and there is adversity everyday - but the bottom line is this:

YOU ARE YOU no matter what. 
YOU HAVE GRACE no matter what. 
YOU HAVE IDENTITY no matter what.  

​Sat Nam
Margaret
Contact Margaret Lindgren, Owner of Unbeaten Path Tours & Yoga, to learn more about our private and corporate workshop offerings.  Locals can join Margaret's Unbeaten Yoga Wednesdays class - every Wednesday 6:30 PM to 7:30 PM at Gualala Dance Studio in Gualala, CA - Drop-Ins welcome!  Contact us for details