Atha & Creating with an Open Heart

How long had it been since I felt truly open-hearted? Since I had empowered myself as the creator of my life and not just the person within it?

This morning I was reflecting on the journey – the travel through the past that dropped me into the now – or in Sanskrit, Atha. I try not to spend too much time looking into the rear-view mirror, but once in a while the past reaches out to me with grubby little fingers and whispers, reminding me of every story that occupies real estate on the long road I walk in my mind.

I know the path well, the one with deep grooves in the dirt born from the heaviness of experience. Only the familiar stops along the way are dully illuminated, the scenery I have focused on so many times it emboldens my memory with conviction – this is the road I traveled, these are the things that happened. Each scene holds an energy that collectively feels as weighted as the vehicle that made the ruts. And today, I realized that both the vehicle of me and the road of the past that I travel are in need of repair.

Or…perhaps there are other roads, new roads, that might provide a better route.

I’m not sure.

What I do know is that what we focus on inevitably contributes to what we manifest. I remember sitting at my desk one day, in a recent former life as a Director of Finance in the hospitality industry. I had just received the seventh request to reforecast expense and revenue streams. Corporate was looking for a particular number, and I had worked tirelessly for many days and nights trying to make credible magic without compromising integrity, realistic departmental budgets or the lives of the people who worked at this property – people I cared about.

My shoulders sagged and my chest tightened, so tight I wondered if what my life partner had been saying might come true. “You are going to have a heart attack. Or worse, a stroke.”

My gaze had become unfocused as I sat in stillness, taking one deep breath after another – the next new breath I have never taken before, I told myself. Atha. My sight sharpened on a drop of coffee that had dried next to my keyboard. I thought about clearing the stain with an antibacterial wipe from the shelf behind me. I visualized the stain gone but did not move.

As if my consciousness suddenly awakened, the witness within me activated, and a random thought entered my head. I’m not even sure it was mine. “Is this how you want to vibrate?”

I had rooted myself in an environment rich with stress, for good reason and with reasonable results. This job was a fantastic learning experience, one that doubled as a consuming distraction while I navigated the kind of grief that turns the heart to ash.

I knew. The container I had placed myself in had expired in purpose. For many turns of the sun, it served me well, but my body and mind were telling me it was time.

Now.

I felt dense, heavy, like the worn road of thought about past circumstances I had both created and let weigh my energy. Were I to die today, would my heart be as light as a feather? Or still ash? Is this how I want to vibrate?

As I contemplated the unsolicited question, a counter-vibration began to buzz. How long had it been since I felt truly open-hearted? Since I had empowered myself as the creator of my life and not just the person within it? How long had it been since I created with an open heart?

The question that hastened the career shift has not left me. “Is this how you want to vibrate?” Such a precise and core inquiry. Slight adjustments became broader movements, based on the quality of yes, on who I want to keep company with, and what kind of container I want to reside within. I am listening, manifesting change.

When I first left my job, the fatigue was commanding. One or two naps per day were not uncommon. Fatigue was the alpha that I became willingly submissive to. At the same time, I threw myself into Enjoy the Journey retreat efforts full time. Let this be the avenue that allows me to create again with an open heart, I prayed. For two months I balanced deep rest with filling the well only with what nourished me. By the third month, I realized I had stopped napping. By the fourth, I had so much energy I had to discipline myself not to stay up into the wee hours…creating.

So, this morning, when the past kicked up a little dirt from the over-trodden road, apparently, I was ready – the container of me was solid enough. Finally, I looked at the ruddy thoughts, the mire and the doubt and the guilt that are byproducts of the trauma of loss. I lifted my head just a little and scanned for a different road. Perspective. Turns out, there are several, each with a waiting guardian, a version of myself welcoming, smiling, clear.

The roads are so white, I thought, and the vista is so expansive. There is decisive flow here, vulnerability, and there is support…the support of me. Take a step. And another. Each accompanied by a sense of weightlessness, density replaced with breath. What if I allow myself to remember that I create my own reality? If I replace private persecution with possibility? I do wonder, what different memories I will encounter here as new neural pathways illuminate.

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Atha is commonly translated as “now”, just as I used it in the opening paragraph of this writing, just as it sits in perpetuity as the first yoga sutra. Now, as in present moment. Yet it is not just now, not an ordinary now. Just as the present moment can embody multi-dimensionality, so does the profound intelligence of this concept.

If Atha could describe itself it might begin with, “hereupon” – as in, something is about to happen. Atha might then show itself to be a threshold, exude an energy of readiness, and beyond that a confirmation that preparedness has been met. This auspicious beginning, this non-ordinary moment, this initiation into the present can now unfold. Yet this sense of hereupon is not an action or a doing, rather the spark of potential energy or possibility that is the container of life itself.

Atha, in its aliveness, is a portal opening to the student who is ready to receive. The mind has become steady enough, the inner container is strong enough, the journey to this moment ripe enough with reconciliation of karma. Atha says, I am both the doorway that opens and the moment of entry. In this awareness distraction becomes presence, wandering becomes willingness, preparation becomes practice, seeking becomes receiving, and most importantly, potential becomes embodiment.

Now, this is a road: Present, willing, practiced, receiving, embodied.

Let’s imagine that Atha is a sound instead of a concept; a divine calling, in which the present moment is not intellectually understood…it is heard. A vibration so substantial in resonance that it becomes sound, infusing experience with the knowing that permission has been granted, achievement attained. What would this sound like? How is it that we vibrate in the resonance of Atha?

Click.

The inner door unlocks, revealing the student and teacher as one frequency. Atha is the place where wisdom is soul currency, where knowing is not knowledge but vibration, the same soul-stuff that is the eternal us, the one who cannot die. A vibration so completely itself that it is also sound and light – a light to illuminate new pathways.

Atha is a choice.

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I am adding this to my effortless effort. Atha is not just a practice to become present, to witness and sometimes endure what is hard…it is the answer to the question that I heard in my previous life: Is this how you want to vibrate? Atha is the vibration of the sacred, the gateway to the soul.

Every truly conscious awareness, the authentic game changers, needs a ritual. I visualize it like this:

Begin with consciousness, step into presence at the sacred threshold in a state of readiness, open the inner gate and willingly embrace transformation.

Vibrating this way in Atha, experiencing the golden nectar of the light of the soul, resurrects a magic that I have missed for some time. If Atha is now, the moment, the readiness and the gateway all in one, then creating with an open heart is the path beyond the portal, one that feels like living in color again. Maybe, just maybe, a part of my heart that went the way of the phoenix is now a baby bird again, growing new and spectacular feathers that someday might reflect the lightness of my heart.

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We want to play with you!

We are looking for five more amazing humans to join us at the Vermont Retreat, August 28th to the 30th. Camp Abnaki has a rich histroy and a gorgeous location, with rolling green lawns right on the shore of Lake Champlain (see picture). Please consider saying yes and bringing a friend. It’s going to be another excellent adventure where we enjoy the journey together. Our theme is Affinity in the Heart Series.

VIP options are still available, including one-on-one sessions with retreat leaders, The Artist of Conscious Evolution card deck by ETJ founder Kate Lemay (or art and a necklace), your bed dressed with sheets and pillowcase, personal coffee table for early AM coffee or tea without having to go to the dining hall, organic toiletries and more!