Attention world, I am not a vegan! 😱 After my egglicious weekend brunch stories on instagram this past weekend, my “cred” is on the chopping block. So I’m just gonna be straight up. I align with a plant based diet, but I am not vegan. What is important to me is that the choices I make abide by the practice of #ahimsa which is a practice of non-harming. This means I am vegetarian and I believe humans can live without eating other animals, so I CHOOSE to refrain from eating animals. 😘🐷.
I also know the way we source our animal products is seriously fucked in so many ways (in my country at least), so I CHOOSE to only eat humanely and responsibly sourced eggs. This is what my body has told me it needs these days, so I practice ahimsa for myself as well. And who doesn’t love honey? But milk... really? So gross.
🐮💚🥥.
Bottom line, I do not believe in being constrained by a way of life that has been defined by others, AKA vegan. What I do is CHOOSE! I act based on my beliefs, my intuition, and an awareness of the circumstances in the moment. If we blindly prescribe to a way of life outside our own, we are not being, or being present. Don’t limit yourself. Exemplify what it is to be human: to have choice in every moment, each action, and in every thing! And know who you really are choosing to be!
We practice yoga as a practice of connection, to life and to ourselves. It is a time when we can truly acknowledge and honor what is real and true to each of us. Life today has us darting around and doing so many things that we need to schedule time to do this. But to truly embody the philosophy of Yoga, it takes more than finding ourselves on mat for an hour a day or week or month. We must take what we see in those moments in our breath, in our posture, deep within our minds and then we must know it within every space of our lives that we can. Even the most strict practices of asana help us create the space to find our truths. And once we do, it is our responsibility to LIVE IT!
A PRACTICE FOR YOU TO REDEFINE YOURSELF
Take some time and define who you are BEING. Get out a journal or piece of paper and start writing down some of the ways in which you define your life. Write down the answers to the following:
How do you see yourself at home? Who are you there?
What about at work?
Who are you when you are out being social?
Who are you when you’re getting around from place to place, in your car or in traffic or on the train?
Who are you to your family?
Who are you to your friends?
Who are you to your employers and co-workers?
Who are you to strangers that you encounter throughout your day?
Most importantly who are you to YOURSELF?
Don’t overthink, just use simple responses, maybe just one word. We require definitions to exist in and understand this diverse universe. Each definition is simply a way to explain or examine one facet of the whole, an individual shift in the equation of eternal energetic balancing of life.
CARPAX UNIVERSI Capable of the universe are our minds. Even though as humans we are not yet to the point where we can understand everything, we can have an understanding of our connection to everything through a deeper knowing of ourselves. But we often become trapped in the constraints and definitions that others have placed on us. From our society to our best friends, our roles in life are always being defined by others. As a result, our ability to see the connection to our inner universe becomes limited. And we are the ones who most often do this to ourselves.
Look at the answers to the questions above and you will see what ways others may be limiting your experience in the different realms of your life. And most importantly, look at how you may be doing this to yourself. You never can move into who you really are if you are held in the shackles of “who you think you need to be”. What definitions of your life are you using that limit your potential to be? As an example, you may think, “I’m such a hard worker, so when I get home I like to be lazy.” And that is fine, as long as it’s not keeping you from being something you would rather be. On top of that, you are welcome to change those definitions at any moment, and you can go from lazy to care-free or blissful in the blink of an eye, then notice how that shift also affects your experience. The equation of life is always changing, and holding on to ideas of your past-selves is like trying to solve a quantum physics problem with an abacus. Good luck with that…
Time to upgrade your technology. So now that you have given yourself the space for this practice of seeing clearly how you have been defined, you can choose who you really WANT to be. If you are ready to make these choices, you can write down how you would like to define yourself in all of the situations above. Once you have defined your new ways of being as a possibility, you will be ready to choose, fully and completely, who you are in those moments.
What gives us the power to understand the universe is free will and choice. In any moment we can define ourselves and our relationship to the universe, and it comes from CHOOSING who to be. This is the greatest power we have.
Remember that this too is just a practice. Even if you choose to stay in the definitions of others, or don’t quite have a clear idea of who you are wanting to be, you can keep trying and practicing. Revisit these questions every once in a while and don’t be afraid to change your perception of who you are at any time. After all, we are always growing into who we are TRULY meant to be, and what holds us back are only the limits we believe about ourselves. Start practicing conscious choice in any way you can, and work on planting new seeds in yourself that will sprout into something new and absolutely YOU.
