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Monday April 27th:  Why Getting Lost is OK (About our internal GPS System and how I used a real GPS for the first time and what I learned)

Ok you guys so for the first time while in California this weekend I used a fancy GPS system. I was very skeptical.  I didn’t trust it.  The truth is I was afraid of getting lost.  And what if I trusted it and then I still got lost thereby losing faith in trust itself? How would I recover?  What would I lose in the process of getting lost?  A lot of internal dialogue there right?  So I hung in there the first couple hours going by what it told me, then I just had to test it.  I took a wrong way to see if I got lost would it help me get back my equilibrium.  It did!  I tested it some more and then the GPS and I developed a solid dialogue with one another.  I love GPS!

This may seem like not a big deal but recently I had the experience in human relationship of being asked to trust and have faith, which I did, and then “getting lost” as I found out what I was told was true turned out to be false.  I lost my footing, I lost emotional equilibrium.  But as a result of this practice of yoga I learned that falling off the path of what we think life is supposed to be is an opportunity for spiritual growth.  There is more than one way.  Will I need to work harder to trust the next human relationship based on what happened here, probably, but love will win over skepticism with time.  Hey, it helped me love GPS so anything is possible.

While in the Sierra Nevada mountains I took many hikes and you realize in this kind of gorgeous but tough terrain that it is easy to get lost and lose sight of direction.    Just like in life.   You know the earth and the sky (our start date of life and we know we’ll have an expiration date too) but the dash in between these dates is a sometimes confusing roadmap of choices. Now some of us go along living life by staying on the paved road because of fear or lack of trust. We just keep walking the same direction out of duty or being a martyr.  What we don’t realize is just because the road is easy and formalized we can still be totally lost.  We’re lost because we are living life afraid to deviate from this single roadway, just sleep walking or getting through as "fine". 

Going off roading then is the answer.  Get lost!  How? It begins with allowing ourselves to explore new pathways, or poses or relationships. And if we do get lost as long as we are conscious of our actions and are causing no harm to others then why not?  We have to trust the internal GPS of our internal locus that we will get unlost again.  And its through getting lost, that facing of the unknown or fear or being out of control or trying something new, that we often learn the most.  We learn to try the path less traveled as Robert Frost speaks of.  And most of all it wakes us up to so many other options!  Better this than living life in a constant state of “ok” where its just half a life.

Now I’m the first to admit this isn’t easy.  I have to say that I could feel my breath change when hiking especially these fossil falls, all black rock, like the surface of the moon or in the snow on the mountain, or in dense forest you can easily get lost but while lost you can also enjoy the experience.

That’s what I hope we learn, enjoy life, get lost, get unlost but make it all worthwhile as a means to learn about yourself and grow spiritually and emotionally.  Have faith, trust and explore love!  Silvia