In the fall of 2008, I was feeling as whipped by storms – in my case, emotional storms -- as the coastal pine trees that surrounded me on Neptune Ave near the shores of Leucadia's Stone Steps beach. Barely aware of my environment as I struggled inwardly, I brushed away the spirit tears that dropped from the pine needles above me.
My business partners' voice rang clearly through my cell, "For you, Trevor, regeneration is defined as a loss of your old path, and the spontaneous fulfillment of the void created in that loss through a new inspired idea." . The pine needles were dripping with water as if the tree itself were a rogue cloud. My business partners' voice rang clearly through my cell, "For you, Trevor, regeneration is defined as a loss of your old path, and the spontaneous fulfillment of the void created in that loss through a new inspired idea."
Like all new beginnings, this one started with an end. An end to former beliefs as my true path became clear. For many months, I had been glimpsed this new idea that dived in and out of my consciousness. It was an idea that was to impact my career -- my quest to change the world – and all the facets of my life. The idea was simple in its truth. Everyone I met could be touched by a sense of community, an outreaching of heart energy that would lift one's spirit, calm the mind and heal the body.
That night, my friend's words touched my core. She had witnessed the spiritual pubescence that I had recently experienced and well understood that the growth spurt had only just started. I was aware that those past experiences enabled me to break through my barriers of selfishness into realms of giving from a limitless place. I needed to pass through these layers of my fear and to embrace the opportunities to fail, be vulnerable, and to love.
Out of my own fear I was reminded that earlier this year (first quarter 2008), the yoga school where I once did teacher training had closed due to some issues with and among the community. An internal change began when I heard the news and then saw the empty studio in the heart of downtown Encinitas. In this place that had housed two decades of yoga and teacher trainings, I now saw only paper-covered windows. I asked myself what had changed, and then remembered that it was not so much important what had changed but that something had changed.
Later, I found out that my old school was full of asbestos and had to be entirely torn apart before a new renter could come in. I again realized that teaching there had been unhealthy for me and for my integrity. I was appalled by knowing that I'd been involved with a place that was holding classes for health and advocating the healthy practice of yoga in rooms where it was dangerous to breathe anything that chipped away from the walls. In that moment, I called my words and actions into question, and assessed, as any practicing yogi would do, if I was still in that space of communicating ignorantly. A frightening shudder passed through me when I realized how much more of the asbestos I was likely to have inhaled while cleaning the popcorn ceiling, and how, in encouraging my students to breathe deeply during classes, they were possibly breathing poisons into their system.
It was time for the art of giving and receiving to evolve. I understand then that I was to pioneer a new way of giving as the foundation of my business and to support a new, community-oriented system of donation-based teaching resulting in a community where people respect and honor each other from a place of clarity and love.
Having not yet traveled beyond the realm of San Diego, or for that matter, the United States, I searched for guidance in the memories of my younger days at schools, with their various teachings and apprenticeships that claimed to be "the best" and most deeply rooted in "tradition." I have always been a student in search of a history that made sense, seeking a traditional, logical approach that delivered repeatable results and showed success for generations. I understood and believed that these established schools and teachers would provide me with the depth of study in yoga and business that would not be offered by "run of the mill" facilities or by new "up and coming" master teachers.
The teachers I found and the trainings I attended gave me a sense of depth and training that I felt was necessary to be "the best" or to at least be backed by a certification in an art with a history of success. I repeatedly learned from all my trainings and teachers, from 2005 to 2007, that those who teach and follow their traditions and belief systems in an extreme way, also tended to be extremely inflexible. Their paths in business and life orient them in a way that seemed narrow-minded. Today, I see that everyone must do what is in their current evolution to do and they are only capable of working with the opinions that they think they know.
I, like many others in my life, never considered that which I knew, but only what I was pretending not to know. Hence, I worked for free for much of 2005 through 2007, teaching yoga as an apprentice teacher and learning business, sales, and marketing as an administrative assistant to a local CEO.
In January 2008, something amazing happened. After the collapse of my former school. I took a teaching position at Yoga Swami studio, a donation-based studio in Encinitas on the 101 Coast Highway. I was naive to the ways of donation-based teaching and community organization, but I saw this as a challenge to my natural sense of business and sales, and a challenge of the "way I was being." For months, I was grumpy at the idea of not having a set margin of income from my teaching. I struggled and learned through trial and error that it was going to take way more "genuine giving" to create regular attendance and regular donations.
This is when the shift occurred inside of me, some time near my birthday in July 2008. I realized through a series of conversations with former mentors and other students that I was selfish and abundance had a tremendous opportunity to flow freely if I just let go of the "me" and the "I." I changed the weekly communications in my email newsletters to include other teachers' events. I began to use the inclusive "our" in my written and oral communications, and I began sharing of myself, and then community sharing. In my mind, this process will eventually lead to global and universal sharing. I truly believe that when people are involved in global sharing that all of humanity will find peace.
A great regeneration has occurred within, but only after all that made me selfish and all that I was taught as a business professional was shed and peeled back like the openings of a fresh cocoon by an emerging butterfly. This same regeneration will occur for all of society in America as we move into a conscious future where business will be based entirely on the precept: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
It wasn't until I learned to shed my cocoon of the self and ego, that I could thrive in an environment that has shut down so many businesses who took for themselves what was given to the community. At Yoga Swami, I was given the freedom to grow my community and teachings any way that I felt was honest and true as long as it followed the principles of yoga and Ahimsa (to do no harm).
In 2008, I gave away my perspective of ever really "having" something or someone or some contract and allowed a sense of co-creation and community to grow in its place, a community where everyone was allowed to be at the same level and have the same responsibilities if that was truly desired.
After two and a half years of doing my own taxes and running Waking Within Yoga, now renamed Waking Within Community, I decided that I had the know-how to start a non-profit spiritual organization based in Carlsbad, California. The Sacred Spiral, a non-profit spiritual organization, was founded on the intention to "first do no harm" and to manifest community through honesty, sharing, and faith in holistic living. I envision a 2009, to be a year of success for those who hold the intention to heal the global community all the while symbiotically taking care of the individuals involved.
Now, for us as business professionals, but more importantly as community leaders, we use our time and communications to reach out to businesses and individuals who are willing to play the game of oneness or unity, the meaning of the word: yoga. In the past three months we have spend our thoughts, words and actions encouraging others to give like nothing will come in return except a fullness of one's inner faith and peace that will never run out. Members of Sacred Spiral know that it is in giving we receive and it is in letting go and dying that we will be born to abundant life.
Our dream is that Sacred Spiral will one day provide donation-based spirituality classes, holistic health education programs, including a library of holistic history and metaphysics located on a sustainable farming facility. We hope by doing our best with what we know to be fair, we can offer permission for others to do the same.
Practice Lightly On Our Earth,
Trevahr
My business partners' voice rang clearly through my cell, "For you, Trevor, regeneration is defined as a loss of your old path, and the spontaneous fulfillment of the void created in that loss through a new inspired idea." . The pine needles were dripping with water as if the tree itself were a rogue cloud. My business partners' voice rang clearly through my cell, "For you, Trevor, regeneration is defined as a loss of your old path, and the spontaneous fulfillment of the void created in that loss through a new inspired idea."
Like all new beginnings, this one started with an end. An end to former beliefs as my true path became clear. For many months, I had been glimpsed this new idea that dived in and out of my consciousness. It was an idea that was to impact my career -- my quest to change the world – and all the facets of my life. The idea was simple in its truth. Everyone I met could be touched by a sense of community, an outreaching of heart energy that would lift one's spirit, calm the mind and heal the body.
That night, my friend's words touched my core. She had witnessed the spiritual pubescence that I had recently experienced and well understood that the growth spurt had only just started. I was aware that those past experiences enabled me to break through my barriers of selfishness into realms of giving from a limitless place. I needed to pass through these layers of my fear and to embrace the opportunities to fail, be vulnerable, and to love.
Out of my own fear I was reminded that earlier this year (first quarter 2008), the yoga school where I once did teacher training had closed due to some issues with and among the community. An internal change began when I heard the news and then saw the empty studio in the heart of downtown Encinitas. In this place that had housed two decades of yoga and teacher trainings, I now saw only paper-covered windows. I asked myself what had changed, and then remembered that it was not so much important what had changed but that something had changed.
Later, I found out that my old school was full of asbestos and had to be entirely torn apart before a new renter could come in. I again realized that teaching there had been unhealthy for me and for my integrity. I was appalled by knowing that I'd been involved with a place that was holding classes for health and advocating the healthy practice of yoga in rooms where it was dangerous to breathe anything that chipped away from the walls. In that moment, I called my words and actions into question, and assessed, as any practicing yogi would do, if I was still in that space of communicating ignorantly. A frightening shudder passed through me when I realized how much more of the asbestos I was likely to have inhaled while cleaning the popcorn ceiling, and how, in encouraging my students to breathe deeply during classes, they were possibly breathing poisons into their system.
It was time for the art of giving and receiving to evolve. I understand then that I was to pioneer a new way of giving as the foundation of my business and to support a new, community-oriented system of donation-based teaching resulting in a community where people respect and honor each other from a place of clarity and love.
Having not yet traveled beyond the realm of San Diego, or for that matter, the United States, I searched for guidance in the memories of my younger days at schools, with their various teachings and apprenticeships that claimed to be "the best" and most deeply rooted in "tradition." I have always been a student in search of a history that made sense, seeking a traditional, logical approach that delivered repeatable results and showed success for generations. I understood and believed that these established schools and teachers would provide me with the depth of study in yoga and business that would not be offered by "run of the mill" facilities or by new "up and coming" master teachers.
The teachers I found and the trainings I attended gave me a sense of depth and training that I felt was necessary to be "the best" or to at least be backed by a certification in an art with a history of success. I repeatedly learned from all my trainings and teachers, from 2005 to 2007, that those who teach and follow their traditions and belief systems in an extreme way, also tended to be extremely inflexible. Their paths in business and life orient them in a way that seemed narrow-minded. Today, I see that everyone must do what is in their current evolution to do and they are only capable of working with the opinions that they think they know.
I, like many others in my life, never considered that which I knew, but only what I was pretending not to know. Hence, I worked for free for much of 2005 through 2007, teaching yoga as an apprentice teacher and learning business, sales, and marketing as an administrative assistant to a local CEO.
In January 2008, something amazing happened. After the collapse of my former school. I took a teaching position at Yoga Swami studio, a donation-based studio in Encinitas on the 101 Coast Highway. I was naive to the ways of donation-based teaching and community organization, but I saw this as a challenge to my natural sense of business and sales, and a challenge of the "way I was being." For months, I was grumpy at the idea of not having a set margin of income from my teaching. I struggled and learned through trial and error that it was going to take way more "genuine giving" to create regular attendance and regular donations.
This is when the shift occurred inside of me, some time near my birthday in July 2008. I realized through a series of conversations with former mentors and other students that I was selfish and abundance had a tremendous opportunity to flow freely if I just let go of the "me" and the "I." I changed the weekly communications in my email newsletters to include other teachers' events. I began to use the inclusive "our" in my written and oral communications, and I began sharing of myself, and then community sharing. In my mind, this process will eventually lead to global and universal sharing. I truly believe that when people are involved in global sharing that all of humanity will find peace.
A great regeneration has occurred within, but only after all that made me selfish and all that I was taught as a business professional was shed and peeled back like the openings of a fresh cocoon by an emerging butterfly. This same regeneration will occur for all of society in America as we move into a conscious future where business will be based entirely on the precept: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
It wasn't until I learned to shed my cocoon of the self and ego, that I could thrive in an environment that has shut down so many businesses who took for themselves what was given to the community. At Yoga Swami, I was given the freedom to grow my community and teachings any way that I felt was honest and true as long as it followed the principles of yoga and Ahimsa (to do no harm).
In 2008, I gave away my perspective of ever really "having" something or someone or some contract and allowed a sense of co-creation and community to grow in its place, a community where everyone was allowed to be at the same level and have the same responsibilities if that was truly desired.
After two and a half years of doing my own taxes and running Waking Within Yoga, now renamed Waking Within Community, I decided that I had the know-how to start a non-profit spiritual organization based in Carlsbad, California. The Sacred Spiral, a non-profit spiritual organization, was founded on the intention to "first do no harm" and to manifest community through honesty, sharing, and faith in holistic living. I envision a 2009, to be a year of success for those who hold the intention to heal the global community all the while symbiotically taking care of the individuals involved.
Now, for us as business professionals, but more importantly as community leaders, we use our time and communications to reach out to businesses and individuals who are willing to play the game of oneness or unity, the meaning of the word: yoga. In the past three months we have spend our thoughts, words and actions encouraging others to give like nothing will come in return except a fullness of one's inner faith and peace that will never run out. Members of Sacred Spiral know that it is in giving we receive and it is in letting go and dying that we will be born to abundant life.
Our dream is that Sacred Spiral will one day provide donation-based spirituality classes, holistic health education programs, including a library of holistic history and metaphysics located on a sustainable farming facility. We hope by doing our best with what we know to be fair, we can offer permission for others to do the same.
Practice Lightly On Our Earth,
Trevahr
Comments