Watch the sun rise, say your goodbyes... off you go.

Listening to the resounding vibrations of the Tibetan Bowl that concludes every session at Yoga to the People, attempting to melt into the floor as the sound washes over me, I contemplate the quote of the evening. It seemed unusually long, and discussed/described the nature of love as being like the plant that grows in the warmth of love, and ripens with its sweetness, is cut away from its roots and ground into flour to become a part of something more beautiful because of the pain and growth, the questioning of our roots and our acceptance of the form we grew into stripped away by the stone that grinds us into something infinitely more malleable, and with new ingredients and compromises added to the new structure of our beings, we finally take our place in a broader scheme of things, to be partaken of by god as we have partaken in each other, a vague cross referencing of compounds and molecules that unite us in metaphor.

Wave after wave of pulsing washes over me and I am contemplative at my inner stillness, reflecting, I suppose on the parts of me that have indeed felt all of those things: blossoming with the power of being loved, and feeling invincible, because I knew that no matter what, when I turned around, there would be that one person there; I pause to extricate myself from the heavy tangles of my perceptions and the roots I had become so accustomed to and their expectations; My own self definition was being pulled apart and examined thread by achingly tender thread; My sense of self was lost with the love I had expected to be there; I found myself again amidst the crumbled pieces of who I was before, and have found myself in a new and exciting phase of my life because I was FORCED to grow.

And I appreciate and am grateful for every moment of it.

I know I am much more capable than I had ever realized, and finding my way back to a place of love and tenderness brings me to it with a core of strength and self acceptance and tolerance that came when I became a brand new loaf of me, and the fantastic new ingredients that are working to make me a whole person.

As people begin to slowly pull themselves up from the floor and weave through the remaining meditative students, I pull myself together and head out. I have things on my mind, but I choose to focus on my breathing, my swagger, the dampness of my clothes from the sweat. I eat, shower, halfheartedly listen to music. I've put off my work until the morning, and claimed this day for me, listening to the sound of my own breathing.

And I begin to remember who I am.