When plans dissolve I don’t worry anymore, I trust, I let go and this is the Elegance of Power.

Trust and Let Go has been the theme coming up for me lately.

I mean, when isn’t it a theme for any of us, right? I joke with my students, that when we finally get the guts to take our hands off the wheel, we find out that we weren’t the ones driving anyway.

Yesterday I was practicing on the trapeze, my new admitted love and obsession. A perfect practice for anyone trying to control anything in one’s life.

With the trapeze, I’m continually rewiring my awareness in relationship to this bar held by two ropes that dangles in the air. As I discover that somehow my body can wrap and curl, hang and fly with this apparatus mid-air. I’m not only learning how to use my body in space differently or even new muscles, I’m also learning the elegance of power, how to let go.

How easy all of these advanced postures are!

In yesterday’s yoga workshop that I taught at Espace Equilibrium, one of the themes that emerged is how easy all of these advanced postures are, but we have to work really hard to actually find out that truth. Having your body gracefully placed in the correct dimension, it’s simply physics. There’s less strength involved than we think – or at least it’s not brute strength – it’s an elegant strength (elegant power) that involves awareness, soft focus, and trust.

It’s how we fly and stay centered as we hurtle through the cosmos.

And of course, since we are hurtling through the cosmos and have no idea where we came from or where we’re going, we may be terrified. This the early morning as the rain was drizzling down the peeling walls of Lisbon, a dear friend on the other side of the planet was messaging me the same theme: how to trust when we don’t know. But isn’t that the initiation that life is constantly bringing us?

Yesterday on the trapeze in order to fly up onto the bar, I had to relax my body and let life take me. It wasn’t working (or looking pretty) if I tried to control the movement. In fact, for this particular maneuver, I couldn’t even look where I was going. I just had to trust and fly. Once I got used to it, of course I LOVED it. But there was a time period when my eyes widened (and nearly popped out of my head) in fear and disbelief.

I loved that this was what I had to learn yesterday, the elegance of power to let go.

Right now I’m in Lisbon in the 6th apartment that I’ve stayed in here. Last night I had to suddenly move in the rain due to the surprise realization of mold in my other new apartment. I’d been popping around Portugal this past week and needed a place to ground before I fly to Zurich. And although I had put effort into finding a place, I didn’t know the apartment I’m in now even existed. My host quickly moved me into this better more beautiful apartment, right when we discovered the mold. I love it. It’s quiet except for the church bells and warbling pigeon and bird chirps. Sunlight streams in through the windows over the glazed rain roofs of the city. Light meshed in ancient history.

The other thing I didn’t know: I was supposed to be teaching a workshop today. Surprised that there weren’t many signups, the owner of the studio and I ended up cancelling it. Today I was even supposed to be in Switzerland already skiing. I cancelled that as well.

When plans dissolve I don’t worry anymore, I trust, I let go.

What wants to happen will happen. Like my favorite thing that’s happening in the whole world right now: I’m hiding out in this beautiful apartment. I don’t have to see or talk to anyone all day. I’m all by myself. I’ve got a “Cat Day” to play, create and rest. It’s an important time that I need for myself with all the travel and teaching I do.  A sacred space with myself, on no less a Sunday, is the most perfect vibe for a winter mini-retreat.

I love that I have ideas of plans. Because I think I’m the one drawing the map and I’m the one with my hands on the wheel.

As an old mentor astrologer friend of mine said, “Cat, the moment you think you know what’s going on, life will change it for you.”

The Surprise.

On New Year’s Eve of 2005, I was with my friends Pat, Richard and Lincoln. We were on our way for some group meditation event. Pat fed us curry beforehand. As we were walking out the door, she stopped with her deck of cards and said, “Let’s pull a card for the year.”

I remember I got the Dolphin card that said “Surprise.”

Richard kept throwing up his hands laughing for the next hour, saying to me, “Surprise!” I liked it, but really didn’t register much beyond that.

Well let’s just say that year was a surprise. A couple days later I was invited to Japan to teach – initially for 2 weeks, though I stayed for 3 months. I went to Bali for my first time and look what happened.

These past 11 years have been one hell of a surprise.

I couldn’t have ever predicted or even written a more heart-breaking, magical, love-filled, terrifying, amazing-beyond-words story. I couldn’t have even tried. If some old gypsy psychic with arthritic hands and crystal-pierced eyes grabbed my hands and predicted to me all that would have happened, I would have thought she was crazy. I would have just hidden under the covers, pressed fast forward for some of the parts and paused on the others. I would have even tried to delete certain events. Thank god I can’t.

As much of the elegance of power we have, trust in being we are all the divine – or as I discovered on the mushroom trip that changed my life at age 18, “I’m God and I like it!” – we are also only tiny specks of starlight hurtling through space. We have no idea of when we’ll fall from the sky, collide into one another and separate, or burst into ether. All we can do, our only elegance of power really, is to shine, shine, shine.

So my Sunday morning message to myself, and to all of us, is this: Let’s let go and shine.

Sending love from Lisbon <3 o:p=””>