Harvest Moon Thoughts and the Sabbatical's End

During the last Harvest Moon, I reflected on the year that was and the coming days. It has been an amazing year out of the corporate, and taking this sabbatical is one of the best decisions I have ever made. But I am coming back, bigger, brighter and more balanced - Well, that's the prayer!

I want to share a few lessons I reaped from this 15-month journey:

1. Take that time off.

Take that day, that month, that year off to do work that fills you with love. It may begin to change your path, it may bring you back with a bigger heart. It may change or validate what you know to be true. It will make you a better person.  Two things about this:

• Listen. No one can walk your path for you despite the best of counsel and wonderful perspectives. Listen intently and lovingly to mentors, friends, and those around you, then listen to the quiet voice inside you.
• Do it. Nothing beats learning from experience, so do what has to be done and learn from it. Sometimes, your conclusion is different from the initial hypothesis so be open to the gifts of your actions - you can be right or you can be schooled, or both.

Whether it's off or on, relish every moment of your time.

2. Grow the best parts your heart.

We have been given more than a couple of gifts, a few exceptional skills, and while we know what we love innately, we learn to love a few things along the way. The heart symbol has two lobes, so grow both:

• Grow the seeds of what you know you are passionate about - that cause, that movement, that deepseated desire to unleash a talent. Finally, give time for these often (and wrongly) labeled impracticalities.
• Accept the love that grew on you (yep, those acquired along the way). It's quite interesting to admit what these are. I missed big chunks of the work I did. They mattered and made a difference to me but I did not know just how much. I rediscovered that this year.

Grow your heart's best parts in equal measure.

Along with the lessons are some self-discoveries that I now embrace with loving acceptance, most of the time anyway. Everyone will have a great set to share (and not share). Here are those I will share.

1) It is my calling to take care of my family. I am meant to give, and giving starts at home then extends out. I am a provider and I get a bunch of things from that - joy, the most. As a daughter to my cray cray folks (and I say that with love), my belligerent siblings (again with love), wife to my best friend and mom to my big babies, I have this overwhelming need to give gifts, big hugs, tough love, the works. That may very well be my primary function or my Dharma.

2) Sharing Yoga is my advocacy and my spiritual practice. I accept nothing more from it than to sustain and fuel and spiral my love to share it. Because of that, I will continue to practice and so long as I am called, I will continue to teach. I will continue to learn more so I can share more. 

3) I am meant to get things (big and small) done. There are special qualities that we've had even as children. It's great that some things we enjoyed then have a special place to this day. I have a thing for people, for complexity, for creativity, for concepts, for process, for structure, for measures, for relationships, and then for fluidity. Somewhere there is that optimal point of balance. But balance is forever active, and changing despite that sense of steadiness (or efficiency). Each time we get the great things done, I believe we are in that state and that state produces the best outcomes. That, in corporate life, excites me.

4) I really need to learn how to rest. Seriously, this is a tough one. Ovid says, "Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop."  In this "sabbatical," I worked 8 to 10 hours a day. I worked on weekends. I work for the sake of working. It's funny how the general perception is that teaching yoga (or writing music, or creating art, or being a full-time mother and wife) is more relaxed. We are all busy. We work hardest when in the zone. We all need to rest. 

5) It's best to work with the best parts of my heart. By now, I know what does not suit me (or what I am not good at) and it's okay. If there's enough interest or maybe if it's a matter of life and death, I will find a way to stretch the scarcity of these God-given talents but I have the best of me to work with. Being the topnotch homeroom mom may not be up my alley or proficiency in high math may not be my best asset but they are someone else's best, and I have my own.

In this year's field of lessons and self-discoveries, and seeds, and weeds, and acquired plants, I have grown. I am grateful to remember these during the Harvest Moon. This is the time when we work in our fields a bit longer, trusting the light that shines down on us.

May our harvest be abundant!