When merchants eat their big meals
and sleep their dead sleep,
we night-thieves go to work.
-Rumi

Even during the holidays, or maybe especially during the holidays, it is hard to avoid a sense of despair if one reads or watches the news daily or goes on some form of social media. It seems that so much of our world, near and far, is struggling heavily.

Maribel and I take this moment to invite you to join us in intentionally noticing the good (the best form of night-thievery). This practice is not meant to take lightly the suffering all around; instead, it is part of a realization that even in the midst of suffering, there is a possibility for deep appreciation, kindness, and joy that is not based on circumstances.

Lately, Maribel and I have been taking more walks to our park and noticing little and big things. A couple of days we could not help but wonder at the golden color of the sky as the afternoon turned to dusk.

The fact that we were walking allowed us to enjoy the brief moment, never to be repeated in the same exact way. If we would have been driving, we most likely would have missed this commonplace miracle. But that day,we were there, we noticed, and for a brief moment snapped out of the trance of not enough. We stole back what to often gets stolen from us.

Not enough is the toxic mantra of our culture. Everywhere we turn we are told with words or images, that our lives are not enough, that we are not beautiful enough, strong enough, rich enough–fill in the blank the “not enough label.” As we chant this incantation mostly through our unconscious acceptance of a worldview that embraces lack and instills fear, our joy, peace, and sense of being fully and marvelously alive is stolen from within.

We particularly hear the mantra of not enough in the dark news of the day, in advertising, in the very nature of the way we are supposed to mark the holidays– Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Failure to notice the mantra often leads to the trance taking hold of our minds and hearts in ways that are hard to dispel because we are not even aware that we are in its grip.

But like our simple walk to the park showed us, the trance can be broken with awareness and intention. The practice of being night-thieves, sneakily finding the way in to take what rightfully is ours, can be life changing. Night-thievery can lead us toward the direction of compassion, community, and generosity, along with the powerful and surprising rediscovery that there is nothing to fix in us, because we were created whole and good from the very beginning. This last insight is the key to undoing the mantra of not enough. When we realize that there is nothing missing from within, nothing to be saved from, we realize that what we thought was missing all along, has always been there. The not enough trance and mantra is so incredibly toxic because it puts us on a toxic hamster wheel of dissatisfaction and we spend our days looking for something that can’t be found because it is not lost. Rumi and all of the the teachers from all spiritual traditions point to this. It is in stopping the search, stopping our stories of lack, that we notice our authentic and original blessing.

Interestingly, we don’t often break the trance by ourselves. We need each other. Trance breaking, night-thievery (healing) takes place in community and communion.

This gets me to our last night-thievery training Maribel and I had just a couple of days ago. This past Sunday we learned that there are more than a hundred youths (17 years old and younger) awaiting deportation at the Krome Detention Center. I don’t have all of the details. I just know that there are these kids who have a very uncertain future and who soon will be kicked out of the land of their dreams.

As part of our practice of noticing the good, breaking the trance, and breaking and entering, Maribel and I decided to make an effort to join the other groups in our community who are collecting Christmas gifts for these children.

We can’t do this on our own, so we reach out to you. Here’s the invitation:

1. Become the good news that you want to notice.
2. Engage in some night-thievery.
3. Bring an unwrapped gift for one of these kids.
4. Keep it to an item that does not require batteries or any form of electricity. A soccer ball, a nice t-shirt, something to create art will do.
5. Hold the item close to you and bless it with all of your heart and mind.
6. Drop it off at our house or bring it to yoga or boot camp before December 13. (Contact me if you want addresses.)

We will take the gifts to our church community where they will then take our gifts and those of others to be sorted and distributed to the children. That’s it.

Let us know that your in!

Holiday Party

Breaking the trance and breaking in also means having some fun. Please join us Thursday, December 15 from 7-9 PM for a holiday celebration at the Historic Dice House (10001 SW 82 Ave). It’s a potluck. You bring the finger foods and we will have drinks and the rest. RSVP HERE. This will be our first year teaching yoga at the Dice House. We have so thoroughly enjoyed this opportunity. Help us mark the moment.

One Final Announcement

The holidays are often a time where people gain unwanted weight. We invite you to be mindful of what you eat, to continue training, and to know that the best reason to take care of our bodies is not merely to look good naked but to feel great and enjoy the beautiful gift of life with our loved ones. There’s so much to enjoy!

Make strong commitments to love yourself unconditionally and wholeheartedly! Take back what is yours.

Stay with us.

Keep training in our night-thievery programs.

By Carlos Gonzalez

Carlos Gonzalez teaches English at Miami Dade College and yoga and wellness in the community through Miami Firm Body, the company he co-founded with his wife, Maribel. He works with words, movement, and the body. His calling is to invite others to join him in the joy of searching within and finding the strength and courage to walk toward wholeness. Carlos is a spell caster, an educational trickster whose core mission is to transform grief into a source of possible beauty, vulnerability into strength, and fear into wonder.

View all of Carlos Gonzalez's posts.