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What Difference Does Lobbying Make (and Svatantriya)

ByElizabeth

The tantric yoga philosophy ascribes the characteristic of svatantriya or ultimate freedom to the energy that infuses all of us.  We all want to be free, but when we get stuck in our embodiment, forgetting that we ourselves are manifestations of spirit, then we lose sight of our true freedom.  To find our own freedom of spirit, we need to be disciplined, to practice, to study, to live in a way that brings us into better alignment with ourselves and world with which we are inextricably interconnected.

In this country, one of our principle ideals and buzz words in dialogue about how we should live is freedom.  What can so often be forgotten in this dialogue, though, is that freedom is a contract.  To be in a society where all have the opportunity to experience freedom, we need to agree, with discrimination (viveka) to certain limitations (for example, we agree to stop for red lights so that we can be free to drive and walk without a constant risk of being hit in crowded city).

Granted, I am grossly oversimplifying here, but part of the great losses of freedom we are currently experiencing is the abdication by individuals of the responsibility to shape the agreement to maximize our collective freedoms.  Like the agreement with ourselves to practice steadily to experience inner freedom, we need to stay engaged, even when it seems impossible or deeply frustrating, in order not to lose sight of the ideal entirely.  Here’s some information from FCNL on why it is important to lobby despite how fruitless an act it may appear to be.

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    Carbon-Free Website

    ByElizabeth

    For those of us living fully in our modern material world, as I am, it is important to think not so much about denying ourselves things or giving them up, but rather, seeing how we can make shifts to living more lightly.  One of my heavy impacts on the environment is computer usage.  Right now, I have on my work computer, my home laptop, and my Blackberry.

    All of you who are reading this blog are doing so via computer or by a personal device with web access that requires battery charging.  I’d hazard a guess that most of these portable computers are not being powered by sun and wind.  I am still waiting for Pepco to come and change the meter to hook up my newly installed rooftop solar panels to the grid, and I don’t have a solar charger for the Blackberry.

    One thing I thought I could do to help make enjoying this way of connecting have less impact on the environment would be to go carbon-neutral.  In the world of plastic, the ideal is don’t use, reuse, repurpose, recycle.  In the world of electricity, it is don’t use, use from better sources, off-set.  With respect to my blog, I am choosing to use the necessary electricity, but go solar with my house, buy electricity from a source that uses offsets (Clean Currents) for that electricity that is in excess of what the solar panels will provide, and I’m choosing to offset this blog’s impact based on readership through the Carbon Fund.

  • Savasana

    ByElizabeth

    Savasana–pose of the corpse, the pose of final relaxation, the pose without which no practice is fully complete– is both a very simple pose and one that is rather advanced.

    Sometimes when I teach beginners I ask them what was the first Sanskrit word they learned. Usually they guess the word is “yoga.” The first Sanskrit pose name they get, though, and it doesn’t take more than a couple of classes is savasana. For most beginning the practice of yoga, the permission to stretch out on the back after an hour or more of new ways of engaging body, mind, and spirit is welcome indeed. This is particularly true for those who are overly busy and chronically sleep-deprived as are so many people I know.

    What teachers often miss about savasana is that it can be very hard for some students. Injuries (chronic or episodic), tightness, or habitual misalignment (or expectations of how lying down should feel) make it challenging to be in the pose. The default can be to put supports under the knees or head without taking the time to recognize that it may be necessary to focus on and adjust the alignment before relaxing to see if ease can be found without props.

    Other practitioners find it agitating to be asked to lie still for 5-10 minutes, because they are so used to being active all the time. Even if they can make their bodies still, their minds race around, and the idea of final relaxation seems anathema.

    At the beginning,
    savasana can be just stopping movement and enjoying letting go and relaxing.

    But the pose is something much deeper than relaxing after a good workout. The pose of the corpse is not about being unmoving like a dead body, but about ceasing consciously acting and surrendering to the elemental vibration of universal being so that the inner fullness becomes indistinguishable from that which infuses all of the matter of the universe. As one gets more advanced, the alignment in the pose evidently becomes one of inner fullness and luminousity supporting the draping of the physical body. We practice going to earth and light, dissolving the constant awareness of our individuality.

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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