Wishing all a safe, healthy, and joyous holy-day of thanks giving.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Cardinal eying the baby chard. I really ought to start greens inside. Ganesha looks on. The still exuberant saga in front of him was three times the size. It was not hard to find people who wanted some. I also have been offering lots of mint and yarrow. Locals, let me know any time you want to know what’s available for sharing.
To third person who said to me that I deserved a nice vacation, I said that I think of myself more as being fortunate than deserving of such luxuries.
A yoga teacher acquaintance once said rather dogmatically to me that it was not possible to be a true yoga teacher unless one had a guru. He meant having a guru in the traditional sense — being devoted to a particular person as the embodiment of the divine and of the true teachings. I did not engage on the issue, thinking (perhaps unfairly) that he would not listen to another point of view.
I do not have a guru in the technical sense. It would be unlikely. I was raised attending unprogrammed meetings of the Society of Friends (Quakers), where services are premised on the idea that there should be no preacher or minister because the light of the spirit shines equally in all and that each person is equally able to connect through his or her own faith and practice to the spirit. My first major exposure to the teachings of yoga was through the writings of J. Krishnamurti, which a teacher in an alternative program in high school I attended gave us to read, along with the classic yoga texts. Krishnamurti believed that all change comes from within and eschewed devotion to a guru.
Although I do not have a particular guru to whom I give my devotion (bhakti), I strive to honor and recognize that our true teacher is the light and spirit that is within all beings. The first line of the Anusara invocation — om namah shivaya gurave — resounds with truth for me.
On this guru purnima, the full moon of July, I honor the teachings that have so shifted my life, my teachers, especially John Friend and Suzie Hurley, and all of my students and friends, who shine with light always, and who inspire me to try each day to live more aligned with the ideals of yoga.
Yesterday was this year’s perihelion — the day of the year the earth is closest to the sun in the earth’s annual orbit around the sun. I find in interesting that the perihelion is at the coldest and darkest time of year. The relative proximity of the earth to the sun is of far less import for warmth and light than the tilt of earth away from the sun. So, too, with matters of the spirit. It does not matter how close we are to sources of illumination and learning, if we turn away from them. When we turn towards the light, even if the sources of light are farther from our reach, (the aphelion is in July, our hottest month), we are more likely to become illuminated.
