Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
My friend Dan posted some interesting thoughts about democracy on his blog. He is writing in the context of the Unitarian Universalist community, but the thoughts are equally applicable to our lives as citizens. The thoughts on democracy also for me highlighted what is really meant in the Bhagavad Gita about “actionless action.” To embody our spiritual practice in the way we live our lives, we serve to our best ability out of love, out of delight in acting, out of a sincere joy in serving, but we do not get attached to a particular outcome.
The extraordinary blossoming of Spring is springing! Witnessing this great effulgence can help us understand the potential of practice, all of which is intended to lead us to an inner effulgence of bliss so that we can bring it out in all we do.
A glimpse of an inner world.
Paul Muller-Ortega, who is offering a meditation and philosophy workshop at Willow Street Yoga Center this weekend, says that sadhana (yoga practice, incuding meditation), doesn’t just give us “freedom from, but also freedom to.”
The “freedom from” is freedom from suffering. The freedom to” is freedom to move towards light and blissfulness.
When we first come to the yoga mat or meditation cushion, we are usually coming to discover the “freedom from” we have heard about — perhaps relief from aches and pains or disease, perhaps weight loss or improved body image, perhaps lowering anxiety or easing depression. We discover, when we start practicing, that even if we do not get “freedom from” exactly as hoped within a limited view, that discovery of the “freedom to” itself provides a “freedom from” by making that from which we seek freedom less prevailing as the focus of our being.
