I’ll share this one with you: what does it mean to be in alignment? What is aligning with what? Alignment is a relational category.
This bumper sticker (on an enormous black SUV with suburban plates) is likely intended to have only a message about the current wars in which the US is engaged. I wholeheartedly support the sentiment at that level.
What if we took it at other levels? What if we applied it to spiritual-religious practices? We could interpret this as suggesting that we honor the great teachers who have gone before us, invite religious observance and spiritual practice to heal ourselves and others, and dissolve notions of differences among religions and spiritual practices as bases for conflict. How many wars between countries or civil wars would end if saw unity while still honoring difference in this regard?
Perhaps most cogent for the yogi: what if we thought of the exhortation in terms of our own personal practice? It would be an invocation to honor our ancestors, heal the wounds of our family and upbringing (samskaras), and release inner conflict. This is, I think the point of practicing (whatever the style of practice) so that true peace can abound.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
I had forgotten completely about this full moon holiday named “guru purnima.” But last night when I was getting off the bus after evening Spanish class, i was greeted by the brightness of the moon and I stopped and bathed in it. It was a few minutes before I took the picture. I love it when the camera adds something not visible to the naked eye.
I went over to the Hirshhorn. It was madly crowded, with 30-45 minute lines for the mirror rooms. Since I was on my lunch break, I had to leave that for another time.
When I enter into a contact improv jam, I make a commitment. I commit to paying attention with all of my being, to myself, to my partner or partners of the moment, to all the others in the room, and to a spatial, energetic, and creative attention to the dance itself and for the dancers as community and co-creators of the dance (and sometimes for the observers, too).
I think this is not unlike the commitment of the tantric yoga practitioner who ideally engages all of life with a simultaneous attention to the inner and the outer, to the dance between the self and all that to which ones self comes into relationship and to the dance of relationship.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
