Included in the asana today at Cyndi Lee’s day of workshops at Willow Street Yoga was one of my very favorites: anantasana–the serpent couch of Vishnu. Nataraja, dancing his wild dance, was watching. People outside went about their ordinary and extraordinary lives.
Ganesha is only at the most surface level literally the remover of obstacles.
Rather, in exchange for a lot of dedicated practice, Ganesha is the one who helps us how to leverage or elide the obstacles.
These obstacles are ones that Ganesha, being a playful deity type of character, just might have put in our way in the first place, so we could learn, so we can more skillfully and compassionately approach the next obstacle, and so on and so on.
It is a good thing, I think, to do what one can to prepare for eventualities, to take reasonable precautions. It is not optimal, though, to allow fear and anxiety prevent us from living fully each day. I choose to continue to face fear and discomfort in my asana practice, as well as just doing the poses for which I have an innate affinity. I practice poses that bring up fear, dislike, discomfort, and general aversion. I do not ignore my fears and discomforts. I learn why I have them; I practice more assiduously the preparatory strengthening or stretching poses that will give me more support in the deeper poses, so that I can be in a place where I know when my fears are appropriate cautions and when they are unnecessary anxiety.
By practicing the poses that are scary and uncomfortable and learning how to stay grounded, present, and even joyous while doing so, I have learned a lot about how to live in away that optimizes my health (physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial) and the health of those around me, without letting fear, worry or discomfort about dangers, limitations, and pitfalls limit my ability to live fully and generously with a care for the suffering and joys around me. Yes, I took extra care to wash my hands last night right before I started teaching a pre-natal class, but I cannot stop going out and enjoying the spring days or getting my work done for fear of swine flu; I am currently healthy. I am not going to stop supporting local businesses because there is a recession; I still have a steady job and have no reason to curtail my spending, and I have always lived within my income.
It is the absence of a verifiably shared signifier that makes it so difficult, and perhaps unwise, to attempt to communicate mystical experience.
Do you ever pause and think about how amazing it is to be able to get jet lag. It is, after all, the result of moving so quickly through space that one becomes disoriented in time.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
