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    Found Exhortation (with Commentary)

    ByElizabeth

    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.

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    Needless Anxiety (and messages from the universe in my spam folder)

    ByElizabeth

    From a German language spammer advertising “female viagra” comes this bit of universal wisdom on a day when I found myself needlessly anxious about a mistake that was fairly easily rectified:  “It sounds like you’re creating problems yourself by trying to solve this issue instead of looking at why their [sic] is a problem in the first place”

    If I were one who just trusts naturally that many simple things can be fixed easily if I just ask for help, there wouldn’t have been any need to be anxious.  It would have been better not to have made the mistake in the first place, but as much as I might dislike it, I will inevitably make mistakes–here, not getting my dates right for asking for sub coverage for a yoga class.  With the wonderful community in which I am blessed to be a member, it only took a few phone calls to work things out.

    It is one of my biggest challenges to have to ask for help.  Having to ask for help because I made a mistake made it even more challenging.  A big part of my yoga is learning  to soften and trust in such situations.  When I did just that, I not only was able to ease away from needless anxiety, I was able to allow in more love and support.  Sometimes we need to be put face to face with our toughest stuff to open at another level.

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    The Terracotta Warriors of Emperor Qin (and Iccha Shakti)

    ByElizabeth

    I went today with my younger sister and brother-in-law to see the Terracotta Warriors exhibit at the National Geographic Museum.  Even with only a few of the warriors and photographs of the site, it is possible to imagine the sheer magnitude of the vision of thousands of these life-sized images living underground at the tomb of the Emperor.  I then thought of how vast must have been the Emperor’s yearning for power and the wildness of his vision of this extraordinary tomb for it to have become manifest.  Trying to expand my imagination to understand the reality of such ambition and creativity I thought of the principle of iccha shakti.  Iccha shakti is the very will of consciousness to be, to creatively manifest, to become diversified embodiment out the universal.  Ego and will are not themselves bad, but our very freedom allows us to choose a path that is out of alignment with the principles of joy and unity.

    The Terracotta Warriors show the immense possibilities of exercising will.  In their very existence and the manner of their coming into being, they evidence both enormous cruelty and disdain for life and a wondrous manifestation of human creativity, collaboration, and effort.  One of the goals of yoga, in teaching us the possibilities of our own freedom and creativity, is to lead us to choose a life that is progressively better aligned with nature and with all of beings.  This is the path of one who practices, and I find it ever a challenge.

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