Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
Signs Around Town
Don’t get too attached, including to ideas about yoga and practice.
Similar Posts
Sculpture Around Town
Clay Maquette, J.Seward Johnson, at Grounds for Sculpture
You Never Know
When these trucks first came into sight, they were driving side-by-side just below the speed limit, with a number of cars tailing close behind in both lanes. The voice of the monkey mind started down the “what the f**k?” path. But soon after, Johnny law parked in the median came into view. Another half mile down the road a second police car was lurking. As soon as the trucks passed the second police car, the truck in the left lane pulled over in front of his companion, and the passenger cars were able to move a little faster.
The trucks weren’t creating an annoying obstacle. They were graciously saving the cars following closely behind from getting speeding tickets.
One never can tell, either at first glance or in retrospective review of life choices, how what might have appeared as obstruction, failure, or missed opportunity in fact either opened new pathways or saved one from harm. Best then, neither to come to conclusions too quickly or to hold onto regrets.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Fairy Lights
A trail of fairy lights appeared this week in this alley, as they do about this time every year. I have thought about leaving a note for neighbor saying how much delight I get from this simply and perfectly executed display. Maybe this year I will do so.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Cherry Blossoms
When I ventured out into the streets yesterday morning to get some air, greet some neighbors, and get some fresh vegetables if possible, I saw that a very large branch had come off of a cherry tree a block from my house. I have lived in my house long enough to have watched the tree grow from a three-foot sapling to a tree that has swollen past the confines of its row house corner yard. The branch that broke off in the snow was four or five times the size of the sapling when it was first planted. I spent an hour walking and then made sure I went back to the tree. It was starting to bud. It was warm last month, and it’s getting lighter every day. I don’t have high confidence that the buds were far enough along to force blossoms. I thought I’d give it a try. Whether I see blossoms early or not, I can use the branches to stake young herbs in another 7-10 weeks.
Last Night I Slept At My Parents House (and akrama)
I slept last night in the room that I slept in as a child. My mother now uses the room to store some of the vestiges of her old antiquing business. The carpet, wallpaper, and curtains from the 1960’s are gone, but the bed is the same one in which I had slept. The picture on the wall is a kit for making a stuffed animal that my Grandma Rose had bought me (probably when I was about 8) at the Brooklyn Museum of Art that my mother decided would be better as framed art than a sewing project for me.
The neighborhood looks different–it is far more developed as is everywhere near a big city–but the bones are the same.
It is a challenge not to feel the weight of my history and ancestry when I return. Taking the time to meditate when I woke helped me stay fully in my adult self.
When we meditate, we ideally dissolve our individual consciousness into the luminous spaciouness of universal consciousness. In that space, where we are temporarily not experiencing ourselves as an individual, we are also not experiencing our individual self in the sequence (krama) of time. The luminous spaciousness of meditative consciousness is sequenceless (akrama) and, as universal consciousness, is the place in which the sequences of being in time and space arise.
What I experienced this morning when I meditated was that I did not have to be flooded with the emotions of my, to try to graciously describe, emotionally challenging childhood. In the space of meditation I could bring to my day an acceptance of all of my life and be where I am at present, coming to a place of recognition that although I lived all of my history, it neither defines me nor binds me from expanding into a space of growing love and light.
