This is the first chakra imagery I have seen where the chakras from root to crown do not match the colors of the rainbow–red, the slowest, coolest light at the base, the vibrations of the color spectrum the highest at the crown. Was the choice of colors for the various chakras meant to say something in particular?
Not just rubber surfaces, but muscles, bones, and ligaments. Please don’t wear heels or if you feel you must, then only while sitting, reclining, or attending costume parties. By choosing not to wear high heels, You will stave off not only much pain and suffering, but also potential surgeries and their attendant environmental, social, and personal financial costs.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
We’ve had many inches of rain today, strong winds, and tornado warnings. This morning I got a call from my handy man that the drain under my back porch was stopped up and the basement was about to flood. He should not have been at the house. The work was supposed to have been done a couple of weeks ago, but a host of different occurrences got in the way. He only checked the back patio (he was working on something in the upstairs bathroom) because he had installed my rain barrel and wanted to make sure it was working properly (a story goes with that too). I left the office so I could go home and bail and monitor. The handy man wasn’t able to clear the drain with a snake, but bailing it out and then using the handle end of a rake cleared it out.
It is almost midnight and another band of heavy rain has been moving slowly through the area. I’ve gone outside a few times, but it all now seems fine. I’m hoping it will stay ok so that I can go to bed without worry.
I said to the hany man that his having been here today was part of the mysterious workings of the goddess of sequencing; it saved me from a flood in the tenant’s apartment. He said, that’s great, but it does not justify my procrastination. My point to him is that we never know when something that seems like a problem may turn into a blessing. His point to me is that just because things turned out for the best does not mean we can abdicate our personal responsibility for our own actions.
As I listen to a month’s worth of rain coming down in a few hours, I am reminded how lucky I am to have such things be my challenges, when so many are suffering.
Last night I went to see the revival of the Bernstein musical version of Voltaire’s Candide, now playing at the Shakespeare Theater’s Harmon Hall (discount tickets available), which was absolutely a delight — fantastic staging and direction, luxurious costuming, enthusiastic performances. Throughout his journey, which is beset with cruelty, hardship, natural disaster, and other mishaps wherever he goes, Candide sings of his tutor’s optimistic advice that “all’s for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” The application of this philosophy leads to some silly results, including the Monty Python-worthy lyric “it’s a great day for an auto da fe.”
I have a friend who, after telling me of various life challenges and griefs, inevitably signs off with the phrase “it’s all good,” though I am not sure she believes it. I thought of her repetition of the phrase “it’s all good,” while I was watching the musical. Later in Candide’s travels, he encounters a second philosopher scholar who (I’m paraphrasing loosely) contradicts the “it’s all for the best” philosophy of Candide’s tutor by telling Candide to just look around and he will know that things are not in fact always for the best. A fluffier version of the debate in the novel, as to whether things are all for the best when there is so much cruelty and devastation, is interwoven into the rest of the play.
I’ve never had a desire to wear the t-shirt proclaiming that “it’s all good.” I look around me, and I simply do not believe it. I do believe wholeheartedly, though, Voltaire’s premise that we have the responsibility to “cultivate our garden.” As my teachers John Friend and Paul Muller-Ortega espouse, we should “respond from the highest,” regardless of what we experience and encounter. By having our response make the best of all possible worlds from things that are not evidently for the best, we bring more light into the world, whatever is our world view. I can only hope that with steady practice of yoga and meditation, I can keep ever truer to these teachings when I am seriously challenged.
It isn’t sadhana unless it is steady, repeated, and over a long period of time (though form or emphasis might change).
United States Supreme Court, June 28, 2018
