Jai Siva


My gardening friends have been commiserating and worrying about the abnormally dry weather. For the past couple of days, we have all been concerned that this storm has brought so little needed rain, although we are grateful to get whatever rain comes. Other acquaintances were complaining yesterday that it still wasn’t sunny. When I mentioned drought conditions, they had not noticed. If they noticed once it was pointed out, they suggested reasons why for them personally, it would still be a better thing for it to be a sunny day. Part of the reason I garden is to keep me connected with the rhythms of the seasons and the weather. If we do not grow our own food and depend on the fruits of our labors, nor are taught the relationship between the weather and our survival, there is no reason to know it. We become disconnected from nature and from the earth.
For me, connection to the earth deepens my connection to myself and to spirit. How can we know ourselves if we do not know how the earth nourishes us and how we relate to the earth? How can we recognize the light within ourselves, if we are disconnected from nature? At the same time, the practice of yoga, with its inward questing (antar-vimarsha — the quest to touch or reveal the true Self), by revealing to us the subtle energies and knowledge of the relationship of body and mind, can lead us back to yearning for a deeper understanding of the world around us and for a healthier relationship between the give and take between us and the earth. We can thus reach spirit both by being more aware of the outside and seeing where we are disconnected in our practice off the mat and by reaching inward using our spiritual practice (the Anusara principles are designed to be a pulsation of reaching outward and inward for an ever growing expansion and understanding of mind and spirit) and then knowing the outside is not aligned and needs to be shifted. All this is the process of vimarsha, like a little more rain in the drought to nourish and encourage the unfolding of spring.
As I squatted on the brick sidewalk to take this photo during my lunch time walk, a nice-looking older man stopped and asked “what is it?” He was quite tall and standing at an angle that would not have showed the shape as well as from where I was positioned.
“Stand on this side; what do you see?” I asked. He looked from my perspective. “A leaf,” he said with a quizzical expression, wondering why a dessicated bit of English ivy would have captured my attention sufficiently for me to take a photograph.
“Look again,” I suggested. “Can you see anything else?”
“Ah,” he said with delighted recognition: “it’s a heart.”
“Yes. I see them and other interesting shapes in all sorts of things–litter, blackened chewing gum, the pavement itself.”
“Everything has more than one form,” he rejoined. “You are blessed.”
And thus we went our separate ways, having brightened our day with this small connection. If he lives in the neighborhood, no doubt we will recognize each other enough from this encounter, at least to smile and say hello.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
I took leave in the middle of the day in between working for several hours at home and going into the office for a semi-obligatory office party. It was cold, but it was good people were out. One citizen speaker talked about how she is finding her voice and learning to raise it. Her child needs medical care.
