Just as it takes responding to grit and irritation for an oyster to make a pearl, so too the bliss of yoga comes only with effort (tapas) and steady practice (sadhana) in response to the challenges of embodiment.
When we can connect to the essence of the element of akasha, space, within ourselves, we feel less crowded by things pressing in on the outside, whether it be actual confinement or overcrowdedness or the sense of crowding from having too many pressing things to do. For those of us who live in the District of Columbia, this weekend, with the extra million or two or three people in our neighborhoods and using our transportation systems is a great opportunity to discover the spaciousness within.
Practice dwelling in a supremely spacious place in your heart when you meditate this week. Start by visualizing a vast space just beyond your third eye (the point between the eye brows). Once you can visualize that space, the chidakasha, draw the space into your heart and rest there. Then, when you go out onto to the Mall or onto the metro or onto crowded streets, bring enough of your consciousness into the vast inner space that you can feel comfortable with the crowding outside. When dwelling in the inner and outer at the same time, it will be easier to marvel at the outside crowds.
For those of you who are extroverts who get exhilarated by crowds, of course, this practice would seem less critical. I invite you to give it a try anyway.
After a day of teaching and more discussion and emails regarding the upheaval, I had a memory of petting one of the temple cows at Chidambaram. I was jetlagged and in sensory overload, and then I petted a most wonderful cow. I dropped into a space where I was perfectly at peace and unaware of the time and all the things going on around me. This space is always there for us, even in the absence of a sacred cow, and we practice so that we can find it more and more consistently, especially when we are being challenged.
I did not photograph the Chidambaram temple cow, although a nice Indian lady asked me if her husband could photograph the two of us with the cow, so she has a photograph of herself with the strange American lady in a sari who was petting the cow. I stopped to pet many cows after that. In one town, a man told me, as I was scritching a cow between ears and horns, that the cow would enjoy a banana.
