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    Expanding to Receive the Beauty, Opening to Grace, and the Isha Upanishad

    ByElizabeth

    In Anusara yoga, one of the ways the first principle of “opening to grace” can be experienced and practiced  is as a radical expansion of the capacity to receive and appreciate the very wonder of being.  During my visit to India with Professor Douglas Brooks, I found myself repeatedly thinking of the concept of radical expansion and also the preamble to the Isha Upanishad (long a favorite of mine; Shantala on their first CD, Love Window, have done an exquisite rendition), which can be roughly translated as saying that adding fullness to fullness is itself fullness (fullness can also be translated here as perfection).

    What I believe this is saying that being itself is infinitely full; thus, we cannot make it more infinite by adding to it.  Human consciousness of the infinitude of being, though, is limited by the filters of space and time.   One of the key reasons to practice yoga (including meditation) is to expand both our capacity to appreciate the fullness and to receive its full wonder by uniting our own consciousness with the infinitude.  When we can appreciate ever more the wonder of our being, we will naturally be more joyous, and I believe, led to be more compassionate and generous with ourselves and others.

    Day after day on the India pilgrimage, just when I thought my heart and mind were already full to bursting, there were yet more experiences of the beauty and extraordinariness of life and creativity and nature.  I found myself chanting the Isha Upanishad—purnamadah, purnamidam, puranata purnamudatacyate.  Fullness and fullness is fullness.  “Let me expand still more to appreciate to its utmost yet more beauty,” I thought to myself again and again.  Though I already thought I’d developed a fairly full understanding of the concept through study and practice, I thought, “this is what John Friend means when he is talking about radical expansion.” I look forward to studying and practicing to experience and share ever more beauty.

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    Thank You Ravi Shankar

    ByElizabeth

    I say without hesitation that Ravi Shankar is one of the influences that led me to the deep practices of yoga.   When I was first exposed to it through the Beatles in my early childhood, the music appealed to me at a visceral level.  Throughout my late childhood and teens, I loved to dance or allow myself to go into a trance state listening to Indian music.  On reading of his leaving this body, I take a moment to honor Ravi Shankar.

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    What Wakes You Up in the Morning

    ByElizabeth

    A little after 5 this morning, the sound of the unexpected rain brought me out of my dream state.  I was not ready to rise, so I realigned myself into a good savasana and just listened — following no other thoughts — until the morning musical awakening arrived at 6.

    I could have thought of it in this language:  the rain woke me up and I couldn’t get back to sleep, but I was still tired so I lay in bed until the alarm went off.

    Hotels, I think, were on to something when they started offering “wake up calls,” though the sound of the phone ringing in the middle of an intense dream can be shocking.  When did we start naming the sound we use to bring us from dreaming to waking “the alarm?”  What perspective does it give to our day to think we need an alarm to start it?  Why not at least “alert” or “signal” for the days when the only technology (think about that piece of it) was a jarring sound?

    I have been thinking a lot about what wakes me up since Becky passed away.  For 21 years, either Henrietta or Becky was lying on or next to me purring before any electronic signal could go off.  They knew when it would go off and every morning sought a little petting (and then food) before they heard any signal to start the day.  They incorporated it into their rhythm and created a good waking routine around my schedule.

    Some of my waking with the cats instead of the electronic sounds must have been me ready to be shifted from sleeping to waking by the cats’ attention, because I am still waking 10-20 minutes before Bose technology utters an automatic sound (usually yoga chants) to make sure I get off to work.  I also know from conscious attention to the effects on my sleep from when and what I eat and what I put into my day and until how late, that when I am keeping my eating, practicing, and sleeping schedule steady, I have no need to be called awake by something outside myself to start the day.

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