Friendly Reminder
Here’s a friendly reminder that we’re not free until everyone is free.
How are you using the freedoms you have to uplift others?
Here’s a friendly reminder that we’re not free until everyone is free.
How are you using the freedoms you have to uplift others?
It was wonderful to visit another city, to enjoy a change in climate and scenery, to see friends, and to study. I am happy to be home, though, even with the responsibilities and obligations. That I am always happy to come home from a trip away (even when I have gone to places perhaps more spectacular or interesting than where I live and met people who are able to do things that are outside of my reach) is one of the things that reminds me that my unassuming life suits me well enough. Part of this delight in coming home is my having for the past decade steadily practiced the principle of sauca or contentment.
I remember having a talk with a friend a number of years ago about practicing sauca. She expressed surprise that contentment could be a practice. She said she had always thought that happiness was something that just came to you. Happiness may come more easily to some than others, just as some are born with physical beauty or material comfort and others are not. It is my experience, though, assuming our basic needs are met, that by practicing sauca, we will be happier both with what we have chosen and what we have been given.
To manifest an intention, one first has to have an intention. What do you want to manifest?
I am asking myself the same question.
A gate might be an obstacle or it might be a way through or it might be that which is containing something that would otherwise be detrimental to our well-being. One of the key things that we do with the various yoga practices is explore how an apparent barrier is serving us or how a locked gate might turn our path in a more auspicious direction.
We will learn little and live less fully if we just lament the locked gate and unreasonably expect from the practices the removal of challenges or barriers. Ganesha–who is often invoked as the remover of obstacles–is less one who just opens all the gates for us than one who empowers us to discover gateways regardless of whether gates are meant to stay locked or whether they seem to block our path.