It is times like these where the importance of one’s personal home practices is emphasized.
The texts on sadhana — yoga practice — say in simplified essence that mantra is the fulcrum between the unknowable universal and manifest particulars. What language we use and how we use it can either lead us towards skillfully navigating life informed by illuminated understanding or blundering through things with obscured vision (or, I add, somewhere in between, but which do you want to be your goal?). If you listen for your authentic voice, what words do you want to utter, which do you want to embody, which do you want to offer? The mantra is a tool (in the best sense of the word) to find a source for our own language (thought and spoken) that recognizes the common bond of dwelling together as neighbors (near or far) on this earth, in this universe.
New York City, June 13-14
After I have been working and studying intensely, I sometimes find myself called to lie underneath the cats and read fiction. Just because it isn’t hard work, doesn’t mean I won’t find treasures that further my explorations. This bit, for example: “Then he felt his heart floating again, sunlit and serene, impossibly heavy, impossibly light; he felt the earth itself balanced on his outstretched finger.” Patricia A. McKillip, Alphabet of Thorn.
Seeing this painted murti brought a flash of childhood memory of the garden statuary Venus de Milo in my grandparents’ garden that my uncle spray-painted dayglo orange.
It has been my experience that there are times when a hug feels like too much or not right or that it will not ease what hurts. First there is a need for an openness of heart, a little intrinsic brightness, some recognition of worthiness to receive the love, before a strong embrace feels right. In Anusara, we are taught to practice the opening, brightening, expanding principle of “opening to grace” before we draw in with the embrace of muscle energy.
“Shoulder loop” helps us refine muscle energy and by drawing the shoulder blades onto the back of the heart and then lifting and expanding the chest, it can be incredibly powerful and healing. My experience with shoulder loop, though, especially when I have active shoulder or neck pain, is that if I am at all collapsed, if I am not doing maximum “inner body bright” shoulder loop feels OK, but it it is much harder to access and receive. When I open to the possibilities by radically filling with light and energy, especially around the back of the heart — in a word, meeting the possibility of embrace from the inside out — then the embrace of shoulder loop is almost instantly healing and empowering.
