An exhortation if we take it as a reminder that every moment is an opportunity to act gracefully and to respond graciously and to find and offer the highest good, no matter the challenge. Oh yes, I exhort myself.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
I haven’t photographed the t-shirt with the statement “it’s all good” to go with the sign below “needs work,” but I would need to if I wanted to show the apparent philosophical tangle of tantra.
The tantric texts do tell us that it is all good; more accurately, they tell us that all is divine and perfect, and that we are just an element of the “all.” It is hard to believe that when we can see suffering and bad behavior (including some of our own) all around us.
The tricky thing about the declaration that all is divine is that it does not mean that there is no work to be done. The work, though, is not to fix ourselves or what is wrong or bad. Rather, the work (sadhana) is to study so that with discrimination (viveka) we can determine what is out of alignment and causing our own suffering or contributing to suffering of other beings and move towards and unveil the perfection and fullness that we are.
It is sort of like finding a great treasure that has been neglected and misused out of ignorance or carelessness at a yard sale. It takes knowledge to recognize that the cheap, discarded thing is a treasure and skill and effort to restore its intrinsic worth.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
It was just approaching the deep dark of the solstice when I left for places warm and light. Last week, when I got home, just by comparison to the sultriness of southern India, it felt dark. This morning, though, I noticed earlier morning light. When the wake up call sounded, I was deep in a rather wonderful dream in the violet-tinged landscape of the American southwest. As I had an early meeting at another governmental agency that required me to walk 10 blocks further than my usual walk to work, and I did not want to miss my regular morning practice, I had to get up right away.
The light through my second floor skylight seemed softer than it had just a few days earlier. Instead of being absolutely dark, there was enough of a hint of dawn that there was no need to turn on the light just to walk downstairs. I thought perhaps a little of yesterday’s snow might have accumulated. No snow. It was just the first glimmer of the days starting to get longer. When I walked past the Capitol on my way to the meeting, I saw several robin red breasts. With global climate change, many of them now do not fly farther south for the winter.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Congratulations and thanks for my friends and fellow Anusara yoga instructors, Kathy Carroll and Ellen Saltonstall for publishing, Effects of Anusara Yoga on Older Students From Their Perspective (Topics in Geriatric Rehabilitation • Volume 27, Number 2, 94–103 • Copyright © 2011 Wolters Kluwer Health | Lippincott Williams & Wilkins). They are both great teachers and warm spirits. Check out one of their classes when you have a chance.
A big thanks, too, for the regulars at the William Penn House class who graciously allowed themselves to be photographed.
To see the heart of things takes making more spacious and softening one’s vision not looking ever harder.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
