Meditation

Practice, contemplation, and insights

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    The Sky Is Just As Big Wherever You Are

    ByElizabeth

    The sky was luminous and beautiful early this morning when I headed out to teach. The air was scrubbed clear by the cold front that passed through in the night, leaving behind fluffy clouds to highlight the luminousity of the sun rising.

    As I enjoyed looking at the clouds and light in the sky on my walk to Union Station to catch the metro to go teach, I thought about seeing the sky in Arizona next week. When I am there, I always feel a keen delight when I look at the sky. Then I thought that the sky is just as lovely here. It is that things on the land are bigger and farther apart out west that make the sky seem bigger.

    When life is easeful and we are feeling spacious, then the inner place of meditation can feel more luminous than when we are struggling through the day. But just as the sky is just as big wherever we are on the planet, the inner space of meditation is just as vast and luminous no matter what is going on in our lives. The more we remember that and the more we look, the more we will have the opportunity to be lit up from the inside.

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    An Example of How One Door Closing Opened Another (and Article in Yoga Journal)

    ByElizabeth

    I think snow can be beautiful and enjoy the hush when it first falls, but it’s not my favorite thing, which was one of the reasons I settled this far south (yes, DC is pretty far south for a native New Yorker).  Last winter with its record snow falls felt at times as a seemingly endless exercise in looking for the good and trying to respond in the highest.  Among other fallout of the snow, the February blizzard grounded my flight to San Francisco where I was supposed to go to celebrate the start of John Friend’s 2010 workshop schedule and to visit friends.  Instead, I was home shoveling.  With the arthritis in my spine and some other old injuries to groin and shoulder, I had to be extra careful with my alignment so that shoveling could be an enjoyable work out instead of a dreary and potentially debilitating task that I was doing instead of playing with friends and yogis in San Francisco.  Being grounded at home and needing to be in alignment with the shoveling, led me to blog about Anusara alignment for snow shoveling.  Putting this advice out there led to an editor at Yoga Journal discovering my blog and interviewing me for a short article that (I haven’t seen it yet–waiting for my copy to arrive in the mail, but a friend who was reading the most recent edition at Willow Street’s Silver Spring studio gave me the heads up last night) is in December’s magazine (page 22).

    While missing out on a vacation due to weather is not exactly a momentous disappointment or life challenge, this story is an example of how we never know what life is going to bring our way.  We cannot choose what life gives us, but we can choose how we respond, and how we respond will change how the path unfolds.  I persist in the yoga and meditation and share my teachings and experiences because it has been so helpful in opening my perspective and finding more delight and opportunity in life.  In that regard, one of the reasons I challenge myself on the mat, inviting myself into places of discomfort and effort and staying with them until I find ease and even delight, is to help me be able to see the good and to respond in the healthiest and most optimal way on and off the mat.  While I love sometimes just to do the easeful poses, what has brought more strength and joy to all of my life is going deep into the hard places and staying with them.

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    Light is Always There

    ByElizabeth

    always there, we just have to remember it is there to see and to recognize it when we do. The first is just Anusara’s “first principle”–opening to grace. The second is practicing and studying with increasing depth and refinement (viveka) so that we can recognize the light and know how to bring it into our lives.

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    Some Books About Gurus

    ByElizabeth

    As I have discussed with a few of you, I have been contemplating deeply and for a long time the questions of what is a guru and who is a guru.  In the context of this contemplation, I read to enhance my background and understanding, deepen my contemplation, and give myself food for thought or additional exploration.  Here are some books that I have in my library about gurus or those who have been labeled gurus (in no particular order).  Some are written with loving devotion by disciples.  Some question or comment on the interrelationship between the status of guru and the sometimes all too human foibles of the guru and his disciples.  Some are of the guru’s own experience of practice and his relationship with his own guru.

    Be Love Now, Ram Dass, HarperOne (New York, NY 2010)

    Miracle of Love — Stories About Neem Karoli Baba, Ram Dass, E.P. Dutton (New York, NY 1979)

    Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship (13th Ed., reprinted 2001)

    The Golden Guru — The Strange Journey of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, James S. Gordon, The Stephen Green Press (Lexington, Mass. 1987)

    My Guru and His Disciple, Christoper Isherwood, Penguin Books (New York, NY 1981)

    Ramakrishna and His Disciples, Christopher Isherwood, Simon and Schuster (New York, NY 1970)

    Great Swan — Meetings with Ramakrishna, Lex Hixon, Shambhala Dragon Editions (Boston, Mass. 1992)

    Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri, Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa, SYDA Foundation (South Fallsburg, NY 1996)

    The Buddha from Brooklyn — A Tale of Spiritual Seduction, Martha Sherrill, Vintage Books (New York, NY 2001)

    Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, Stephen Cope, Bantam (New York, NY 1999)

    At the Eleventh Hour — The Biography of Swami Rama, Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, Himalayan Institute Press (Honesdale, Pa. 2001)

    Play of Consciousness, Swami Muktananda Paramahansa, SYDA Foundation (Oakland Ca. 1974)

    The Great Oom — the Improbable Birth of Yoga in America, Robert Love, Viking Press (New York, NY 2010)

    ps Jess–Yes, the widget for Library Thing is coming for the website.  I just need to add more books, so that it is a decent start at a representation of at least the yoga-related portion of my library.

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    A Helpful Reminder

    ByElizabeth

    At the weekend workshop in Bryn Athyn yesterday, John Friend reminded us of the scientific fact that our energy flows to where we put our mind. As a physical matter, if we think about our little toe or our tailbone, for example, we will be better able to access it.

    As a mental matter, if we think about something we just did or need to do or think we should do, our energy will be diverted to that place.

    There are even more profound implications with respect to where we let our mind dwell when we are practicing. Our practice deepens and helps us embody intention (sankalpa). If we dwell on something that is making us angry or suffer while we are practicing, we will actually etch those emotions more deeply into ourselves.

    This is not to say that we should not practice when we are suffering or in conflict. Nor does it mean that we should beat ourselves up when “negative” emotions or thoughts arise during our practice. Rather, the awareness of the repercussions of dwelling on and feeding what does not serve is a reminder of the benefits of turning our minds towards the good — perhaps a yearning to be at peace or free from suffering or other positive intention while we are practicing when we are feeling challenged. We use the practice not just to release what does not serve, but choose to refocus our minds so that through the practice we can embody a state of mind and body that better serves us and helps us to respond from a higher place to those things that are painful or hurtful. Ideally, we turn towards what is light, nourishing, and balanced (sattvic), not out of compunction, but because it is more delightful.

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    The Walk From My House to House of Hands (and the start of Standard Time)

    ByElizabeth

    It felt good to sleep in and still wake up at my usual 6am.  I did my morning practice, went to meeting for worship, joined in at a fundraising lunch for Pakistan flood relief, looked at the Truth Beauty exhibit at the Phillips, took a walk in the neighborhood, and then took a short nap.  Then I took one of my favorite walks in the neighborhood — from my house to House of Hands, the home of my neighbor, friend, and wonderful massage therapist Patrick.  As you can see, the sun was setting as I walked to a 5pm appointment.  In honor of the change of seasons, the heat was on the massage table.  Nice.  It was dark when my massage was finished, but I had hot soup for dinner and am looking forward to my evening meditation and practice.  I do not have many days that are this luxurious and free of commitments.  I enjoy them to the fullest when they come.

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    If Only It Were So Easy

    ByElizabeth

    The problem with trying to run away to make things better is that we still bring ourselves with us. We don’t have the luxury of hitting the “reset” button after we’ve done things that we wish we had not done.

    Yoga and meditation practice can help give us a sense, though, of being reset by giving us more and radical acceptance and compassion and the ability to simply marvel at the very intricacies of the dance. From there, we can release what binds from our history and continue on, knowing that it is a choice to respond in the same way as we have in the past when the old patterns confront us again (which they inevitably will).