Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Body | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation
Found Exhortation
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Signs Around Town
This sign was for a dry cleaner. I gave up dry cleaning (for the good of the environment) years ago, and this doesn’t want me to go back to having clothes cleaned with and impregnated by solvents (“organic” or otherwise) and then returned to me wrapped in plastic that needs to go to a landfill.
I like very much, though, the idea that whatever our work, we try to embody this ideal offering.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Extra Speshul Spam of the Day
“Just cause it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s not super heplufl.”
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Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation
Signs Around Town
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Cosmic Dance
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Dance of Opposites?
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
Lakshmi Sky (at the Jersey Shore)
“You like looking at clouds, don’t you?” asked one friend, as we took a walk along the shore after the workshop on Lakshmi this weekend. Another added, “did you always see so many heart-shaped clouds?”
“Yes,” I answered the first. “I always have.” To the second, I note that although I did not pick them out so frequently before, they are often there to be seen for those who are paying sweet attention.
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Signs Around Town
It is hard to think of trash as lovely, though I am acquainted with a few who make extraordinary meals from dumpster diving (though they would be doing that from a better class of dumpster).
Is finding lovely a dumpster in the parking lot of mostly closed stores anything like the yogis who seek the divine in the cremation grounds? Am I up to the challenge? Are you?
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Golden Radiance
My younger sister, too, loves the luminous work of William Laib, whose work is currently on exhibit at NY MOMA. The radiant golden square of hand-gathered hazelnut pollen brings to mind saffron-robed monks; think of the loving patience needed to gather this much pollen.
For me, it also is reminiscent of Lakshmi–goddess of prosperity, who is said to glow golden and whose energy we invoked the day before at a workshop with scholar and intuitive Constantina Rhodes.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Quaker
The Importance of Doubt (and Shrada)
I was just led by a friend’s Facebook posting to the website for an upcoming movie about the Siddha yoga ashram (Siddha yoga was part of the teaching and practice lineage of John Friend and Paul Muller-Ortega, and both have told stories about how useful the fierce ashram discipline was for them, but who adopted too much of the ashram style in their yoga organizations for me ever to have tried to be in the inner circle). In watching the trailer and reading the background materials for the movie, it struck me that the most important point for me is that the followers who were most injured were those who doubted least and who were the most hungry for an authority and love figure.
As a born and bred doubter (how could I not be one who consistently doubts as part of my spiritual practice, given that I am a culturally jewish, New York intellectual who was raised on the Quaker system of queries and advices, who studied western philosophy and law, and who works inside the Beltway?), I believe that you will always be able to get the good out of teachings without losing your own control, sense of self, and discriminating (viveka) ability to evaluate your commitment to a teacher or organization and the teachings offered, if your faith is in your own intuition and education and not in any one human or organization or specific teaching.
Faith (in Sanskrit shrada), in order to serve us well, needs doubt; it needs questioning; it needs testing at every point of the way or it is superficial faith. Don’t let anyone–particularly someone with whom you study or engage in religious or spiritual practice ever tell you otherwise. Sometimes doubting with faith means getting involved or staying fully committed to an organization or teacher despite misgivings or despite troubling behavior (assuming you are not sticking with being abused yourself or standing idly by when witnessing the abuse of others). After all, no humans, organizations, or relationships are without their shadow sides. Sometimes doubting, even with faith, means a radical and complete separation–quietly or loudly. Sometimes what is best for you is something in between. Learning to be in community is part of the practice, after all, keeping in mind that you are the company you keep.
All I can say is this: Please doubt. Please doubt with sincerity. Please doubt with love. Please doubt with respect. Please educate yourself, and with appropriate doubt, have faith that there is good in connecting and in the teachings, no matter how challenging is getting and sharing the teachings and the practices with and through the filter of others.
