Ecstatic Serenity
When I was eight or nine, a teacher asked everyone in my class to say what they wanted to be when they grew up. The other children named the various jobs or professions that appealed to them at the time. … (READ MORE)
Intention
To manifest an intention, one first has to have an intention. What do you want to manifest? I am asking myself the same question.
What’s Up with the Heavens?
I am no astrologer, but I tend to be sensitive to the subtle energies. After having a week of wild shifts, things not functioning, and sequences not behaving in their usual manner, I resorted to asking a question of my… (READ MORE)
A Flood of Memories (and Luminous Spaciouness)
I returned home yesterday from teaching my Willow Street classes and having a late lunch with a friend to a message on my answering machine from my mother advising me that a cousin had died. Although I was not close… (READ MORE)
New(ish) Edition of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
One of the things I am enjoying about studying in depth with Paul Muller-Ortega is permission to invest in new books for my library. I already had on my book shelves a number of the suggested books for supplementing our… (READ MORE)
“How did I get to be so lucky?”
most of us might ask, who have the health, education, material well-being, and computer access and skills to be able to read this. “Not luck, but grace,” Paul Muller-Ortega advises that Swami Chidvilasananda would say. For this grace, practice gratitude…. (READ MORE)
Not just freedom from
Paul Muller-Ortega, who is offering a meditation and philosophy workshop at Willow Street Yoga Center this weekend, says that sadhana (yoga practice, incuding meditation), doesn’t just give us “freedom from, but also freedom to.” The “freedom from” is freedom from… (READ MORE)
Stringing Baby Seed Pearls (and “Opening to Grace”)
Last night I sat down at my kitchen table to string baby seed pearls for a mother-of-pearl charm I had gotten from Manoj a few years ago. When I took the pearles off of the thread they came on and… (READ MORE)
Green advertising (and viveka)
One of the important principles of yoga practice is viveka — discrimination. The longer and more steadily one practices, the greater ease with which one will find path that leads towards recognition and remembrance of our own light and the… (READ MORE)
The Svadharma of the Pinky Toe (and Radical Affirmation)
Svadharma, from sva (self) and dharma (duty) means our personal path, duty, calling, or place. The principle of svadharma is a significant teaching in various yoga texts, such as the Bhagavad Gita, especially emphasizing the importance in acting in accordance… (READ MORE)