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)
We Never Know Where We Will Find Music or the Form It Will Take (Penn Station LIRR Level)
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)
The Parable of the Guru, the Disciple, and the Mad Elephant
It is a constant dialogue that arises for me with others in my various communities about the place of political discussion in a spiritual community. Is there a place for examining the state of the world, calling for action, and… (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)
One Love
There are several heart-shaped holes in the sidewalks on my usual haunts. A number have gotten progressively more heart-shaped over a period of months. Who are the good fairies who are chipping away at things to remind us of the… (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)