Fight Ignorance With Education
Please order from independent booksellers or direct from the author. One-click shopping feeds the problem.
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Shadows and Light
In discussion of erudition and spirituality, much use is made of the metaphor of light. Light takes us out of darkness, reveals the truth of illuminated wisdom, is the truth, is pure consciousness, etc.
When I noticed the shape in the sidewalk pavement culminated by a shadow, I found myself thinking that we cannot fully experience light without shadow. Not because we cannot understand something (e.g. good) without experiencing its opposite (evil), but because absolute light blinds us to the point of destroying the ability to see even the light. We need shade or dark sunglasses to see what is differentiated when the sun is at its most glaring.
Just as the stone in the photo would not be revealed as a heart but for the shadow crossing it, so too, we cannot know the deepness and authenticity of love or spiritual teachings and practices until we discover that we can stay true to them through challenge and adversity. The shadow does know, just as the light reveals.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Intention, Discipline, and Freedom
One of the primary themes at the Anusara certified teachers’ gathering this week with John Friend has been how discipline and technique serve our yoga. In keeping with the elemental Anusara principles of “attitude, alignment, and action” (iccha, jnana, kriya), the point has not been to emphasize rules for the sake of rules, form over substance, or technique for its own sake. Mastering technique, by itself, will not bring us to the ultimate intentions of yoga: living liberated (jivamukti), experiencing the very wonder, bliss, and dance of being.
But just playing or seeking freedom for its own sake, while we are embodied in human form, will not likely lead us to the most expansive and steady experience of ultimate freedom (svatantra). It is discipline and technique with the constant remembrance of the reaon for being disciplined about how we practice and live that will take us further on the path.
It can be nice, for example to go to a class where there is little emphasis on form, and the call is just to flow and feel. For me, though, because of my physical limitations (degeneration in my spine, old groin injury, etc–these do not define my being; they just inform how I practice), I feel far freer and more able to expand how much I can play the more attention I give to the physical alignment. In such a situation, the rigorous attention to detail is not for the sake of an external idea of what is right and what is wrong. Rather, it is the constant disciplined attention to alignment that frees me to play as free from injury, pain, and fear of injury as is possible in my body.
The discipline then becomes a way of self-affirmation. It is the limitations that lead me to have to focus more on technique than if I did not have the limitations. That attention then provides a ground for a more expansive practice and a deeper appreciation for the beauty of what the practice can offer.