Yoga and meditation* can clarify your relationship to the ever-present inner light.
In time, you will come to know and feel this light in the smallest of everyday experiences.
Through the practices, this light gradually burns away the fog of ignorance and habituation that occludes its effulgence.
*the practices of the eight-limbed path
Our suffering is multiplied by our resistance to life’s “undesired” changes.
Our peace of mind is greatly enhanced by their acceptance.
Yoga is ever-deepening….
like digging a hole to infinity.
It is both a process and a practice that can support you and your growth for a lifetime.
As far fetched as this may seems, last night in the wee hours of darkness, while I was deep in meditation, a mouse crawled from the floor up my shawl.
I only felt it when its claws dug into my biceps.*
Shocked and frightened, I violently shrugged my shoulders, hurling the creature. I next heard a light thud and its tiny claws scratchy against the wood floor.
I assumed it was startled too and scurried away.
Deep in meditation… as quiet as a mouse!
*I am presently staying with friends in their Amsterdam flat, and they are having a mouse “problem.”
By focusing and resting your mind on your little joys, something happens.
Your attention to them somehow grows them as well as your propensity to feel joy.
Be a happiness gardener, and grow your joy!
Paying attention to and becoming absorbed in our everyday joys can lead to greater happiness.
By doing so, our everyday fleeting moments of joy can become a feast for our hearts and souls, and thereby nurture our happiness.
The stillness of the Self allows all to change unimpeded.
This stillness is both the witness of the flux and that from which all else arises and into which all subsides.
Through yoga and meditation, we can become more and more rooted in stillness and bring calm and peace amidst change to the world.
And we can find our place amidst change to speak and live our truth, to play our part in it all.
We don’t do all this work to escape from our lives, but to help us live our lives!
Yoga gradually draws our lower self, the ego, in alignment or in harmony with our higher Self, and there is union.
Yoga is the process or means by which we achieve yoga, union.
We do poses, mediate, do pranayama or work with the breath, and practice the yamas and the niyamas to draw into greater alignment–to “yoke” the self to the Self.
It is the means by which we keep our lives in this proximal zone of harmony.
Yoga is for lovers…
of all humanity with utmost respect.
Yoga is for doing no harm, ahimsa…
upholding the dignity of all.
Yoga is for being welcoming…
to the infinite array of personalities and persons of varying convictions and viewpoints, and genders, and religions.
Yoga is for action…
bringing what we know on the mat and meditation cushion into the world.
Right now, the world needs yoga!
Now always needs our attention and care, but, at least in America, right now, it seems more than ever!…
Uniting practice with action,
yoga in action!
The Every Day Yogi 