Author: pmcrose

May my presence help others, and may theirs help me.

Does the beautiful rose sitting atop the stem ever make such a prayer?

Throughout our lives, we dance with and around the ever-shifting center or life force.

We can seek to move more in correspondence to it and develop an ever-deeper and nuanced relationship with it.

Through our yoga and meditation practices, we can learn to play with how we relate to this center or force. Our practices can help us develop, deepen, and even learn to let go to this relationship.

How we live and all our other relationships mirror this primary relationship. As we honor and respect this center or life force, our lives become filled with enthusiasm, energy, love, joy, and peace.

In yoga and meditation, we can practice or play at refining and fine-tuning the infinite nuances in this relationship—a continuous, never-ending journey, one asana… one breath at a time.

Throughout, may we be graced to find opportunity in its challenges and be open to its immeasurable energy and joy.

What do you resonate with?

We all seem to vibrate with or exude our state.

Our thoughts and feelings constitute much of our state.  Thoughts and feelings, like ripples of vibration in water, emanate out from us as waves of energy.

We exude our innermost state at all times.  It is what we bring to the world.

I meditate and do yoga daily to move in proximity, as best I can each day, to inner silence–to bliss, love, joy, and acceptance.  I choose to try my best to tune in to, or resonate with, these vibrations.

At this point, it is almost a compulsion.

Imagine, a Skinnerian experiment in which for 40 years daily I meditated and/or did yoga and was rewarded with at least a bit of food, some carrot, something positive almost every time.  Even with occasional days when nothing positive seemed to happen, I was trained (or trained myself?) to return again and again because of this “reward”–being more in resonance with that which was transforming my life in a positive way.

I choose, and am compelled, to continue to return again and again to these practices which reward me so richly.

Like a breath of breeze

blowing a leaf,

the breath carries me to that space where I too dance in homage to the dynamic still center.

Illness can teach us humility.

It can also teach us compassion for ourselves and others.

Finally, illness can open us to our hearts and the light that shines through them.

Healing… or not healing… can do the same!

Both can immensely deepen our respect and love for both the power and delicate tenderness of life, being simultaneously like an elephant and the finest of filaments.

Often in the background, there’s a voice keeping me on high alert–something might go wrong.

Something might….

But then again, something might not!…

It’s good to be alert to possible dangers.

But it’s equally good to be alert to possible opportunities!

Something might go wrong; something might go right….

If there is a choice, rather than being alert in fear, dread, worry, and nervousness, I choose to be alert in love, hope, compassion, and joy!

Regular practice of yoga and meditation can slacken the former and augment the latter.

Yoga and meditation also can teach us to be neutrally alert, relaxed yet ready, at ease, present and prepared for the moment and all it may bring.

 

Joy is like a fountain.

From deep within the earth, through us, it gurgles and bubbles its scintillating creative warmth shooting upward and outward–

uplifting our souls, hearts, and minds to the heavens

buoying and catapulting our beings to our heretofore unimagined now-possible potential.

 

Love’s whisper is clearer when it’s quiet.

But sometimes it has to be so loud you simply can’t ignore it anymore.

It has to scream in your pain

to demand your attention

so it can open you to your undiscovered potential to love.

Even at a busy airport gate

waiting for your plane to board,

you can sit and watch your breath

and find your center, still and calm, enlivened with joy,

until the call comes to board for your other destination.

What would happen if I was to see life more like a series of yoga poses?

There would not be mistakes, but instead just a series of observations as situations change and evolve with adjustments and readjustments as you attempt to keep your center, balance, or equipoise as much as possible, inhaling and exhaling.

What would life be like?