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Things can be hard.

However, there are two kinds of hard–one through effort, the other through suffering.

Putting forth the effort to do yoga and meditate can be difficult. We need to overcome tendencies to resist–whatever they may be… and show up for practice. The result is a happier life–not free of suffering but with less of it, full of more love and joy and compassion.

Or we can forgo practice and suffer the absence of that which can help us have a happier, more fulfilling life.

Hard??

This song lyric pretty much sums it up.

Great yogis and sages say we can’t find love, and happiness, in the variable world–at least not the deepest sort that’s unaffected by circumstances. We are talking about a love, and happiness, that endures despite all.

This love, and happiness, is right here with us all the time, according to the sages.

We’re simply looking in all the wrong places.

According to them, we need to turn within and meditate and do yoga, and then we just might be fortunate enough to encounter this love and happiness, or get glimmers of it.

And at least then we’ll be looking in the right place, which is certainly a good place to try.

See you on the path… no, I mean the road to happiness… and love!

Yoga and meditation help us reset and transform into enhanced versions of ourselves. Sort of like you and me 2.0… over and over again, modifying and adjusting and improving. This transformation can be nuanced and very subtle or substantial.

The practices poise us for the grace of The Great Transformer to “adjust” what needs adjustment for the always variable circumstances of our lives.

2.0… 3.0… 4.0… 4.2….

Unique flavors, unique tones on a piano with an infinite keyboard, unique tapestries–each person, each event, each moment of time… unique.

Yoga and meditation can awaken us to this and help us be more present to the time we have–unique.

Yoga and meditation support our well-being in all regards and in all circumstances.

Like that which support the domes of grand stone buildings, the practices buttress our lives lifting us, while firmly grounded here on earth, toward the heavens.

In truth, the practices help us realize this Grand Buttress that is always there supporting and uplifting us.

The inner teacher has a very large classroom with a very full curriculum–our lives.

Through our yoga and meditation, we start to listen to the inner teacher. We come to attention.

Class is not in session only when we practice, but for our entire day and night, week after week, and year by year.

Listen up, class is in session!

As we practice our yoga and meditation, we travel through the veils of identity that our Source has become.

In varying degrees, we may be uplifted and feel greater love or compassion, greater unity with humanity and nature, greater peace or centeredness… we may feel more expansive. We may just feel a significant and noticeable shift in energy or mood. Whether these effects of practice are slight or great, they are always beneficial.

Close your eyes on your meditation cushion; begin to move on your yoga mat.

Welcome one and all!

Socrates and Plato proclaimed the need to know thyself on the road to happiness.

In yoga and meditation, we can come to use all the human tools or capacities the life force or consciousness has created and animated to know itself.

As we practice, we peel the layers of our being and pierce or see through their veils. We use “thyself” to know thyself.

We are the mirror that mirrors who we are.

Our practice is the road, if not to happiness, to greater contentment. And if we are fortunate, it is the way to greater and greater happiness.

We yogis and seekers share the road! See you there!

Yoga and meditation are the great equalizers.

Through our practices, as we realize deeper love and respect for all humans and life, we begin to focus more on the common good–that which is good or at least better not just for ourselves, but for all of of us.

In this world, we know this may not be so common.

With the common good as our intention, we can help spread the energy and vibes of the common good and help make it… more common!

We humans are unique. We are, like all animals, conscious–alive, vibrating with the life force.

But our consciousness is not only conscious or alive. It is alive and at the same time conscious of itself; it can reflect on itself and see or witness itself. We are, if you will, self-conscious, self-reflective. As though looking in a mirror, our consciousness can reflect on itself.

Close your eyes for a moment. Become aware of your breathing, of the buzzing energy in you that is being you. This awareness that is aware of this, this is your consciousness being aware of itself.

Through yoga and meditation, we can explore this consciousness that can be conscious of itself.

Mirror, mirror!