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There is a dark side to every light side and a light side to every dark….

 

In solidarity today, we march for human rights.

• That no one, male or female, be bound or limited in freedom by discriminatory laws or practices including outmoded and discriminatory gender roles
•  The same applies to all races, or mix of races.. all religions…ALL people!

This is America…the land of the law abiding, peaceful protesting, respectful, loving, compassionate, deeply patriotic–and angry as all hell–free!

For yoga and meditation there is a special breath called ocean breathing or ujjiya.  You breathe in and out slightly constricting the back of the throat producing the sound of the ocean waves.

Their soothing rhythms coming in and coming out can still the mind and bring you to the present moment.

 

Remember what or how you feel may be out of your control.

How you respond is your choice.

What you do with it is your own doing.

This creates great inner freedom.

One of the greatest gifts is the grace of a teacher–their freely giving of themselves and all their knowledge skillfully taught.

Work at forming an active relationship with your teacher. Do your best to open yourself to their presence. This is the grace of the student.

This opens the free flow of love between student and teacher.

Sometimes, life hurts.  This is often hard to accept.

We need to learn to have compassion, not blame.

Bringing compassion and sometimes a even a bit of laugher and even a wry smile to life’s pains seem the only way to really move on.

When meditating or doing yoga, pay attention to uplifting feelings, even the slightest of them.

With the light of your attention focusing on them, they will grow and spread their radiance throughout your being and beyond.

Your attention is like the sun is to a plant.

What you shine your attention on grows.

Like a plant, the thing you focus on angles and reaches towards your attention to gather as much of it as it can.

What do you pay attention to?

Shine your attention on helping and caring for your family and friends, on appreciating beauty in nature, on helping those in need….

Take care what you pay attention to.

You grow what you pay attention to.

 

When meditating in the last few days I came to see clearly a major nemesis that had secretly thwarted me for years.  It was especially ardent during my early years of yoga and meditation and has certainly lessened over time. But until recently, it still lurked surreptitiously darting in and out of my meditations and yoga practices.

There would be this compulsion pushing hard on me, “Will enlightenment happen now or in the next moment… or in the next?”  This made anything that was happening in meditation/yoga unacceptable and ultimately then not fulfilling.  It negated the present moment.  It was a voice that demanded the ultimate now…a compulsion to be perfect.  And it urged me to push harder still!

Dropping the urgency for enlightenment, for ultimate fulfillment now, and its misguided pressure gone, I can more easily settle into the meditation and accept what is happening.  My heart and mind can open to and embrace the present.  A glorious in-the-moment balance has been restored.

Accept the present as it is and feel what it is like to be more fulfilled and much more deeply satisfied with your meditations.

The true longing for enlightenment can remain without the necessity for it to happen now.  Enjoy the learning, the real gems, along the way!

I know this looks like I am doing nothing, and in a manner of speaking I am not.  I am in a very supported corpse pose or shavasana after a restorative yoga class.

So often the mind is blabbing its incessant commands to the body and most often it is drowning out any signals from it and not listening to it.

In restorative yoga, you let the mind and its need to control so much drop away.  You listen to the body, try to hear its whispers.  You try to key into the body’s own innate healing energy.

The mind is not in charge here.  The body is.