Miracle in stone: Eagle on the mesa

“There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.”
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) Physicist & Nobel Laureate

On the way to Wijiji, Easternmost Great House of the Chacoan Center. 

Sometimes yoga just means getting out of the way…

If you’ve been reading here for very long, you know one of my careers is Paramedicine. Street medicine draws on my ability to discern, do, organize, energize – emphasis on the “do!” – turn around and do it again. Again! (think claymation baby dinosaur… 🙂

There’s great flow and joy available in this groove. Remembering its a groove though, among other curvy, smooth, deep grooves is the trick. So it’s a blessing when I’m reminded of what I call yoga-mind (you may call it tao-mind, Christ-mind, Spirit or Bob) or union. It’s so easy to get caught up in the role-ness of our careers: I am a …. And then the world conspires to remind us that the activity and the flow are all, and that the special designations and lines we sometimes draw for our own comfort, the ones that identify “me” and “mine” (think furry blue cookie monster) are fictions, fudgible and dispensible – in fact dispense-worthy!

When I count these moments throughout the day as yoga time I find that they don’t substitute for mat time, they inspire it, I want more, I give more, I do more and I yoga more. Then the “I” falls out.

yogaeveryday.gather.com

You can find our dedicated group for discussion of Eckhart Tolle’s new book A New Earth at yogaeveryday.gather.com.

The cool thing about joining the group – aside from being quick & easy – it becomes a co-blog. You can comment on what others write or make your own article (blog) reflecting how you are digesting your experience.

Look for this icon on the groups page.

Let me know if you have any difficulty and I’ll help. yogaguidesatgmaildotcom

Dharma Now.

Self-possessed, resolute, act

without any thought of results

open to success or failure.

This equanimity is yoga.

Bhagavad Gita

Eckhart Tolle refers to the ego using others as reflectors, turning them into objects and trapping the mind in the false succession of past and future. In yoga and other Eastern systems they refer to the dharma.

The ego structure disappears as you sense what appropriate action is, take it, let go in the moment.

Sounds like idealism, doesn’t it. Who can be indifferent to success or failure? Who can not worry about the opinions of others? Who can release results? The one who is in the moment, who has taken appropriate action and is aware.

Where are you?!?

Hello, Friends! Lovely, smart, inquisitive yogi friends!

 I’m reading. I have been reading. I have a yoga book to review. There’s a book on the food industry I want to review. I’m reading a friend’s manuscript. I’m reading Eat, Pray, Love, which I know you all have read before me, but if you haven’t, oh please pick it up! It’ll make you want to write, to cry, to eat, to hold, to drink wine and laugh and cry some more. Whatever you do that is you, where the you of you disappears and the activity just glistens in the moment – it’ll make you want to do that.

I’m reading, I’m practicing, I’m being. I’m adjusting to a new schedule (I love it). I’m cogitating. I’m incubating. I’m detoxifying, releasing and opening. It’s January and I’m hibernating.

Where are you? What directions has your practice taken you this new year? Did you resolve (which means to unify, simplify, come to essence)? Are you resolute? Are you doing your own duty, your own dharma, and no one else’s?  Are you doing the one thing that represents the state of affairs of you right now? Are you enacting your truth?

Let’s all get about just that. Right now. This moment.

Obstacles to Practice: Perfection

Intention is a powerful guiding force. However, sometimes we get our ideas mixed up with our intentions and then the ideas stand in the way of manifesting the very intentions from which they grew.

We intend to practice every day. Then we wisely think about what that means.  We imagine, we set up schedules and guidelines. And then when we can’t meet the schedules and templates, feelings of inadequacy or futility can overwhelm us. And the intention dies, or goes dormant.

So here’s an idea: think about what it means to practice yoga every day in terms of how it will make you feel. That’s all. Imagine a single down dog or warrior or balance. Imagine a single breath seated in repose. Over at becomingayogi.blogspot.com, she reports on the amazing feeling of drishti – gazing at her toe in a forward fold. That moment, being in it. Now, go practice and see what you find! Accept what you find, embrace it, have compassion for it. As Thich Nhat Hahn says “Darling, I care about this pain.” A moment is all it takes.

Perfect in the moment….

What if “Perfect” = “present in the moment & unjudged”?

"Radical Acceptance"

Yesterday’s post has certainly generated some reactions. My central idea is simply that while emotions sometimes call us to honor specific stories, they always connect us to our basic humanity. After we let the story go, we are in a position to be present with the emotion in the moment, each moment.

Last night while listening to Tara Brach on AudioDharma talk about her book Radical Acceptance presented through Zencast, which I highly recommend, I was struck by her clarity in addressing this presence. She focuses the issues quite beautifully. One of the problems that “being present” or “accepting” often brings up for us is a version of the problem of evil. By looking at it, am I condoning it? By acknowleding the existence of something hurtful, dreadful am I decreasing my resistance, my approbation, am I allowing it into my life? What if everything is sacred (my word)? What do I do with the dark side then?

Part of the answer is that we don’t keep hurt and harm from our lives by resisting its manifestation. The notion that we can keep harm at bay by intellectually refusing to acknowledge it, though full of  Captain Kirkian nobility, conflates two notions of resistance. When a harm is potential we can work to mitigate or even negate it. When it is actual, it no longer is helpful to “resist”, if this means acting like it’s not there because we don’t know what we’d do if it was: it is. One is positive action. The other is a veiled state of mind.

Tara Brach uses a Buddhist teaching on acceptance to demonstrate a way of “Being With” what is difficult. The Buddha invites Mara in and treats the demon gently, acknowledging its presence and effects. By acknowledging Mara, some of the sting, of the wrongness and the power is taken from the effects and the participants are free to be present.

Relaying in my words her clarity and gentleness would distract from the point: go listen to her. Her stories are amazing and I’m still processing the deep teaching behind the story about her student with Alzheimers.

Stories are amazing, but they are also Wittgensteinian ladders: meant to be kicked away. Everything important is right now.