True romance comes unscheduled, unruly, "a madness most discreet" quoth Romeo.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Beautiful thoughts
People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. When you know which one it is, you will know what to do for that person.
When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend and they are. They are there for the reason you need them to be. Then, without any wrongdoing on your part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away. Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled, their work is done. The prayer you sent up has been answered and now it is time to move on.
Some people come into your life for a SEASON, because your turn has come to share, grow or learn. They bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it, it is real. But only for a season.
LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons, things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life. It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.
When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend and they are. They are there for the reason you need them to be. Then, without any wrongdoing on your part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away. Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled, their work is done. The prayer you sent up has been answered and now it is time to move on.
Some people come into your life for a SEASON, because your turn has come to share, grow or learn. They bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it, it is real. But only for a season.
LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons, things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life. It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
On compassion and intellect - On Love
In contrast
to modern higher education, where intellectual and scientific
traditions remain somewhat divorced from the heart, and thus often do not
foster the altruistic motivation to benefit beyond self, a regular meditation practise unlocks insightful intellect.
We develop
friendliness, warmth, and humor toward ourselves and, simultaneously toward
everyone we encounter. And as we become more curious, inquisitive, and open, we
encounter an ever-expanding world.
For most of us, mordern education has heightened
individualism, competition, and individuation, so that a
graduate is most often saddled not only with a college debt, but also with a
reinforced sense of “me-first." It is the practice of meditation that makes an education comtemplative. It combines direct experience with inquiry. Meditative intelligence is awake but still, not speeding along trying to reach a quick or clever conclusion. What does all this have to do with love?
Love is a dialogue between compassion and intellect. Both these are inside of you. You have the capacity for deep responsiveness that is compassion. You also have the capacity for intellect and analysis. You can analyze the actions and reactions of your friends and lovers forever - determine where their behaviors have come from - but this activity is nothing without compassion. Dont let your pain be private. Use it as a compass to guide you. Suspend the content. Perhaps it is possible to use the feeling of being with pain to connect with others - to deepen compassion.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Stress in not your enemy
I read this post form Harvard Business Review Blogs,
http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2012/04/stress-is-not-your-enemy.html
Few of us push ourselves nearly hard enough to realize our potential, nor do we rest, sleep, and renew nearly as deeply or for as long as we should. What the writer says is essentially distilled into the statement, "We live by the myth that stress is the enemy in our lives. The real enemy is our failure to balance stress with intermittent rest. Push the body too hard for too long — chronic stress — and the result will indeed be burnout and breakdown. But subject the body to insufficient stress, and it will weaken and atrophy."
In my practice, I see this unfold all the time. Yoga is the sweet spot where effort and relaxation. To simplify this point further, in any pose, once you learn to stack your body and achieve enough strength to hold the pose for a few moments, it is then a subtle shift happens and you get a feeling of "sinking" in, or relaxing into a pose. Almost like let gravity take over. That is your sweet spot. When you find that balance, the potential for growth is enormous.
http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2012/04/stress-is-not-your-enemy.html
Few of us push ourselves nearly hard enough to realize our potential, nor do we rest, sleep, and renew nearly as deeply or for as long as we should. What the writer says is essentially distilled into the statement, "We live by the myth that stress is the enemy in our lives. The real enemy is our failure to balance stress with intermittent rest. Push the body too hard for too long — chronic stress — and the result will indeed be burnout and breakdown. But subject the body to insufficient stress, and it will weaken and atrophy."
In my practice, I see this unfold all the time. Yoga is the sweet spot where effort and relaxation. To simplify this point further, in any pose, once you learn to stack your body and achieve enough strength to hold the pose for a few moments, it is then a subtle shift happens and you get a feeling of "sinking" in, or relaxing into a pose. Almost like let gravity take over. That is your sweet spot. When you find that balance, the potential for growth is enormous.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Why I practice yoga
I find the physical movements of Hatha Yoga
to be graceful and magnificent. Witnessing someone going through the movements
of a vinyasa can be very beautiful and lissome, balletic, but there is an
internal aesthetic that`s perceptible to me as well. The more absorbed I am in
asana, the more apparent this becomes. There is a corporeal elegance that is imminent
in it and yet also transcendent as ever more subtle nuances are endlessly being
uncovered.
It is an internal and external adventure of
discovery: A previously inexperienced lengthening, a twist, ease, or a glimpse
of that which feels true and unencumbered. The travel is at a slow speed with
unpremeditated direction. There is also a feeling of liberation as
though all tethers have been cut, a busting out from the shackles of the
physical body. Yet paradoxically, a keener sense of body cognizance occurs, a
more intimate relationship with the body phenomena and a deeper familiarity, an
exploration with sentience. The longer one has practiced, the deeper the relationship
and the more effortless the expression. Yoga is transformative; ossification
evolving into malleability, effort surrendering to stillness. It’s wide open,
it`s focused. It’s liberating… but not as an escape from something, just pure
freedom.
There is also the possibility that yoga can
instill a speck of the unknown into the mundane, at least be a pathway to such
or even an answer to the larger existential questions. I’m not so sure about
that, but that’s a whole other discussion. Sometimes I think that the finality of settling on an answer
is limiting, staying with the question however leaves the door open for wider
potential of insight.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Why I teach yoga
People ask me, why do I teach yoga? I am reminded of a quote by Maya Angelou, it goes something like this - People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
Teaching yoga is about standing on the other side of the mirror. When I practice on my mat, I am in my own space, contained yet free to explore my inner self. But as a teacher, I have the privilege in being in other peoples' spaces. It is about discovering, renewing and strengthening the bonds that connect us. And when I sense that yoga has met a student exactly where they are, that feeling is indescribable, unlike anything else I can hope to experience. It is at once a powerful yet humbling feeling. Practice and teaching go hand in hand, like 2 sides of a coin. I am at once a teacher and a student.
Teaching yoga is about standing on the other side of the mirror. When I practice on my mat, I am in my own space, contained yet free to explore my inner self. But as a teacher, I have the privilege in being in other peoples' spaces. It is about discovering, renewing and strengthening the bonds that connect us. And when I sense that yoga has met a student exactly where they are, that feeling is indescribable, unlike anything else I can hope to experience. It is at once a powerful yet humbling feeling. Practice and teaching go hand in hand, like 2 sides of a coin. I am at once a teacher and a student.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Creative Emptiness
Creative emptiness is not possible so long as there is the thinker
who is waiting, watching, observing in order to gather experience, in
order to strengthen himself. Can the mind ever be empty of all symbols,
of all words with their sensations, so that there is no experiencer who
is accumulating? Is it possible for the mind to put aside completely all
the reasonings, the experiences, the impositions, authorities, so that
it is in a state of emptiness? You will not be able to answer this
question, naturally; it is an impossible question for you to answer,
because you do not know, you have never tried. But, if I may suggest,
listen to it, let the question be put to you, let the seed be sown; and
it will bear fruit if you really listen to it, if you do not resist it.
It is only the new that can transform, not the old. If you pursue the pattern of the old, any change is a modified continuity of the old; there is nothing new in that, there is nothing creative. The creative can come into being only when the mind itself is new; and the mind can renew itself only when it is capable of seeing all its own activities, not only at the superficial level, but deep down. When the mind sees its own activities, is aware of its own desires, demands, urges, pursuits, the creation of its own authorities, fears; when it sees in itself the resistance created by discipline, by control, and the hope which projects beliefs, ideals - when the mind sees through, is aware of this whole process, can it put aside all these things and be new, creatively empty? You will find out whether it can or cannot only if you experiment without having an opinion about it, without wanting to experience that creative state. If you want to experience it, you will; but what you experience is not creative emptiness, it is only a projection of desire. If you desire to experience the new, you are merely indulging in illusion; but if you begin to observe, to be aware of your own activities from day to day, from moment to moment, watching the whole process of yourself as in a mirror, then, as you go deeper and deeper, you will come to the ultimate question of this emptiness in which alone there can be the new.
J. Krishnamurti
It is only the new that can transform, not the old. If you pursue the pattern of the old, any change is a modified continuity of the old; there is nothing new in that, there is nothing creative. The creative can come into being only when the mind itself is new; and the mind can renew itself only when it is capable of seeing all its own activities, not only at the superficial level, but deep down. When the mind sees its own activities, is aware of its own desires, demands, urges, pursuits, the creation of its own authorities, fears; when it sees in itself the resistance created by discipline, by control, and the hope which projects beliefs, ideals - when the mind sees through, is aware of this whole process, can it put aside all these things and be new, creatively empty? You will find out whether it can or cannot only if you experiment without having an opinion about it, without wanting to experience that creative state. If you want to experience it, you will; but what you experience is not creative emptiness, it is only a projection of desire. If you desire to experience the new, you are merely indulging in illusion; but if you begin to observe, to be aware of your own activities from day to day, from moment to moment, watching the whole process of yourself as in a mirror, then, as you go deeper and deeper, you will come to the ultimate question of this emptiness in which alone there can be the new.
J. Krishnamurti
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