You, just as you are, and your life here, right now, are all there is and all you need to know. You don’t have to do anything special. Mostly, you have to be open to meeting face to face, and even dancing with, the truth that pertains to your life right now. You have to find a way to collect your fractured pieces, examine them, and then accept them as part of who you are. Spiritual practice is about transformation, but it’s also, and more importantly, about working with what is. Angel Kyodo Williams
Another great quote found in my favorite book : Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga
Sometimes you read something that is just what you needed to read at that exact moment in your life. I used to think it was a coincidence, these two events coming together at the same time, but now I see it as guidance from something, someone, somewhere …………..honestly I haven’t figured that one out yet but I know it is there!
I have thoroughly enjoyed the book Mediations from the Mat by Rolf Gates. I will say that it is one of my most favorite books. I find I can connect with what is being said and at times, what I’m reading that day seems to be exactly, and I mean exactly, what I need insight on at that moment. A few days ago as I read the paragraphs below I had one of those surreal moments – perfect timing, perfect passage, perfect for what I needed to know right at that moment.
“Although Patanjali wrote 196 sutras concerning yoga, only three of them pertain exclusively to the asana. The first concerns the means – firm, relaxed postures: the second concerns the end – effortless oneness with what is. The sutra above speaks to the first stumbling block most of us encounter in our practice: we try too hard. Despite the fact that all of us achieved effortless mastery in many areas of our lives, we come to yoga with cultural baggage that says that we are not enough and never will be. We must improve, we must pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, we must try harder and make some progress. With more effort, we think, and a little more strain, we will get more out of the posture. The mistake is believing that we can get where we are going through effort.
Patanjali defines success as effortlessness. Floating in the center of our postures, the center of our experience, we succeed by moving into harmony with the moment, our limbs, our breath, our awareness. Note your tendency to try too hard. Note your impulse to push past the point in which harmony is possible. Note what is keeping you from backing off and simply holding the posture at a point in which integrated experience is possible. Make effortlessness your aim.”
This was written concerning asana practice but as in almost all his passages there is more to the message…………
From this wonderful book: Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga
While preforming asana, the student’s body assumes numerous forms of life found in creation, and he learns that in all these there breathes the same universal spirit – the spirit of God. BKS Iyengar
Found in one of my favorite books: Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga
I love to read. I always browse the “New Books” and “best Sellers” sections of our local library to see if anything interests me. For years I have always seen quite a few books by Eric Jerome Dickey but have never pick one up to read until a few weeks ago. Holy-moly this book was “hot” – it was called Pleasure and had to do with the main character’s, a woman, particular life experience over a short pan of a few months. I liked his writing style and I liked the way he empowered his main character. I won’t give too much away about the book but I loved this paragraph near its end. It is in reference to her recent experiences but there is so much more said between the lines……………..
No man’s words or actions would ever be allowed to cheapen my experience, because in cheapening the moments of my life, my life would be devalued, and no man or woman would ever be given the power to make me less than, not when his true fear, her true fear, when unmasked, wad that I was greater than. I was resilient. I was sensitive. I was feminine. I was loving. I was sexual. I was giving. And I was stronger. I had weaknesses, but that did not make me weak. This was my life. This was me. My uniqueness. No one would be allowed to castrate my desires, they would not be allowed to diminish my needs. They would not be given power to revise my existence, whittle my spirits down, make me over, put me in their box of comfort. They would not lessen my humanness with their hypocrisies. Eric Jerome Dickey
Book by Eric Jerome Dickey: Pleasure
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. Meet me there. Rumi
What an amazing quote……………
Got this quote form one of my favorite books on yoga: Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga
Great Rumi book: A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings
