Parinama

  Habitual doubt can show itself in a number of ways. One of these forms is a kind of unhealthy skepticism that keeps life, relationships, and any vitalizing help at bay. Gitte Bechsgaard   Perhaps the art of harvesting the secret riches of our lives is best achieved when we place profound trust in the act of beginning…To live a truly creative life, we always need to cast a critical look at where we presently are, attempting always to discern where we have become stagnant and where new beginning might be ripening.   There can be no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable to what is new and different. I have never seen anyone take risk for growth that was not rewarded a thousand times over. John O’Donahue   It takes faith, courage, and surrender to begin. To take that first step into the unknown for growth, for our dharma (purpose in life) even as we do not know where it will lead and what will be asked of us along the way.  ...

    One of the pleasures of growing older is having the chance to look back on life from the distance of years.   Looking back 20, 30, 40 years offers me a richer more complex view of things than the thinner view when I was in the thick of it.   From a distance, I see how one thing unfolded to the next to make up the rich weave of my existence.   My understanding continues to change.   From this distance I can see where the woundedness took root and why the healing of this woundedness took its own long time for a reason.   I see how my life’s unfolding in the specific way that it did created the conditions for many gifts like my daughter, precious friendships, a long and devoted yoga practice.   While I wish it had been easier, I cannot regret the struggle. All those apparent dead ends, the inertia, the many failures in their own way helped me to grow in faith and courage.   All these struggles the compost heap feeding the soil of new gro...

  Faith is the soul’s witness to something not yet manifested achieved or realized, but which yet the Knower within us, even in the absence of all indications, feels to be true or supremely worth following or achieving. Aurobindo Sri, A Greater Psychology    Faith fuels the bright fire of our enthusiasm and energy. Gitte Bechsgaard, The Gift of Consciousness     Where do you turn when things start falling apart, when life feels unbearable?   What is it you have faith in?   For me, it comes as feeling of being held even in the midst of falling, a knowing that I will be okay no matter what is happening. It comes from a connection to my deeper self this passageway from fear into faith.   When I can get to that interior place, I find an accompanying presence holding me that is greater and more spacious than my small self.     Faith is sharpened by the travails of life. When our hopes and dreams are tested as the...

    Sometimes our lives demand activity and action, a true engagement in the world. Life is relationship and the Yogic path also encompasses these relationships. Gitte Bechsgaard, The Gift of Consciousness   Resolution:   from the Old French resolucioun , "a breaking or reducing into parts; process of breakup, dissolution."    Taking on a new challenge, making a resolve does seem to require some loosening-up of the old ways of doing things to make way for something new.  In the breaking apart, we can discover the next small step we need to take to reach the greater goal. Hiking helps me to understand what it takes to attempt a challenge.   When I look up at a distant peak, it can seem like an impossible goal.   Starting out, I am not sure if I will make it to the top.   I am a little afraid.   Will I have the strength and stamina, will the weather hold out, will I lose my will along the way? I feel the fe...