Parinama

  I have been afraid of many things over the years.   Most of these things do not make rational sense but because of the trauma I experienced as a child and just the way I am in the world, small things can trigger a fear that the world that supports me is about to collapse.   It feels inside like I am about to be annihilated, to be disappeared.   It is only recently, in this latter half of life and after many years of yoga, that I have begun to find space between what is happening and the fear.   I have come to sense in my body that just because something feels like a catastrophe it isn’t necessarily one.   It is a grace of healing to see the differences between these two – what is happening and how I feel about it   - even if sometimes only a sliver light escapes between them.   The yoga sutras speak about non-duality as a gift of yoga where we catch a glimpse of life beyond the labeling of things as good or bad.   We ...

    Imagine you are sitting alone in the middle of a well-lit room.   As you sit there alone in silence, the light in the room slowly begins to dim.   As the room dims, a light on the other side of the wall you are facing slowly becomes brighter and brighter.   You begin to realize that the wall you are facing is not really a solid wall, as you had imagined, but is rather a gossamer veil that is becoming increasingly translucent in the light that is shining through it, filling the darkness of your room with an unfamiliar light. James Finley, The Healing Path   God, the divine presence, the deepest innermost self, can seem distant from us.   Even though God’s presence and belovedness lives within us, we can be cut off from this presence through trauma, loss, betrayal. Our hearts become hardened by the thick skins we layer around them so we might not feel the pain of our wounds. Healing comes as we allow the layers around the hear...

    On dealing with asanas, Patanjali says that when the effort of performing comes to an end, then that effortful mind loses all resistance and changes into an effortless state, and finds solace in experiencing its real state and status. This means that when the effortless state is reached in practice, the movements take place from the source and cover the entire body as if body were the self.   When all resistance dissolves and effortful efforts are transformed into effortless efforts, the sadhaka becomes alert at once and experiences changes and transformations.    The dual mind is transformed into a single, simple and innocent mind without ignorance or arrogance. BKS Iyengar, Core of the Yoga Sutras   It is hard to act in the world without the ego, that part of us that longs for acknowledgement, belonging, power.   The ego can give us the energy and courage to take on challenges.   On the flip side, though, the ego ...