Hi Friend
Thank you for your lovely message. I am delighted that you are able to share some of your thoughts about your life and yoga with me.
I am sorry to hear your news of recent events.
I pray that you will find the stillness and peace within that Yoga can offer us all.
I can share with you that I do not always find things easy either! In both teaching and my own ‘practice’. This happens when I associate my mind to be my ‘Self’.
Yoga is something much deeper and greater than joints and sinews. Truly, I am not concerned with how wonderfully strong or flexible some students may or may not be.
I act as a medium/mirror to show how yoga has helped me to look deeply within myself for truth, light and darkness.
This means that I constantly look, at the darkness especially; the shadow side of my being or psyche. I may not like what I see, but that does not detract from the truth that these facets are all a part of me.
‘Everything that I see, it is all me’. – (Vimalananda from ‘Aghora’ by Robert E. Svoboda)
To deny ‘what is’, is to deny myself from reality and this can only cause me pain and suffering.
I am currently injured and so won’t be in class tomorrow evening. My ribcage is inflamed at the moment – I have been over zealous in my ‘practice’ at home. However the fact that I embrace this as ‘IS’ removes me from the pain. Although ‘I am in pain’ I do not associate myself to be the ‘I of the body that is experiencing pain’.
How can this be?
I am not ‘his-tory’, I am not ‘my story’. If I am in pain and my mind says ‘I can’t bear this, I can’t take it, there’s always something wrong, some trouble’ then this is how I feel.
If I do not feed my story then I cannot even be in pain.
If when my ribcage starts to throb and I hear my mind say ‘aahhh that’s really painful and getting me down now’ and then i look outside my window and my mind sees my cat climbing the tree and it says ‘i love my cute furry cat’ – then i know that i can either associate myself to ‘be this story’ and suffer the pains and enjoy the blisses or rather, i can see that i am the seer of the pain, ribs, mind, cat and tree. This ‘seer’ is always bliss, peace, stillness and silence.
In yoga I ask, ‘Who am I?’ and the reply is ‘I am the eternal witness of this ever changing body’. This allows me peace and joy. I am living and dying simultaneously. Parts of me fall away and parts arise without question. I cannot do everything in a day and i cannot please everyone. I don’t attempt to ‘try to please’ anymore. As the great master asks us to ask ourselves; ‘Who cares?”
Who is it that cares if there is ease or difficulty, pain or pleasure? I ask you to ask yourself this question.
You say that you would like to master Yoga. Know the Self and you will master all things.
I have all the time in the world although at times I may appear to hurry.
You ask me to be patient with you. This is my ‘role’, my story, this is the ‘job’ of the teacher. The important thing is that you are patient with yourself, your story. As you watch your mind unravel before you, you will begin to notice that you are already in bliss and do not even care that you can or can’t.
In those moments of relaxation in corpse pose at the end of the session, when your mind becomes still for that minute or moment – This is who you really are; beyond the concerns of ‘can or cannot’, ‘good or bad’, ‘he does this, she does that, i can’t do this and i’m better at that’.
Someone said to me last week; “I am holding everyone up” and with that she left the class. Can I suggest that it is not possible to hold anyone up except your own vision of your-self?
I just went to stir my noodles. They look and smell good. The hallway is looking clean and well groomed and so my little monkey mind is satisfied.
What if the noodles were burning, and the cat had just attacked the plant by the front door; spilling its contents all over the beautiful carpet?
Either way, neither have any way of interfering with true and lasting joy, do they.
Life is completely beautiful exactly as it is.
And death? What is life without it?
I hope that this all helps a little.
I look forward to seeing you next time.
Namaste,
Matt.