“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bounds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”
Dear Yogini,
Let us be human together and speak of our disappointments, our grief, sometimes our fear, but also of our courage and our trust regarding all things that yoga brings to life. Please know I hold and honor your confidences and your sentiments in the highest esteem because they are each and every one of them valid and very, very real, and I have experienced every single one in my own fashion. Faced with various conflicting truths along your path, you will need to consider the urge to move forward—a movement into uncertainty—and the urge to resist, to hold onto what feels certain and what you think you know and want to control. Change is hard under the best of circumstances; under hardship or duress, it may feel impossible. You will face the need to let go because there is nothing left for you to hold onto; and the desire to hold on because it feels impossible to let go.
To live in truth, as it turns out, is to be able to live in these contradictions, to accept that each element can be true without negating the other. When your heart grows so big it can contain the right and the wrong, the good and the bad, the happy and the sad, your courage and your fears, know that your yoga is working in service of you. I know this because I too am practicing living with all the contradictions life has placed at my own feet in what feels like too small a heart to contain all of these sensitivities: The grief of loss mixed up with the joys of celebration; the intimacy of family transmuting into the independence of empty-nest; the known of a yoga studio relinquished for the unknown of self-agency; the complexities of couplehood dissolving into the simplicity of singledom; from Here to another Now.
What lessons can you derive from your experiences on the mat to revitalize your expression of yourself off the mat and in your life? What does your calling to seek more from your yoga feel like in your body? What does it sound like in your heart? Your yoga reveals to you your particular gift. Find your voice, your self-expression and shout to the world what you are about. As you persevere at the practice of the Yogic Wisdom and in following your path of yoga, you will find that signs and motivations show up in your sphere of awareness in the most mundane and also unlikely places, from your coffee mug to a pop-up ad on Facebook. Simply take notice, this is all that yoga asks of you.
You do not need to be an expert at yoga, dear yogini; you will become the expert of your own experiences by your engagement with the tenets and practices of the Yogic Wisdom and your wholehearted commitment to your path. Adhikara is a Sanskrit term that implies openness to deeper spiritual study combined with a respect for what is being studied. It also suggests ownership in that every student assumes a certain level of responsibility for their yoga and what they do with it, commensurate with their body of knowledge and degree of commitment to their practice. So I reflect your question back to you, dear yogini, and ask you instead: In what capacity do you perceive your experiences, through yoga and your “inmost happening,” working to serve your highest truth? You have within you all the resources you need to meet yourself fully whether that means continuing down the path of yoga in studentship, as a guide, or in some other creative capacity as a “dispeller of darkness.” To bring the essence of You into Action in the world is teaching yoga.
Take what you learn off the mat into your daily life. Combine your solitary practices with nature where true healing is found. Carve out time and space for yourself, for self-practice, and for ritual wellbeing. This is a statement of self-worth. You are deserving of everything you want for yourself, and I would be happy to support you on your journey should the need arise. In the end, we are a mandala of practitioners—students, guides, and gurus—who come together through yoga to practice and learn from each other. We feel what it is to breathe, to appreciate the gift of the physical body, the joy of movement, and to experience moments of stillness and equanimity within ourselves, transporting all of this into community and connection. The doorway to practice is always open and the path of Self-mastery is constantly evolving.
Little do I know of you or your life, but I do know this from my heart: You are as brilliant as the stars, as vast as the skies, and as temperamental and troubled as the seas, for you are a child of the universe and subject too to the mere fact of being human. Let amazement, furious curiosity, and passionate perseverance fuel your thirst for all things bright and beautiful, for you are a Seeker—this I know to be true. Light up your world with trust and truth and love and, together, in connection, let us learn to trust the untrustworthy and be brave.
Embody your truth and love yourself without condition. Ultimately, the place of practice is your very own heart, this place of conscious intent. The one thing we all have in common is our humanity. On some level each of us participates in our own ‘hero’s journey’ to remember who we are, what we are, and where we are on this path of life. What makes yoga such a powerful practice is that it asks us to step right into seeing the habitual and conceptual conditioning of our consciousness into the freedom of begin fresh, and merely human, for a time, together. Anything less is ‘spiritual bypass’. The way you live your life—the speed, noise, chaos, agendas, calcifications and conflicts—will all show up on your mat. Take notice. Shift this dynamic for yourself in practice for NOW is the time to take this precious yoga out into our lives, our relationships and into the world as a manifestation of the consciousness we cultivate on our individual mats. Join me in taking this heart vow: “I do.”
May all be well with mankind.
May the leaders of this Earth protect in every way by keeping to the right path.
May there be goodness for those who know the Earth to be sacred.
May all beings everywhere know peace.
May the rains fall on time and the Earth yield her fruit in abundance.
May this world be free from disturbances, and the righteous free from fear.
Om Shanthi. Shanthi. Shanthi.
Love,
Nicole