Raja Yoga

I opened Remember, Be Here Now to a random page this morning and here is what I found.
If you don’t know it, this book is a modern yoga classic. His experience is equal parts academia, psychedelia and yoga.

THE FINAL PLACE THAT THE GAME LEADS TO IS:
WHERE YOU LIVE CONSCIOUSLY
IN ALL OF IT
WHICH IS NOTHING
YOU ARE ETERNAL
YOU HAVE FINISHED PERISHING
THERE IS NO FEAR OF DEATH BECAUSE
THERE IS NO DEATH
ITS JUST A TRANSFORMATION
AN ILLUSION

AND YET, SEEING ALL THAT, YOU STILL CHOP WOOD AND CARRY WATER.

YOU STILL DO YOUR THING.

YOU FLOW IN HARMONY WITH THE UNIVERSE.

YOU ARE BEYOND MORALITY
AND YET YOUR ACTIONS ARE TOTALLY MORAL
BECAUSE THAT’S THE HARMONY OF THE UNIVERSE.
YOU SEE THAT TO DO ANYTHING WITH ATTACHMENT.
WITH DESIRE…WITH ANGER…GREED..LUST…FEAR..
IS ONLY CREATING MORE KARMA, WHICH IS
KEEPING YOU IN THE GAME… ON THE WHEEL
OF BIRTH AND DEATH

ONCE YOU SEE THROUGH THAT…

DESIRES CAN’T HELP BUT FALL AWAY

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“No one can ‘do yoga’. Yoga means union with God. Yoga means eternal happiness, bliss, joy, and unconditional love. Yoga is who you are. It is your natural state. What we can do are practices that, by revealing to us our resistance to existing in our natural state, may lead us to it.”

Sharon Gannon and David Life,
Founders of Jivamukti Yoga

source: yogalight.org.ua via creative commons

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I wrote this blog post for the yoga.inthekoots blog. It’s about how men relate to their bodies, and how yoga can help cultivate a more receptive and healthy attitude. Its relevant for women too! My intention is to offer some of my experience in yoga with the hopes that more men might give it a try.

“Historically, men have engaged their bodies primarily through intensive physical labour. Pain and fatigue are part of life and survival depends on putting those painful sensations aside and continuing with the task at hand. Maybe we could even say that men have been conditioned, over thousands of years, to ignore the pain sensations of their bodies.”

Check out the full post here.

photo source: oedipusphinx, flickr, creative commons

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credit to kinshuksunil and creative commons

I’m sitting on my back porch listening to JJ Cale. I just finished practicing Hatha yoga outside with a view of the lake and mountians at sunset in Nelson, BC. With the sky sponge-painted blue and pink, I stood on my high perch and started to breathe. I expanded into the poses and reached inward for a sense of balance. The Two Sides take time before coming together to meet. Gravity is the operative force.

Blockage and change happen together to create flow. When one path is blocked another is found, and a connection is made that was never there before. I enter a new place and take stock: what have I learned? How have I changed? What has stayed the same?

I look at the changes first. I think of leaving Yasodhara Ashram after 7 months as a student and a teacher. I think of the moments and choices between then/there and here/now. I see where Reality has conspired to help me. Awareness and feeling guide my way and I am in a much larger world.

A friend recently observed a fly as it hit against the kitchen window, over and over. The screen was open nearby but it insisted on moving to where it could clearly see ahead. It wouldn’t accept that the barrier in front of it was something it could not see.

My friend caught the fly with a cup and piece of paper, and released it outside. The fly spun aimless and giddy in its freedom, then flew off into a vast open world.

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