Category Archives: Live Your Yoga

Patanjali and Vyaghrapada in the Tillai Forest

Here is a lovely story I learned from Douglas Brooks. It contains many teachings, several highlighted here. I begin by telling the story, and then unpack some of the major teachings.

Once upon a time, Vishnu was reclining on his couch of Shesha, the serpent. Vishnu seemed rather unsettled, heavy and exited, so Shesha asks him, what has happened to cause you this agitation, this ecstatic discomfort?

Vishnu replies, I have seen the dance of Yogeshvara, I have seen the Lord of Yoga’s ecstatic dance. He has seen the beautiful poetic self-expression of the divine, he has seen Nataraja’s dance.

Shesha then asks Vishnu if he, too, can see the dance, and Vishnu replies yes, but you must become embodied to do so. You must become embodied to taste the experience.

So Shesha is born as Patanajli, this being, who has is half human and half snake.

Shesha, now Patanjali, burrows into the darkness, into the depths of the earth, he’s part snake after all. And eventually he emerges in the forest of the Tillai trees, where he begins searching for the Lord of the Dance, Nataraja, whom Vishnu had experienced. For many years he searches for Nataraja, he perseveres and is determined, as he knows the dancer is here somewhere in the forest of the Tillai trees.

Then, finally one day he comes upon a linga.

A linga is a statue that is a single pillar or column, and signifies the unmanifest Absolute reality, also known as Shiva. It signifies everything, but appears as nothing. It holds all possibilities, the potentiality prior to manifestation.

This linga has obviously been worshipped, it is adorned with sandalwood paste and kum kum, which is the red paste that people put on their foreheads and on statues and such. So Patanjali sees this adorned linga and realizes he is not alone in this forest, there are other seekers as well. There are others who have been seeking even longer.

Also adorning the linga, Patanjali sees a flower that is exquisitely beautiful, unlike anything he’s ever seen before. He, also, wants to make this beautiful flower offering to the linga. So he searches and searches the forest for the flower, but to no avail. Each night he falls asleep not finding the flower, and then every day he wakes up to see a new flower has been offered. Each day, someone has offered another fresh gorgeous flower.

Finally he decides to make an offering he does have, a particular seed from the earth, where he borrows. So he makes his own unique offering from the earth he inhabits.

And then from the trees descends this being who is mostly human, but has the paws of a tiger. This is Vyaghrapada, his name literally means “tiger paws.” Vyaghrapada lives up in the trees and was given the boon of paws which allow him to climb high up into the trees to gather these amazing flowers no one else can touch. He has been watching Patanjali all the while, and when Patanjali slept, he brought down beautiful orchids from the treetops, and did his puja, his worship. Vyaghrapada has been watching Patanjali carefully and has realized the seriousness of his worship.

Patanjali and Vyaghrapada sit together at the linga to worship. They learn that they each know mantras to chant, and they teach each other what they know, and they chant together. And as they chant, the linga starts to twist and turn, and from that form of potentiality, Shiva emerges in the form of the Lord of Dance, Nataraja.

In his blissful dance they see all of creation, manifestation, and destruction. They see revelation and concealment, and they see the gesture of the upturned hand signifying “no fear,” abhaya mudra.

They receive and share these teachings from Nataraja’s dance, and they each also receive individual teachings. Patanjali offers more gifts to Nataraja, and Nataraja bestows upon Patanjali the gifts of the teachings of Ayurveda, of grammar, and of yoga. Then Patanjali leaves, having seen the dance and received his gifts. Vyaghrapada stays, as he is a dweller in the forest, and he asks Naratarja: is there more? Together Patanjali and Vyaghrapada saw the ananda tandava, the dance of bliss, but there are actually several more dances of Nataraja, which Vyaghrapada witnesses, since he asked for it.

Then eventually Nataraja returns back to the potential form of the Shiva Linga.

This story has much to tell us about the path of yoga. There are many teachings held in this story, and we will consider a few of them.

First of all, remember that you are every character in the story, so you are Patanjali, you are Vyaghrapada, you are Nataraja.

In the beginning of the story, Shesha gets a hit of something Vishnu has experienced, and he wants to experience it himself. He becomes a seeker, searching for more in life. It’s like when you’re around someone that has a certain energy that you pick up on and it is so attractive that you want to learn about it. This is like many of us who have a sense that we want more out of our lives, and that is why we turn to yoga and meditation.

So Shesha asks how he can experience the dance, and is told that you must embody to experience more. In our lives, we have the opportunity to experience the bliss of the Divine, as well as the joys of embodied life. So in this story Shesha embodies as Patanjali.

Patanajli works hard to first burrow through the ground to arrive at the Tillai forest, then to find the linga within the forest, and then to try to find the flowers for offering. He is no slacker. Patanjali doesn’t give up. He is unrelenting on his path. So in Patanjali’s teachings we see a yoga of effort and discipline.

He sees the lovely flower offering someone else has offered and he searches and searches the forest for the flower, but to no avail. The flower is not his gift, it is the gift of another. We each have our own unique offering to make and often it takes us time to discover this. Often in life we try to copy someone else’s offering and it just falls flat. It takes Patanajli a while as to discover that his offering is that of the seed which comes from the earth where he has burrowed.

And then he meets Vyaghrapada, and they sit together to worship. They discover that they each know mantras to chant, and they teach each other what they know, and they chant together. This is the power of our spiritual community.

Nataraja has always been present, they just haven’t seen him. Something shifts so that the dance becomes manifest from the potential of the linga. Then they finally do see the dance, they learn the pancha krityas, Shiva’s five acts, they learn abhaya mudra, the gesture of fearlessness

Patanjali sees the crossing arm of Nataraja, he sees there are barriers to the heart. He worked hard to attain his experience of the dance. He leaves the forest with the Yoga Sutras, a text of renunciation, discipline, and asceticism. So we have here represented the nirvritti yoga, yoga of turning inward.

Vyaghrapada sees into the cave of the heart, the dance of living a life fully, and remains in the forest as a householder. This represents the path of pravritti yoga, of doing our dance in the world.

This story is a powerful exposition of our path as yogis in the world. As meditators, Patanjali’s teachings of discipline and inward turning are important to us, but they are only part of the story. Like Vyaghrapada, we are householders, so we must learn how to do the many dances in our life. And like both of these characters, we must each learn to offer our own unique gifts, to dance our own unique dance.

There are many other teachings applicable to our lives in this story. You are invited to contemplate what further you can learn from this story, and how it might apply to your life.

Trying to Make Sense of Another Mass Shooting

This morning I put on NPR an hour before I had to teach. The newscaster described two mass shootings in the last 24 hours, and then said something like “this is morning in America.”

Again, I try to make sense of it. Trying to make sense of what is truly senseless. And yet again I come back to disconnection. A lack of connection. A person who has become so disconnected from his own heart that he could perpetuate such violence on others. It isn’t an anomaly; it has been the human situation forever. (And I must point out: what IS an anomaly is the easy access to weapons of war).

I find I can make some sense of it from how the teachings of yoga explain the process of disconnection. As humans we all emerge from the great ocean of consciousness. We are created as finite beings from the infinite. As we become finite we forget the infinity from which we came. We take on bodies of a particular form, with particular proclivities. We separate from the ocean and become individual life waves.

And what we see from that perspective is separateness and differentiation.

And that can become our focus. Instead of seeking connection, we focus on our differences.

Difference is a natural consequence of our manifestation. It is tricky, because at the surface, differences do make a difference – in ways that are both delightful, and problematic. Delightful are those differences where we appreciate other perspectives, ways of being, cultures. Problematic are differences when we elevate some beings and oppress others. And of course, there are some “different” behaviors that we must work to protect ourselves against when they are truly harmful, like perpetrating violence against other beings unnecessarily.

But I came to the conclusion long ago that ultimately the means to address these problems is to penetrate into people’s hearts, so that they experience the connection. We must recognize we are all from the same source, that we are connected to all beings, not just our family, our race, or our nation.

This is exactly why I quit my trajectory of becoming a social psychologist studying prejudice, and became a teacher of yoga and meditation. I sensed the need to work on these deeper levels. But we MUST work on ALL levels simultaneously. We must be active socially and politically. And ultimately that will come easier to the extent we can each connect to the underlying heart, and help create a society in which that is a societal norm. This is my hope and prayer today.

SEED

Seeds are powerful things, as many traditions have noted: from a tiny seed the greatest of trees can grow.

In the yoga tradition, every one of our actions lays down a samskara, which can be thought of as a seed which is waiting for the right conditions to sprout. Just like physical seeds can be dormant until the conditions are ripe for sprouting, the seeds of each of our actions reside in our subtle body, awaiting fruition. They emerge as conditioned responses or habit patterns.

As you sow, so shall you reap.

So in every moment we have an opportunity to sow what we want to reap. A beautiful thing about our capacity as human beings is that we are free. The tradition calls it svatantrya – we have the freedom to choose which seeds we want to encourage, and of course which we want to discourage.

The external conditions of our life create the initial impulse for a seed to sprout. For example, the holidays bring up many old samskaras, both positive and negative. And this is super important to remember: samskaras can be positive, negative, or neutral.

So as conscious, mindful beings, we can exercise our freedom of choice to work with these samskaras, choosing to nurture those which are life enhancing and choosing not to enact those which degrade our lives and are not in alignment.

Our practices, especially meditation strengthen our ability to exercise our freedom. This works in a variety of interacting ways. Our daily practice lays down the seeds of connection to our deepest self, which allows an easier and more automatic access to that place at all times. Then this can allow us a moment of pause that is so important in reshaping our lives. There is a moment we have between an impulse arising, a seed beginning to sprout, and our conscious choice to allow it to unfurl into fruition, or instead choose to not lay down another one of those particular seeds.

In this way we slowly, slowly, transform our lives such that we are creating the potential for seeds that produce more positive impulses in our life to dominate.

Samdhana

I had the wonderful opportunity to study one of the foundational texts of Tantra, the Shiva Sutras, with my teacher Paul Muller-Ortega. He pointed to the theme of “samdhane” from the first chapter of the text, that I have found so useful. The word “samdhane” has the verbal root “dha” in it, which means “to place or put.” “Sam” means “with” or “together,” so samdhana means putting together, drawing something together, joining, uniting.

From what I learned from Paul, and contemplating the text, this concept of samdhana encapsulates so much of what our practice is about. My understanding of this concept of alignment is that it manifests in stages, and in all the different levels of our life.

When we take a step toward aligning with the highest through our practices, that intention accelerates an already set-in-motion movement toward alignment. It makes sense that a primary purpose and result of our meditation practice is to connect with the highest, the source of everything, and that from which everything manifests. But taking it back on step: there must have been some prior impulse within you, some seed that seeks the light, that encouraged or urged you to seek that connection in the first place.

And having heeded that impulse, that call to connect with your innermost self, the practice of meditation sets into motion the establishment of that connection. Through the practice of meditation, your awareness traverse the depths of consciousness to its source. This absolute source place is the root matrix from which everything comes into being in the relative world, which we see on the physical surface of our life.

Connecting with that source place of creating and manifesting energies sets in motion another aspect of samdhane. Our life at the surface begins to reflect and resonate with the source. On a practical level, we begin to experience that flow of creativity and manifestation rearranging our lives on its many levels. We find our desires, our thoughts and our actions, aligning with the highest such that aspects of our life that are more occluding, less supportive of the highest, begin to drop away, to be replaced by what is more affirming and supportive of the highest.

While this is an automatic result of our practice, it is a process, it is not instantaneous. It may take some time for the connection and alignment to come fully into fruition, as there are obstacles that must first be removed, all our old pain and patterns must be addressed in some way.

I see this process unfolding within myself in ways that are both delightful and painful. In my everyday life, I see more loving and compassionate responses arise naturally. I don’t have to force a kinder response, it is as if I am unable to do otherwise.

Yet because this process is still unfolding and evolving in me, at other times I see myself enacting old reactive patterns. But what happens now that I’ve been meditating a while, is that most times (sadly, not always…yet!) I immediately detect my misaligned pattern before I actually enact it. The pain of misalignment has become greater than any satisfaction from enacting old patterns that no longer serve.

So these teachings on samdhane indicate that initially our meditation practice allows us to align with the highest place from which all activity unfolds. So that unfolding of activity naturally begins to line up with the highest possible in any given moment. In this way, our entire life begins to be rearranged so that it is reflective and supportive of the highest.

LISTENING and RECEIVING

During my recent meditation retreat I received darshan* from the animals three times.

The first was a hummingbird that roused me from my meditation with its flutter buzz of wings I could feel on my face. I opened my eyes and it was so close I couldn’t focus on it. (I think it was attracted by my rose quartz earrings). I felt kissed and blessed by the merging of our auras.

The second was again when I was meditating by a fountain pool area. I heard a distinct rhythmic lapping sound and I opened my eyes to see a beautiful fox getting a drink just 4 feet from me. I was hidden in the shadows so I was able to enjoy its beauty for a few moments. I felt blessed by that beauty.

The third time I was out on a walk and sat down on a log to meditate. I looked up and in the clear desert sky I saw a hawk soaring, circling and circling. It came closer until it was right over me. I felt blessed by the grace and freedom of its movement.

I received many other blessings as well on this retreat, but these visitations from the natural world remind me of the blessings of beauty, connection, freedom, and grace.

When I recounted this experience on Facebook, I got a comment that perhaps I was exuding some special energy. Perhaps, but mostly I was simply quiet and listening. These beings are always there, it is simply a matter of sitting quietly, allowing them to come closer, and receiving their presence.

This is a lot of what meditation is: just getting quiet and being present for what shows up. “Listening” with our awareness, our senses turned in to receive the blessings of our innermost Self, the heart in the core of our being. Many things will appear, sometimes challenging, sometimes sweet, sometimes informative. All are blessings in their own way.

To receive these blessings, we must take the time to sit and be quiet, listening, then “look” at what is offered to us from the depths of our being. Life in its many forms is precious. May we slow down enough to receive its many blessings.

*darshan: the beholding of a deity (especially in image form), revered person, or sacred object. The experience is considered to be reciprocal and results in the human viewer’s receiving a blessing. (Britanica.com)

For the Love of Chidambaram

This morning I stood to watch the crystal linga and then ruby Nataraja abhishekam, up front with a gaggle of little Indian ladies, one of whom chanted/sang beautiful mantra the whole time. I watched as the murtis were drenched in water, milk, honey, fruit, sandalwood, rice. I watched as the crowd gasped when the lamp alighted the ruby Nataraja from behind.

I sat in the hall afterward and tried to take it all in. There is something so rare and true and real and accessible here, it is so precious.

Priests chanting the vedas (one using his cellphone for reference). People sitting meditating, or chatting. Dikshitars doing their business. Westerners walking around dazed and confused.

I cried to know this is my last day here. I sat for quite a while soaking. Soaking in the grace of it all. Indescribable.

Then I made my rounds.

Each corner of the temple holds something. The plethora of deities too numerous to keep track of them all. The hunched old people who can barely walk. The dikshitars striding to do their business. The making of garlands.

And everywhere: worship. Palms raised overhead like a little temple or pressed together in front of the heart. Light offered, ghee lamps. Pranams. Mantras.

So alive!

A hidden corner with nagas (snake deities) and the Goddess in one of her many forms.

A dikshitar chanting into a cellphone, then handing it to a younger diskshitar who begins to listen to it.

Endless small shrines in the pillars, anointed with kumkum and lighted with clay lamps filled with ghee.

Inevitably my steps take me to the Dakshinamurti shrine. I have been sitting here in the early mornings when it is not too stinky. Today it is too stinky.

Around past the saints all labeled (in Tamil, which unfortunately I don’t read) and lined up. Respect, honoring lineage.

Pausing at the mula lingam, the oldest part of the temple.

Looking at the natural light as it plays in the long hallways and imagining what it looked like when the temple was lighted with the oil lamps lining the ceiling rather than electricity.

Moving on to Kamasundari, who has her own temple and it is fabulous. A little hike and at 11:30 the stones are quite hot on bare feet. Sticking to stones in the shade, or hurrying.

Walking down the steps inside…the beauty of the ceiling! Different vintages of paintings tell stories of the Goddess and of the temple. A lone dikshitar chanting, struggling a little I can tell. Yesterday he was there with two others, one named Shiva who is the son of Sundaramurti Dikshitar, who has been our host. Yesterday, Shiva seemed to be guiding the others, and I sat and listened to them chant for quite a while.

Inside it is dark, yet the beautiful saris on the sapta Matrikas are shining-alternating purple and gold.

It is too hot for proper pradakshina around the outside of the Goddess temple, so I take a quick sidetrip to sit in the shade before the Shri Yantra shrine.

The heat sends me “home” to my hotel, knowing I will return tonight for the chaos of the arathi, gazing back and forth at the reclining Vishnu, Nataraja dancing, bells clanging, singing, clapping, and happy chaos, again trying to soak it all in, holding it in my heart of hearts.

CHURNING OF THE OCEAN

shivapoison

One of the most pervasive myths in the Hindu lore is the long and intricate story of the “churning of the ocean.” I have been considering this myth as I have been processing and practicing this last post-election week. Here is a shortened version with the salient details applicable to my current consideration.

The devas (gods) and asuras (demons) were both seeking the nectar of immortality (amrta or soma). To get it, they worked together to churn the ocean. They upended a great mountain, and wrapped a huge snake around it and churned and churned for a very long time.

Eventually a variety of different things emerged, like a cow, an elephant, the goddess Laksmi, and jewels, happily claimed by the churners.

Then as they continued churning, a dark viscous noxious substance started to emerge. It was quite toxic and threatening to the world. They had to call upon the god Shiva to handle it. He held it in his throat, which is why one of his names is Lord Blue Throat (nilakantha). He transmuted the poison in this way and the churning resumed until the amrta emerged.

I have heard this story interpreted in many ways, a favorite is as a metaphor for our practice of yoga, particularly meditation. As we practice, we are churning our own consciousness, from which emerges gifts like centeredness, clarity, and creativity, and eventually more blissful states. But as well, along the way, we must deal with and transmute any poison that resides in our own individual consciousness.

We experience this in our yoga asana practice as discomfort arises physically due to tightness in our bodies or old injuries. We transmute these through conscious breathing and correct and therapeutic alignment such that eventually there is healing. But it may be unpleasant for a while.

And as well in yoga asana and especially meditation, frustration, residue of old patterns, and all kinds of psychic gunk can be churned up. The practice gives a context and methodology within which to transmute these challenges.

As I’ve thought about the story of the churning of the ocean in light of our current political climate, I’ve been thinking of the ocean in this myth representing our collective consciousness, and how we’ve stirred up and unleashed the poison. And the question becomes, who will transmute it? In the story it is Shiva, who is the consummate yogi. Shiva was called upon to handle it, he held and transmuted it.

Many of us have had the privilege and blessing of many years of yoga practice. As yogis we have many tools at our disposal to shift energy and transform our beings. We practice asana, pranayama, meditation, and chanting. We study the scriptures for guidance. And as we deepen our studies and practice, we have the power of transmutation.

The form this takes can vary. On a very practical level, for me it involves staying steadfast in my yoga practices, stabilizing myself in a place of connection to my heart. As a yoga teacher I will continue to aid others in this process, teaching the tools for transformation. As a citizen of this planet, I intend to do whatever I can to acknowledge the poison when I see it, and seek to transmute it by whatever means I have at my disposal.

I hope we can each remember and seriously consider utilizing the gifts we have received through the practice. We begin by acknowledging the poison is there, it has been unleased. Acknowledge as well that the gift of yoga has led to some degree of awareness, that you are awake at this critical time. Are you willing to engage, to work to transmute it in whatever way you have the power to do so?

Feel free to leave a comment regarding how you would like to transmute the toxic energy.

Choosing to Go Left

cindy5

I received a suggestion/challenge from a student in one of my yoga classes recently: can we sometimes go to the left side first? She felt she was tighter on the left and that it seemed we spent more time on that first side.

I found this an interesting challenge because it would require me to practice what I teach on several levels.

On the physical level I often have students switch up how they clasp their hands behind their back, in order to balance things out. This is a little different, but the same principle operates: not giving preference to one way of doing it. I often use the hand clasping as an example of a certain mindlessness and habitual patterning we allow in our practice, and in our lives as a whole, and the same thing applies to switching up which side we move to first.

In our yoga practice, most times we just automatically do it. When the teacher says clasp your hands behind your back, my tendency is to put my right index finger on top of my left. Over time, this is going to have a subtle imbalancing effect on my shoulders. But as interesting is that choice moment when I act seemingly without thinking. I just do it automatically, as if there is no other choice. This happens in our yoga practice, and in many other domains of our life.

This is an example of a habit pattern. Notice how we don’t think about it, we reach with certain hands, turn certain directions. We have a repeated way we travel from point A to point B. We have “our” way of doing things, perhaps honed from our own trial and error to discover the “best” way of doing things.

Maybe, maybe not.

Or perhaps a teacher told us to do it that way. In the tradition in which I began doing yoga, we always moved to the right side first. Some might argue there is a physical or more esoteric advantage to this.

Maybe, maybe not.

I realized I had established a pattern that I was perpetuating, and chose to see what it was like to start shifting that pattern.

It was challenging. I was constantly flummoxed as I taught because after 25 years of teaching it one way I had grown lazy with my instructions. I didn’t have to think about it, I just did it. And now I had to be mindful.

I persevered. I announced to my students we were going to start moving left first in some classes. It became a bit of a game as they noticed and reminded me when I slipped into my old patterns. And they got to see their own patterns as I switched it up, and they were challenged to shift their own patterning. We giggled at ourselves together, and together we began to shift the pattern.

In summary, here’s the steps of how I worked with it:

– Notice the pattern. This is often the hardest part because it is so automatic. In this case, I was open to feedback. Someone sweetly mentioned a pattern that might not be altogether positive, and I listened. At first I was resistant, and I had to look at that and evaluate whether or not I wanted to shift.

– Set an intention. I made it public. I asked for help and accountability. I announced it to my classes so they could remind me. This allowed them as well to look at their own habits and resistance.

– Make a plan. I committed to starting on the left side first on the first and third weeks of the month. I made it concrete.

– Do it. Again. And again.

– Flounder. I allowed myself to flounder. I made mistakes. I allowed myself to not be perfect.

– Stop in your tracks when you are enacting the old pattern. Choose again the new pattern. When I became aware I was caught in the old pattern, I stopped and switched, right there in the moment. I didn’t wait to shift it until later. So my students have had to endure starting on one side, only to have me shift, but as I said, they were in on the game, and they’ve played along very sweetly.

– Understand it is a process. It is challenging. Allow it to be challenging

– Acknowledge success. I noticed how it became easier as I established the new pattern. With the switching the hands behind the back, it is hard now for me to discern that the new pattern feels weird.

Of course this is a somewhat trivial example in the larger scheme of habits in our lives we could benefit from shifting. But it makes the point. We all have patterns, some of which serve us, but others that may not. As we refine our lives we need to be mindful that we are making choices, and whether we are choosing the optimal choice. Our ability to pause and make conscious choices is one of the greatest gifts of our humanity. May we enact it.

Ganapati’s Ears: Listening and Winnowing

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the elephant-headed God, Ganesh, or Ganapati, is his ears. They are said to be indicative of his capacity for listening, and as well they resemble winnowing baskets, and therefore the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Our ability to truly listen is fundamental to our paths as yogis and as humans. By “listening” I mean not only hearing with our ears, but accessing all our senses, and honing our ability to perceive accurately, which is tied into the winnowing process.

Think about any of conversations you have, face-to-face or electronically, and consider to what extent you truly listen. If you look closely, you’ll find that most of us are already formulating a response before the other person has completed the articulation of their thought. Often our listening is selective, we hone in on a particular point without hearing the full range of what the person is saying.

For example, I recently received an email with feedback on one of my classes. I immediately began to discount the feedback, pushing it off on the person who had the problem, justifying why I did things the way I did, etc. And I immediately began writing back with those points. But since it was an email, I had the time to first of all, reread the email and really try to understand what was being articulated. Then I started formulating a different, more nuanced response. And instead of hitting send too quickly, I again read the email and formulated several more responses before sending one that expressed appreciation for the feedback and how I would try to improve my teaching. So instead of starting a negative feedback loop, I was able to shift it into a win-win situation.

Now, I know some of you are thinking: well, sometimes it is the other person who is “off” somehow, or incorrect. Or sometimes it is hard to know, how can we figure that out?

Here is where the practice of meditation comes in. Our meditation practice allows us to begin working with our habitual patterns in a variety of ways. Meditation directly affects the old imprints stored inside, such that they become attenuated or burned off. As well, a regular meditation practice allows us to establish connection to, as Patanjali puts it, the Seer: a wiser and clearer part of our self. Having established connection with that part of our self, we can begin to access that wiser self on a moment-by-moment basis to guide us in both our understanding, and responses.

So there is a listening we can cultivate in the other direction: listening within, listening to the Seer. And in time, with practice, we can begin to truly listen and perceive the outside world from this place of deep listening to the Seer.

Nowhere is this more important than when we are facing the challenges: the obstacles and thresholds that are associated with Vigneshvara, the Lord of Obstacles as Ganesh is also known as. In those moments of challenge, or as we cross the threshold into a new domain in our lives, our ability to negotiate all of the input while standing in an awareness of our innermost self will allow us to respond in a refined and nuanced way, and from a place of love that is the essence of who we are.

My sense of the divine is that it is benevolent, and actually wants us to grow and heal, and to serve the world. And as the Lord of Obstacles, Ganesh is that energy of the divine that places exactly the obstacles and thresholds in our path that we need in order to proceed on that path of growth. Yet often when things are challenging, or challenging messages are sent, we try to combat them, or to simply ignore them. So Ganapati’s ears remind us: are we listening to what the divine is offering us?

EXERCISES
For the next week or so, in your conversations, try to truly listen.
– Can you listen and hear the other person before you begin judging or formulating a response?
– Can you create some space to respond from a place of listening and refinement, rather than reacting from you habitual patterns?

Over time, notice the effect that your practice of meditation has on your ability to listen and refine.
– Can you begin to discern the habitual patterns that cause you to want to react before you’ve had the opportunity to really listen and refine?
– Is there a shortening of the time it takes to create a refined response to a situation?

SPACIOUSNESS

In a recent workshop I facilitated, we each came up with some words or phrases encapsulating our next steps toward manifesting yoga in our lives. Here’s mine:

I placed this on my altar, and I’ve held it in my awareness each morning and afternoon as I meditate. And I came to realize that it is all encapsulated in the word SPACIOUSNESS.

Last year I went with the word CONNECT, and I have to admit that I failed to connect in the ways I wanted because I allowed myself to get too busy. I don’t regret the work I got busy with, but it took its toll on me, and my failure has taught me much, and led me to this place of craving for space, and a determination to create it in my life.

First and perhaps most relevant to my previous failure, I want to maintain a spaciousness with my time. A huge pattern of mine is overcommitting – in fact it is a tactic I use to be productive. And I will still use it , but much more judiciously. For I must create space in my schedule in order to do the other things on my list: practice, study and write. And as well, to fulfill my desire to connect that I articulated last year.

Other ways I intend to create spaciousness in my schedule:
– being present and enjoying doing things, like writing as I am now
– limiting my time on social media
– limiting when I check and respond to emails
– tracking my time and noticing places I unconsciously waste time.
I welcome your ideas about this in the comments section!

I’d like to create more spaciousness in my overall attitude. I want to notice my reactivity and allow some time to pause before responding. I want to allow a larger more spacious perspective and awareness in general, especially in relationship, on social media, and when people differ from me. And I’d like to cultivate a more spacious attitude regarding my conception of time.

And finally, but perhaps most fundamental, I need to create physical space. Ever since my mom passed, over 7 years ago, I’ve been struggling with the physical stuff of my life. When I cleaned out her house I was aghast at the amount of stuff she had. Then I brought a bunch of it home! It has been a very slow yet steady process of letting go. And there is so much more to do. I have become increasingly aware of my sensitivity to clutter, and will be exploring how it shows up in my life, and its ramifications.

I would love to hear how you create more space in your life. Please leave a comment!