Playful Yoga Quotes

When the melody plays, footsteps move, heart sings and spirit begin to dance.

People who harm you will blame you for it. Remember, an abuser will generally always play the victim, spin a story, tell everyone and they generally call you crazy.

After pacing, humming, yoga, and playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with the entire cast of Good Times, exhaustion finally got to me, and I managed to fall asleep.

It was like finding Attila the Hun at a yoga class. Like finding Darth Vader playing ultimate Frisbee in the park. Like finding Megatron volunteering at a children's hospital. Like finding Nightmare Moon having a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese.

It is a common belief that we breathe with our lungs alone, but in point of fact, the work of breathing is done by the whole body. The lungs play a passive role in the respiratory process. Their expansion is produced by an enlargement, mostly downward, of the thoracic cavity and they collapse when that cavity is reduced. Proper breathing involves the muscles of the head, neck, thorax, and abdomen. It can be shown that chronic tension in any part of the body's musculature interferes with the natural respiratory movements. Breathing is a rhythmic activity. Normally a person at rest makes approximately 16 to 17 respiratory incursions a minute. The rate is higher in infants and in states of excitation. It is lower in sleep and in depressed persons. The depth of the respiratory wave is another factor which varies with emotional states. Breathing becomes shallow when we are frightened or anxious. It deepens with relaxation, pleasure and sleep. But above all, it is the quality of the respiratory movements that determines whether breathing is pleasurable or not. With each breath a wave can be seen to ascend and descend through the body. The inspiratory wave begins deep in the abdomen with a backward movement of the pelvis. This allows the belly to expand outward. The wave then moves upward as the rest of the body expands. The head moves very slightly forward to suck in the air while the nostrils dilate or the mouth opens. The expiratory wave begins in the upper part of the body and moves downward: the head drops back, the chest and abdomen collapse, and the pelvis rocks forward. Breathing easily and fully is one of the basic pleasures of being alive. The pleasure is clearly experienced at the end of expiration when the descending wave fills the pelvis with a delicious sensation. In adults this sensation has a sexual quality, though it does not induce any genital feeling. The slight backward and forward movements of the pelvis, similar to the sexual movements, add to the pleasure. Though the rhythm of breathing is pronounced in the pelvic area, it is at the same time experienced by the total body as a feeling of fluidity, softness, lightness and excitement. The importance of breathing need hardly be stressed. It provides the oxygen for the metabolic processes; literally it supports the fires of life. But breath as "pneuma" is also the spirit or soul. We live in an ocean of air like fish in a body of water. By our breathing we are attuned to our atmosphere. If we inhibit our breathing we isolate ourselves from the medium in which we exist. In all Oriental and mystic philosophies, the breath holds the secret to the highest bliss. That is why breathing is the dominant factor in the practice of Yoga.

The first is that everyone—including Mom and Dad—has to do a hard thing. A hard thing is something that requires daily deliberate practice. I’ve told my kids that psychological research is my hard thing, but I also practice yoga. Dad tries to get better and better at being a real estate developer; he does the same with running. My oldest daughter, Amanda, has chosen playing the piano as her hard thing. She did ballet for years, but later quit. So did Lucy.

Today will be different. Today I will be present. Today, anyone I speak to, I will look them in the eye and listen deeply. Today I’ll play a board game with Timby. I’ll initiate sex with Joe. Today I will take pride in my appearance. I’ll shower, get dressed in proper clothes, and change into yoga clothes only for yoga, which today I will actually attend. Today I won’t swear. I won’t talk about money. Today there will be an ease about me. My face will be relaxed, its resting place a smile. Today I will radiate calm. Kindness and self-control will abound. Today I will buy local. Today I will be my best self, the person I’m capable of being. Today will be different.

O Raghava, be outwardly active but inwardly inactive, outwardly a doer but inwardly a non-doer, and thus play your part in the world.

Samadhi is the word used by Patanjali in his classic work, the Yoga Sutras, to describe the final stage in meditation, in which the mind is completely concentrated and a superconscious mode of knowing comes into play.

For women especially, tuning into the goddesses is a way of homing in on aspects of our own life-energy that we may never have understood or owned. Celebrating the goddesses has the potential not only to tune us to our own sacred capacities, but also to help us work with the hidden and secret forces at play in our lives. When we can do that, we can literally harness these forces for our own transformation.

In our family, we live by the Hard Thing Rule. It has three parts. The first is that everyone—including Mom and Dad—has to do a hard thing. A hard thing is something that requires daily deliberate practice. I’ve told my kids that psychological research is my hard thing, but I also practice yoga. Dad tries to get better and better at being a real estate developer; he does the same with running. My oldest daughter, Amanda, has chosen playing the piano as her hard thing. She did ballet for years, but later quit. So did Lucy.

I remember reading about an NFL receiver who studies yoga so that his limber limbs won't be surprised when they're slammed into strange positions as he plays his full-contact sport. Well, in case you haven't noticed, life is a full-contact sport, at least for the soul.

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let’s be kind to the people in our own existence. Let’s occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever. Yesterday I knew I had no future, and that it was impossible for me to accept my life as it is now. And yet today, that same messy life seems full of hope. Potential. The impossible, I suppose, happens via living. Will my life be miraculously free from pain, despair, grief, heartbreak, hardship, loneliness, depression? No. But do I want to live? Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.

...below even our most obscure physical consciousness is a subconscious being in which as in a covering and supporting soil are all manner of hidden seeds that sprout up, unaccountably to us, on our surface and into which we are constantly throwing fresh seeds that prolong our past and will influence our future,--a subconscious being, obscure, small in its motions, capriciously and almost fantastically subrational, but of an immense potency for the earth-life. Again behind our mind, our life, our conscious physical there is a larger subliminal consciousness,--there are inner mental, inner vital, inner more subtle physical reaches supported by an inmost psychic existence which is the connecting soul of all the rest; and in these hidden reaches too lie a mass of numerous pre-existent personalities which supply the material, the motive-forces, the impulsions of our developing surface existence. For in each of us here there may be one central person, but also a multitude of subordinate personalities created by the past history of its manifestation or by expressions of it on these inner planes which support its present play in this external material cosmos...

When we expect the world to meet our needs, we turn outside of ourselves to find sustenance and completion. We expect our partners to fulfill us, our jobs to meet our needs, and success to solve all of our problems. And when it doesn’t, we continue to play the “if only” game, looking for that one more thing. Or we play the “planning” and “regretting” game. We let our contentment be managed by all these uncontrollable variables. As long as we think satisfaction comes from an external source, we can never be content. Looking outward for fulfillment will always disappoint us and keep contentment one step out of reach.

I feed my captive vegan,” he growled. The force of his voice stilled me. “She spends her days doing yoga and playing in the yard and her nights reading classics by the fireplace.” His sardonic tone lacked humor. I couldn’t decide if he was insulting me or showing he did care in his own twisted way. I wanted to hear more, but all I could do was turn around and accuse, “You’ve been spying on me.” “Be quiet,” he snapped. “This is my monologue.” I closed my mouth. “Keeping you here is a slap in the face to my men, but it seems I don’t give a fuck about that.” The eye contact seared. “The longer I put off revenge, the closer I get to another war with your papa. And I don’t give a fuck about that either.” My throat tightened at the thought I was a source of that kind of violence. I had no idea my presence here had caused so much trouble. His gaze narrowed. “You pull a trigger on me, and I can’t even leave you out in the cold for fifteen fucking minutes. So you tell me, Mila, who cares more here?

Yoga is the union of that which has become separated in the play of the universe with its own true self, origin and universality.

Yogi science teaches that this Solar Plexus is really a most important part of the Nervous System, and that it is a form of brain, playing one of the principal parts in the human economy. Western

The entire universe is just a creation of thought. The play of the mind is just a creation of thought. Abandon the mind which is only thought. Take refuge in the changeless, O Rama, and surely find peace.

How to be in harmony with the cosmos? It seems that certain preliminaries are indispensable: Rid yourself of all beliefs; leave metaphysics to the sectarians of the absurd; understand that hope is fear gone bad; confront reality directly; stop upholding the romantic dream of realization; forget sentimental neurosis; play with your own limits; look at your confusion; confront life without the bric-a-brac of the religious and the spiritual—without, for all that, becoming a narrow-minded materialist who would make a new God out of rationalism; dare to be alone; do not oppose Essence against reality; give yourself over to the pleasures of pure subjectivity; understand that everything is real; and finally, one day, know exhilarating silence.

11 cricketers play for India but a billion people give opinions, do gossip and enjoy the game as a fan. Same thing is in spirituality/religion. Only a few people seek the eternal truth/God. Others are happy being fans of their respective Gurus, gods and ancient culture.

Tips and Pointers for Building a Spiritual Life from Scratch Pray Meditate Be aware / Stay awake Bow Practice yoga Feel Chant and sing Breathe and smile Relax / Enjoy / Laugh / Play Create / Envision Let go / Forgive / Accept Walk / Exercise / Move Work / Serve / Contribute Listen / Learn / Inquire Consider / Reflect Cultivate oneself / Enhance competencies Cultivate contentment Cultivate flexibility Cultivate friendship and collaboration Open up / Expand / Include Lighten up Dream Celebrate and appreciate Give thanks Evolve Love Share / Give / Receive Walk softly / Live gently Expand / Radiate / Dissolve Simplify Surrender / Trust Be born anew

. . . I bet I'm beginning to make some parents nervous - here I am, bragging of being a dropout, and unemployable, and about to make a pitch for you to follow your creative dreams, when what parents want is for their children to do well in their field, to make them look good, and maybe also to assemble a tasteful fortune . . . But that is not your problem. Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to live it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it, and find out the truth about who you are . . . I do know you are not what you look like, or how much you weigh, or how you did in school, or whether you start a job next Monday or not. Spirit isn't what you do, it's . . . well, again, I don't actually know. They probably taught this junior year at Goucher; I should've stuck around. But I know that you feel best when you're not doing much - when you're in nature, when you're very quiet or, paradoxically, listening to music . . . We can see Spirit made visible when people are kind to one another, especially when it's a really busy person, like you, taking care of the needy, annoying, neurotic person, like you. In fact, that's often when we see Spirit most brightly . . . In my twenties I devised a school of relaxation that has unfortunately fallen out of favor in the ensuing years - it was called Prone Yoga. You just lay around as much as possible. You could read, listen to music, you could space out or sleep. But you had to be lying down. Maintaining the prone. You've graduated. You have nothing left to prove, and besides, it's a fool's game. If you agree to play, you've already lost. It's Charlie Brown and Lucy, with the football. If you keep getting back on the field, they win. There are so many great things to do right now. Write. Sing. Rest. Eat cherries. Register voters. And - oh my God - I nearly forgot the most important thing: refuse to wear uncomfortable pants, even if they make you look really thin. Promise me you'll never wear pants that bind or tug or hurt, pants that have an opinion about how much you've just eaten. The pants may be lying! There is way too much lying and scolding going on politically right now without having your pants get in on the act, too. So bless you. You've done an amazing thing. And you are loved; you're capable of lives of great joy and meaning. It's what you are made of. And it's what you're here for. Take care of yourselves; take care of one another. And give thanks, like this: Thank you.

The world is not what it appears to be. Behind this surface life, where we experience the play of life and death, there is a deeper life which knows no death; behind our apparent consciousness, which gives us the knowledge of objects and things…there is…pure…consciousness…Truth…is experienced only by those who turn their gaze inward.

You say you know these streets pretty well? The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone. It saw you steeling yourself for the job interview, slowly walking home after the late date, tripping over nonexistent impediments on the sidewalk. It saw you wince when the single frigid drop fell from the air-conditioner 12 stories up and zapped you. It saw the bewilderment on your face as you stepped out of the stolen matinee, incredulous that there was still daylight after such a long movie. It saw you half-running up the street after you got the keys to your first apartment. It saw all that. Remembers too. Consider what all your old apartments would say if they got together to swap stories. They could piece together the starts and finishes of your relationships, complain about your wardrobe and musical tastes, gossip about who you are after midnight. 7J says, ''So that's what happened to Lucy; I knew it would never work out.'' You picked up yoga, you put down yoga, you tried various cures. You tried on selves and got rid of them, and this makes your old rooms wistful: why must things change? 3R says: ''Saxophone, you say? I knew him when he played guitar.'' Cherish your old apartments and pause for a moment when you pass them. Pay tribute, for they are the caretakers of your reinventions.

Hospice care? No, you must mean Frisbee game. Because there's no way my brother and I aren't outside right now playing Frisbee in the middlle of the street in the middle of summer and there are weird bugs everywhere no matter how much bug spray we put on ourselves and our mom is coming out to tell us for the third and final time, C'mon inside kids, it's getting dark.

Being an audience for God also means we have to get off center stage. We don’t need to be the center of attention and activity all the time. I think it might surprise us to realize how much crazy activity we create in our days just so we can feel important. We wear our busyness like a badge, like our busyness would somehow impress the rest of the world, or impress ourselves. How many of us go to bed with a sense of accomplishment because we checked a lot of things off our task list or someone told us how “great” we were, or we “helped” others? What if walked off stage altogether and put God there instead. Maybe then we could go to sleep at night, not with a sense of accomplishment, but with a sense of wonder, because all day we had been an attentive audience to the divine play.

Hard work is important. So are play and nonproductivity. My worth is tied not to my productivity but to my existence. I am worthy of rest. Changing my root belief about worthiness has changed my life. I sleep a little bit later. I schedule in time for reading and walks and yoga, and sometimes (on the weekend), I even watch a TV show in the middle of the day. It’s heavenly. It’s also an ongoing process: Still, when I see Abby relaxing, my knee-jerk reaction is annoyance. But then I check myself. I think: Why am I activated here? Oh, yes, that old belief. Oh, wait, never mind. I’ve exchanged that one. And when Abby asks, “What’s wrong?” I can say, “Nothing, honey,” and mean it, mostly. Anger delivers our boundaries to us. Our boundaries deliver our beliefs to us. Our beliefs determine how we experience the world.

The True Self quietly observes the playground where thoughts take form, where games are played, and the gunas obeyed. These are the laws of light, activity, and inertia … of inspiration, action, and obstacles. The gunas are those things that can be known. Your mind ponders all their qualities, mistaking these for reality, for they gave birth to the mind. But the Self remains unmoved by the noise in the playground.

What are you doing here?” “Coming to pick you up for tonight.” “I’m not going.” “Would it help if I lowered to my knees and said please?” He started to go down. I hit his shoulder. “Stop that. You’re embarrassing me.” He dragged his gaze over my body. “You look beautiful.” “Whatever.” I wore black yoga pants and a shirt with Star War’s Yoda flipping the bird on the front. “I love the way your clothes hug your body.” “I love the way you continue to invade my privacy.

Angie sometimes wondered if they’d still be married had she stuck with those damn yoga classes. God knows she tried. The crowded, windowless studios made her claustrophobic, and that mandatory loop of Eastern chimes was so annoying. Why the fuck couldn’t they play Pearl Jam? “I’m not cut out for this, Dustin,” she’d said after one blazingly sweaty Bikram session. “Serenity is overrated.” He didn’t get angry; that wasn’t his style. Instead he took up with one of the community’s freshly divorced, self-discovering female yoga fanatics that traveled in packs, ever-alert and lithe as meerkats.

The soul of the primitive man reincarnated almost immediately after the death of the physical body, because the experiences gained were mostly along the lines of the physical, the mental planes being scarcely brought into play, while the higher and spiritual faculties were almost entirely obscured from sight. Life after life the soul of the primitive man lived out in rapid succession. But in each new embodiment there was a slight advance over that of the previous one. Experience, or rather the result of experiences, were carried over, and profited by. New lessons were learned and unlearned, improved upon or discarded. And the race grew and unfolded.

Before every elementary school classroom had a 'Drop Everything and Read' period, before parents and educators agonized more about children being glued to Call of Duty or getting sucked into the vortex of the Internet, reading as a childhood activity was not always revered. Maybe it was in some families, in some towns, in some magical places that seemed to exist only in stories, but not where I was. Nobody trotted out the kid who read all the time as someone to be admired like the ones who did tennis and ballet and other feats requiring basic coordination. While those other kids pursued their after-school activities in earnest, I failed at art, gymnastics, ice skating, soccer, and ballet with a lethal mix of inability, fear and boredom. Coerced into any group endeavor, I wished I could just be home already. Rainy days were a godsend because you could curl up on a sofa without being banished into the outdoors with an ominous 'Go play outside.' Well into adulthood, I would chastise myself over not settling on a hobby—knitting or yoga or swing dancing or crosswords—and just reading instead. The default position. Everyone else had a passion; where was mine? How much happier I would have been to know that reading was itself a passion. Nobody treated it that way, and it didn't occur to me to think otherwise.

He begins talking to Himself inside of Himself, playing two parts as the student and the teacher or as Shiva and Shakti. ‘Hmm, why are things like this?’ ‘Well here’s why’. Becoming both, He has a dialogue within Himself. When we turn within we can still hear that rumbling, vibratory monologue. It is the fundamental vibration of the mind within. Whatever is in Shiva is in you, whatever divine powers are in God are in you. To truly get there you have to become unlimited. You have to let go of limitation, you have to let go of ego, you have to let go of ignorance. It is not a trivial process. The Mahartamanjari says: This is the way that the error of ordinary persons who think, ‘I am not the Lord’, is dissipated. This is an error with respect to the Self who shines always as the ‘I’. One repeats to them, ‘You are Shiva, gifted with the free power of Consciousness and activity: this world depends on you as a kingdom on its king. It is in you that the world shines, in you that it resides. It is you as Consciousness that the world has as its basis: from which it arises and into which it is reabsorbed. There is no world here without you. Only your awareness makes the world so for you. Contemplate this until conviction dawns. The Shiva Sutras say that such conviction is realisation of the Self. Shivo’ham. I am Shiva. All this arises and has its being in my awareness!

His reading habit was so varied that in his early teens, he was reading both Maxim Gorky’s Mother and the detective thrillers (Jasoosi Duniya) of Ibn-e-Safi. The detective thrillers—be it Indian or American pulp fiction—were a big favourite for their fast action, tight plots and economies of expression. He remembers the novels of Ibn-e-Safi for their fascinating characters with memorable names. ‘Ibn-e-Safi was a master at naming his characters. All of us who read him remember those names . . . There was a Chinese villain, his name was Sing Hi. There was a Portuguese villain called Garson . . . an Englishman who had come to India and was into yoga . . . was called Gerald Shastri.’ This technique of giving catchy names to characters would stay with him. The wide range of reading not only gave him the sensitivity with which progressive writers approached their subjects but also a very good sense of plot and speaking styles. Here, it would be apt to quote a paragraph from Ibn-e-Safi’s detective novel, House of Fear—featuring his eccentric detective, Imran. The conversation takes place just outside a nightclub: ‘So, young man. So now you have also starred frequenting these places?’ ‘Yes. I often come by to pay Flush,’ Imran said respectfully. ‘Flush! Oh, so now you play Flush . . .’ ‘Yes, yes. I feel like it when I am a bit drunk . . .’ ‘Oh! So you have also started drinking?’ ‘What can I say? I swear I’ve never drunk alone. Frequently I find hookers who do not agree to anything without a drink . . .’ This scene would find a real-life parallel as well as a fictional one in Javed’s life later. Javed

Baba Muktananda also gave a lot of importance to the concept of matrika, though in a less aesthetic and more practical way. He urged the yogi to become aware of the subtle play of matrika though careful Self-observation. Seeing how matrika works in his inner world to create his experience of life, the yogi slowly learns to control matrika and turn it in the right direction. He writes: Just as matrika helps us to contract, it also helps us to expand ourselves. The moment one understands the matrika shakti and its work, one is no longer a human being. When the matrika shakti expands within, in this very body one becomes Shiva. Sit quietly and watch the play of matrika shakti. Watch how the matrika gives rise to letters, how the letters compose words, how the meaning of the words create images in the mind; watch how you become involved in these images. The yogi pursues matrika shakti; he watches it and makes it steady. He brings it under his control, he manipulates it any way he likes. He turns evil thoughts into good thoughts. The matrika shakti works according to his will. Such a yogi is called a conqueror of the senses. Another aphorism in the Shiva Sutras, II.7, says: Matrika chakra sambodhah When the Guru is pleased he grants full knowledge of matrika.

But one can see exactly why Dr Ali is so successful - he seems to offer a solution within the individual's grasp: you may not be able to change deadlines and workloads, but you can make yourself more efficient. Ancient wisdoms can be adapted to speed up human beings: this is the kind of individualised response which fits neatly into a neo-liberal market ideology. It draws on Eastern contemplative traditions of yoga and meditation which place the emphasis on individual transformation, and questions the effectiveness of collective political or social activism. Reflexology, aromatherapy, acupuncture, massage - these alternative therapies are all booming as people seek to improve their sense of well-being and vitality. Much of it makes sense - although trips to the Himalayas are hardly within the reach of most workers and the complementary health movement plays an important role in raising people's under standing of their own health and how to look after themselves. But the philosophy of improving ‘personal performance' also plays into the hands of employers' rationale that well-being and coping with stress are the responsibility of the individual employee. It reinforces the tendency for individuals to search for 'biographic solutions to structural contradictions', as the sociologist Ulrich Beck put it: forget the barricades, it's revolution from within that matters. This cultural preoccupation with personal salvation stymies collective reform, and places an onerous burden on the individual. It effectively reinforces the anxieties and insecurities which it offers to assuage.

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy. We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can't visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we feel in any other life is still available. We don't have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don't have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don't have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savor the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays.

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let’s be kind to the people in our own existence. Let’s occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever.

Kshemaraja says: Let people of great intelligence closely understand the Goddess Consciousness who is simultaneously of the nature of both revelation (unmesha) and concealment (nimesha). The best attitude is to regard everything that happens in the group as the play of Chiti. Revelation is Shiva and confusion is also Shiva. However, there is always recourse to A-Statements, statements of present feeling. An A-Statement (I feel mad, sad, bad, scared or glad), is already at a higher level than a statement in which the A-Statement is not acknowledged or expressed. A person might be angry and not know it. That anger will colour all his opinions and attitudes and distort them. The simple statement, ‘I am angry’, is much closer to the truth and also much less destructive. Making A-Statements keeps thought closely tied to feeling. If thought wanders away from feeling, that is, if it is unconscious of the feeling underlying it, it can and does create universes of delusion. When thought is tied to feeling, it becomes much more trustworthy. If I were to look for a scriptural justification of the concept of the A-Statement, I would point to the remarkable verse (I.4) from Spanda Karikas: I am happy, I am miserable, I am attached—these and other cognitions have their being evidently in another in which the states of happiness, misery, etc., are strung together. Notice the A-Statements (I am happy, etc.). Of course, the point that Vasugupta is making has to do with the old debate with the Buddhists. He is saying that these cognitions or A-Statements must exist within an underlying context, the Self. The Buddhist logicians denied the existence of a continuous Self, saying that each mind moment was essentially unrelated to every other one. Leaving that debate aside, the verse suggests the close connection of the A-Statement with the Self. The participant in Shiva Process work makes an A-Statement, understanding that with it he comes to the doorway of the Self, which underlies it. I think of the A-Statement as a kind of Shaivite devotional ritual. The Shaiva yogi sacramentalises every movement and gesture of life and by making a perfect articulation of present feeling, he performs his sacrament to the presence of divinity in that moment. Once the A-Statements are found, expansion takes place via B-Statements, any statements that uplift, and G-Statements, those B-Statements that are scriptural or come from higher Consciousness. Without G-Statements the inquiry might be merely psychological, or rooted in the mundane. Without A-Statements we are building an edifice on shaky foundations. Balance is needed. Mandala of the Hierarchy of Statements. Self-inquiry leads to more subtle and profound understanding. A-Statements set the foundation of present feeling, B-Statements draw on inner wisdom and G-Statements lift the inquiry to higher Consciousness.

Kaleidoscope Yoga: The universal heart and the individual self. We, as humanity, make up together a mosaic of beautiful colors and shapes that can harmoniously play together in endless combinations. We are an ever-changing play of shape and form. A kaleidoscope consists of a tube (or container), mirrors, pieces of glass (or beads or precious stones), sunlight, and someone to turn it and observe and enjoy the forms. Metaphorically, perhaps the sun represents the divine light, or spark of life, within all of us. The mirrors represent our ability to serve as mirrors for one another and each other’s alignment, reflecting sides of ourselves that we may not have been aware of. The tube (or container) is the practice of community yoga. We, as human beings, are the glass, the beads, the precious stones. The facilitator is the person turning the Kaleidoscope, initiating the changing patterns. And the resulting beauty of the shapes? Well, that’s for everyone to enjoy... Coming into a practice and an energy field of community yoga over and over, is a practice of returning, again and again, to the present moment, to the person in front of you, to the people around you, to your body, to others’ bodies, to your energy, to others’ energy, to your breath, to others’ breath. [...] community yoga practice can help us, in a very real, practical, grounded, felt, somatic way, to identify and be in harmony with all that is around us, which includes all of our fellow human beings.
 We are all multiple selves. We are all infinite. We are all universal selves. We are all unique expressions of the universal heart and universal energy. We are all the universal self. We are all one another. And we are all also unique specific individuals. And to the extent that we practice this, somatically, we become more and more comfortable and fluid with this larger, more cosmic, more inter-related reality. We see and feel and breathe ourselves, more and more, as the open movement of energy, as open somatic possibility. As energy and breath. This is one of the many benefits of a community yoga practice. Kaleidoscope shows us, in a very practical way, how to allow universal patterns of wisdom and interconnectedness to filter through us. [...] One of the most interesting paradoxes I have encountered during my involvement with the community yoga project (and it is one that I have felt again and again, too many times to count) is the paradox that many of the most infinite, universal forms have come to me in a place of absolute solitude, silence, deep aloneness or meditation. And, similarly, conversely and complimentarily, (best not to get stuck on the words) I have often found myself in the midst of a huge crowd or group of people of seamlessly flowing forms, and felt simultaneously, in addition to the group energy, the group shape, and the group awareness, myself as a very cleanly and clearly defined, very particular, individual self. These moments and discoveries and journeys of group awareness, in addition to the sense of cosmic expansion, have also clarified more strongly my sense of a very specific, rooted, personal self. The more deeply I dive into the universal heart, the more clearly I see my own place in it. And the more deeply I tune in and connect with my own true personal self, the more open and available I am to a larger, more universal self. We are both, universal heart and universal self. Individual heart and individual self. We are, or have the capacity for, or however you choose to put it, simultaneous layers of awareness. Learning to feel and navigate and mediate between these different kinds and layers of awareness is one of the great joys of Kaleidoscope Community Yoga, and of life in general. Come join us, and see what that feels like, in your body, again and again. From the Preface of Kaleidoscope Community Yoga: The Art of Connecting: The First 108 Poses

We, as humanity, make up together a mosaic of beautiful colors and shapes that can harmoniously play together in endless combinations. We are an ever-changing play of shape and form.

Kids are one of natural most perfect learning devices. With just a little knowing, a kid can be activated and kept content. Starting early in your kid's growth can do wonderful factors for their psychological growth in later years, and provides them a large boost over other kids their age. Comprehend youngsters are designed to comprehend. Regular actions, such as offering, diapering, enjoying, executing, going for a generate in the child baby stroller, and getting bears from Grandpa are all "educational". You do not need to do synthetic actions or extremely concentrate on "educational activities" for a kid to succeed. Care for the kid. A kid needs a full belly, a dry diaper, a comfortable atmosphere, and really like for the best possible growth. Discuss to the kid. Provide a "play by play" of what you're doing (making a cup of tea, modifying a diaper, confirming the email box. Take part in kid talk; it's designed to stimulate a kid. Read a book together. Increase and massage. Kids really like to move their systems. Learn kid massage and kid yoga exercise exercises, which help comfortable, revitalize, and stimulate. But simply shifting the kid in a way he or she likes (like clapping arms, wearing coming back and forth, "So Big!") is outstanding work out, and properly rubbing kid down with kid massage oil is outstanding for sensitive growth. Acquire a execute gym or action gym. These are generally a company recommended with children from child up to about 12 months. They mostly come in the form of comfortable, quilted or properly cushioning execute shields, sometimes raised at the edges with a space in the center for kid. They can include detachable, holding locations for small children to try to comprehend. They usually have locations that are crinkle, smooth, scrunchy styles for kid to touch, media and action. Some come with bright dazzling illumination and alarm systems and others make insane seems to be, or musical show show seems to be, and some even do both. Look around. Kids are fascinated by factors grownups take for granted: Automobiles visiting outside the screen, tanks, vegetation provided by the wind, failing outfits in the outfits clothing dryer. Go outside A child baby stroller generate can be very interesting, going to uncommon new locations like the mailing service, bakery, recreation area, and so on.Drive your car, which has best car accessories, and go for a have a eat outside. Perform to the kid. Perform child's room music, TV jingles, your popular.Play with the kid. Conventional activities like "Peek-A-Boo" or cheap baby toys, the hug the kid's belly, shifting a football coming back and forth on are outstanding kid actions. Dance with the kid in your arms.

The concept of the “university,” a term coined in the Middle Ages by European monks, was of a center where people would learn to find their place in the universe, helping them discern their role in the grand scheme of things and play their part in a great symphony.

emotional factors and psychological stress play a major role in the onset and persistence of low back pain.

Our anxieties were driving us to become other people—he was Earner; I was Mother, like characters in some phenomenally boring Ionesco play.

Our anxieties were driving us to become other people-he was Earner; I was Mother, like characters in some phenomenally boring Ionesco play. We both worried all the time and often didn't remember to laugh. I could find relief in the baby's smile, or with my friends, or now, in yoga. I didn't see that Bruce was headed someplace where there was no relief.

I know why you are here.” She knew! “We receive extensive financial statements, and I know you did not pay your own way, so let us put that drama out of the way, shall we?” “Is it a drama?” Jane said with a laugh, relieved the woman was just referring to Carolyn’s bequest. “Hm?” Mrs. Wattlesbrook would not budge from her intended course of conversation. Jane sighed. “Yes, my great-aunt left me this vacation in her will, but I don’t know what you mean by drama. I never intended to hide--” “No need to make a fuss.” She waved her arms as if wafting Jane’s exclamations out the window like a foul odor. “You are here, you are paid in full. I would not have you worry that we will not take care of you just because you are not our usual type of guest and there is no chance, given your economic conditions, that you would ever be a repeat client or likely to associate with and recommend us to potential clients. Let me assure you that we will still do all in our power to make your visit, such as it is, enjoyable.” Mrs. Wattlesbrook smiled, showing both rows of yellowing teeth. Jane blinked. Economic conditions? Usual type of guest? She made herself take two deep-rooted yoga breaths, smiled back, and thought of men in breeches. “Okay then.” “Good, good.” Mrs. Wattlesbrook patted Jane’s arm, suddenly the picture of hospitality and maternal tenderness. “Now, do have some tea. You must be quite chilled from your journey.” In fact, the temperature of the limo, unlike this pseudo-inn, had been quite comfortable, and in the blazing heat the last thing Jane wanted was hot tea, but she reminded herself to play along, so she sweated and drank.

In Shiva, knowledge is perfect, will is perfect, ability is perfect, feeling is perfect. In Shiva there is no time but only eternity. In Shiva too, there is no space as we know it, but only omnipresence. There is total freedom, svatantrya. There is no sequence of events, no steps, nothing outside of Shiva Himself. There is no cause and effect. Everything is known at once in its totality. In Shiva, past and future do not exist separately from the present. In Shiva, other places do not exist separately from this place. In Shiva there is no ‘there and then’, only ‘here and now’. The early Shaivite masters measured time with thought. They held that the smallest unit of time is the ‘moment’, which is the time it takes to have one thought. A meditator soon discovers that past and future are products of his mind alone. He sees that meditation is a struggle to become present. When the mind moves towards future possibilities or broods over past events there occurs a subtle but real diminution of energy. But when the mind stays present, energy is enhanced and uplifted. In every activity in life our enjoyment and our efficiency are increased the more present we are. Whether the activity is watching a movie, playing a sport or making love—the more present we are, the more vivid, full and enjoyable it is. Being present clearly has something to do with our interest in whatever we are doing, and that can affect our emotional engagement with it. Although the Self is ultimately the source of all love and interest, it takes a while to truly focus on it because we are beguiled by false possibilities and superficial goals.

The people who are part of my everyday right now—who invite me to dinners and plays and movies and yoga, who amuse me, and who understand me—may be less present someday.

The most important thing about India, the thing to be gone into and understood and not seen from the outside, was the people. It was as though, in these small, crowded spaces, no one really felt at home. Everyone felt that the other man, the other group, was laughing; everyone lived with the feeling of siege. The emptiness of the yard was an aspect of its cleanliness. The emptiness of the space was live luxury. Gandhianism was almost a mass hysteria in India, but of a healthy kind. It was the good old values, but packaged in a modern-looking way, very mass-based. As in old Rome, so in modern Bangalore: the more important the man, the greater the crowd at his door. Where there is no want, there is no god. The very idea of the latrine was a non-brahmin idea: to enter such a polluted place was itself pollution. No old-time brahmin would have even contemplated the idea. Good brahmins, traditional brahmins, used open-air sites, a fresh one each time. In the palace where the brahmin had served there had been splendor and extravagance beyond human need, almost as though in the Hindu scheme one of the functions of great wealth was to remind men of the vanity of the senses. In Christian thinking the eternal opposites are the forces of good and evil. In Hindu or brahmin thought the opposites are worldliness and the life of the spirit. One can retreat from one to the other. When the world fails one, one can sink into the spirit, the idea of the world as the play of illusion. Bad architecture in a poor tropical city is more than an aesthetic matter. It spoils people's day to day lives; it wears down their nerves; it generates rages that can flow into many different channels. That station lets you into the very worst of the Bengali small-town atmosphere - ugly, noisy, crowded, full of the kind of deprivation I see in the style of urbanization in our country, the deprivation of mind, of basic needs. I've been practicing yoga for about 15 years now and it's helped me tremendously to arrive at this mental state in which I could take an enormous amount of chaos and confusion around me, for a while, without losing my own peace of mind. Formally, I'm an atheist, but I've reached a state where I separate spirituality from theism and religion. To me the Upanishads represent man's effort to understand the universe and himself at the very highest level of spirituality.

other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear

The build-your-own-website program was child’s play to him, and before long we had a home page with photographs that changed every five seconds, starting with a full sanctuary that looked very racially diverse (taken the day we’d invited a nearby Baptist church to our worship service); followed by Amira officiating at a lesbian wedding; then a pan-racial group of laughing kids eating cupcakes (same Baptist church visiting day); a shot of Arroyo House foregrounded by orange trees, with the snow-covered San Gabriel Mountains behind; and last, a yoga class in the new chapel, ten human triangles in a downward facing dog.

Time-dependent-strain means that if you tug on the ligament abruptly the ligament is strong and stiff and holds its length, but if you put even a very light load on a ligament over a long time period (e.g. an hour, or over night) the ligament stretches and lengthens and can potentially stay like that for some time after the load is removed. The consequence is that you have a joint that is operating ineffectively and this may lead to an acute injury while playing sport for example as the joint is not functioning effectively. It can also lead to excess muscle tension as the muscles need to over-work in order to hold the joint firmly through its range of movement in the way that the ligament would be doing if it were at its healthy length and operating like a firm hinge. How does this situation happen? The trouble usually begins during rest.

Kelley gives the planning everything he’s got, both strategically and financially. He rents a Jaguar, the height of luxury (and fast, Kelley thinks). They will drive to Boston, have dinner at Alden and Harlow in Cambridge, and stay at the Langham, Mitzi’s favorite hotel—then in the morning, after breakfast in bed, they’ll drive to Deerfield, Massachusetts, and meander through the three-hundred-year-old village. From Deerfield, they’ll head to Hanover, New Hampshire, to have lunch at Dartmouth (Mitzi’s father, Joe, played basketball for Dartmouth in 1953 and Mitzi has always felt an affinity for the place), and then they’ll drive to Stowe, Vermont, and stay at the Topnotch, a resort. From Stowe, it’s up to Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom to spend the night in St. Johnsbury. From there, they’ll go to Franconia Notch State Park, where they’ll ride the Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway for the ultimate in foliage viewing. They’ll end with a night in charming Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a town Kelley thinks is possibly the best-kept secret in America. He has arranged for a couple’s massage in front of the fire, for them to go apple-picking, on a hayride, out to dinners at fine country inns where bottles of champagne will be chilled and waiting on the tables, and for a personal yoga instructor in Stowe and then again in Portsmouth. He has made a mix of Mitzi’s favorite songs to play on the drive, and he’s packing up pumpkin muffins and his famous snack mix (secret ingredient: Bugles!) in case they get hungry on the road.

When we direct our eyes looking forward from the corner of the temple in its normal field of vision, the frontal brain is working with analysis (vitarka). But when we spread our ocular awareness from the back corner of the temple, near the ear, the back brain is brought into play and works with synthesis (vicara). The front brain can dismantle because of its powerful penetration. The back brain is holistic and reassembles. If you find this difficult to imagine, just think what happens when you first walk into a great medieval cathedral. Your eyes may appear to focus on what is before them, the altar for example, but your real awareness takes in the whole immense volume of the space surrounding you, its grandeur and the hum of its ancient silence. This is holistic meditative vision. While working in asana, if the action is “done” solely from the front brain, it blocks the reflective action of the back brain. The form of each asana needs to be reflected to the wisdom body (vijnanamaya kosa) for readjustment and realignment. Whenever asana is done mechanically from the front brain, the action is felt only on the peripheral body, and there is no inner sensation, there is no luminous inner light. If the asana is done with continual reference to the back of the brain, there is a reaction to each action, and there is sensitivity. Then life is not only dynamic, but it is also electrified with life force.

If communities can play together Why can't they pray together? Unity initialised... communities #Mickeymized!

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let’s be kind to the people in our own existence. Let’s occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever.

I’ve coached on every type of people problem any individual, team, or organization has ever had. You name it, I’ve coached around it. Problems such as Organizations that want to change their culture. Teams that don’t succeed because they have turf wars that create silos. Executive leadership teams that are in conflict and aren’t communicating effectively. Leaders and executives who want more confidence to make tough decisions. Managers who have strong technical expertise in their field but have never managed people. Individual contributors who need to be more engaged with their coworkers and teams. My clients come to me with these challenges. Nine times out of ten, those challenges are people problems. I coach them to handle these problems and clear the hurdles, so they have more time and energy to do what matters most to them—earn their yoga certification, be a more present mom, learn to play the guitar—and get back to focusing on the things they do best: their job and their organization’s mission.

My dedication is for all those who are living with depression. For all those who are thinking or have thought that suicide might be the best option. I am proof that there is a life to be lived after depression and a life to be lived with depression – though it might not always feel like it. Don’t give up. Talk it through, write it down, run, dance, read, paint, sleep, play sport, do yoga, sit in a chair, walk in a park! Do whatever you need to and wait it out until the demon is off your back and the darkness passes. Take a breath. Take a moment. As I say in the book, things can and often do get better. Don’t delete yourself.

I feed my captive vegan. She spends her days doing yoga and playing in the yard and her nights reading classics by the fireplace. You pull a trigger on me, and I can’t even leave you out in the cold for fifteen fucking minutes. So you tell me, Mila, who cares more here?” -Ronan

The next hurdle is the recognition that we have many deeply ingrained habit patterns that take time—a lot of time—to change. At first the typical neophyte is sure that he or she has a tremendous capacity and will grow more quickly than others. Then the sobering realization dawns that the degree of self-transformation is equal to the effort made. If neophytes have persisted thus far, they will almost inevitably encounter doubt (samshaya)—doubt about their own capacity; doubt about their teacher; doubt about the efficacy of the teaching. It is not far from the truth to say that practitioners who do not befriend doubt are bound to become self-deluded. If there really is no doubt or self-delusion, then they are quite simply enlightened. Another obstacle, not often identified, is the fact that practitioners’ karmic tendencies (read unconscious or semiconscious habit patterns) are magnified because awareness is enhanced through regular practice. This can be likened to a bright searchlight shining deep into the well of the mind. In the depth of the unconscious reside all kinds of unpleasant realities that get flushed out by steady application to self-inspection and self-understanding. At times, the unconscious materials that drift into the conscious mind seem overwhelming, and then it becomes clear that spiritual life is a form of brinkmanship. The Indic tradition speaks of the razor-edged path. Gradually spiritual practitioners learn to overcome their intrinsic materialism (i.e., constantly thinking in terms of the visible reality only). There is a progressive loosening of the ego knot or “self-contraction” (ātma-samkoca) by which the ordinary individual anxiously seeks to hold everything together. Spiritual practitioners learn to be humorous about everything, including themselves. Life is seen from a new perspective: as a strange play in which we are willy-nilly involved and which we can either misunderstand and suffer or understand and transcend even while being fully engaged in its drama. Practitioners must prevail over spiritual materialism—the false sense of accumulating “higher” experiences. They can realize inner freedom only to the extent that even the goal of liberation is renounced. Liberation, or enlightenment, is not a thing to be attained or acquired. It is living in the moment from the most profound understanding and without egoic attachment to anything. Those who parade their extraordinary spiritual accomplishments in front of others are possibly the least illumined of all. They merely substitute material commodities for “spiritual” merchandise. The Indic heritage knows of many adepts who after years of intense practice achieved a high state of consciousness or astounding paranormal ability only to promptly plunge from grace. The higher the adept’s elevation, the steeper the drop into oblivion and misery. Therefore the authorities of Yoga ever admonish practitioners to be circumspect, to keep their attainments to themselves, to focus on the cultivation of moral integrity, understanding, self-transcendence, and not least service to others.

Like one’s parents, the initiatory guru makes a deep spiritual connection with the initiate, which is thought to endure beyond the present lifetime. Initiation occurs at various levels and through various means. In most instances it consists of a formal ritual in which the guru transmits a portion of his spiritual power (shakti) awakened through a mantra that is whispered into the disciple’s left ear. But great adepts can initiate by a mere touch or glance or even simply by visualizing the disciple. Sri Ramakrishna, the great nineteenth-century master, placed his foot on Swami Vivekananda’s chest and promptly plunged his young disciple into a deep state of formless ecstasy (nirvikalpa-samādhi). THE GURU AS TRANSMITTER According to Indic Yoga, the guru is a teacher who not merely instructs or communicates information, as does the preceptor (ācārya). Rather the guru transmits wisdom and, by his very nature, reveals—to whatever degree—the spiritual Reality. If the guru is fully enlightened, or liberated, his every word, gesture, and mere presence is held to express and manifest the Spirit. He or she is then a veritable beacon of Reality. Transmission in such a case is spontaneous and continuous. Like the Sun, to which the sad-guru or teacher of the Real is often compared, he or she constantly transmits the liberating “energy” of the transcendental Being. In Yoga, with adepts who are not yet fully liberated, transmission is largely but not exclusively based on the teacher’s will and effort. Many schools also admit of an element of divine grace (prasāda) entering into the configuration for which the teacher serves as a temporal vehicle. Thus the traditional teacher plays a crucial role in the life of the disciple. As the Sanskrit word guru (meaning literally “weighty”) suggests, he or she is a true “heavyweight” in spiritual matters. THE GURU AS GUIDE Apart from triggering and even constantly reinvigorating the spiritual process in a disciple, the guru also serves as a guide along the path. This occurs primarily through verbal instruction but also by being a living example on the spiritual path. Since the path to liberation includes many formidable hurdles, a disciple is clearly in need of guidance. The written teachings, which form the precious heritage of a given lineage of adepts, are a powerful beacon along the way. But they typically require explanations, or an oral commentary, to yield their deeper meaning. By virtue of the oral transmission received from his or her own teacher or teachers and also in light of his or her own experience and realization, the guru is able to make the written teachings come alive for the disciple. This is an invaluable gift.

But great adepts can initiate by a mere touch or glance or even simply by visualizing the disciple. Sri Ramakrishna, the great nineteenth-century master, placed his foot on Swami Vivekananda’s chest and promptly plunged his young disciple into a deep state of formless ecstasy (nirvikalpa-samādhi). THE GURU AS TRANSMITTER According to Indic Yoga, the guru is a teacher who not merely instructs or communicates information, as does the preceptor (ācārya). Rather the guru transmits wisdom and, by his very nature, reveals—to whatever degree—the spiritual Reality. If the guru is fully enlightened, or liberated, his every word, gesture, and mere presence is held to express and manifest the Spirit. He or she is then a veritable beacon of Reality. Transmission in such a case is spontaneous and continuous. Like the Sun, to which the sad-guru or teacher of the Real is often compared, he or she constantly transmits the liberating “energy” of the transcendental Being. In Yoga, with adepts who are not yet fully liberated, transmission is largely but not exclusively based on the teacher’s will and effort. Many schools also admit of an element of divine grace (prasāda) entering into the configuration for which the teacher serves as a temporal vehicle. Thus the traditional teacher plays a crucial role in the life of the disciple. As the Sanskrit word guru (meaning literally “weighty”) suggests, he or she is a true “heavyweight” in spiritual matters. THE GURU AS GUIDE Apart from triggering and even constantly reinvigorating the spiritual process in a disciple, the guru also serves as a guide along the path. This occurs primarily through verbal instruction but also by being a living example on the spiritual path. Since the path to liberation includes many formidable hurdles, a disciple is clearly in need of guidance. The written teachings, which form the precious heritage of a given lineage of adepts, are a powerful beacon along the way. But they typically require explanations, or an oral commentary, to yield their deeper meaning. By virtue of the oral transmission received from his or her own teacher or teachers and also in light of his or her own experience and realization, the guru is able to make the written teachings come alive for the disciple. This is an invaluable gift. THE GURU AS ILLUMINATOR Tradition explains the term guru as being composed of the two syllables gu and ru; the former is taken to represent darkness, while the latter is said to stand for its removal. Thus the guru is a dispeller of spiritual darkness, that is, he or she restores sight to those who are blind to their true nature, the Spirit. If we compare the ego to a black hole from which no light can escape, the guru is like the radiant sun: an ever-lustrous being that illumines every dark niche in the disciple’s mind and character.

But great adepts can initiate by a mere touch or glance or even simply by visualizing the disciple. Sri Ramakrishna, the great nineteenth-century master, placed his foot on Swami Vivekananda’s chest and promptly plunged his young disciple into a deep state of formless ecstasy (nirvikalpa-samādhi). THE GURU AS TRANSMITTER According to Indic Yoga, the guru is a teacher who not merely instructs or communicates information, as does the preceptor (ācārya). Rather the guru transmits wisdom and, by his very nature, reveals—to whatever degree—the spiritual Reality. If the guru is fully enlightened, or liberated, his every word, gesture, and mere presence is held to express and manifest the Spirit. He or she is then a veritable beacon of Reality. Transmission in such a case is spontaneous and continuous. Like the Sun, to which the sad-guru or teacher of the Real is often compared, he or she constantly transmits the liberating “energy” of the transcendental Being. In Yoga, with adepts who are not yet fully liberated, transmission is largely but not exclusively based on the teacher’s will and effort. Many schools also admit of an element of divine grace (prasāda) entering into the configuration for which the teacher serves as a temporal vehicle. Thus the traditional teacher plays a crucial role in the life of the disciple. As the Sanskrit word guru (meaning literally “weighty”) suggests, he or she is a true “heavyweight” in spiritual matters. THE GURU AS GUIDE Apart from triggering and even constantly reinvigorating the spiritual process in a disciple, the guru also serves as a guide along the path. This occurs primarily through verbal instruction but also by being a living example on the spiritual path. Since the path to liberation includes many formidable hurdles, a disciple is clearly in need of guidance. The written teachings, which form the precious heritage of a given lineage of adepts, are a powerful beacon along the way. But they typically require explanations, or an oral commentary, to yield their deeper meaning. By virtue of the oral transmission received from his or her own teacher or teachers and also in light of his or her own experience and realization, the guru is able to make the written teachings come alive for the disciple. This is an invaluable gift. THE GURU AS ILLUMINATOR Tradition explains the term guru as being composed of the two syllables gu and ru; the former is taken to represent darkness, while the latter is said to stand for its removal. Thus the guru is a dispeller of spiritual darkness, that is, he or she restores sight to those who are blind to their true nature, the Spirit. If we compare the ego to a black hole from which no light can escape, the guru is like the radiant sun: an ever-lustrous being that illumines every dark niche in the disciple’s mind and character. This illuminating function depends on the degree of the guru’s own realization.

He imagined a reality show host selling Los Angeles to a live audience: “Are you a surfer dude hitting the waves? You’ll fit right in. How about a hipster starting a gluten-free cookie brand or a new church? Of course. And is there a place for a young family raising small children? You bet. How about a retired couple wanting to play bingo all day? Indeed. High-powered executives? Yes! Lawyers, doctors, agents, and managers? Best place to thrive. Gym buffs, starlets, chefs, yoga teachers, students, writers, healers, misfits, trainers, nurses? Right this way, please. Are you into cosplay, improv, porn, Roller Derby, voyeurism, cemetery movie screenings, food truck drag racing, AA, relapse, rehab, open mic, plastic surgery, wine tastings, biker meetups, karaoke, clubbing, S and M, or escape rooms? Come on over!” Every race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and food preference was well represented within Los Angeles County, and this is what Oscar loved most about his city;

You want to hear something super kinky?” “There’s no need to ask me that question. My answer to it will always be a resounding yes.” She giggles. “The fact that you keep that photo on your desk, and visit your mom regularly—and do yoga and play Scrabble with her, and make her happiness your top priority...” She physically swoons in my arms with a heavy, happy, sexy sigh. “Oh, God, Reed. All of that really turns me on.” The butterflies in my stomach turn into a hard-on—one that’s giving me instant amnesia about the annoyance I’ve been feeling about this topic. I slide my arms around Georgie and smile broadly at her. “That’s what turns you on? What kind of sick fuck are you, Georgina Ricci?

) It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let’s be kind to the people in our own existence. Let’s occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever. Yesterday I knew I had no future, and that it was impossible for me to accept my life as it is now. And yet today, that same messy life seems full of hope. Potential. The impossible, I suppose, happens via living. Will my life be miraculously free from pain, despair, grief, heartbreak, hardship, loneliness, depression? No. But do I want to live? Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes

Human consciousness is characterized by a strong extravert tendency that reaches for objects via the senses. Hence the Yoga masters call for the control of both the mind and the senses, citta-nigraha and indriya-nigraha. Buddhist Yoga speaks of three types of “thirsting” (trishna), or grasping: (1) thirsting for things of the world, (2) thirsting for rebirth, and (3) thirsting for liberation. While thirsting for liberation is preferable over the other two, it still represents a limitation. Therefore it, too, must be overcome. Nirvāna (nonblowing) was originally defined as the nonblowing of the wind of desire—for anything, including the impulse toward liberation. Nirvāna is realized only when every form of grasping is transcended. According to an old Buddhist model, human life unfolds as a play of twelve factors of dependent origination (pratītya-samutpāda): Ignorance (avidyā), which gives rise to Volitional activity (samskāra), which can be bodily, vocal, or merely mental and which represents either meritorious or demeritorious karma; this leads to Consciousness (vijnāna), which causes “Name and form” (nāma-rūpa), which stands for what today is called the body-mind as a whole and which gives rise to The “six bases” (shad-āyatana) consisting of the five senses and that part of the mind which processes sensory input; this leads to Contact (sparsha) with sense objects, which gives rise to Feeling (samveda), comprising pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral sensations; this evokes Craving (trishna), or the desire to unite with pleasant or separate from unpleasant experiences, which leads to Grasping (upadāna), which consists in one’s holding onto specific experiences, views, behaviors, or the sense of self as such; this causes “Becoming” (bhava), or a particular state of existence that corresponds to a person’s inner constitution, which leads to Birth (jāti), or the actual incarnation as a specific individual, which brings Ageing and death (jarā-marana). This causal nexus seeks to explain cyclic existence (samsāra) in terms of an individual’s journey from birth to death to rebirth, ad infinitum. This model makes it clear that cyclic existence is not due to any outside agency but the human mind itself. In other words, we are creating our destiny in every moment. Yoga further tells us that samsāra is not inevitable but that we can stop the vicious cycle by modifying our volitional activity and behavior. This good news is fundamental to all forms of Yoga. Greed is a phenomenon of the unregenerate psyche, which is under the spell of the conditioned nexus and has not taken control of its own destiny. Freedom from greed comes with nongrasping (aparigraha), which is based on the recognition that we are inherently complete and need nothing for our perfection.

Either through effort alone or through a combination of effort and grace, we can overcome our spiritual ignorance and actively shape our future destiny. If belief is involved in some schools of Yoga, it plays only a preliminary role. The accent is typically on wisdom (jnāna), even in the more sophisticated approaches of Bhakti-Yoga, the devotional path. The impulse to attain freedom—or, in the bhakti-oriented schools, union with the Divine—underlies all yogic effort. Only in this way can the practitioner be assured of not getting stuck along the path. This impulse is known as mumukshutva, the desire for liberation, wholeness, perfection, or lasting happiness. With the sole exception of this desire, or impulse, all desires (kāma) relate to either the physical world or some subtle object or state, including heaven. Since all manifestation (vyakta)—whether coarse (sthūla) or subtle (sūkshma)—is finite, none of these desires can give us true fulfillment. They are, to put it differently, all part of the world of change (samsāra). The impulse to liberation, however, is directed toward the unmanifest (avyakta), infinite Reality. Having kindled the impulse toward ultimate freedom and adopted an appropriate spiritual path, the practitioner gradually sheds ignorance (or sin) and simply awakens as the ever-present Real. Even this experience of awakening is merely a metaphor. From the perspective of the ultimate Reality (which has no perspective at all), nothing ever happened. We were never ignorant, self-divided, or unhappy, and therefore we also did not awaken. Whenever we talk about the fully liberated or enlightened being, we inevitably get trapped in paradoxes or doctrines. And yet, tens of thousands of adepts have risked opening their mouths in order to convey something of the Unthinkable or Unspeakable to (apparent) others. When we examine the Hindu concept of liberation, or enlightenment, we find that it comes in two fundamental forms: bodiless liberation (videha-mukti) and living liberation (jīvan-mukti). The former type implies perfect transcendence not only of the human condition but of embodiment as such. It is a state of being that is utterly formless and wholly apart from the universe in all its many levels. This is the great spiritual ideal promulgated in the philosophical traditions of Mīmāmsā, Nyāya, Vaisheshika, Ishvara Krishna’s school of Sāmkhya, some Vedānta teachers (like Bhāskara, Yādava, and Nimbārka), and apparently also Patanjali’s school of Yoga. The second type of liberation, jīvan-mukti, is the ideal favored by most teachers of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina Yoga. It can be said to be India’s most important contribution to world spirituality. Living liberation, or liberation while still alive in a body, is the idea that it is possible to be inwardly absolutely free while yet simultaneously appearing as an embodied individual.

The path of Jnāna-Yoga, which has been described as “a straight but steep course,”4 is outlined with elegant conciseness by Sadānanda in his Vedānta-Sāra, a fifteenth-century text. Sadānanda lists four principal means (sādhana) for attaining emancipation: 1. Discernment (viveka) between the permanent and the transient; that is, the constant practice of seeing the world for what it is—a finite and changeable realm that, even at its most enjoyable, must never be confused with the transcendental Bliss. 2. Renunciation (virāga) of the enjoyment of the fruit (phala) of one’s actions; this is the high ideal of Karma-Yoga, which asks students to engage in appropriate actions without expecting any personal reward. 3. The “six accomplishments” (shat-sampatti), which are detailed below. 4. The urge toward liberation (mumukshutva); that is, the cultivation of the spiritual impulse, or self-transcendence. The six accomplishments are: 1. Tranquillity (shama), or the art of remaining serene even in the face of adversity. 2. Sense-restraint (dama), or the curbing of one’s senses, which are habitually hankering after stimulation. 3. Cessation (uparati), or abstention from actions that are not relevant either to the maintenance of the body or to the pursuit of enlightenment. 4. Endurance (titikshā), which is specifically understood as the stoic ability to be unruffled by the play of opposites (dvandva) in Nature, such as heat and cold, pleasure and pain, or praise and censure. 5. Mental collectedness (samādhāna), or concentration, the discipline of single-mindedness in all situations but specifically during periods of formal education. 6. Faith (shraddhā), a deeply inspired, heartfelt acceptance of the sacred and transcendental Reality. Faith, which is fundamental to all forms of spirituality, must not be confused with mere belief, which operates only on the level of the mind. In some works a threefold path is expounded: Listening (shravana), or reception of the sacred teachings Considering (manana) the import of the teachings Contemplation (nididhyāsana) of the truth, which is the Self (ātman) Step by step, the practitioner peels away all the veils concealing the ultimate Truth, which is the singular Spirit. This realization brings peace, bliss, and inner freedom.

Brahma Yoga reveals that I am occurring naturally and play a crucial part amid the interdependent and outwardly opposing forces of the universe

In sum, the Indian tradition shows no evidence for the kind of posture-based practices that dominate transnational anglophone yoga today. We should except from this assertion, of course, seated postures such as padmāsana and siddhāasana, which have played an enormously important practical and symbolic role throughout the history of yoga. And today, largely thanks to modern advertising, cross-legged yoga postures such as these have become powerful and universally recognized signifiers of relaxation, self-control, self-cultivation, a balanced lifestyle, good health, fitness, and spiritual urban cool.

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy. We can't tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can't visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we'd feel in any life is still available. We don't have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don't have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don't have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don't have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let's be kind to the people in our existence. Let's occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever. Yesterday I knew I had no future, and that it was impossible for me to accept my life as it is now. And yet today, the same messy life seems full of hope. Potential. The impossible, I suppose, happens via living. Will my life be miraculously free from pain, despair, grief, heartbreak, hardship, loneliness, depression? No. But do I want to live? Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.

The third component of yama is nonstealing (asteya). Once again, this is to be understood in a very comprehensive sense. As a form of dispassion it is the abstention—in deed, word, and thought—from grasping after another’s property. Even merely coveting our neighbor’s strawberries, let alone his wife or her husband (who is of course not property), constitutes an infringement of this moral commandment. This virtue is connected on the one hand with nongrasping (aparigraha) and on the other hand with contentment (samtosha), which will be discussed below. Where does faith come into play in this case? The Yoga practitioner’s faith is placed in the Self as the inexhaustible Fullness (pūrnatva) that, once it has been realized, leaves nothing to be desired. Our external grasping after, or seizing of, things (and also relationships) is an expression of the ego’s strategy to overcome its basic fearfulness created by its self-isolation (or separation from the Self). But in this endeavor to extend its radius, the ego necessarily encroaches on the life-space of others, and this violates the first law of nonharming. Through surrender to the Self as the absolutely self-sufficient Reality, the ego’s harmful activity is gradually neutralized. The yogins or yoginīs who live this ideal are no longer at war with the world or themselves. The next element of yama is chastity (brahmacarya). The literal meaning of this old Sanskrit word is “brahmic conduct,” that is, the “behavior of a brahmin” or “mode of the Absolute.” Here the principle of reversal, spoken of above as the very essence of the yogic process, is most clearly expressed. To behave like the Absolute means to model one’s life on the ideal condition of the genderless Absolute. This is the underlying idea of chastity. Our ordinary experience of the world is always framed in terms of male and female (and occasionally neuter). “Chastity” is, first of all, the attempt to break away from this binary compartmentalization of life. True continence begins in the mind. Spiritual practitioners who have mastered this virtue regard all people as the same (sama), irrespective of their sex. On the physical level, chastity involves the abstinence from sexual activity. Some schools make this an unqualified condition, whereas others hold a more lenient view. The latter apply the principle of moderation to this aspect of one’s personal life, but also have rather definite notions about what is to be considered as legitimate sex. Sexual exploitation between men and women, which is often what today’s sexual revolution is about, is in yogic terms not only a waste of precious vital energy (ojas), but also a kind of violence, theft, and deception. Certain that the eternal Self not only transcends all bodily distinctions but also is inherently blissful (ānanda), Yoga practitioners are able to surrender their desire for the transient pleasure afforded through sexual activity.3

Create space in your day to be able to decompress, relax, and return to a state of non-thinking. Write out things you can do during your day that can help you achieve this. It could be journaling, taking a walk, meditating, playing with your pets, taking a nap, doing yoga, or anything relaxing.

Things I do when I’m feeling drained of energy Things I do that actually energise me Scroll Instagram Go for a walk Scroll TikTok Play some guitar Lie on the sofa and search endlessly for a random movie to watch on Netflix Reach out to a friend and suggest grabbing dinner Scroll through Twitter, feeling incensed about what’s going on in the world Do some yoga or stretching Order an unhealthy takeaway Head to the gym for a quick workout

But then, on a brisk February evening my junior year, I attended a free yoga class at the Harvard Divinity School Andover Chapel. I came in fully expecting to do cat, cow, and child’s pose. Our instructor, Nicholas, who was also a graduate student there, had us on our backs with taut abs, legs held in the air in a ninety-degree position, neck lifted off the ground, hands stretched above our heads. I had become the sleeping dragon. One minute in, my body was trembling. You can’t. I told myself I could. You can’t. I opened my eyes and saw everyone else peacefully holding their pose. This voice yelling at me wasn’t my own. So where was it coming from? You can’t. It was Hang telling me to dump my elementary school best friends who still played with toy horses at thirteen. He said I needed to be more strategic about my social ranking. You can’t be friends with them. My sister excluding me from her life when we became teenagers. You can’t hang out with us. Ba calling me pathetic when I told him I wasn’t pursuing med school. You can’t even try because you’re too dumb. I screamed, You can’t, right back inside of my head, telling all of them what I never had the courage to say. My body shuddered as the rage escaped my body like bats flying out from a cave. Hot tears fell from the sides of my eyes into the chapel carpet floor. And then I heard a clear voice inside of me speak. It was not mine, it was someone else’s. “All those times you’ve felt unloved or alone, you weren’t. God, through the presence of the body, has always been there for you.” Who was this voice? And how could my body be the key to loving myself? My body was always something I had seen as an inconvenience, a detached thing I had to fix. But tonight, I felt welcome to get to know my body.

Remember that thoughts are not the issue. Thoughts are the innocent play of the mind. If left alone, they naturally dissolve, or self-liberate, back into the clear-light mind from which they arose. But, of course, we rarely leave them alone. That’s the problem. We pour the gasoline of attention onto these tiny sparks of mind, and they ignite into the worries, dramas, ruminations, anxieties, expectations, hopes, and fears that comprise the entirety of our lives — all born from taking our thoughts to be solid and real — just like we take our non-lucid dreams to be solid and real.

If only people knew wherein lies their own good! To those who act wrongly the Self is an enemy. Befriend the Self and the Self will save you. There is no other savior than your Self. The fetters of ignorance and bad habits keep you bound. It is because you are determined to follow your wrong habits that you suffer. If only you would picture life a little ahead; lest the time, the precious time that is given you, slip away fruitlessly. The Hindus have a saying: “The child is busy with play, the youth is busy with sex, and the adult is busy with worries. How few are busy with God!” Banish the imaginary hope that happiness will come from worldly fulfillment. Prosperity isn’t enough, “gracious living” isn’t enough. You want to be eternally happy. Seize the God within you and realize that the Self is Divinity.

It could be journaling, taking a walk, meditating, playing with your pets, taking a nap, doing yoga, or anything relaxing.

We were just…playing a game. Twister. You know, with the colorful dots and weird yoga poses? Crazy fun.” “Twister?” My frown deepens. “I assumed you were having sex.” Gabe’s mouth shapes into an O as his eyebrows raise, his feet shuffling back and forth like he’s uncomfortable. “Right. We did that, too. After Twister.

A Thing I Have Learned (Written By A Nobody Who Has Been Everybody) It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let’s be kind to the people in our own existence. Let’s occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever. Yesterday I knew I had no future, and that it was impossible for me to accept my life as it is now. And yet today, that same messy life seems full of hope. Potential. The impossible, I suppose, happens via living. Will my life be miraculously free from pain, despair, grief, heartbreak, hardship, loneliness, depression? No. But do I want to live? Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.

When we are happy, we tend to attract happy people and positive events. We magnetize the same qualities that we have inside.

Meditation should not be the goal of spirituality, but a tool to be able to actualize greater and greater service.

Service is an expression of inner growth and development. It is the muscle-building for virtues. It is the barometer of inner development and spirituality.

We are only actors and yet we identify so intensely with the part we are playing, that we forget our true Self. Through yoga meditation, Self- inquiry, and living in accord with natural law do we wake up from the dream, or at least realize we are the dreamer.

If a shift in practice, action, or thought generates more embodiment, creativity, empowerment, sweetness, clarity, astuteness, love, energy, or connection, this is probably a solid sign that it’s adding value and enhancing your life for the better. If it does the opposite and detracts vitality over and over and over again, let it go, compost it, and trust in your ability to begin a new inquiry. Playing in the sandbox of experimentation also welcomes us into relationship with the process of creating messes.

It chooses to play in its own retail stores, with athletic wear for women. It decides to win on the basis of performance and style. It creates yoga gear that is both technically superior (in terms of fit, flex, wear, moisture wicking, etc.) and utterly cool. It turns over its stock frequently to create a feeling of exclusivity and scarcity. It draws customers into the store with staff members who have deep expertise. It defines a number of capabilities essential to winning, like product and store design, customer service, and supply-chain expertise.

I'd much rather spend all day on the Santa Monica pier playing Asteroids than delve into the murk and analyze myself. And if you think I haven't gone down to the pier to do that recently, well, you'd be wrong. Sometimes you just have to be twelve again.

To put it plainly, having modern ethics means having "your ducks in a row" or having your act together. It means creating basic stability in your life so that when lila (the unpredictable) happens you can roll with the play of the universe rather than getting run over by it. Being prepared for any possibility means that you can create opportunities out of challenges rather than being a victim to them

People slip spontaneously into moments of concentration all the time—while reading a book, exercising, playing chess, or creating art. A yogi seeks to experience that same level of concentration intentionally in a practice known as dharana—the act of purposefully narrowing the mind’s focus on the breath, the sensations of the body, a mantra, or a prayer bead. This consistent and purposeful focusing of the mind while on the yoga mat or meditation cushion gives the yogi the same level of focus in life, allowing for wild creativity and unfathomable productivity.

They are part of the nervous system because of the role calcium has in the working of neurons, and they are part of the endocrine system because of the hormones secreted by bone cells that play a role in our metabolism.

Two things must happen to partake in this mindset of non-judging so that we can start dealing with stress better and gain greater well-being. Don't get angry at the little weirdo doing its thing. Be like, "whatever I don’t mind." Continue to bring your attention back to the song that you play. Feel the sound vibration. When you meditate, all kinds of thoughts and experiences will come up. Patience: understanding that growth happens in its own time. The mantra therapy session will clear your head and make you happier and brighter and relaxed and free of anxieties–these results are pretty instant. Yet, the meditation's long-term objectives including self-realization, liberation from fate, jumping out of the reincarnation loop... those don't happen overnight. We have a lot of karmic baggage from who knows how many lifetimes of gazillions. Don't overemphasize development. Be rest assured it will happen. Beginner’s mind: a mind that is willing to see everything as it is for the first time. The cornerstone of mindfulness practice lets us catch the "extraordinariness of the ordinary" of our perceptions of the present-moment.  This mentality encourages us to "be able to see everything as if it were the first time" Critical for practicing and participating in organized meditation practices, such as body scan, yoga, meditation, this sort of open-mindedness to new experiences "helps us to be receptive to new ideas and keeps us from getting stuck in the rut of our own wisdom, which often thinks it knows more than it does." They have no assumptions resulting from past experiences with the mind of the beginner.  This reminds us that every single moment, by definition, has unique possibilities.  The subconscious of the novice is working as de-clutterer.  With it, we can see, witness, hear, and learn of our universe's beings, places, and stuff, as they really are and in the moment.  Our ideas, feelings and desires no longer filter or place a curtain on our everyday lives. Trust – No Imitations, Live Own Life, and Honor Own Feelings, Intuitions, Wisdom, and Goodness An integral part of the training and practice of mindfulness includes the development of a simple trust in yourself and emotions.  Guidance comes from within you— your own instincts, your own strength.  The foundation involves looking inward rather than outward.  Your mindset here indicates that you value your own fundamental intelligence and goodness.  Your thoughts are honored.  An analogy here may be linked to backing off a stretch during yoga practice.  The mindfulness ethic "accentuates being your own human and knowing what it means to be yourself" Being your own individual means you are not mimicking someone else.

Samuel Clemens, who used the celebrated pen name Mark Twain and was the author of such nineteenth-century classics as Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, had many telepathic experiences. He dubbed them “mental telegraphy” because the telegraph was the fanciest long-distance communication technology in his day. Twain was concerned about his reputation as a serious author if he reported his experiences, so for years he kept quietly adding his experiences to an unpublished manuscript. Finally, after British scientists began to show serious interest in this topic in 1882 with the formation of the Society for Psychical Research, Twain decided to publish an article in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in 1891. It began: Note to the Editor.—By glancing over the enclosed bundle of rusty old manuscript, you will perceive that I once made a great discovery: the discovery that certain sorts of thing which, from the beginning of the world, had always been regarded as merely “curious coincidences”—that is to say, accidents—were no more accidental than is the sending and receiving of a telegram an accident. I made this discovery sixteen or seventeen years ago, and gave it a name—“Mental Telegraphy.” It is the same thing around the outer edges of which the Psychical Society of England began to group (and play with) four or five years ago, and which they named “Telepathy.” Within the last two or three years they have penetrated toward the heart of the matter, however, and have found out that mind can act upon mind in a quite detailed and elaborate way over vast stretches of land and water. And they have succeeded in doing, by their great credit and influence, what I could never have done—they have convinced the world that mental telegraphy is not a jest, but a fact, and that it is a thing not rare, but exceedingly common. They have done our age a service—and a very great service, I think.238

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum.

When the three Ph.D.s, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner, began experimenting on themselves with LSD-25 at Harvard in 1960, they were respectable and thoroughly academic psychologists. Later, Dr. Leary became a fugitive and an enthusiastic exponent of Aleister Crowley’s sex magic, after having passed through stages of trying to be an Oriental guru in hip clothing and a violent revolutionary in Marxist drab. Dr. Alpert has become “Baba Ram Dass,” an orthodox Hindu exponent of hatha-yoga. Dr. Metzner is devoting himself to teaching non-drug methods of consciousness-expansion, including yoga, Tarot cards, sex magic, the I Ching and alchemy. Almost certainly, the ideas that these men have encountered in the past years have played the major role in shaping their ideas. But it is almost equally certain that – as they believe themselves, and as their admirers and critics also tend to believe – LSD was a catalytic agent in propelling them out of the groves of academe into the wild blue yonder of unorthodoxy.

The Shaivism of Kashmir teaches a system of yoga that leads to the highest level of Self-realization and yields a revelation of the innermost secrets of the nature of the Self. In the practice of this yoga, the student is able to pass beyond the various levels of susupti and turya that we have been describing and finally to become immersed in the blissful experience of the Self as one with Absolute Consciousness. The student of Kashmir Shaivism discovers that what others experience as the void is actually pulsating with divine creative energy and that this creative energy is their very essence. Further, these practitioners experience everyone (pramatr) and everything (prameya) as the Absolute Lord, endowed with infinite divine potency and joyfully manifesting the whole universe. They see everything as His divine play, and recognize that everything is actually He. This totally monistic view of the world was termed “immediate non-dualism” (pratyaksadvaita) by Narasimhagupta, father of the famous eleventh-century philosopher, Abhinavagupta. Immediate non-dualism sees total unity even in mundane perceptions. Those who live in this state of unity do actually see monism with their eyes and feel it through all their senses. — B. N. Pandit, Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism (3rd ed., 2008), p. xvii-xviii

Bondage and liberation is another important issue that Kashmir Shaivism has clarified in a unique manner. Most of the other schools of Indian philosophy assert that all beings are responsible for their own misery and can only attain liberation through their own efforts. But Kashmir Shaivism, while advocating personal effort for the attainment of freedom from limitation, finds the basic source of both bondage and liberation in the divine creative expression of God. In this philosophy, the world and our lives are often described as a divine drama or play in which Paramasiva is the sole producer, director, and cast of characters. He is everything wrapped up in one. It is He who, in the initial parts of His divine play, obscures His divinity and purity, appears as an ordinary person with limitations, and becomes progressively denser and more ignorant as a result. But in the final part of this play, He bestows His divine grace on the person He appears to be. This person then turns away from misery, becomes interested in spiritual philosophy, comes into contact with a teacher, receives initiation into spiritual practices (sadhana), attains correct knowledge of the theoretical principles of absolute non-dualism, practices yoga, and develops an intense devotion for the Lord. Finally this person recognizes that he is none other than the Lord Himself. — B. N. Pandit, Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism (3rd ed., 2008), p. xxii

I found one observation that is people are just stuck in technology and they just want to sit next to the computer and work hard on the internet or whatever it may be and so the mind started to dominate them. Just think if all humans just want to sit next to the computer then what will happen, comfort zone demands more comfort zone. The more we lessen physical activity, more will be the frustrations and agitations, it's time to act physically more and more, our physical dimension is more powerful than psychological dimension, just work upon it by doing yoga or other intense activities, if we do these #intense activities "consciously" then the mind will work the way we want it. The act could be anything like having a cup of tea, having a drink of water, playing chess, walking, talking, listening, all these activities should come to the place in tune with #consciousness.