Prolong not the past
Invite not the future
Do not alter your innate wakefulness
Fear not appearances
There is nothing more than this.
--Ram Dass
A friend of mine asked me about a year ago if I had any interest in starting a spiritual book club. The idea immediately intrigued me. In 2003, roughly about the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, I started a book club with a group of women. Some of these women were good friends of mine, others were women I wanted to know better, two were sisters. Over a period of 10 years, we managed to read and discuss together 50 different books. I still marvel a bit at this. Naturally, some discussions were better than others as were some of the books; and, some of our discussions lasted beyond the scheduled gathering and persisted by way of passionate e-mail exchanges as we grappled with original ideas a book had stirred up. Members came and went, but, for the most part, we maintained a core group of dedicated readers. We became regular correspondents and confidantes. While we did not all become better friends, I do believe we became better people. I discovered pieces of myself as a member of this tribe of women reading that I might never have discovered reading on my own. Looking back upon this book club now, I understand we were part of a sacred journey. So, when my friend originally floated the idea of a spiritual book, despite my intrigue, I was hesitant. The hardest part of starting a reading circle again was always going to be finding that new tribe.
Anthropologists define a tribe as consisting of a singular cultural unit having shared traits such as language and the absence of a hierarchical political structure. A tribe, these scholars say, is a group of people who define themselves by a kinship to an ancient lineage. And, so, just after the first of this year, I acted upon my friend's request by sending out a tentative communique, this time to members of my yoga tribe. We share, after all, a kinship to an ancient lineage--raja yoga or ashtanga yoga--and by way of that lineage a language, Sanskrit. As for the singular cultural unit, our mutual dedication to the practice of the ashtanga yoga syllabus amply serves. I had decided that I was ready for a second pilgrimage. As luck would have it, a willing band of pilgrims answered the call.
We are poised to discuss our first book at the end of this week. We selected B.K.S. Iyengar's Light on Life to begin. In the eight weeks we have had to read and digest the wisdom and insight shared by the late yoga master, who continued to practice until his death in 2014 at the age of 95, I have been on quite a journey. Iyengar announces in his introduction Freedom Awaits--good news, indeed--and explains to the reader at the end of the book what it means to be living in that freedom promised in the earliest pages. Between that promise and its explication at the end is an exploration of our divine nature and the discrete layers, kosas, of our human form: physical, energetic, mental, intellectual and blissful. Yoga moves us along the path to wholeness. The key to this wholeness is the complete integration and harmonization of these various kosas. According to Iyengar, this means that the whole practice of yoga is about "learning to live between the earth and the sky" or as author Nikos Kazantzakis had us learn from Zorba, his beloved Greek, how to embrace the full catastrophe of our lives while understanding that at our core, we are all divine.
I have learned a thing of great value from Iyengar about time and the present moment and the state of being. If life were a little more predictable right now, this lesson may have eluded me as I read. Recently, I stopped teaching, which means I am in the process of releasing an identity that has kept me tethered for 20 years. The routines and responsibilities of teaching anchored my days and seasons--yes, even summers--with myriad duties. These duties ordered my days; they provided an easy and respectable response to the question "and what is it that you do?" They kept at bay the doubts I harbored about the gulf that lay between this profession I could with ease present to the world and the work I believe I would like to do. The demands of teaching also prevented me from having to test the realities of that belief.
By releasing this identity, I fell out of time a bit like Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim of Slaughterhouse Five. No doubt this is why Vonnegut placed Billy in the realm of the Pilgrims. He, too, was on a quintessential journey. The truth is, I did not like it. The month of February seemed interminable. I could not escape my self/Self. According to Iyengar to lose identity is to find out who we are not. This also explains why Iyengar describes Savasana (corpse pose) as the most difficult pose in the yoga practice. Because while we lie in Savasana at the end of our practice, we are encouraged to let go, to relax, to cut the tension. How do we cut the tension? By cutting the thousand threads of identity that bind us. "All our identities, our affiliations link us to past and future. Nothing at all in our lives links us to the present except the state of being," Iyengar says. Savasana is being without was, being without will be.
This reminds me of the Baltimore Catechism I studied in first and second grade in Catholic school, a text I had to learn by heart in order to take the sacrament of Communion. The catechism presented this definition of God: God had no beginning. He was and always will be. Iyengar would concur. He believes that Savasana takes us to the edge of that great mystery, that place of divinity--outside of time--beyond the thousand threads of identity, and into the very heart of the present where we are ceaselessly transforming.
Native Americans believe the power of the world works in circles; everything tries to be round; and everything where power moves is a circle. If I were asked now as an adult to draw a picture of God, I would draw a circle. Like circles, like my adult image of God, we are beings without end. I am looking forward to being among this new tribe of pilgrims who has agreed to take a leap into this great mystery. Wherever will it lead us? With any luck, to that kernel of the present.
Invite not the future
Do not alter your innate wakefulness
Fear not appearances
There is nothing more than this.
--Ram Dass
A friend of mine asked me about a year ago if I had any interest in starting a spiritual book club. The idea immediately intrigued me. In 2003, roughly about the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, I started a book club with a group of women. Some of these women were good friends of mine, others were women I wanted to know better, two were sisters. Over a period of 10 years, we managed to read and discuss together 50 different books. I still marvel a bit at this. Naturally, some discussions were better than others as were some of the books; and, some of our discussions lasted beyond the scheduled gathering and persisted by way of passionate e-mail exchanges as we grappled with original ideas a book had stirred up. Members came and went, but, for the most part, we maintained a core group of dedicated readers. We became regular correspondents and confidantes. While we did not all become better friends, I do believe we became better people. I discovered pieces of myself as a member of this tribe of women reading that I might never have discovered reading on my own. Looking back upon this book club now, I understand we were part of a sacred journey. So, when my friend originally floated the idea of a spiritual book, despite my intrigue, I was hesitant. The hardest part of starting a reading circle again was always going to be finding that new tribe.
Anthropologists define a tribe as consisting of a singular cultural unit having shared traits such as language and the absence of a hierarchical political structure. A tribe, these scholars say, is a group of people who define themselves by a kinship to an ancient lineage. And, so, just after the first of this year, I acted upon my friend's request by sending out a tentative communique, this time to members of my yoga tribe. We share, after all, a kinship to an ancient lineage--raja yoga or ashtanga yoga--and by way of that lineage a language, Sanskrit. As for the singular cultural unit, our mutual dedication to the practice of the ashtanga yoga syllabus amply serves. I had decided that I was ready for a second pilgrimage. As luck would have it, a willing band of pilgrims answered the call.
We are poised to discuss our first book at the end of this week. We selected B.K.S. Iyengar's Light on Life to begin. In the eight weeks we have had to read and digest the wisdom and insight shared by the late yoga master, who continued to practice until his death in 2014 at the age of 95, I have been on quite a journey. Iyengar announces in his introduction Freedom Awaits--good news, indeed--and explains to the reader at the end of the book what it means to be living in that freedom promised in the earliest pages. Between that promise and its explication at the end is an exploration of our divine nature and the discrete layers, kosas, of our human form: physical, energetic, mental, intellectual and blissful. Yoga moves us along the path to wholeness. The key to this wholeness is the complete integration and harmonization of these various kosas. According to Iyengar, this means that the whole practice of yoga is about "learning to live between the earth and the sky" or as author Nikos Kazantzakis had us learn from Zorba, his beloved Greek, how to embrace the full catastrophe of our lives while understanding that at our core, we are all divine.
I have learned a thing of great value from Iyengar about time and the present moment and the state of being. If life were a little more predictable right now, this lesson may have eluded me as I read. Recently, I stopped teaching, which means I am in the process of releasing an identity that has kept me tethered for 20 years. The routines and responsibilities of teaching anchored my days and seasons--yes, even summers--with myriad duties. These duties ordered my days; they provided an easy and respectable response to the question "and what is it that you do?" They kept at bay the doubts I harbored about the gulf that lay between this profession I could with ease present to the world and the work I believe I would like to do. The demands of teaching also prevented me from having to test the realities of that belief.
By releasing this identity, I fell out of time a bit like Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim of Slaughterhouse Five. No doubt this is why Vonnegut placed Billy in the realm of the Pilgrims. He, too, was on a quintessential journey. The truth is, I did not like it. The month of February seemed interminable. I could not escape my self/Self. According to Iyengar to lose identity is to find out who we are not. This also explains why Iyengar describes Savasana (corpse pose) as the most difficult pose in the yoga practice. Because while we lie in Savasana at the end of our practice, we are encouraged to let go, to relax, to cut the tension. How do we cut the tension? By cutting the thousand threads of identity that bind us. "All our identities, our affiliations link us to past and future. Nothing at all in our lives links us to the present except the state of being," Iyengar says. Savasana is being without was, being without will be.
This reminds me of the Baltimore Catechism I studied in first and second grade in Catholic school, a text I had to learn by heart in order to take the sacrament of Communion. The catechism presented this definition of God: God had no beginning. He was and always will be. Iyengar would concur. He believes that Savasana takes us to the edge of that great mystery, that place of divinity--outside of time--beyond the thousand threads of identity, and into the very heart of the present where we are ceaselessly transforming.
Native Americans believe the power of the world works in circles; everything tries to be round; and everything where power moves is a circle. If I were asked now as an adult to draw a picture of God, I would draw a circle. Like circles, like my adult image of God, we are beings without end. I am looking forward to being among this new tribe of pilgrims who has agreed to take a leap into this great mystery. Wherever will it lead us? With any luck, to that kernel of the present.
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