Day 105 – Good advice from Rolf today: “Begin to notic when you are not saying yes to love. What is your experience of saying no? What is your experience of saying yes? When is hard tos ay yes? What would happen if you said yes?”
One would think that having a family like mine it would just be so easy to say yes, and yet, I believe, we let our reactions to love control us. These are great questions to ask because much of my existence is living in a reaction to one emotion, event, or like, instead of coming from and toward love. Love shouldn’t need a reaction, right? Shouldn’t it just be? I mean it is really easy to tell my family I love them and to know that I am loved back, but it isn’t really easy to FEEL love as a day-to-day truth. Lots of tiny little acts in our house show we love each other, but sometimes it is really a control or a trust issue within ourselves, not just others, but me, too. And, I grew up similarly, so it feels familiar, but not the same kind of LOVE LOVE that Rolf talks about, which (according to him and a wealth of other people, along with the niggling feeling inside) resides in all of us. Love is all. Love is “G”od. Love heals. Love is authentic. And I know it begins with me.
Maybe why I am vexed with this idea that I can be kinder and purer and more giving with others and yet I repeat the same tired thought patterns all day has less to do with how much meat I eat or whether I do crossfit or teach public school or set intentions for magick or goals for creating dreams or any of this stuff. That niggling feeling is intuition–ancient, wise–the soul’s voice. Love is the stuff I need to work on, or find. This reading makes me understand the stuff of isvara-pranidhana and a little part of me somewhere really believes that samadhi is possible. I’m sure this is why books are written, journeys are taken, and recluses gotta’ recluse. Rolf insists that “the aim of yoga is to become still, to learn to reside in our truth.” For a simple householder, I guess this is the way. I could travel all over (and most prolific and accessible yoga teachers do), but I should be able to do it all at home living the niyamas and yamas.
space365 