“There is a part of each of us that would like us to miss the point–a part of each of us that wants to believe that there will be no magic, no mystery, that our own life is not blessed and sacred, that our days are not a miracle, and that we are not connected to all living beings as a leaf is to a tree.”

-Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat (Day 322)

Day 323 – Rolf likens dharana as a dance; in his Christian worldview, it is a dance of light, and on his previous day, he subtly and proverbial places darkness–self-doubt, judgment, shame, avoidance, fear, etc.  The opposite of light is dark, of course, but we are all these things.  As sentient beings we forget that we coexist with other sentient beings and, at least in my worldview, the Earth is alive, as well.

Rolf describes dharana as “a dance where we enter into the real, with the light [of the world].  He writes of the void we create in stillness–a void, “where there had been mental chatter.”  Yoga is one way to allow the light to enter our beings, and in practicing, we “dig the well…to create the emptiness so that the light of the world can pour in and through us.”

I wonder, in my own heart of hearts, if dharana is intuition?  Is my return to dance led by yoga, because of my yoga practice?