A Life Well Lived

Carl Jung said, "We are not what has happened to us. We are what we wish to become."

I had an extraordinary experience in one of my classes last Saturday. In an effort to continue to teach that we are all on this path together, that sometimes there is brightness and sometimes darkness... there is always a light within should we decide to use/recognize it. The trust is, like Hanuman (the monkey headed God in Hindi mythology), sometime we forget our divinity and need to be reminded of it.

This crazy beautiful path is full of many curves and waves that are sometimes gentle, sometimes, soft, something soothing, and something they come crashing down when we least expect it kicking our yogi/yogini asses! I find myself thinking so much about that energetic field, the heart field, and the space where compassion flows amongst us all and how we can offer to that energetic field or pull from it when we need.

There was such an enormous expression of love and compassion like I have never experienced in that room last Saturday. The class was ending and in sharing "what the path of yoga is for Sanieh" is at the moment, they nurtured my cells through hugs, words, tears.... some offered a warm gaze and smile- everyone offered their hearts and I felt it, they felt it and in that moment there was just one body one soul who shared the same. When we feel alone or SEPERATE from, may we find comfort in knowing that we are all in this together?

Anicca. Changing, impermanent. This Pali word I learned while attending a Silent Vipassana meditation course this summer is one of my biggest lessons to work with during this life in this body of mine. The Buddha said that all things and the people we love are all subject to change. NOTHING stays the same forever. My time at the 10-day silent course taught me that it is our attachment and our aversion to these things that cause our suffering. We try to give that power to anything and everything but ourselves and for as much as we blame and try to make it about all things outside of ourselves; it really comes down to these two elements. Our attachment and our aversion to circumstances, people, and material "things", IS the cause of our own suffering. IF we know this, then why in the heck is it so very difficult in the eye of the storm to sit and be still through it all?

Vipassana (are you getting that I'm a fan of this experience yet?!) teachings shared by Goenka-ji try to convey that if we normally get angry 10 out of 10 times, going through this process does not mean that we are free from that anger, sadness, clinging, what have you.... the idea that when we work with the tools to free ourselves from our samskaras/miseries due to that attachment and aversion and THEN we begin to notice shifts. Maybe that 10 out of 10 becomes 8 out of 10.... and "out of 10", that's great progress. Like anything else though, the work must be constant. Sometimes having that awareness even in our neurosis, that we are experiencing neurosis itself, is progress. It's not about perfection; progress.

This year, I vow to make myself priority. I vow to nurture my own soul, or begin to make that shift in discovering just what that means for myself. I vow to live in a way that people are happy when I arrive and sad to see me go. I vow to come to know the depth to which my compassion can become alive and to free all blockages that prevent all of these things; no matter what the price because the reward of a life FULL and well lived, is so much sweeter.
OM GAM GANAPATIYE NAMAHA.

sanieh
http://www.saniehyoga.com/