My new fav
As I love to plan and play an active role in the creation of my life, I've always struggled with this notion of surrender. Especially now, when things aren't exactly unfolding as I would have planed them (didn't think the big C would be part of this story!), it's been an interesting struggle to just "let go and let God". What does that mean exactly and what does that really look like?
Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
-Rumi
I taught a pose in yoga class last week called Svarga-dvijāsana, a pose often translated as bird of paradise, or "twice born" in Sanskrit. A bird is born once as an egg, and then is born a second time when it emerges from it's shell as a bird. In order for the bird to really live, the safe little shell in which it dwells must break and dissolve. A scary and painful process perhaps, and one that feels all too familiar these days.
“I had always imagined God to be in the same general direction as everything else that I valued: up. I had failed to appreciate the meaning of the description of God as the “ground of being.” I had to be forced underground before I could understand that the way to God is not up but down.”
Anyone whos ever taken a yoga class or been in the presence of yogis has heard of yoga being refered to as "a practice". Last year I was in Portland assisting a yoga workshop and recall the studio owner's 11 year old daughter asking her parents and I what we were practicing for.
As I sat though my fourth chemotherapy treatment yesterday, I felt a rush of love for life as my dear friend Laurie and I talked about what we each felt most mattered in life. Having just lost her grand mother last week, she too came face to face with mortality and has been contemplating what kind of legacy she desires to leave behind. We laughed as we walked to the cancer agency, calling it the "spa" and acting as if we were just two girlfriends going for a a treatment, spending an afternoon together, reconnecting over coffee. And that's exactly what it became.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012 at 7:50PM