“Shock and awe is a military tactic. Comfort and awe is a spiritual alternative. The military option supports the will to dominate. The spiritual option supports the commitment to liberate. We share with all people an awesome grace: the path to peace, on the walk of truth and reconciliation, with justice lived for the sake of all creation. We do not seek control, but something much more transformational and enduring. We seek kinship.”
(Photo by Kinø on Unsplash)
The following graphic (source unknown) is a good reminder that there is far more to Yoga than just asana practice (yoga poses). While the poses keep our physical bodies strong, flexible, and balanced, other aspects of Yoga train the mind, help us work with our inner strengths and weaknesses, control energy levels, and connect us to our own inner peace – which then carries into the rest of our lives and decisions. This is why Yoga can have such a powerful effect over every aspect of our lives, including the way we approach our work and our relationships.
It Is Not The Fact That I Will Die That I Mind
but that no one will love as I did
the oak tree out my boyhood window,
the mother who set herself
so stubbornly against life,
the sister with her serious frown
and her wish for someone at her side,
the father with his dreamy gaze
and his left hand idly buried
in the fur of his dog.
And the dog herself,
that mournful look and huge appetite,
her need for absolute stillness
in the presence of a bird.
I know how each of them looks
when asleep. And I know how it feels
to fall asleep among them.
No one knows that but me,
No one knows how to love the way I do.
––Jim Moore
This is Yoga, Oneness, Unity, Union with the Divine….
“When we know Holy Truth, all sense of separateness, alienation, fear, and desire ends. We feel our unity with the One and realize that it has never been otherwise.”
(Riso and Hudson, Understanding the Enneagram, 59)
“You cannot possibly say that you are what you think yourself to be! Your
ideas about yourself change from day to day and from moment to moment. Your
self-image is the most changeful thing you have. It is utterly vulnerable, at the mercy
of a passer by. A bereavement, the loss of a job, an insult – and your image of
yourself, which you call your person, changes deeply. To know what you are, you
must first investigate and know what you are NOT. And to know what you are not, you
must watch yourself carefully, rejecting all that does not necessarily go with the
basic fact: ‘I am’. The ideas: I am born at a given place, at a given time, from my
parents and now I am so-and-so, living at, married to, father of, employed by, and so
on, are not inherent in the sense ‘I am’. Our usual attitude is: ‘I am this’. Separate
consistently and perseveringly the ‘I am’ from ‘this’ or ‘that’, and try to feel what it
means to BE, just to BE, without being ‘this’ or ‘that’. All our habits go against it and
the task of fighting them is long and hard sometimes, but clear understanding helps a
lot. The clearer you understand that, on the level of the mind, you can be described in
negative terms only, the quicker you will come to the end of your search and realize
your limitless being.”
— Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That
Holistic Yoga & Spiritual Guidance 