study and practice the eight limbs of yoga

emphasis on three aspects in ahimsa:
1. loving your self
2. finding a balance in your life
3. not being petty

I’m great at letting things go. Always have been. In fact, some would say that I am too great at letting things be. I like to assume that people have a conscience and have their own minds. I tend to think that we are ultimately directed towards true north even though we often forget. I already know that when we get to the second yama, satya, I’ll have to challenge my thinking on some of this. How do we remain true and pacifist at the same time?

Balance is the area that challenges me the most I think. I have this idea of what the perfect schedule should look like and I think it would get me to places where I have never been but it is hard to perfect it. A part of this is that my priorities in life knock me off center without very many ways to recover. Taking care of my children and responding to their needs and wants get in the way of a balanced life. At the same time, I’d never have it any other way. I also have become aware of just how much time restaurant management takes away from my “other eight hours”. I have to work fifty and tend to work around 53. That’s an extra day. It makes it hard for me to have any time for anything but work, food, exercise and a fairly minimum amount of children. That has to change eventually. I’m knocked out of balance there because our debt level requires a fairly high income level on my part. If we could cut the debt, cut the needs, then I could cut hours. What would it be like then to pursue my dreams and hopes rather than living a fortress mentality where everything I do is about paying for the rent on the house.

The other balance issue that deeply affects me is relationship. I used to have so many friends. Now I don’t have time for them. I also don’t have much time for my spouse. This all wears away on my ability to live a quality life and then I find myself satisfying myself with momentary, cheap thrills (that sounds so cliche but it’s true). I kind of understand why yoga embraces a four stage development in life beginning with the learning stage and then moving through the productive stage to a stage of contemplation. It is hard to have time to ‘contemplate’ when work requires so much. Things will change alot in the next year and a half if we can conquer our financial obligations. If we can’t, we’re in deep trouble.

I spend so much of my time reflect on balance and developing and redeveloping a balanced schedule. Sometimes I think that it’s a waste of time. Other times I think I’m being too tough on myself, that I have to embrace the lesson that I lesson that I learned as a young adult that the body and our actions sometimes tell us more about our priorities and needs than we want to know. Until I have arrived at some more successful conclusions to my life goals and plans, I think I need to keep tinkering away, “trying to play a pretty tune without breaking my back”.

for the whole week, pretend that i am complete…how does that feel?

So I think that i did a pretty good job of maintaining a balance this week…when i didn’t, at least i discovered the reasons behind why i didn’t..This week’s exercise is to determine whether I am “running interference on others’ lives. Am I a worrier? Am I a fixer? I need to discern the difference between health and support. Do I ignore my own life by paying attention to the lives of others.

I keep coming back to the notion of carbon footprint as my metaphor for violence. We are called to walk gently on this earth. It’s hazy now, but I vaguely remember when I first started seminary there was some discussion between one of the professors and the students over a situation that seemed to require us to impose our will upon others. It may have been giving advice. It may have been about creating rules to protect others from their own actions. I can’t remember. I remember one of the students using the term “self-destiny” and suggesting that we do not have the right to block another person’s “self-destiny”. That’s an extremely libertarian idea but I like it. I think that we need to absolutely respect the journeys that others must take in order to get through life.

Time for just the shortest of thoughts. I realize that nonviolence is really counter to the goal that I have set for myself in life. I have always wanted to leave my mark on the world. I am coming to realize, however (and I know that I’ll get some debate on this one), that the nonviolent goal is to not impose myself in such a way that I leave a mark. I am to be persuasive but not coercive. I am to channel the positive energy in the world and not to dam it. I think that there is a sense in which life is like a three day camping trip out in nature. The goal after those three days is to leave the camp as much as possible as you saw it when you arrived. Enough for now. I’ll talk more about this later.

For the next month, I will be studying the first yama, ahimsa, which means non-violence. This is the yama upon which the whole yoga philosophy rests. The book that I will be reading to focus on the yamas and the niyamas is appropriately called The Yamas & Niyama: Exploring Yoga’s Ethical Practice by Deborah Adele.

Ahimsa is a dramatic concept. On the one hand, it reminds me of great pacifists and resisters of violence who have changed history such as Mohandis Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreaux, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and, of course, Martin Luther King Jr. It therefore reminds me of the many great violences in the world that call us to respond. On the other hand, the ahimsa that I am reading about in this book has far more to do with loving ourselves and forgiving ourselves for our faults. We are told not to challenge violent, not to make ourselves change, but to change slowly and lovingly and forgivingly.

What leads us to violence. First, fear, particularly fear of the unfamiliar. Second, not living a in definite, living on the defensive so that life is rushing at you and you can’t seem to do anything about it. Third, a sense of powerlessness. Fourth, and these are all interrelated, a desire for a control and a sense that things are out of one’s control

Adele’s goals for us are four-fold:
1. to find out own courage so that we are at ease with the others in our lives,
2. to create balance in our lives (think of the mountain pose) so that nothing will knock us over,
3. space and time to rest and reflect,
4. hearing our inner voice which is implicitly nonviolent.

In the midst of this, probably interspersed through the first ten months, I also want to look at the five impairments of the mind:

1. Avidya (ignorance)- This ignorance makes us believe that what we see is the only reality.

2. Asmita – the assumption that I am a self separate from reality

3. Raja – Attachment

4. Dvesa – Indifference, the opposite of raja

5. Abhinivesa – clinging to this life as though it is everlasting

yama – moral observances for interactions with others – the following five guidelines: Ahimsa (non-violence), Satya (truthfulness), Asteya (non-stealing), Brahmacharya (celibacy) and Aparigraha (non-covetousness)

Niyama – moral observances for interactions with yourself – the following five guidelines: Shaucha (internal and external purity), Santosha (contentment), Tapas (austerity), Svadhyaya (study of religious books and repetitions of Mantras) and Ishvarapranidhana (self-surrender to God, and His worship).

Asanas – the practice of physical postures for the purpose of calming the mind and moving into the inner essence of breathing

Pranayama – measuring, control and directing of the breath

Pratyahara – withdrawal of the senses from attachment to external objects

Dharana – total mindfulness

Dhyana – meditation and worship that involves concentration upon a point of focus with the intention of knowing the truth about it.

Samadhi – It means pleasurable fascination of one’s individual consciousness in the essence of God. Samadhi means to bring together to merge. In this state, the body and senses are at rest, but the faculty of mind and reason are alert. You need to control the feelings of Avidya (ignorance), Asmita (egoism), Raga-Dvesha (likes and dislikes), Abhinivesha (clinging to mundane life)

I think it is important to make it clear that I do not expect to come anywhere close to achieving all this in sixteen months or even in a lifetime (?). These next sixteen months will be my introduction to yoga beginning in May, 2012 and ending in September, 2013.