Where do thoughts come from? What gives them power, charge? Why are they enticing? When sliding into thought, is it a little bit like falling asleep? Is awareness wakefulness? Does wakefulness need any effort? What is the dizzy, ill area? Can it be dissolved, or allowed to dissipate? Need I do anything about anything? What do I have other than awareness? Is awareness even ‘mine’? Is it a default state? Where is peace to be found? Within that which is not peaceful? Love and awareness seem to go together, with care and gentleness. To be suspicious of any other action, doings. The hardness isn’t something I need to bring, it’s not necessary. Not to deny it but to feel it and hold it in loving awareness. Things start to evolve, shift, change, unfold, in light and delight. Where can light be found? In darkness itself.
love
Kripalu Yoga Journal – YTT – First Evening
During the teacher training course last year, we were encouraged to keep a journal during the four week intensive. It’s nearly six months since we started the course and I would like to share some of my entries and memories.
On the first evening we wrote down what yoga meant to us and chose a book title to describe our current position in life, or our life so far. I chose: ‘The Truth Is In There’. In a circle of 50 classmates and teachers, we stood in turn and introduced ourselves and gave the name of our book. My heart was beating like crazy! I remembered very few names that evening. (‘Eagle Steve’ was one I did remember from the start)
We picked cards from a deck. Each card had a yoga pose on it. We then found the three others who had the same card. This was done by striking that pose and looking around for others doing the same thing. That group of four became our study group until after our first practice teach more than a week later. We chose a name: Full Moon. We become close in that original group: Erin, who since has founded Hand To Heart Yoga, Dalia who is now in Puerto Rico, and Ria who I haven’t heard from. The good news for me that evening was we only had to teach three times during the course, to four people only, one of whom would be a yoga teacher.
Good bunch in our dorm – four of us from the course and one guy from a massage course, Brian. I think it was that first night we agreed that there’d be no ‘yoga bullshit’ once back at the dorm. Brian was so chuffed that I worked with K’s ‘Teachings’.
Back to today: Groggy session with morning, but enjoying it somehow. Blissful night. Ecstasy comes in waves and cannot be interfered with or controlled in any way. The more of me, the less of it.
What we call our love is a thing of the mind. Look at yourselves, sirs and ladies, and you will see that what I am saying is obviously true; otherwise, our lives, our marriage, our relationships, would be entirely different, we would have a new society. We bind ourselves to another through contract, which is called love, marriage. Love does not fuse, adjust – it is neither personal nor impersonal, it is a state of being.
Krishnamurti, Book of Life, 14 April
Falling Awake 