And our language underpins that misunderstanding.
Isolating a me from experience. Yoga is the opposite. It is ruling out a me. just taking the me out of the equation. Very simple, really.
Without a me nothing gets in the way of joy, peace and gratitude.
Sometimes that is my practice: saying to myself as I breathe in "breathing in Joy", and as I breathe out "breathing out Peace". Just that. Especially if I'm under pressure and I feel that wellknown tightening.
Joy in, peace out.
And I feel how my whole body relaxes in to what ever the present moment is, so I can experience it more directly. This is true for pain. For anger. For sadness ... For restlesness.
I talked to one of the diveguides on the boat we were diving from in Thailand, and she told me, that when she woke up in the morning, she would say to herself, that this day was going to be the best day of her life, and then she would invite positive energies and get the life that she wanted.
This, in my view, is also a misunderstanding.
Trying to get what we want by repeating a mantra of "okay, so now I'll act happy, so give me" is childish superstition in line with not stepping on the cracks on the sidewalk to ward of evil spirits or whatever the borderline obsessive behaviour we had as kids (or was that only me?) to keep fear at bay. And it is a very narrow and selfcentered perspective.
When we stop struggling, life is beautiful and every moment is joy. With all the imperfections, the failings of being human, the chaos, the sadness, the joy, the whole register the human experience. And we can learn to more gracefully learn to dance with life's everchanging rythm. and enjoy the dance instead of fighting against it.
And on that note I'm off to bed. May you all be full of joy and peace :-)
I've been practicing the mini-meditation with breathing in joy and exhaling peace for the last couple of weeks now and it's a very queer experience.
SvarSletI find particularly interesting that the energy of Joy feels different from the energy of Peace, which I've never noticed before. On inhalation I feel excitement and what is almost like a rush, while on exhalation I feel as if the body calms the rush down, grounding itself in a way.
The curious part is that it feels like two different movements, instead of one. It seems like the Joy "comes" from bottom-up and "peace" comes from top-down.
Then these two movements seem to meet in around lower back region, where it feels like an intense heat. This or maybe I'm dinning spicy!
I experience much the same thing I think, and probably these are just qualities of the breath and the words only accentuate that. Thank you for your comment and wonderful to hear that you have tried it out. Thanks for sharing:-)
SvarSletThe breath is connected to the nervous systems, so in a subtle way when we breathe the exhale connects to the parasympathetic nervous system, which calms us and activates digestion, resting, sleep ... and the inhalation connects to the sympathetic which has to do with activity and creativity. It's indeed interesting to start noticing these subtleties of the breath and body.
SvarSlet