The Greatest Gift

July 2010, I met a dear friend of mine at the botanical gardens.  I had just returned from my pilgrimage to Israel.  We spent the day talking about life and taking in the beauty of nature.  We watched the birds, bees and butterflies fly around, the people pass and couples take wedding pictures. I fell in love with the grounds as I felt so serine and peaceful.

My friend and I made a promise that at the age of thirty we would throw ourselves a joint birthday party for our thirtieth birthdays if we both remained unmarried as our date of birth are close together.

As my thirtieth birthday is around the corner, my friend and I both remain unmarried and we failed to fulfill our pact of having a birthday party at the gardens.  I deliberately neglected to remind her of our pact as I realized that I am already married and have always been married to myself.

I sit here today renewing my wedding vows as I do everyday.  I promise to cultivate compassion towards myself, promise to honor, respect and protect myself.  Most importantly I promise to love myself unconditionally and loving oneself unconditionally is the greatest gift of all.

Peace

As I am turning 30 in a week, I have reflecting about my 20’s.  Searching for peace has been a major theme for me during this decade of my life.  I travelled many places in order to find peace.  I prayed at the Western Wall, bathed in the Ganga River, studied in yoga ashrams, completed a 200 hour yoga teacher training and even moved to China.  Each experience and lesson led to more clarity and peace in my life.

I stopped my desperate search for peace a few years back and started to turn inwards as I learned that peace come from within.   However, I have been contemplating how to access the peace from within for a while.  I recently came to the realization that we are peace as it is our true essence.  It comforts me to know that we are already what we seek.

No Pain No Gain

I am happy to announce that I will be posting on my blog again as I was recently inspired to start writing again.  I first started this blog while in Mysore studying Ashtanga Yoga in 2011.  As I find myself in Mysore again, it is only natural that I start posting again.
 
I came to Mysore intending to focus on my meditation practice as I recently completed my third Vipassana Mediation Retreat. As I wanted to establish a more solid home practice, I committed to meditating two hours daily as my teacher Goenka states.  Even though I am not able to sit for the full hour and usually get up about 45 minutes into my sit, I am blessed to have only love and compassion for myself and do not get upset. 
 
As I been delving deeper into my meditation practice, I started to wonder if my asana (yoga postures) practice still had a place in my life because I feel as I am getting older my meditation practice is and will be a greater importance to me as I am able to connect to my true self on a deeper level.

Recently my asana practice has been becoming more intense.  I am expressing various asans in ways that I never dreamed that were possible. I have been finding myself resistant in going deeper into these postures as I have been experiencing pain.  At times I feel discouraged and even wonder if practicing is even worth the pain.

Well today after practice, I was blessed as I experienced a feeling of openness, gratitude and bliss.  I also realized that the pain that I am experiencing is not only physical, but it is also mental pain.  As my body begins to open up more, I feel that I am able to open up more to life and its subtleties.  Like everything, pain is ever changing and impermanent.  I know I am just experiencing growing pains, the pain will not last forever and that this will only leads to growth.  Being in Mysore has thus been an extremely rewarding process so far.

 

Om shanti