Sunday, August 30, 2009

The Grace of Despair

Greetings Yogis and Yoginis,

This week in class we are considering the topic “Dealing With Difficulties.”

The Grace of Despair

If you have never reached the bottommost depths of despair, if you have not realized some point in your life at which you felt completely disintegrated, then you haven’t begun your journey towards God yet. But immediately upon that disintegration, when everything you value in life is gone, there should be surrender. The cup of your personality shatters, and at that moment of shattering you surrender your will completely to the unknown, whoever that is, and right there, by that very act, you have found the perfection that is God.

- Pandit Usharbudh Arya

The homework is to recognize the moments in life where you have “reached the bottommost depths of despair” and learn from your response. What does it mean to surrender your will and what is the outcome? Will you come closer to God, whatever that means to you, each time you surrender your will?

Blessings,

paul cheek
Rushing Water Yoga
The BKS Iyengar Yoga School of Southwest Washington
417 NE Birch St., Camas, WA 98607
360.834.5994

www.rushingwateryoga.com
info@rushingwateryoga.com

Serving Yoga to Camas, Washougal, and Vancouver Washington since 2003

2 comments:

Lulu Smith said...

I think my personal nadir is looming imminently, I can't decide whether to keep on trying to claw out of it or relinquish and surrender.
Chin up and keep smiling or crumple?

Unknown said...

I belive that there is no true progress in self liberation until you reach that "despair", it is not until that desintegration of ones attachments that one is force to change even those parts of ourselves that we once believed the constituents of who we are; it is not until our own psychic existence is at stake, that we are obliged to search for new ways to exist...and therefore we change, we improve, we evolve...into better beings, closer to God and therefore to our own true essence.