Becoming Small Forces for Peace Wherever We Go

Greetings Sadhakas,

This week in class we are exploring "becoming small forces for Peace wherever we go".

And then there crept a little noiseless noise among the

leaves,

Born of the very sigh that silence heaves.

                                    - John Keats

Today I was walking with some friends in Armstrong Redwoods Park and I was astonished at those trees. The more I looked at them, the more I came to appreciate them. It was completely still, unlike our tropical forests in India, where elephants trumpet, tigers roar, and there is a constant symphony of sound.

Here everything was still, and I enjoyed the silence so much that I remembered these lines of John Keats. It is a perfect simile for the silence of the mind, when all personal conflicts are resolved, when all selfish desires come to rest. All of us are looking for this absolute peace, this inward, healing silence in the redwood forest of the mind. When we find it, we will become small forces for peace wherever we go.

Words to Live By: Inspiration for Every Day – Eknath Easwaran

The homework is to consider why you have taken up the practices of Yoga and how doing so can help cultivate becoming small forces for Peace wherever you go.

Blessings,

paul cheek

Rushing Water Yoga

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

Fear

Greetings Sadhakas,

This week in class we are exploring fear.

On this path, effort never goes to waste, and there is no failure. Even a little effort toward spiritual awareness will protect you from the greatest fear.

                                    - Bhagavad Gita

To be truly secure, we must begin to find a source of security within ourselves. Even the bravest among us have many fears. Behind the attachment to money or possessions, for example, you will always find the fear of loss. Attachment to prestige brings the nagging fear of what others think of us. The thirst for power feeds the fear that others may be stronger. Every self-centered desire brings the fear that we may not get what we desire.

One could make a Sears catalog of these fears, but all stem from one fatal superstition: thinking of ourselves as merely physical creatures, separate from the rest of life. As our sense of oneness with the rest of life deepens, we step out of the world of fear to live in the world of love.

Words to Live By: Inspiration for Every Day – Eknath Easwaran

The homework is to consider how can the physical practices of yoga (bahiranga sadhana: yama, niyama, asana) and the inward practices (antaranga sadhana: pranayama and pratyahara) prepare you for your spiritual path and help free you from fear and move you in the direction of LOVE and the experience of oneness?

  

Blessings,

paul cheek

Rushing Water Yoga

417 NE Birch St., Camas, WA 98607

360.834.5994

www.rushingwateryoga.com

info@rushingwateryoga.com

Savasana

Greetings Sadhakas,

This week in class we are exploring Savasana or corpse pose.

Dreams are real as long as they last. Can we say more of life?

                                    - Henry Havelock Ellis

When we wake up from a dream into waking consciousness, we do not pass from unreality to reality; we pass from a lower level of reality to a higher level. And, the mystics of all religions say, there is a higher level still, compared with which this waking life of ours is as insubstantial as a dream.

Yet until we do wake up, nothing sounds more absurd than the assertion that we are dreaming, and nothing seems more solid than this world of the senses. Why should this be so? If original goodness is our real nature, why are we unable to see it? The answer is simple: because we see life not as it is but as we are. We see "through a glass darkly," through the distorting lenses of the mind - all the layers of feeling, habit, instinct, and memory that cover the pure core of goodness deep within.

Words to Live By: Inspiration for Every Day – Eknath Easwaran

The homework is to observe your state of being after Savasana. One of the goals of Yoga is to uncover our true reality or as Eknath Easwaran writes "the pure core of goodness deep within." In Sparks of Divinity B.K.S. Iyengar writes, "The best sign of a good Savasana is a feeling of deep peace and pure bliss. Savasana is a watchful surrendering of the ego. Forgetting oneself, one discovers oneself." See if through your practice of Savasana you can move towards discovering yourself. 

Blessings,

paul cheek

Rushing Water Yoga

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