Begin where you are

Don't really know what to say except that its nice (that most bland of adjectives) to hear from so many people I haven't been in contact with for a while.

The title of this post refers to something I was reading today from Heart of Yoga (Desikachar). He talks about how to construct your own yoga practice. It's a really down to earth book, very accessible and it is the style of a teacher I really admire so it is cool for me to see the tradition she is coming from. (ann it is that friday woman sue who you always really liked).

IW and I are both reading (different) books on Jung at the moment. He just told me something interesting a la Jung:

That youth and adolescence are a process of separating yourself from the universe and adulthood is a process of reintegrating and finding your place in the world again.

It makes me wonder then if it goes back again to withdraw for death and separation when you are elderly.

it's interesting because in my book today he was saying that individuality is a somewhat contentious state, which in a simplistic way would account for the above but perhaps in that case reintegration is the wrong word and it is more conformity that we go through in adulthood.

He discusses indivduality as subject to and moulded by the church and the state.

We have made science (statistical data) paramount in our society, and as a medium it discounts the individual as incompatible subjective data, yet any statistic if broken down is comprised of the same data it denies the validity of.

The church acknowledges the individual only through its adherence to their dogma which is basically again placing it in a collective category.

Jung says:In both cases the will to idividuality is regarded as egotistic obstinancy.

Which maybe explains why it is so hard to make sense of your own place in the world.

So, my novice advice?

Begin where you are.

: )

Hippy Stuff

The colour purple. (without Oprah)
Where I work there is an awful lot of the colour purple. In that statement IW would stress the word awful. For us, purple has become synonymous with the concept of hippyness. IW takes much delight in teasing me about the many shades of lilac I am currently exploring.

For me, yoga has become a microcosm of life. The more i try to understand living in my body the more i understand living in the world. Which says not that I have answers for many of life's questions, rather that now I have more questions following on from what understandings I have gleaned.

Creating a sense of space in the body (flexibility, freedom, looseness) creates a sense of space in life (room, time, possibility). As freeing up the body allows it to move in new ways or ways that are now comfortable where they have not been before, conceptually creating this feeling simultaneously means room to see how we behave removed from the immediacy of our own behaviour. Seeing ourself in this new (perhaps truer, perhaps not) way gives us choice. In seeing our forthcoming action/response as a choice rather than from the safe veil of hindsight we can truly decide. Preempting in this way allows the choice to respond in new ways, to explore alternatives and to move away from old patterns that have and are limiting us.

koan

courtesy of dictionary.com:

A puzzling, often paradoxical statement or story, used in Zen Buddhism as an aid to meditation and a means of gaining spiritual awakening.

why?

Here is my new blog. Created not for the propogation of such self-evident information but as a way to address my appalling record at correspondence. I want my brain to work. Maybe you feel the same. I hope so.

the idea is for ideas,

what are you interested in, reading, thinking, at the moment?

here's my me at the mo:

yoga (duh)
jung - the undiscovered self
learning to understand balance
the breath

and you?