6 months and counting down....

When I look at the calendar for the countdown to Pune,  I could choose to become stressed or overwhelmed.  Instead I choose to feel excited about the opportunity to study with a living master,  BKS Iyengar.  LIfe happens so fast, I forget to stop for a second.  So.....

The last 3 days I have been sick,  the kind of sick where all you can do is sleep.  I had to stop.  Move from one room to the next trying every remedy to get some relief.  It is funny that the one room I was afraid to go into was the Yoga room.  I felt as though I would make that room contaminated by my obivious lack of motivation to do anything.  Today is the day that I am up,  moving around the house no longer searching for a cure.

In Basic Guidelines for teachers, Geeta does say that if one is sick with fever and chills they should avoid all asana and rest completely.  It is funny that I remember that as I write since it was a question I got incorrect on my Intro I test 2 years ago......I answered that they should do Savasana!  So wrong, rest people, rest.

Whenever I have a setback like sickness or an ache or pain,  I am the type to be quite dramatic about it.  Thinking all is over,  I should give up in the moment.  It typically takes a day or so to get back on the train and get on moving again.  In reading the sutras this morning,  (the version of Edwin Bryant),  I read: "Suffering that has yet to manifest is to be avoided".  Awesome,  I could have prevented this?! 

Keep reading Angie......"Just as the present is the result of previous causes,  and was once that which had yet to come, so future suffering  has its seeds in the present and  past."....keep reading...."..relief from suffering  comes only from liberation.....only when the mind is removed from its objects is one free from pain." Ahhhhh there it is.  I get it now.  Stop trying so hard to be what you think everyone wants you to be.  Be who you know you can be,  be good, be fair, be compassionate,  be honest, live more simply.

Some of you may read the sutras, and you know who you are,  and will get something totally different, something that is on a more philosophical level, or so one could think.  I think how can I read these words and put them into day to day life?  We live in a real world, not in a cave.  We must roam about the earth with all kinds of life, even the kinds we may not agree with. So go read the sutras even if you have no idea what they are saying,  because one of these days it will all come together,  I promise.