Yoga Therapy in Practice: Are You a Prisoner of Your Judgments? –by Rob Schware

I grew up a pacifist. Along with an entire generation of anti-Vietnam War youth, I was devoted to and energized by the Gandhian principle of ahimsa and other ideas of non-violence. Still true to these influences in later life, I co-founded the Give Back Yoga Foundation, which supports teachers who bring yoga and meditation to underserved populations.

But the younger me might not have predicted that part of its core mission would be to bring yoga to veterans, active-duty soldiers, and their families. Or that my son's oldest and best friend, someone very dear to me, would be serving in Afghanistan, while my youngest daughter joined the Israeli Defense Forces.

Thus, now in mid-life, I find myself standing in what appears to be a contradiction: I profess to be guided by ahimsa, and yet people I love, as well as those served by Give Back, are trained not just to defend, but also to attack.

Perceiving Without Naming –by Eckhart Tolle



Native Ghost Dance

  “When you look without grasping,
the whole universe is looking out of your eyes.
It’s an opportunity to see what it is to move
without a sense of a central me.”  ~Mukti~

A lot of us feel more alive when we are traveling to places we are not familiar with or to countries and cultures we do not know because during those times our ordinary thinking is diminished and our perception is heightened by all the new experiences that are flooding our being. In other words, you become more present.

Have you ever been on a trip or voyage to an exciting new place and a friend or family member is still talking about issues and problems from back home? That’s the voice in the head being predominate even though there are all kinds of opportunities to see and experience new things. Their body may be traveling through time and space, but they are still in the same place in their head as they were back home.

Suffering and the Soul --by Dr. Judith Rich

"When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful." -- Billie Mobayed

Can a soul lose its way or be broken? And if so, what can one do about it? These are some of the questions posed by readers of my last post: "Soul Stories: Discovering the Lessons of Your Soul's Journey." 

Earlier in our discussions here, I suggested that when we talk about matters of the soul, the river is wide and the water is deep. There is so much more unknown than known. So as we consider the questions that inevitably arise when we wade into these waters, we need to be aware that there are no tidy answers, no place of universal acceptance or agreement. There is no Dept. of Lost Souls where one can go to reclaim theirs, or no Missing Souls papers to be filed. When we wade into the waters of the soul, we usually end up with more questions than answers, for that is the nature of soul.

ABOUT MY FAITH --by Jane Fonda

I am frequently asked about my faith. At the end of my marriage to Ted Turner I became a Christian. For several years prior, I had begun to feel I was being lead. I felt a presence, a reverence humming within me. It was and is difficult to articulate.

Today I think I know what was happening: I was becoming embodied, whole. I had spent 60 years dis-embodied, trying to be perfect so I could be loved. You can’t be whole if you’re trying to be perfect. Now, as I entered my sixth decade and with much work, I could feel myself becoming whole and I knew: This is what God is. I was stunned when I read in William Bridges’s The Way of Transition, that in Matthew 5:48 when Jesus tells his disciples, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” it was a mistranslation of the Greek adjective teleios which actually means “whole, fully formed, fully developed.” Jesus wasn’t telling his disciples to be perfect like God, he was telling them to be whole, like God.

This is what the third step of Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Step Program means. It says we need to give ourselves over to our higher power, become whole (which addicts aren’t) by welcoming the Holy Spirit into our innermost selves.