Bringing Yoga To Life

I started reading Donna Farhi's Bringing Yoga To Life today, and especially liked this little bit from the first chapter:

It is through...Yoga that we learn how to contain and liberate our energy and ultimately direct it toward a more positive way of being.

And what is this more positive way of being? When we are in full command of our physical, mental, and emotional capacities and in complete possession of our self, we begin to live fearlessly and to open to new experiences, new possibilities, and new challenges. Then the energy that we may have previously squandered defending and fortifying a limited definition of self is mobilized to express our unique talents and abilities. These abilities can then be directed in such a way as to fulfill our personal destiny. We rise to the occasion, and the occasion is this life, right now, just as it is. Practicing Yoga does not eliminate life's challenges, and neither does it provide us with a convenient trap-door to escape from life's distractions. Instead, Yoga gives us the skills to meet life head-on with dignity and poise."

Bringing Yoga To Life: The Everyday Practice of Enlightened Living
Donna Farhi

There is so much packed into that paragraph that you could easily spend one day on each of the sentences, dismantling and thinking and looking at each one. I was half tempted to stay up all night and read the entire book to see how she addresses it all, but i won't because i want to read it slowly, savoring her thoughts as she slides them, morsel by morsel, across the pages in my direction. Based on that paragraph, this is going to be too good to devour without a thought.

A more positive way of being? Notice that she didn't focus on a more positive way of "speaking," or "acting," or "thinking." Being is, rightly so, her focus, for it is being that is the greatest gift we have and the one the vast majority of us so totally mess up. Most never stand still long enough to see that there is a difference between 'life' and 'busyness.'

When being is seen for what it is, you see that there is only being; not your being and my being and others' being. Being is. Period. And in that being, you are temporarily manifested and i am temporarily manifested. Being is both permanent and impermanent. Being is both everything that is, was, and ever will be — and it is nothing at all.

Why some people go to their grave saying "he who dies with the most toys wins," while others go to the same grave saying "he who dies didn't matter" is beyond my intellectual abilities, but i do know that it is the latter that truly understood what it meant to Be and manifested that in every single aspect of their lives.