I M Perfect lady

When I was doing the standing postures today, I felt very deeply that I was the one who controlled this body.

Meaning It is up to me to get up each day, to push it as far as I can in each posture, and to be aware of my body.

The feeling that no one was coming to step in front of me and do this physical fitness had two distinct sides.  

One being great no one can stop me, and the other was oh boy will I be able to keep going?

In Deepak’s latest book, Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul he writes.

“Expect the best.  You don’t let go so that something good might happen. You let go so that the very best in yourself, your soul, can merge with you.  By itself, letting go of a bit of anger, a bit of fear, a bit of resentment, might seem tiny.  I’d reframe the situation.  Imagine that you are used to living in a small cramped house.  You’ve become so used to this claustrophobic space that you almost never go outside.  Yet there are carefree moments when you think it would be nice to experience a wider world.  So you open the door, and as you step outside, you confront a vast landscape, filled with light and extending to infinity in all directions.

Ah, you think, here is joy and love.  Here is real fulfillment.  So you roam outside, wanting to abide in this land of light forever.  Yet after awhile you get tired of this love and joy.  Somehow the space outside is too vast, the horizon to infinite.  You miss your familiar house, and it pulls you back.  So you return, and it feels safe to be back.  You resume you familiar existence.  For a time you’re content again, but you keep remembering the vast, unlimited space outside.  Once again, you step out, and this time you stay longer.  Your sense of love and joy isn’t so tiring.  The space outside is still infinite but that doesn’t frighten you so much.  The light that shines everywhere isn’t so blinding, and you resolve that this time you will abide here forever.

This is a parable about the ego and the soul. The ego is your safe house; the soul is the unbounded space outside.  Every time you feel even a moment of joy and love, freedom and bliss, you have stepped into the land of light.  You feel so wonderful that you want to keep the experience going, the way two infatuated lovers never want to be apart.  But your ego, your safe house calls you back.  This pattern of coming and going is how letting go works.  It takes repeated exposure to the unbounded soul for you to know that it is real. But your old conditioning will keep pulling you back.  In time, your trips outside will last longer and feel more comfortable.  Your soul is starting to seep into you; with this merging you begin to understand that you can live in the unbounded permanently. It becomes more natural than your safe house because in the unbounded you are the real you.”    Deepak

It is so good to know that it is normal to want to sneak back to the comfortable cramped place.  And that it may take a few times of coming out into the new landscape to feel comfortable.

Sometimes fear arises, but now it seems I am more fearful of getting left in the dark, cramped, unhealthy, and old conditions.

Doing this 60-day yoga challenge has me going outside each day getting used to living unbounded.

It literally feels like I am unraveling what has kept me bound and motionless. 

Like coming out of a cocoon! 

 “Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.”   -proverb