I asked

[Lisa Walford]

This poem, by Sharon Olds, speaks to me of an adage I found myself asking in my earlier years of practice. "May I come to know that from which all else is known". This last is from the Mundaka Upanishad. The Upanishad goes on to describe a higher and lower self. The presumably 'higher' self:

The eye cannot see it; mind cannot grasp it.

The deathless Self has neither caste nor race,

 Neither eyes  nor ears nor hands nor feet.

Sages say this Self is infinite in the great

And in the small, everlasting and changeless, 

The source of life. (translation Eknath Easwaran)

The I found this poem. Read it several times. I tear up when I read "the turn taken". What a gift this life is. And how much we suffer over meaning. When I was in my twenties I remember constantly saying, 'justify it'. I found most things to be self oriented and aggrandizing. Now, I simply listen, accept, and love the diversity. Each bird has a unique song.. Last Wednesday I also read from John O'Donohue's Bless the Space Between Us. You will find that reading below. 

Join my this Wednesday for my last pranayama class on the YogaWorks platform. Together, we listen, breath, and listen more deeply.  

You will find me on a new platform, more of this later this week

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I asked, with everything I did not

have, to be born. And nowhere in any

of it was there meaning, there was only the asking

for being, and then the being, the turn

taken. I want to say that love

is the meaning, but I think that love may be

the means, what we ask with.

Blessed be the longing that brought you here

And quickens your soul with wonder.

May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire

That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease

To discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.

May the forms of your belonging - in love, creativity, and friendship - 

Be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul. 

May the one you long for long for you.

John O'Donohue