presence

The past week or so I've found a few minutes each day for some leisure reading -- you know, the kind of reading you do for fun, not for a grade. It feels so good. But instead of expanding, I've returned to an old favorite for much needed enlightenment: Eat, Pray, Love. Following are exerpts from a section on yoga.

"The Yogis say that human discontentment is a simple case of mistaken identity. We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality.

We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire universe. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character.

We don't realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme Self who is eternally at peace. That supreme Self is our true identity, universal and divine. Before you relaize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair...

'You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not.' - Epictetus

Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicated effort to haul your attention away from your endless brooding over the past and your nonstop worrying about the future so that you can seek, instead, a place of eternal presence...

This world [is] an equal manifestation of God's creative energy -- men, women, children, turnips, bedbugs, coral: it's all God in disguise."

I definitely don't have an affinity for yoga. I've tried, and I'm terrible. I find it so uncomfortable and painful. Instead, I like to make up my own poses, ones I find enjoyable and fun, ones that stretch me without feeling like it's tearing me in two. What I love about yoga (and many many other things) is feeling myself in my body, and my body as part of the world.