December 10, 2013

Stillness in the movement

Stepping into 3rd year of yoga. I am still not fully able to understand my recent yoga obsession, often when my friends ask me about my experience with yoga, I was never able to give a convincing answer.  Practicing mostly Vinyāsa style, all the sweats, hard work, took one year even to touch my toes. I think I never had patience to do something which required so much of dedication and hard work and with very little 'visible progress'.

Yesterday it was a Vinyāsa flow class with candle lights and it was themed around, heart opening ( back bends), something I really don't enjoy, facing all the fears, letting things go, accepting my limitations. As we were preparing to do the Dancers pose (Natarajasana, shown in the photo), which can be sometimes very agitating, trying to go deeper in back bend with the other leg and getting a sense of balance in the other leg, not my favourite pose. My teacher gave a beautiful explanation to make peace with this pose, not to be agitated by trying to find the stillness in the movement. When the heart rates goes boom..boom..boom..and the blood starts flooding and rushing around the body, can I still balance things calmly in one leg? I think this is one of the thing yoga is teaching me silently for the past 2 years.  2013, was externally most agitated year, accidents, losing friends, reset in relationships yet internally very much at peace, may be thanks to yoga. 2013 was more like December in Europe, cold, deep silence of the snowy days and yet lot of celebrations and lights all around. 

March 20, 2013

Wordless communication with Existence

I am back after a year, after a fan's request :-)

I feel I lost words after moving to England, if I have to write about the summary of life in cambridge, the closest one word description will be 'peaceful'. I am losing faith in words, even more so during the past few days. What I see, feel and experience is unique to me and my surroundings, how can I expect another man-made language  to have words for that?

I will try to explain this wordless communication with existence using a new 'passion' in my life, the birds. I was introduced to a whole new world of birds few years back during the Easter holidays by a friend. They might have existed even before that Easter, there are evidences for their existence in books describing them and people have given different names,  I use these books to identify them, most of them were printed before that Easter.  So these birds might have existed for a long time.

Only very few existed in my world before that Easter, may be Chicken and Rooster as they have ended up in my lunch plate few times, Pigeons and Crows as they come in huge numbers to my house and gardens in search of food and yes! Peacocks , Parrots and Kingfishers who can miss such bright colours.  But now my experience with them is beyond that, I hear them every time I step out of my house, as walk around the natural reserve in my work during lunch breaks and during my stroll in near by woods, I hear some bird-like sound from an empty autumn tree, I stop for few minutes, sometimes even for few hours under that tree, trying to locate the source of that sound, I scan through all those empty branches but only left with the feeling that the source of that sound have transcended my limited 3 dimensional perception of this world.  But sometimes for few seconds I can see them, I can even capture them through my camera lenses. So the words are like these photos they can only show what I have seen for few seconds but my experience with the existence of these birds are beyond those few seconds, no words or photograph can capture or explain that.  I recently felt this strong, powerful wordless communication with another human begin, If I have to simplify and flatten that experience into a one dimensional thing like this bird photograph, it was magical!

I am not the only one who rambles about such wordless communication, looks like this also one of the very few idea that I share with Osho.

 Wordless communication with Existence in his own words.


 Osho : You are looking at a flower: look at the flower, feel the beauty of it, but do not use the word beauty, not even in the mind. Look at it: let it be absorbed in you, go deeply into it, but do not use words.

Feel the beauty of it, but do not say, ”It is beautiful” – not even in the mind. Do not verbalize and gradually you will become capable of feeling the flower as beautiful without using the word. Really, it is not difficult; it is natural.

You feel first and then the word comes, but we are so habituated to words that there is no gap. The feeling is there, but you have not even felt it before suddenly a word comes. So create a gap: just feel the beauty of the flower, but do not use the word.

If you can disassociate words from feelings, you can disassociate feelings from existence. Then let the flower be there and you be there, as two presences, but do not allow the feeling to come in. Do not even feel now that the flower is beautiful.

Let the flower be there and you be there, in a deep embrace, without any ripple of feeling. Then you will feel beauty without feeling; you will be the beauty of the flower. It will not be a feeling: you will be the flower. Then you have existentially felt something.