Aligning with Grace

Life has a way of coming full circle and cycling through so many things... On Friday, almost three years to the date - I visited the river with the friend who first brought me there. Both of us had not returned there together for one reason or another, and I wanted to mark our return visit as the remaining "bookend" experience to a phase of my life and its conclusion. Yes, three years ago, I both visited this river and and began this blog - never imagining the role that both would come to play in my life! Three years ago, when my outer and inner worlds collided and unraveled, I came to visit the river daily, urgently and fervently engaging in Lovingkindness practices and other meditations as a form of healing and releasing animosity toward individuals and situations I felt had deeply wounded me. For nearly a year and half, in the throws of deep depression, I visited this river, and began kayaking, as a therapeutic way of taming my own inner turmoil and emotions as I paddled u...

In the last few days I seem to have been caught in the vortex of a maelstrom of words, flying around the very globe with incredible intensity, passion, and power... Some of them truthful, some of them not... Some of them hurtful, some of them uplifting... Some of these words have brought tears to my eyes, because they were so touching, or because they engendered such sadness... How can such a community of yoga practitioners be so grateful, and gracious, and vindictive, and unloving as well? And yet, how could we not? We are all part of the same human family with all its foibles and limitations...Still, we loosely assent to and try to embody, an ancient code of ethics, The Yamas and Niyamas , with so many souls already radiantly striving towards greater luminosity... I have read the words of colleagues and friends who have spoken of a shared teacher whose instruction and genuine care has been nothing short of transformational in their lives. I know what they speak of - because they hav...