Why Stress is Useful: Meditating With The Radiance Sutras Summary: Stressing the body makes you stronger – as long as you have time to rest and recover. This is the basic principle of working out. Exercising challenges the body. And when you sleep, the body rebuilds itself to be stronger. The same is true of [...]
Sunset over Santa Monica Photo by Jeff Skeirik/Rawtographer The word ocean is so beautiful that it is a mantra all by itself. Listen to the sound of it––Ooooohhhhh turning into shhhhnnnnn. It has a susurration* that lends itself to meditation, a variation on OM. The physical reality of the ocean is a great [...]
Using desire as an awareness tool for action. It’s eight in the morning, and suddenly the desire for a beer pops into my consciousness. Wait, what? An image has just flashed in my awareness – a glass mug filled with an amber fluid. The mug is tilted slightly and dripping with condensation. As I [...]
Rivers of Power: Meditation with the Radiance Sutras by Dr. Lorin Roche It’s a hot afternoon in the desert, at Bhaktifest in Joshua Tree, and my energies are starting to fade. The chanting has been going on around the clock for days and I feel saturated. What sounds good right now is to go jump in [...]
Life is Full of Surprises Unless you live in a cave, life is full of surprises. Even meditation is full of surprises. In the relaxation of meditation, we are often presented with mini-movies of whatever we are stressed about, including traumatic events from the past and whatever we are gearing up to deal with in [...]
Placing your mat in class, the teacher gives you a spiteful look. You don’t know it, but her ex-husband, to whom she is paying alimony, was walking out the door as you walked in, and she saw you smile at him. Driving to work, you slow down and give lots of space to a woman [...]
Just for a moment, let’s breathe in awe and delight with Shakti, for She is power and always awesome. In English, we might refer to her as “Mother Nature.” We are all powered by Shakti, and when we practice Yoga, we are invited to notice that every thought we think is a sparkle of Shakti [...]
There are days when reality seems to unravel before our eyes. We are shaken, torn down, stripped of what we believe. A scandal breaks out at the ashram or Yoga studio. A friend turns against us. The person we married turns into someone we don’t recognize, or wish we did not know. The banking and [...]
Sutra 18 From The Commentary On The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra IN A SONG, IN THE SPACE of a few minutes, we can let go, lose ourselves and then return, refreshed, with a deeper sense of self. In music, we ride our passions into the vibrating core of energy from which they arise. On the [...]