LOVE IS A JOUNEY TO YOUR SOUL
From Paramahanda Yogananda’s Metaphysical Meditations:
Expanding Love
(Meditate, dwell on and feel this)
My kingdom of love shall expand. I have loved my body more than anything else. That is why I am identified with and limited by it. With the love that I have given to the body, I will love all those who love me. With the expanded love of those who love me, I will love those who are mine. With the love for myself and the love for my own, I will love those who are strangers. I will use all of my love to love those who do not love me, as well as those who love me. I will bathe all souls in my unselfish love. In the sea of my love, my family members, my countrymen, all nations and all beings will swim. All creation, all the myriads of tiny living things, will dance on the waves of my love.
This meditation is from the first YOGI to come to the United States, who also wrote “Autobiography of a Yogi” and whose teachings are continued today with the Self-Realization Fellowship more than 100 years after he came to our country.
My yoga teacher, Yogi Bhajan, talked about the longing to belong that we all feel. This longing is the longing of the soul to connect to other souls, to experience Love, which in itself is a challenging concept to fully define. Yogi Bhajan said “Understanding and humility lead to the perfection of love”. Recently I attended a wedding where the bride’s great grandfather’s Bible was used to read the verse from Corinthians which many of us know as this: “Faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love”.
In this version the word charity was substituted in the place of the word love. I found that to be both interesting and thought provoking. Is charity synonymous with love?
In Paramananda’s meditation above he also talks about the limits of the physical body and our identification with it. A true yoga practice is self reflective and concentrated, not just a series of exercises. In the last article I spoke of Yogafit. This is an approach to yoga that uses sound physical principles to teach yoga that would fit in an athletic club setting. However to me something is lost in that presentation. Perhaps I have had too many students tell me about teachers who approach yoga quickly, like an aerobics class, which can leave students disillusioned and discouraged. One of the most important contributions a teacher can make to a student is being an example of self-love and acceptance despite the human faults.
Beyond the Yoga practice of physical asana is the sincere practice of loving your body, mind and breath enough to really become aware of it and change what is not serving you or the larger community also mentioned in Paramananda’s meditation ( the global community of last issues’ article, of which we are all a part). Reflective of self love, which one hopes will exist in your students as well, is letting the students truly accept where they are in pacing, practice, self-reflection and concentration, inching them on to new arenas when you see they need that little prod.
So often when leading a class I can tell the students are elsewhere, not really concentrating on themselves as is part of the practice- teaching our minds to be one-pointed and honoring the body by using that concentration to observe your body and breath fully. This is a lot easier said than done. Recently a student who used to be a dancer was doing a sloppy job of a standing pose which requires real concentration. The next day I spotted (supported) her in the pose and commented that when she concentrated she did much better. “You weren’t really concentrating the other day” I commented. “You are right!” she said ”I don’t like balancing poses for that reason”. I explained that in all the poses , balancing or non-balancing, she was meant to have that concentration required in the balancing poses. As a previous dancer many of the other poses were simple for her but that did not mean she was meant to wander in mind while her body was present!! These are all lessons we give lovingly. If a student has the humility to hear that he or she will benefit from it. That is the role of the teacher.
Love is the soul of yoga. Even teachers who appear mean, as some of the stories I have heard of Yogi Bhajan’s teacher in India when he was a boy, if they are true teachers, are only giving the lessons from a place of love. In our society students don’t always have the humility to realize the love from a teacher like that. Their egos interfere. Yogi Bhajan taught us that as human beings, and as teachers, we were to have an impact on others, not make an impression. Love has an impact. Impressions are superficial. Love goes to your soul. Yogi Bhajan told us that Kundalini Yoga was the Yoga of the Soul. Other Yogas do touch us in our soul but many feel things on a deeper level when their eyes are closed and breathing deeply, as is practiced in Kundalini. Some Yogas do not touch us in the soul and those have a certain popularity for Westerners which fits another need in people.
I once read that the role of a Yoga teacher is like that of a Mother, to prepare our children to go out in the world and then let them go. If so, don’t we teachers, like a parent, receive the gift of learning from our students (or children ) as well? The same student who was not truly committing to her balancing poses, out of laziness, remarked how my lower back had no bend compared to her overly flexible lower back. Therein lies the limits of the body that Paramanda talks about in his meditation. Almost 30 years ago I broke my back skydiving. Some Yoga teachers keep their personal histories to themselves, others teach how Yoga helped them overcome addiction and other challenges and adversities.
I do not usually talk about my back but after over 20 years of yoga there are still things I cannot and likely will not be able to do physically in my Yoga Practice. Have I seen progress? Yes. Have I had to work hard at it? Yes. Does it make me better or worse at Yoga? Neither. It makes me human and that is what my student said reassured her, to see that we teachers also have our limitations.
That is the challenge, not the physical only, but responsibility of another person’s psyche and body and spirit. Yogi Bhajan told us we were at the same time a physical, mental and spiritual counselor to our students. This requires truly a charitable loving space despite our own neuroses and human-ness. In our Kundalini Yoga classes we sometimes do Venus Kriyas, which usually turn out to be a most powerful experience for those doing it because it entails looking into another’s eyes for 3 minutes at a time. Doesn’t sound like a long time, does it? But if you are not accustomed to it, it can be a wonderful enlightening new experience, one that brings up our sadness, fear, self-consciousness and LOVE. After all, the eyes are the mirrors to the soul and that is what one is doing in Venus Kriya, connecting deeply into another’s soul with loving eyes.
To conclude this article I will leave you with more words from Paramananda Yogananda.
I hope you will find them inspirational to your soul:
I Go Within
I was a prisoner carrying a heavy load of bones and flesh,
but I have broken the chains of my muscle-bound body
by the power of relaxation. I am free. Now I shall try to go within.
Bewitching scenic beauties, stop your dance before my eyes!
Lure not my attention away!
Enchanting melodies,
keep not my mind enthralled in the revels of earthly songs!
Haunting sirens of sweet sensations,
paralyze not my sacred intuitions by your enticing touch!
Let my meditation race for the eternal bower of eternal divine love.
Luring aromas of lilacs, jasmine, and roses, stop not my homeward-marching mind!
These tempting enchantresses of the senses are now gone.
The cords of flesh are broken.
The grip of the senses is loosened. I exhale and stop the storm of breath: the ripples of thought melt away.
I am sitting on the altar of my throbbing heart.
I watch the roaring, shouting torrent of life force
moving through the heart into the body.
I turn backward to the spine.
The beat and roar of the heart are gone.
Like a sacred hidden river my life-force flows
in the gorge of my spine. I enter a dim corridor through the door of the spiritual eye, and speed on until at last the river of my life flows into the ocean of Life and loses itself in bliss.
And simply one more quote from Yogi Bhajan on Love:
“Love has no limit. When it has a limit then it is not Love”
May we bring that charity into our Yoga Practice, our daily lives and our interactions with those familiar and those unfamiliar as well…or at least keep working on it!
Donna(Amrita)offers ongoing Yoga Retreats from June to October and Christmas at www.sewallhouse.com in Island Falls, Maine and has been an avid yogini and teacher in the training arena called life for 50 years and as a Yoga teacher for over 20 years.
