Thursday, September 16, 2010

Letting go of the false self.



Most of our energy ges into upholding our importance. If we were capable of losing some of that importance, two extraordinary things would happen to us. One, we would free our energy from trying to maintain the illusory idea of our grandeur; and two, we would provide ourselves with enough energy to catch a glimpse of the actual grandeur of the universe.
Carlos Castaneda


Asana practice has been a wonderful through line for me because it's a way of embodying that work with attention, a way of spreading attention throughout the whole of the system, and a way of reflecting the perennial nature of life. You arrive back at the mat day in and day out, and yet you're not the same person you were the last time you were on the mat. Millions of cells have come and gone, different food has been metabolized on all different levels, whether it's food of thought, food of emotions, food of light and energy, food of relationships, food of organic substances. So there is all this different play in consciousness occurring each time we practice. And then there is the beautiful metaphor of it, training one's consciousness to absorb multiple lifetimes within this lifetime.
David Kennedy