Yoga Lesson of the Day

March 19 -- I got up early today to go to my yoga class.  The teacher, John, is really intense about yoga and always works us really hard.  I love it.  Anyway, on the way to class, I was sitting at the traffic light and I noticed the cars driving by.  I mean, I really noticed them.  And what I saw was that most of the cars were either beige or white.  And grey.  A ton of neutral colors.  I thought to myself, wow...I am glad I went with a color when we picked the mini van.  But it was kind of a choice made by accident.  The one I was originally leaning toward was beige.  Anyway, as I sat at that intersection, I made a judgement;  I decided that what I was reading lately about color was true.  With a shaky economy, people tend to pick "safe" colors...i.e. neutrals.

And then I went to class.  And John, as he always does, started the class with a verbal, life yoga lesson.  He talked about a story from Eckhardt Tolle's "The Power of Now".  In the story, a poor beggar asks for money every day.  And every day, there is this guy who walks by.   Finally, one day the man stops and asks the poor man, "what is in the box you are sitting on?"  They open the box and there inside is a million dollars.  The moral of the story is that everyone's treasure is within.  It's a great connection to yoga.  Doing a pose, your objective is to try not to judge it as good or bad.  To try and look at it without judgement.  Very, very hard to do, especially when the position is a difficult one.  But I gave his words a lot of thought.  How quickly we look outside of ourselves to define our world instead of remembering all of the wealth within.  If you do downward dog and you feel good and you are trying your hardest, good for you.  If you happen to look at the person next to you and see his heels touching the     floor...yipes...suddenly you aren't so good right?  Your stomach sinks in disappointment and you make a quick (not so nice) thought about yourself.  It happens all of the time.

For some reason, I thought about my observation of the car colors.  Did I judge them as good or bad?  I guess I did make an assessment of sorts.  Weird.  We really do make judgements...all the time.  John's words really resonated with me.  I hope I can remember them as I continue along my path.  It's hard.  But I will try.  For now... :)