we need light and dark to live in full color

Dear Rainbow Yogi! 

 Are you familiar with Goethe’s color theory? Goethe observed that light seen through a turbid medium (e.g. air, dust, moisture) appears yellow, and darkness seen through an illuminated medium appears blue. In other words the colours of this world are created out of the relationship between light, matter, and darkness. There are so many rich teachings and insights that stem from his work with light and dark, but for right now I want to keep it simple; in the world of matter both light and dark are necessary to experience color. 

 Everybody knows if there is only darkness we see nothing. Our fear of the darkness is so traditional, pervasive, and unquestioned that we demonise the shadows, eclipses and night. Darkness becomes bad, dangerous, negative and unwanted. By necessity then light becomes good, safe, positive and wanted. However if there is only light again we see nothing!! Instinctively we lift our hands to shade our eyes because light, just as much as darkness, blinds us. Our attachment to light, good and positive is trending right now and validated ubiquitously. For instance, have you been instructed by a teacher, friend or yourself to only focus on the light, the good and the positive? While in the first few moments it might make you feel better, it merely blinds us to our suffering. What if Siddhartha Gautama just sat under the bodhi tree and kept repeating to himself ‘just think positive, just focus on the positive’?!? Countless stories remind us how suffering and pain become turning points but still we forget even our own discomfort, pain and suffering can be the key to our liberation or healing, if we want to live in the fullcolor, complexity and vitality we have to include both the light and the dark in our path of self-realisation. 

 In an increasingly polarised culture for positive change towards a more beautiful world our hearts know is possible, we need to invite the dark together with the light into the conversation. Can we learn to share our sorrows and suffering along side our successes and joys? It does require worthy formative effort to discover the positive of all situations, but it becomes superficial if it can’t live together with the acknowledgement of what has happened or what is hard or painful. Just as we have had the energy to heroically champion positivity, we have the power to be honest and kind at the same time. When brought together they are the most loving we can be. As we move into eclipse season and towards the darkness of winter, can we take this time to invite both the good stuff and the hard stuff onto our yoga mat and into our practice? This act already starts transmute the dark pain of suffering into colorful jewels of insight and seeds for a vibrant future. Just like compost first stinks, rots and is gross before it becomes rich life supporting soil our practice transmutes our pain and our darkness. 

 So keep your heart up and your practice on! 

 with lots of love, Rachel

on passing comments, different kinds of evil and time

Dear Beings of Courage and Love, Years ago I was visiting a friend in Switzerland and they had another older maybe wiser guest staying at the same time and one afternoon as she walked past me while I was doing or playing something on my phone she casually said ‘oh look Arhiman stealing your time’ !! Of course my first response was something classic like ‘ whatever’ or ‘oh’ but it’s something that stuck with me and, like a good cheese or wine, has become richer with age. Lets unwrap this gift a little to see why now I find this initially seeming obnoxious comment useful. The first part of the sentence specifically refers to a nuanced conversation in Anthroposophy around different types of necessary evil. Perhaps if you receive my emails ‘Ahriman’ is not a totally new concept to you, but for those of you scratching your head wondering who or what I am talking about, very shortly, Ahriman is the force of evil that solidifies and deadens, often connected to materialism, technology and a hardening of any living substance. In Anthroposophy the conversation around evil is more complex than evil just being the opposite of good. The more dynamic picture of evil is that there are contrary forces that take you too far out of your body (luciferic), forces that make you too dense (ahrimanic) and forces that rob you of your capacity for self-reflection (asuric). Even though these forces are decisively adverse to the human being they are also necessary formitative forces very similar to what is described in vedic traditions through the guanas; tamas, rajas and satvas, all formative forces in living things. This conversation around a dynamic model of evil and good is fascinating and a topic I will return to but for right now lets keep unwrapping the gift at hand! now that we know Ahriman is connected to machines and technology as well as this hardening aspect in the human being maybe you will start to notice when you spend a moment at your computer or phone and you look up and hours have past or anytime a machine or an app wants you to respond by entering a code, swiping or answering yes or no, see how often does machines and technology grab your attention and take up your time? Let’s uncover the second part of the sentence, she said Ahriman is stealing your time, not time itself. The second part of her statement refers to the sacredness of your lifetime. What is your time? Some ancient yogic traditions believe that we are each gifted a certain number of breaths for this life. Knowing this we can understand some of the inspirations behind kumbaka pranayama exercises where you hold your breath in or out longer than usual! Even if you don’t connect a number of breaths to your time on earth the concept is the same, our time here is destined to end, nobody gets out alive. Which then begs the question how are you spending your time? In our material money centric world we forget sometimes that our time is also an asset, something that we have the free will to invest, it’s never just selling. Even if you ‘give’ or sell your time to a job, the karma, the consequences and the experience still are very much yours. Beyond 401k and pensions getting older is seeing how your time investments are panning out, was the time spent worth the return? It would be nice if it were just a question of am I having a good time or not, or do I like what I am doing or not, but really the investigations go deeper than that and must be answered with ever deepening degrees of honesty. Is what I am doing contributing to what I want to experience in the future? Is what I am doing going to be a gift in the future for someone else or something they will be burdened with or have to clean up? Clearly the question of how to use your time touches on the big one like ‘who do i marry’, or ’should i have children’ but it also reach down into the minutia of daily life. For instance is the entertainment I am engaging with relaxing or refreshing me or am I just escaping feeling or avoiding family? Is this bath self care or habit, necessary or indulgent? The bath, watching a show or being on your phone isn’t the question, clearly it can be good or bad or both, but again and again the real question is how are you spending your time and are you awake to what you are choosing? The question of how am I spending my time are not always easily answered and require moment to moment specific reflection instead of hard rules. Asking questions like how am I spending my time or why am i here are the kind of inquiries that return you to yourself and illuminate your way, ultimately become a core part of any spiritual practice. These where some of the gifts that a simple passing, little bit annoying comment from long ago has matured to become a treasure in my present, reminding me and waking me to how I want to spend my time here on earth and that my time is so valuable there are forces that want to steal it! Our time and attention can be a gift to the world and all that is required is your wakeful loving participation! Come meet me on the mat and we’ll share some our precious lifetime together. with lots of love, Rachel

Veijo Rönkkönen Sculpture Garden (finland) http://www.patsaspuisto.net/#english

Dear Bearers of Light,

Early in my morning and in all of our last 24 hours, there was a full lunar eclipse.  Lunar eclipses happen when the earth blocks the light of the sun and dresses the full moon up with her shadow. Every month the full moon is a celebration of illumination and completion, so lets explore todays celestial message and illuminate the shadow of the eclipse, discovering insight in darkness.  Darkness always has something to show you.  Think of the night sky.  Your face turns upward to swim in the depths that hold and contain the varying bodies of light, the stars. you may even try to shield your eyes from any distracting light to see the stars better. Notice how we can nearly feel the signature twinkle of the stars in your chest, or seemingly hear an echo of their stellar pulses in your head.  Even if you have only ever see the few brightest stars hovering over city lights you may catch yourself responding physically.   Of course we are more familiar with the brightness of the one sun star, who lifts our moods and can make us strip or the other wondrous luminescence of the moon who can bath an entire evening in romance, but the stars are the ones that seem to wink and glitter like they have  secrets to tell us and will explain magic someday! Artists that we are, we can mimic the effect of a starry night using a dark solidish material, prick holes in it and then cover a window in the day time. Tadaaa! The narrow tiny shafts of sun light become the sparkling expanse of stars. It could look the same, especially if we squint our eyes, but this is backwards from the night sky. While the pin pricks are the empty spaces light shines through in the material,  the stars are the source of light, the something, surrounded by so much nothingness it appears as darkness!  Often I muse about how we are universes turned inside out, each one of us. I picture our divinely perfect and crude material body sculpted out of everything found on earth and then, like turning a shirt inside out, the stars and planets fold inwards moving through the impossible and we are born.  We find the Sun in our heart, fuelling our life! We discover Mercury dancing with our breath and words, Venus quietly rooting in our kidneys and balancing everything, simultaneously Mars and Jupiter conspiring for our greatness by throwing forth passions, reactions, plans and impulses to shape our path!  If you haven’t noticed your celestial insides yet, maybe its time to take a moment and look again. 

At first when we close our eyes to pray, meditate or just go within it can appear dark.  Sit with it, and similar to your eyes adjusting to the night sky, your inner eyes, your witness, starts to see more over time, and what may have first appeared like a solid impenetrable block is not solid, but space and darkness so you can see all the small sources of light you contain, your radiant source of being-ness,  your twinkling source of becoming and  sparkle of endless possibilities.

Trust yourself, respect yourself, stay with your darkness and discover your light. You are always becoming, you are always a source. Even when the earth casts a shadow, you can be the light in the dark!

Love, Rachel

Dear Friends,

Sometimes it’s tiering to always have different opinions than others and feel different about things and, well I guess, just be different. Being different than people expect you to be, different than people wish you were and different than most, starts to feel lonely and hopeless. Its easy to blame our struggles on our differences but hard to suppress our uniqueness and still find connection.  While some of us seem wildly different, we all have unique finger prints, one of a kind irises and even a signature heart beat, we all are individuals, we bear the essence of something new the world has never seen before. It’s a responsibility.   In light of that it’s no wonder we all experience our differentness, and continue to find differences in the rough edges between us and the world.   Rather than just thinking about smoothing out our own edges or changing the world to suit us, what if we search for ways to weave together and integrate these edges into a fertile lattice of creativity and resilience? That way instead of just thinking of ourselves as the isolated special ones in need of perfection we start recognising how much we contribute to each other’s becoming, how much we create when we make new agreements and collaborations and how much life we restore when we use the hard stinky stuff to fertilise new ideas rather than ignoring it and hoping it will disappear!  By no means is this the path of a coward, quite the opposite. It’s time we stop imagining the opposite is always a hero the opposite of cowardice could be boldly making things beautiful despite the wars in the world, it could be advocates standing up for each other’s rights, people who protect land and water, and communities who are brave together honouring peace. 

Time changes humanity not only in technological progress but in the sacred evolution of the human being. In the history of our becoming we have exalted and exhausted the plight of the hero’s journey to discover the jewels of individualism.  Instead of revealing a humanity sparkling in their unique gifts and services for each other we have inadvertently unleashed a tidal wave of greed, together creating an arena where every individual is prompted to fight for their needs, their desires and their well being over everything else.  While some still march to their higher ideals, morality and/or sense of service, our collective agreements perpetuate rewarding greed, speed and power over vision, contemplation and honour. Perhaps there are still gems to be uncovered through the classic story of the individuals’ plight to become themselves against all odds and hardships but lets start complimenting this model with one of bridge making, healing and regenerating life. What could this look like?  Thats the kicker isn’t it?!   I can’t just tell you, you can’t just tell me, we have to actually create it together.  No one person can present a finished picture of how we can do this, but wondering about what the human being is, honouring nature and the being-ness of the whole earth, and/or committing to truth, kindness, life, and beauty all start to lay a foundation for a future that has room for every difference. If we depend on our heroes to make the world for us then we just have to keep finding new enemies for them to battle while we lament all the suffering, instead if we treat our gift of individuality as a responsibility rather than an isolating burden then we can respond by asking ‘how can my differences become gifts for the world?’ ‘ What future is possible through our collaboration?’  ‘What has been planted in me that belongs to supporting life in the future?’ ‘What live in me that is a jewel for your becoming?’ These same questions we ask of ourselves could also create a lens to look at all the different people with their ever challenging differences, what happens when we carry this wonder and questions diligently as we bump into another’s rough edges? What could happen if instead of fighting we ask and wonder ‘what needs to happen now to create more beauty, love and life in the world’?

with lots of love, Rachel

Christianity and Buddhism

 Dear Seekers of Love, Light, and Truth,

When my dad was visiting last summer he told me that he was a Buddhist, a Hindu and Christian!  Needless to say I was a little surprised and pleasantly woken up.  See my father is a priest for the Christian Community and has been since I was 7.  The Christian Community is a nondenominational church that was founded with the help of Rudolf Steiner and has the tag line ‘a movement for religious renewal’.  While the traditional story of a preachers daughter is usually about rebellion and wildness, mine was that and at the same time a story love. As the first born daughter in my family I grew up very much ‘daddy’s little girl’ and loved everything connected to my dad.   One early memory is when we were living in Germany my dad was explaining how American peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were and even though I didn’t like it right away, I worked on liking it because I wanted to be more American, more like my dad.  Oddly enough while I had to work at liking peanut and jelly sandwiches, I always and immediately loved being in church.  There were these great smells of incense and candles,  there were usually good feeling rooms in atmospheric colors because of the veil painted walls and to this day whenever I walk into a Christian Community Church I feel a little like I’m coming home.   As a teenager, after my confirmation at fourteen, I started to realise that amongst my peers religion was not a cool thing, especially Christianity.  Of course I still liked telling people my dad was a priest because it would confuse and shock them and I would have a chance to show off how smart I was and explain the difference between a priest and a pastor or minister and sometimes even the difference between catholicism and the christian community. But I get distracted, back to the topic at hand!   

 In the yoga community I often find myself around more Buddhist than Christians and, of course, all sorts of other expressions of spirituality and ritual.  One of my most influential yoga teachers taught out of a Tibetan Buddhist lineage and it was during one of her classes I was asked to visualise my teacher.  She didn’t necessarily mean herself and I have no idea who other people visualised, but a clear picture showed up for me. The whole image was glowing and green,  it was Christ sitting in lotus position with one hand raised in ‘fear not’ mudra  and the other hand open in a ‘welcome’ mudra. It was so strong and it sang to my heart, I knew this is my forever teacher.  Part of why my dad’s statement was so awakening was because it suddenly allowed for all of me.  Since then I have studied more and learnt about connection between Buddhism and Christianity and other religions that we so religiously try to keep separate, fleshing out a story of collaboration and destiny.   In our modern times it is our task to find humanity in each other not as a source to justify division but to confirm our belongingness to each other and the earth.  

If you are hungry to explore spirituality as part of your becoming don’t fear that you will alienate others through your chosen path, with sincere study your will only find more connections.  In that vein I want to invite you to a retreat my partner is hosting here in Järna where I will be teaching a wee bit of yoga.  I am including a flyer below and some links to explore, but very simply put this stream of Buddhism that he is engaged with is ancient and modern, celebrating the traditions of Buddhism while lifting up the long neglected feminine aspects, figures and elements.

Wether you heart leads you to uncover your spirituality through Buddhism, Christianity, or Nature, our practice on the mat strengthens our body to bare our spirit so we may fervently pursue our hearts desire. This week I am offering one zoom class because of many guests in and out of our home and its a vacation week here.  Take this opportunity to explore these links below and/or visit and subscribe to my youtube channel :)  May your endeavours be fruitful, and I look forward to meeting you on the mat!

with so much love, Rachel

 

https://www.taramandala.org/programs-2/14479/chod-of-chogyal-namkhai-norbu-rinpoche-retreat-in-sweden/

follow this link to read about the retreat here in Järna <3

This link is to a page about Live Sunday Talks with Lama Tsultrim Allione  which a lovely and accessible way to start to get to know this Sangha

https://www.taramandala.org/programs-2/14516/lama-live/

A painting by Mats Hermansson I saw in a Gotland church, the Swedish translates to 'don't be afraid' and notice the mudra!

 

Dear Complex Beautiful Human,

I woke up this morning to an aching and throbbing wrist sucking my energy, bleak prospects about finding a new place, and snow on the ground in April coupled with a hopeless grey sky.  I wished I could just fall asleep again or hide under the blankets for a while, but my wishing was interrupted by my husband bringing me coffee before leaving for work and like a wave of sunshine parting the clouds I then also felt gratitude for my beautiful partner, coffee and the present moment lying in a warm bed in a beautiful place right here and now.  After this wave of warmth, another roll of harshness clawed its way back and I remembered a friend shared with me yesterday about the struggles her son is going through with aggression and eruptions, and another friend the day before who confided that her daughter is hopeless and depressed and she doesn’t know how to help her. While these two stories are about only two kids, unfortunately its far too common of a problem in all of us, but it also echos the stuff that is going on all over the world.  So many wars are still raging against innocent people all over the world, some with real bombs, some with bans and mandates, some purely economic, even some habitual and unnoticed by the perpetrator or victim alike, all of them equally deadly.  All wars divide, some drive wedges between nations and folk, some divide humans from their human rights, and some divide our thinking from our creativity or our spirit from our body. What can we do to heal, help and transform instead of despairing or fighting?  How do we create fertile ground for peace, freedom and love?     

As i sip my coffee I keep feeling this push and pull between anger and depression but also I notice gratitude hanging about at the edges and the desire to share and write a letter to you that gives light, inspires love or ignites action towards creating the world we all want to participate in! If I let my inner division drain me, immobilise or stop me, then I’m defeated truly.  Therefore I need to celebrate that we are not computers, we can be complex and hold paradoxical truths, we can be wonderful while still being a work in progress.   We can work on loving ourselves more while being a force of love in the world and loving others. I can feel anger and fear and also let gratitude in, I can be scared but act out of love or a deep wish for peace even if i don’t know what to do or how we’re going to get there.  I don’t know what to do to make boys feel loved and not want to hit things, I don’t know how to cure little girls from adult sized depressions and inspire life in them again, i don’t know how to stop bombs from falling or the greedy from scheming but i know that despite my fear and doubt i have to try anyways.   If we all try in our ways to heal divides and champion peace, then maybe collectively we have a chance of reaching the one place nobody can get to alone, peace. 

Well my coffee is now long cold, the snow has turned to rain and the sky is still relentlessly grey, but I feel more ready to keep going and creatively raging towards peace, love and collaboration even if we don’t know how were going to get there  because I know I am not alone in this deep wish for Peace. In the spirit of cosmic entrepreneurship we need to say yes to what we want, Peace, even if we don’t know how to do it!  We will discover the way together.  

Come join us on the mat, lets remind each other that we are truly in this together, help each other keep our hearts up and keeping our practice on. 

with lots of love, Rachel 

p.s. if you are not making it to your mat these days are you praying or meditating?  what are you doing to keep your light on and how are you actively working towards peace?  there are many ways, but if your searching  below is a thread that you could follow...

TĀRĀ YÜLLE GYALJEMA, 

protector against war and violence.  find out more about her and a mantra for piece by following this link:

https://www.taramandala.org/13th-tara

in the name of love: a yoga love letter

dear love, it's been a while, again..
when i started teaching on line more regularly in 2020 i also started writing every week to share the ever changing zoom schedule and the writing became more regular and sometimes interesting :)  the numbers on my zoom classes have dwindled again, but i keep meeting people or hearing from them 'I'm not practicing yoga right now but please keep me on the list' :)  so maybe its time to share again. 

 Yogis, Yoginis, and Readers of Blogs, 

Dear Yogis and Yoginis 

How many ways can I tell you I love you? Maybe screwing up in love is one of the best ways to get to know yourself and others, but oy vey it hurts.   Wether it’s family or friends, romantic or not, why it is so hard to express it sometimes and why is it so hard to hear it sometimes? Maybe because love lives beyond the bondage of physics and rationality.  There is no satisfying equation to master or guarantee love, so we all get to know it through each other in our life and our communities.  I imagine the variations and permutations of expressing love between two unique individuals are as many as stars in the sky.  One man I knew said I love you to his wife for the first time when she was giving birth to their daughter, another didn’t mean it till they had children.  A woman I knew only ever said ditto when others said it out loud to her. Still others tell everyone all the time, some never say it and one teacher described how much he liked telling strangers in the grocery store line ‘i love you’! Each one of us carry stories of love, some light, some dark, all revealing our tenderness and vulnerability globally in success or regret.  Each story offers another way that humans try to love each other.  How many times did we miss hearing it or recognising it as love? How many promises  have we broken and excused because there was love involved? Or how foolishly we have mistaken craving possession of something for love? Or just wanted it too be true despite knowing it wasn’t? Once I lied and echoed back ‘i love you too, even though i knew they meant it that way and i didn’t.  Even as I played dumb I knew I had lied and watched for years as that lie ricocheted through their tender places ripping and wounding again and again like a piece of invisible shrapnel.  My inner laziness and lie lived like as a wound in the other. Before this experience i believed i would suffer my own lazinesses or short comings, not other humans.  But we are in this together.  Do you play games of guessing or fantasy to make up little measures to see if someone really loves you?  Like if they forget this then that means they don’t love me or if they don’t show up like this at that time it means their love isn’t real? One of my deepest regrets was trying to withdraw my love from someone for their lack of integrity, but the joke was on me, the relationship disintegrated but my love remained, roaming my dreams and stalking my heart, and yes teaching my so much through my own suffering. 

In the world of love we have blundered most of all and still it’s where our salvation lives. Love is our practice, our collective earth co-creation. We’re born into, thrown into it, seduced into it and discover life giving vitality from love! Even when too much time is cloistered away from it, our whole being suffers.  Living is a commitment to keep practicing in the mystery school of love.   We fail all the time when we commit to a practice.  His holiness the Dali lama even talks about failing at meditation, and any musician knows that they only master a piece after hours and hours of practicing, in other words after hours and hours of failing.  Yoga is no different, it isn’t a performance of mastery, it is the practice of an amateur, even after years of practicing.  While we can’t successfully opt out of the mystery school of love, the things that help us through it are optional.  You don’t have to practice yoga, meditation or kindness, but you are free to. When you channel your will and return to your practice again and again you also strengthen your enthusiasm and perseverance for life and in love.  We can become more loving and kind through practice, through trying, through messing up and trying again, but it requires our participation, honesty, risk and courage.  may you find the things that help you love more generously, more wildly, more kindly! 

Keep your practice up and your heart on,

with lot o love, Rachel

The Swan, No. 24, 1915 by Hilma af Klint