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