Dear Yogis,

This covid experience experience is visiting us/me as a teacher,  and I am learning many things.   One of the things I have learned is that without you my life has less meaning.  I love teaching you, doing these newsletters, and next week, speaking to you via ZOOM. Something I never thought I would do. It is my challenge, and I have a few.

If I went to my monastery in this time I could fill my days with meditation, and spiritual routine dependent on no-one. I would have nothing to achieve, nothing except the routine to comply with. I could feel good because I would receive validation just for being there, just for making that choice. But I have not escaped to there, am not there;  like you – I am here.  I could even escape at home, and maybe you are doing it.

I know the planetary reasons I feel like I feel, I know about the retrograde (which will last a few months), and the tarot cards. I like finding reasons for how I feel…  My advice to self – turn around, look at the spiritual.  Because I am me, I am not giving up on what God has put in my heart. He is waiting for me to look again, and not settle for what appears to be.  I am waiting for our clouds to turn into rain, and new plants.  I am waiting for new ideas to grow into fruitful paths.

In the TOWER, the 16th card in my Tarot pack, I learn that there is an obstacle, a tiring one.  I could start to climb and give up, I could just curl into a ball and wait things out in which case nothing would change and things would get dark.  Or, I could climb down the ladder and run away, in which case I would learn nothing and once again, nothing would change, except I would have a feeling of failure. No matter what other choices I made I would know there was a Tower I did not climb, an opportunity I did not take.   The challenge, the Tower –  and no matter how far I ran, I would know I had given up.   Now is the time to climb the tower no matter the obstacles, no matter your imaginings…. plant good seeds, nurture them and watch them grow.

You have to have a made up mind and decide that abundance is on the way, look again and do what it takes.  Like me, you may be climbing today.  Have faith that you will have a sign of what God is doing in your life.  You will look at the world from the top of the tower.  Look again.  When you keep looking up,  keep climbing no matter the obstacles, you will be able to see what is your destiny.  Look up again.  There is a new beginning.  You wouldn’t be alive if there wasn’t something fantastic up ahead of you.

If you keep the faith, if you keep climbing your particular tower, doors will open, opportunity will track you down.  That stirring is new life.  Keep your faith stirred up, live with expectancy.  Your difficulties are set-ups, not set-backs.  No matter how things look in the physical,  rest in the Spirit.  You will still get what you have been promised.   You would not have the dream if there wasn’t a way for it to come to pass.  

Please let me into your world.  If you are interested in zoom yoga classes, weekly zoom teacher training sessions (most suitable for those who are struggling with the course), and zoom tarot and tarot training sessions…. please email me at yogafirst2@bigpond.com and I will give you the password and the code required. If you are not confident in this new technology – well, neither am I.  Let us learn together.

 I can’t give you what you want if I don’t know what it is you want.  EMAIL me.

 

Have a lovely day, no matter the weather, no matter the height of the tower.

NAMASTE – JAHNE

 

Dear Yogis,

TODAY’S NEWS:  I am going to do RESTORATIVE YOGA Zoom classes starting next week.  Please look at the Yogabeautiful “CLASSES” to keep abreast of what we are doing and how we are moving forward.  I update the Yogabeautiful pages regularly, and they mean nothing if you don’t check.  Please let me know if you are interested.

THE LESSON:  Desire, desire, attachment.

According to Buddhist tantra we can remain trapped inside a circle of dissatisfaction because our view of reality is narrow, and may I say it – suffocating.  Almost all of us hang on to a limited and limiting view of what we are and what we can become.

I remember when I was on the wheel of relationships, I tried to be what the man wanted.  I thought in that way he would be happy and we could work together towards a future.  It didn’t work because I couldn’t abandon my beliefs, my life or my students to keep a males attention or affection.  I believed in partnerships and they wanted control.

Ordinarily this energy of desire feeds into patterns of grasping and attachment which have over time become strong and habitual.  They decrease our awareness whilst reinforcing our ignorance and dissatisfaction.  One of the major tasks confronting us, is to identify the factors perpetuating this cycle of dissatisfaction (suffering) and then apply the most appropriate antidote to their destructiveness.  Transforming it with Tantra.  As long as our opinion of ourselves is miserable, our life will remain meaningless.

Tantra allows us to see ourselves and others as transcendentally beautiful.  We begin by transforming our ordinary concept of ourselves from empty space into which they have dissolved,  into a glorious light body of the Diety, which is not “out there”, but a manifestation of our deepest being.

This “self-visualisation” gives us the strength to take control of our lives, and create for ourselves a pure environment in which our deepest nature can be expressed.  The most powerful “diety” is the essential qualities of the fully awakened experience latent inside of each of us. at our most profound level of consciousness.  

If you you identify yourself as being essentially strong and capable you will become that.  You will see yourself in this way and develop these qualities.  If you continue to think of yourself as  “not good enough” THAT is what you will become. Trapped in the negative.   The more closely we identify with a diety, understanding the various attributes, the more deeply we will stimulate in our own mind the growth of the qualities they represent.

A story:  One time a student who has been having trouble at every level in their lives was going for a job. She was new to yoga,  not terrific at meditation or visualisation but fully grasped the concept,  and  she asked me if she could borrow one of my hats.  Why? Because she believed that if she felt that my strength, my willpower was with her she could get the job.  The hat somehow made the visualisation easier.

We all do it to some extent.  We carry a crystal, use the mala bead, wear the St.Christopher.  They would be more powerful if we knew their qualities and how they apply to the situations in our lives… if they were not just an object.  This understanding is what Tantra asks of us in order to achieve our goal.  At this level we will be manifesting the divine qualities already within us, not just putting on a magic overcoat.  Tantra is not Harry Potter  magic.  It is a practical way of living up to our highest potential through the transformation of our human consciousness.

You are far more powerful than you imagine yourself to be.

HAVE A BEAUTIFUL, Sunny day in the garden – it is Camelot here at the moment (rain at nite, sun in the day)

NAMASTE – JAHNE

 

Dear Yogis,

The OpShops in our town went back to work this week.. it reminded me of a story.  

A little girl came in to the store looking for a doll.  Her mother directed her to shelves with lovely dolls, tall dolls, baby dolls, fabric dolls, sparkly dolls, but this kittle girl was drawn to a doll in the throw-out bag.  You can imagine that a doll in an OpShop throw-out bag was less than beautiful.

It was faded, had only one shoe, the head was hanging on by only a thin thread of plastic, the clothes were torn, and one of the glass eyes was missing.  You get the message.  This baby had been discarded, disrespected, forgotten. As we say it was “on its last legs”.  This was the doll that the little girl wanted, and she was prepared to be stubborn, to take a risk to get it.

If her mother was like my mother she would have been strongly discouraged in her choice because the mother probably felt that if the daughter chose THAT doll it would be a reflection on the family, or on her suitability as a mother.  She probably was not thinking of the daughter, and certainly not at all about the doll.  She could have been thinking “What would people think if my daughter carries that doll around?” She hadn’t yet worked out how few people do think, and if they do it isn’t for long.   This lady wanted her daughter to have a beautiful doll not to please the daughter or to save the doll.  She wanted her friends to  know she was a good mother, and on some level even if not conscious, believed the doll was a negative reflection on her.

Too put a positive spin on it, she could have wanted her daughter to have THE BEST.

But the girl persisted in her need for the tattered doll.  The salesperson who was pretty pleased to sell any doll asked “Why do you want that particular doll?” and the little girl said “BECAUSE IF I DON’T TAKE HER, IF I DON’T LOVE HER, NO-ONE ELSE WILL”.

What do you love?  Will people think more of you, or less of you because of your choices? Does it matter?

Love is the ultimate reality.  Something has clicked in your being..  It is not about the little girl (or you) being convinced about your ideas.  It is not a conviction, it is not a conversion, it is a transformation.  A change from the inside out.  Looking into the others eyes, something happens without saying a word, something that you never dreamt of suddenly becomes a reality.

It isn’t about faith, because faith contains fictions – we have to search for arguments or evidence.

It is about trust.  Trust is the highest flowering of love.  There is no guide, and you probably will not meet anyone on the path no matter how many times you ask “are we there yet?”.  The little girl in the story above trusted her heart, because in the moment she experienced the flowering of love, and acted on it.

Once you have found that truth on your own, you will realise that nothing else is needed..  This little girl searched on her own, alone – risking, moving away from the crowd on a lonely path, trusting her heart. She chose freedom.  The question of belief does not arise.  She responded in sincerity, integrity and consciousness.  She responded to the highest quality of love and positioned herself for the greatest gifts that God has in store..

There are many powerful forces in this world, but nothing is more powerful than love.

 

HAVE A WONDERFUL SUNDAY. Be a NOW-PERSON, take a risk,  your destiny is calling you..

NAMSTE, JAHNE.