Dear Yogis,

NOTES FOR TODAY:I am never sure whether to put these in the front or at the end.

YOGA CLASSES: please read “classes” above, and bring all your props, and pre-pay. ZOOM – Four classes PER WEEK.  Mondays, Wednesdays, Friday and Saturdays.

TAROT: The last training class today (Saturday) at 2pm.  Bookings taken for the next class. I will be trying zoom consults and trainings starting the 1th July.

TEA AND TAROT  “Afternoon Tea – Meet-up”, At the studio, 2pm to 4pm Sunday 28th June.  Please email an RSVP yogafirst2@bigpond.com. Everyone welcome.  Readings, decks, paintings, posters, pendulums….

We have been walking around and around the hard things, the yoga basics, but starting today we are going to jump in.

WE ARE NOT THESE BODIES.

“O descendent of Bharata, he who dwells on the the body can never be slain.  Therefore we need not grieve for any living thing”. (Bhagavad-Gita 2.30)

The first step is to understand that you are not your body.  In the verse above the “he who dwells in the body” is not talking about you.  It is not a matter of just repeating “I am not this body” but actually realising it.  Although we are not these bodies, these vehicles,  but are pure consciousness, somehow over time we have become identified within this physical identity.

Some scholars say that this identification with the body can be cured by abstaining from all action.  Buddha also maintained that if we somehow separate ourselves from the material,  the cause of suffering will be removed. In today’s terms – If you were being pursued by the ATO, would it remove your tax debt if you destroyed all your material possessions.  I don’t think so.  It would however make it more difficult for you to meet the remaining obligations, but now you would have destroyed the vehicle through which this could be achieved.

The Bhagavad-Gita indicates that the body is not everything.  There is more.  Beyond the complex material elements there is the spirit, and the symptom of that spirit is consciousness.  We know that a body without consciousness is a dead body.  What is this energy we call consciousness? Consciousness is the energy of the soul and proves that the soul is present.  When the body breaks down and this energy called consciousness leaves the body, there is no possibility of our replacing a broken part and thereby reviving the body, and achieving our destiny…  The soul energy has gone.  There is no possibility of re-animating the body after the soul has left.

In the Bhagavad-Gita, Sri Krishna points out that all our miseries are caused by false identification with the body.   It is the spirit spark of the soul which motivates us into great feats of creation. We try to attain eternity, knowledge and bliss by subjugating our imperfect physical vehicle, however to progress to our goals we must realise  that we are being blocked by the physical.  Perhaps we are floundering in a place of desire and attachment, allowing the  senses to drag us this way and that.  For success, for peace and contentment, we must learn to master the body, not deny it.  We must be masters and not servants.

Tantra USES the energy of desire.  Instead of seeing pleasure and desire as things to be avoided at all costs, TANTRA recognises the powerful energy aroused by our desires,  to be an indispensable resource for our spiritual path.  Tantra seeks to transform every experience no matter how un-religious it may appear – into the path of fulfilment.  Because our present life is so inseparably linked with desire, instead of denying this fact, instead of living in denial,  we must USE desire’s tremendous energy if we wish to transform our life into something transcendental.

HAVE A LOVELY WEEKEND.

NAMASTE – JAHNE

Dear Yogis,

What do you WANT?  We are living in a world governed by DESIRE.  From the moment we wake up we are thinking of the next thing – food, clothing, house, sounds.  Our ears want to hear lovely sounds, our eyes want to see beautiful colours, even our nose want to smell expensive beautiful perfumes and aromas.  This sense desire is so strong that if we are deprived for any length of time we begin to imagine them.

Our desire is not limited to the physical.  We can desire knowledge, security, contentment and we do.  We run after them as if we can catch them.  It is desire that drives us to achieve success.  Most people would consider life without desire to be a living death.

Behind each of our desires is our wish to be happy and if only in this regard we are all equal.  We all want to be happy, but in spite of this our life is full of unhappiness, pain and dissatisfaction.  Buddha called this cycle SAMSARA.

We have been taught that liberation or NIRVANA is achieved by completely uprooting cravings from the heart. However, if the only way we know how to deal with the objects of desire is to avoid them, there will be a severe limit as to how far our spiritual practice will take us.

TANTRA moves in a different way.  In Tantra, instead of viewing desires as things to be avoided at all costs, Tantra recognises that the energy stirred by desire can be transformed into a resource for the spiritual path, and seeks to change every experience in this way , even if the doing seems to others to be “unreligious”.

It is because our present life is so rooted in desire that we must learn to use desire’s amazing energy in order to transform our life into the transcendental.  Tantra recognises that we can’t reach our heart’s desire by becoming more and more miserable as we squash one desire after the other.

TANTRA teaches that is only by cultivating SMALL experiences of calm and satisfaction where we are now, that we will have any hope at all of achieving pace and contentment in the future.

SPEAKING OF DESIRE… Ever since I started teaching I have lived for my students remembering some famous words “…I am a river to my people”.  When the candle is burning at both ends, I remember those words and keep going.  During covid my students have been a river to me.  Vegetables, and small gifts left on the porch, cards, letters  and yesterday KNITTED HOUSE SOCKS (in the photo).  Thank you all.  Mostly I don’t know where the gifts originate, who has left them, but I do know who posted the sox, and I have to say they are beautiful – thank you.

Have a beautiful, colourful, SOX’Y DAY

NAMASTE –  JAHNE