Dear Yogis,

ZOOM:
Today (Monday) 1pm RESTORATIVE with weights and bands.
TUESDAY: 7.30pm The Chakras a group discussion.
WEDNESDAY: 12.30 GENTLE RESTORATIVE, 5.30 RESTORATIVE YOGA with weights and bands.  6.45PM MINDFULNESS YOGA

We have all of Tuesday afternoon waiting for you to come to a class.  I have started thinking about the end of the year and the Holiday Season, and have started to produce cards and paintings.  I am thinking about a class so you can do your own too THE TAO OF WATERCOLOUR.  It is easy to make doodles into cards, and with the price of cards at the moment, it can be a save.  The postage makes sense if the cards are original and can be framed.  Yours could.

Years ago when the Collins Street Store “Georges” was still open I used to make all their Special Occasion and blank cards.  It kept me very busy.  My mum knitted socks for them and I made cards.  It was lovely experience.  I still make cards. I make tarot cards, gifts cards, and Christmas cards without Father Christmas – I have flowers and Australian orchids on my Christmas cards.  If you want to make cards (easily) come to class.   TUESDAYS AT 1.30 to 3pm from 29th September ($50 for three classes).

…OR, you can buy mine.  When I have a stash I will put them on our web site store www.yogabeautiful.com.au  and ETSY www.myyogabooks.etsy.com.  I am also on Patreon (without videos – yet). www.patreon.com/TarotArt

 For our class you will need some basic materials you can source between now and then, even if you can’t get to a store.  If you have some left over card, newspapers, watercolours, basic brushes we can do this.  Even if you don’t have card stock you can do the small paintings and mount them on the cards when you get them in plenty of time for Christmas (or frame them) – NO ART SKILLS REQUIRED. If you can doodle, you can do this.  Email your interest or you can sign up in the usual way – go to the home page, click on DONATE and PayPal will take credit/debit cards and PayPal account.

The rain has returned.   If this was December I would be super happy… rain at night until the fire season please.  We are told it is going to be a cooler and wetter time (especially November) with a hot February as usual. Start preparing now if you didn’t start last year.

We repeated the Bhagavadgita learnings yesterday.  It is a huge subject but every time we get together we learn something new, approach the subject a different way.  From this point of view there are no repeats. Next sunday morning we will be discussing YOGA in the Bhagavadgita.  It is a huge subject and unlikely we will get through it even in a couple of sessions, particularly as we are yogis, and have our own ideas about what “yoga” means to us.  Be there.  Put it in your diary now.  It is $20 for the 2 hour lecture and the repeat the following week is FREE if you have purchased the first one.  Two for the price of one.

LOVE

No matter what Church you belong to,  or if you absolutely don’t believe, we all long for the same thing, TO LOVE AND BE LOVED, as the song says.  We are all reaching for that deep sense of connection, worth, and belonging that we believe LOVE provides.  and are led to believe that this feeling is as close to heaven as we humans can achieve.

If we have felt respect and love as a child from our parents,  we are more likely to have a reasonable chance of experiencing what we conclude is love.  Such positive influences from our parents provides the foundation for compassion and kindness as an adult.  I will always remember what my teacher said to me as I began my work with people in rehabilitation ….“Always remember – HURT PEOPLE HURT PEOPLE”.  In America (before Covid), statistics showed that the prison system was the fastest growing sector of the economy and over half the population of America would be incarcerated by the middle of this century.  The way to reverse this would be to help the children.   Like every human,  the majority of prisoners have the desire to make sense of their lives, and create a future that is different to their past, if not for themselves, then for their children..

If you want peace in your life (we all do) you will have to commit to a healing process that mends our concept of self, teaches emotional intelligence, and most importantly helps you work towards forgiveness both for yourself and others.  No healing can take place without forgiveness.

Mother Teresa coined the phrase “One-by-One”.  She knew she would be overwhelmed if she thought about all the people on the streets of Calcutta, and the 40,000 she rescued.  She expanded her mission one by one.  That is why I urge you to think as I do of healing the world “one yogi at a time”.  It is a strategy you can all adopt, and begins with forgiveness.

START TODAY.  Heal the world where you are, one yogi at a time.

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.

 

Dear Yogis

As my heart is seeking it finds you in every soul I meet. – Ibn’ Arabi

https://youtu.be/56sCYO_9XfM

This morning we can consider LOVE, and the story of Rumi the Persian Poet, and his lover Shams.  It is a wonderful example of love, courage, service and duty.  Love and death.  When I listen to the words of Rumi, and the music,  my heart also calls for the desert,  but I have been put here to write to you, to be with you. I am not who you think I am.  Do you know about you?

Rumi started his adult life as an authoritarian teacher, head of a community, strong husband, feared and honoured by most. A Judge. But inside he knew this was not life.  Like the Christian Saint Peter, he was at heart a homosexual..  He had no passion, no love.   Trying to be the person his family and community wanted him to be,  he was strangling the person he was at his heart.  These things have a way of surfacing, and so they did when he met Shams, and we are told,  fell instantly in love..  (and that is another story – there are many).

This meeting with the Dervish, transformed Rumi from an accomplished teacher and jurist, to an ascetic.  He left behind everything solid, everything stable to be with his Lover.  We don’t know much about his wife and children, but at the end end he was buried with great honour in the family tomb. Reconciliation and acceptance  occurred, and his poetry changed a community,  a country, and then reached the world.  Such is life – only the angels would understand.

Shams Tabrizi,  Rumi’s love, an itinerant poet, mystic,  had travelled throughout the Middle East searching and praying for someone who could “endure my company”. A voice said to him, “What will you give in return?” Shams replied, “My head!” The voice then said, “The one you seek is Jalal ud-Din (known as Rumi) of Konya” and the music was born.

However, on the night of 5 December 1248, as Rumi and Shams were talking, Shams was called to the back door. He went out, never to be seen again. It is rumoured that Shams was murdered with the connivance of Rumi’s son, ‘Ala’ ud-Din; if so, Shams indeed gave his head for the privilege of mystical friendship.

Rumi’s love for, and his bereavement at the death of Shams found their expression in an outpouring of lyric poems, He himself went out searching for Shams and journeyed again to Damascus. There, he realised:

Why should I seek? I am the same as
He. His essence speaks through me.
I have been looking for myself!

Rumi found another companion in Salaḥ ud-Din-e Zarkub, a goldsmith. After Salah ud-Din’s death, Rumi’s scribe and favourite student, Hussam-e Chalabi, assumed the role of Rumi’s companion. One day, the two of them were wandering through the Meram vineyards outside Konya when Hussam described to Rumi an idea he had had: “If you were to write a book like the Ilāhīnāma of Sanai or the Mantiq ut-Tayr of ‘Attar, it would become the companion of many troubadours. They would fill their hearts from your work and compose music to accompany it.” Rumi smiled and took out a piece of paper on which were written the opening eighteen lines of his Masnavi, beginning with:

Listen to the reed and the tale it tells,
How it sings of separation..

Hussam implored Rumi to write more. Rumi spent the next twelve years of his life in Anatolia dictating the six volumes of this masterwork, the Masnavi, to Hussam.

In December 1273, Rumi fell ill; he predicted his own death and composed the well-known ghazal, which begins with the verse:

How doest thou know what sort of king I have within me as companion?
Do not cast thy glance upon my golden face, for I have iron legs.

Rumi died on 17 December 1273 in Konya.  His death was mourned by the diverse community of Konya, with local Christians and Jews joining the crowd that converged to bid farewell as his body was carried through the city.  Rumi’s body was interred beside that of his father, and a splendid shrine, the Yeşil Türbe (Green Tomb, قبه الخضراء; today the Mevlana Museum, was erected over his place of burial. His epitaph reads:

When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men.

 

HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY.  The sun is shining, and there is a gentle breeze where there has been an icy wind..  beautiful.

Open your eyes, for this world is only a dream – Rumi

NAMASTE.  JAHNE