From Amma

March 13, 2004

Divine Family: Namastey!

The Thirty-Fifth Six Month International Yoga Teachers Training Course is coming to a close, with a dozen souls making this intrepid journey into “Self” together. Every year, it is a long, arduous journey. The most difficult part of the whole affair is that one must learn to “live with one’s self” as day after day, moment after moment, our weaknesses and strengths reveal themselves to us in the clear mirror of our community’s “Satsangha”, “Abhyasa” and “Tapasya.” False ideas about ourselves must be stripped away and the “real nature” must be exposed to an unflinching view. This requires tremendous courage. Ashram life offers very little in the way of the normal “escapes” or “crutches” which a man or woman may use to endure his own “sense of self” – there is no

television, no cinema, no chance to lose oneself in material projects, works and activities. All the “work” is “inner work” which eventually turns us back on ourselves – the intense community living constantly turns us back on our value system in relationship to others, the Yama and Niyama. The Asanas turn our attention back on our own body, its weaknesses and its strengths. The Pranayama turns us back on our own breath, that subtle current, that subtle life force, that very essence of our life which causes our trillions of cells to “hold together and work as a single unit”. Sensory control, Pratyahara, is part and parcel of Ashram life. One eats what one is given, one lives within a confined environment, one lives a daily, routine schedule with regularity and commitment, one sees the same people in the same place every single day for six months. The senses are curbed, along with their inherent drive to constantly “be on the move”, seeking new and more thrilling sensations and

stimulations. After all, the senses are the “hunters” of the body, seeking prey to sustain themselves! The mind itself is confined in Dharana, and attached to “one place,” sometimes to the body position, sometimes to a thought or idea, sometimes, to the breath. All this is hard work indeed, and is not a childish task.

The souls who have made this journey have “entered fire” and have as their reward, been purified, strengthened, stretched, expanded. They are “shining.” They have been in gestation for six months, in the womb of the Guru. They are just “Yoga babies”, new born to the spiritual world. They are very soft and sensitive. Now they have to “go out into the world” and learn how to navigate their own “tumultuous ocean of Samskara”. They must carve their own path through their own “jungle of Vasanas”, using the tools their Yogic Sadhana has given them. They must create their own oasis of spirituality in the desert of materialism. This is only the start of the journey, not its end. Yet, it is also true, and this is important to remember: the journey is always the

destination.

They are young eagles who are about to be placed on their mother’s back as she takes off for the great heights of sky with her broad wings. Higher and higher she soars. The view from that height is glorious and vast. The eaglets are spell-bound with the magnificent spectacle below them, the vista which opens to their view. Suddenly, Mother Eagle takes an abrupt turn, and all the little eaglets lose their perch on her back and fall off into the bottomless blue. They flounder, flap their untried wings. It is now “crisis mode” – Fly or Fall! Then, little wings flap, furious and fast, as they plummet, pulled by the heartless, impersonal force of gravity, mother earth’s attraction, to destruction on the rocks below!

But, the sun shines warm. It is glorious! An exhileration rises out of the new freedom now coursing through their tiny hearts. They are on their own! They soar, they lift, they spread their wings – and they fly! They can fly! They can soar on their own power! What a revelation! They fly off into their own futures, off to fulfill their own Swadharma, their own peculiar purpose, their own destiny.

But these “human eaglets” should always remember that unlike their counterparts in nature’s realm, they can always return to the nest, for rest and refreshment. The nest is large. It can accommodate thousands of souls. And Mother Eagle will be there. She will always be there.

I wanted to share this journey with you. Perhaps, you have made it yourself, in another way, at another time.

Affectionately in Yoga,

AMMAYogacharya Dr.Ananda Balayogi Bhavanani Chairman

Yoganjali Natyalayam and ICYER

25,2nd Cross,Iyyanar Nagar, Pondicherry-605 013

Tel;0413 2622902 / 0413 2241561 abb,yognat2001 Website: www.icyer.com

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