Yoga Philosophy and Spirituality for Modern Life
Spiritual Knowledge
The ‘official’ summer season, as opposed to the calendric summer that still has a few weeks to go, has come to an end. Back to school, back to work, back to whatever we get back to when September arrives. September is a month of transitions. The Sanskrit word ‘sandhya’ describes a juncture between one time and another, such as the […]
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Well, at least for the moment, the clouds have parted over the DC area, the rain has ceased, and sunlight is ricocheting through the trees, creating a million shades of green. The early sunrise and late sunset are one of the reasons I love the month of June. Grammar police? Not so fast: the sunrise and sunset are two things […]
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I used to tell people that I don’t make New Years resolutions. I told myself that, too, but the truth is every year I made a few without telling anyone. Being secretive about them was a way to give myself an out if I didn’t follow through on them. Over the past few years I’ve gotten a lot better at […]
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In his Yoga-sutras, Patanjali defines yoga as the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind. Curiously, yoga philosophy thinks of the mind as a form of matter. It’s subtler than what we normally think of as ‘matter’ in that it’s a metaphysical aspect of the physical world. One way to understand the mind is to visualize it as if it […]
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I routinely speak about ‘awakening our spiritual senses’ in my classes. As often as not, a student or two will linger after class to ask what I mean by ‘spiritual’ senses. The idea that we have a dormant set of spiritual senses waiting to be stirred is a curious notion. We assume that senses, by definition, are made of matter […]
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One of life’s great challenges, when you’re 8-years old, is to keep yourself entertained when you’re the only child at an adult party. Such was the challenge for Anton, the young son of a couple we know who brought him along for a social gathering at our home a few years ago. Anton amused himself for most of the evening […]
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