January 2024 Week 5

You are going some place New:
“You are opening up more and more. You're becoming clearer each day. Embrace the changes taking place. They are good. They will last. They will take you and your life to someplace new, someplace you can’t fully imagine now because it’s so different from where you have been.
All will be changed. Your love, your life, your friends, your work. Your quiet moments and your times sharing. Your playtime, your rest time. Your attitude will change. Your ability to fully and joyfully experience your life will change.
Things that used to bother you, hold you down, hold you back will roll easily off you. Problems that used to plague and pester you, making you feel weighted down, will be lifted easily. You will know and trust that the answers you need will come to you.
Your powers will increase. You will find yourself doing, knowing, and feeling things that you thought only certain others could do. You will find yourself gliding through life in a way that brings you joy, and touches and heals others.
You will laugh a lot. And yes, you will cry a lot, too, because an open heart feels all it needs to feel. But you will not think twice about your emotions. You will feel them with the purity of a child and the wisdom of a sage. You will see, touch, taste, and feel life’s magic in a way you never imagined. You will love, and you will be loved. And you will learn that it is all the same.
You are open now, more open than you’ve ever been. Trust the process and trust your heart. The journey is not in vain. It’s purpose is to lead you to love.”
Melody Beaty

Yes this beautiful poem is more an ideal than a reality, however we can certainly take comfort in its hope for us. This month we chose to pause at the start of the new year rather than jumping in intention setting for 2024. Our intention was simply, LET GO, allowing us to pause and look back a bit and leave behind any burdens from last year and beyond.

I also loved how our sutra studies lines up so well with this month which was sutra 1.3:
Then in a state of yoga the seer rests in its true nature.
I think it is worth reviewing the 1st 3 sutras as they truly set the foundation of all of yoga.
We started with Sutra 1.1 in November: Now the exposition of Yoga is being made.
Exposition or instruction - this is not merely philosophy that the Sutras are going to teach us but a direct instruction on how to practice Yoga.
“Mere philosophy will not satisfy us. We cannot reach the goal by mere words alone. Without practice, nothing can be achieved.” SriSwami Satchidananda

We followed this last month with yoga sutra 1.2: Essentially, yoga is the cessation of mind chatter.
This brings us to this month and yoga sutra 1.3: then the seer abides in itself, resting in its true nature, also known as self-realization. This sutra explains the ultimate result of yoga—the discovery of one’s true nature*******.

Once we are able to calm the fluctuations of the mind, our perception of reality becomes clear. No longer clouded with thoughts of the past or the future, reality sharpens and we finally understand our true nature. We recognize our connection to all that is. We recognize that our current state is just as it should be. What a relief to know that this practice—this work we do on and off the mat to find that place where our minds become quiet and we become more aware—will bring us back to a place where we can finally, and again, realize our being-ness. This shift from doing to being happens gradually (and can also happen at a moment’s notice)—and it has nothing to do with idleness. It is a perceptual shift that changes our very interaction with life and with the people and situations we encounter.

So with our intention, our decluttered mind and hopefully a little self study we can all finish out this month with a clear picture of who or what we want to let go of so we can move into 2024 setting more thoughtful, realistic and hopeful resolutions. The poem above that I started with is our space of reference and excitement for what is to come!