Friday 26 June 2009

Positive attitude ...

When I realized that a positive attitude in life needs to align its components I begun working on it.
I needed to accept without resistance any situation that life ( karma) presented me with.
No resistance meant No judgements, No blame.
I needed to cultivate the Joy of expressing myself, truly, in any situation I found myself in. The Joy
would come if I dropped any agenda or wanting. Having accepted the situation I would then be joyful
of being there. Going through life smiling ...
The last component would be the Enthusiasm (powered by love) of doing what was required for me to do
in any given situation which, in reality, was a test for my resolve. Was I coming from my heart (no agendas) or from my mind (ego, agendas)?
During the practice of this commitment, it became obvious to me that the essential ingredient of a Real
Life is Awareness. I couldn't carrying on smiling without the awareness of my feelings at any given moment.
Ahhhhhh!!!

Thursday 25 June 2009

My Yoga starting line ...


My beginning with Yoga was very difficult as I had reached a high level of toxicity in the lifestyle I had adopted before the magic appearance of this ancient discipline: God had come down to earth to lift me out of the mud, showered me and put me back up standing. It all happened around my 40th birthday.
In the photo my brother, about 1978, is convinced that I am on the right path and that soon I will feel more at ease with myself. Not bad for a forecast ...

Tuesday 23 June 2009

Who am I? ...


The fundamental question raised in Raja Yoga, who am I?, has to burn in your heart because it is raised there, in your heart, and not in the intellectual mind. If you awaken to the question, life will turn a page in your personal story and take you to next chapter where the Great Unknown unfolds on the horizon year by year. To achieve survival in that challenging space of self enquiry you need a total commitment to the discovery of the Truth. Any less than that and the voracious mouth of compromise and mediocrity will chew you and spit you out in the dull
ache of disappointment.

Wednesday 17 June 2009

Dharma ... Destiny



When I stepped beyond my personal story my life begun to shine. The brilliance happened within, like I needed sunglasses to protect my third eye, because I experienced so much more brightness: inner and outer.
Gradually my days became somewhat longer and much more intense but, strangely, less complex and felt instead a simplicity about life never experienced before. Simplicity is the beauty of clarity. As the years unfolded I learned how to trust my intuition and those inner moments of inspiration which kept opening the doors of opportunity into new horizons. Sooooo ... I kept going till the point when a vision came to me during my customary morning meditation: I saw a path, smooth like sand, with deep footprints on it leading far into the distance ... I was standing, still, before the footprints and, looking down at my feet, I noticed that I had stepped on a kind of word written roughly on the surface : Dharma.
It didn't take me long to figure out the incredible message appeared in my consciousness: the footprints of my Destiny. Just follow the signs (intuition) and I'll get where I am meant to be.

Monday 15 June 2009

Mind ...

Mind is the most beautiful and miraculous event in the Cosmos capable of evolving to the ultimate step of merging with it. The fraught journey of the Ego from ignorance and separateness to the brilliance of Awareness and the dissolving into cosmic energy... and to be reformed and regenerated for the next journey. A real miracle.
Soon after I awakened to this reality, an expert friend gave me a Tarot reading that generated in me an intense feeling of recognition, kind of deja-vu. The strongest card produced at that session was the 'Magician'.
I knew then, with goose pimples on my skin, that my future path was to manifest that 'miracle that I was'.
My heart begun bursting with enthusiasm and determination and a strange sense of urgency. I wanted to refine my human act to achieve the least possible resistance to separation in order to ... dissolve smiling into nowhere and everywhere: the Universe. I felt I had no time to waste ...

Thursday 11 June 2009

My Teacher's Diploma ...


It was a distant 1983 july when SwamiVishnu made me come up to the stage to give me the Teacher's Certificate.
My back had given in few days earlier and I could not stand up. It had been agonizing and had to crawl to reach him. Swamiji had a beaming smile as he was making fun of my misery ...

Obama , the man of our time in his Cairo speech ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00l2glv/Briefings_Barack_Obama

Happiness ... the mirage of our lives.

http://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_etcoff_on_happiness_and_why_we_want_it.html

Great sound ...

http://www.ted.com/talks/rokia_traore_sings_kounandi.html

Wednesday 10 June 2009

Krishnamurti


Krishnamurti begun the process 0f my awakening when I was given one of his books for my birthday.
His words pierced my heart and opened a flood of emotional energy that slowly changed my life. Hatha Yoga at the Sivananda nurtured that energy and helped it blossom to new heights. I recall the day when, during my TTC
(teacher training course) at the Sivananda Val Morin Ashram in Quebec, I saw, as a vision, what I would become in the years ahead. I would discontinue my photographic career to step onto the path of freedom by sharing my knowledge with others. That vision hit me so deeply that I retreated for 3 days and nights with no food and in silence. When I emerged from it, soon after, my back gave in and I had to take the final exams sitting on a mountain of cushions and against a wall. Pretty embarrassing for an aspiring Yoga Teacher ...