Becoming Ourselves

As part of my Yoga Training at Bodhi Yoga, I recently read a wonderful and thought provoking article, Yoga as Self-Transformation, by Joel Kramer. Yoga Journal, May/June 1980. 

Joel talks about how "for thousands of years yoga has been a tool to open the mind and body, bringing transformation". (I love moments of clarity that bring pure enlightment, and there are so many thoughts in this article that produced "Ahas" for me). He points out that "the transformation that yoga brings makes you more yourself and opens you up to loving with greater depth". 

I have been thinking about this. Have you noticed that we often refer to babies as being "perfect"? We instinctively know that they come into this world in purity and perfection, "trailing clouds of glory" as William Wordsworth describes in Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Chhildhood.  Children see life, nature, others, through pure eyes that still hold the magic of understanding their own divinity. But life happens, and we forget. We become jaded, burdened and hardened, our cares take up all our bandwidth and we no longer notice the beauty and magic of life.  How wonderful to have the yoga path to help us shed what we don't need and become more ourselves, to wake up once again to the magic of life and be able to enjoy it!

Then automatically we love with greater depth, because the more we realize our divinity, the more we recognize it in others. But that's a topic for another day.