For the past couple of days the skyline has been quite magical in Portland. During the weekdays I'm at work before it's light out, but this past week I was lucky enough to still be in bed and capture the shot above. Roughly about five times a week I step on my mat to begin my yoga practice in a very deliberate and meaningful way. I follow in an ancient tradition that dates back thousands of years – the practice of sun worship, commonly known as sun salutations. 

In an article I recently read they explain that ancient yogis traditionally practiced the sun salute at sunrise, facing east. While the sequence has seen countless variations throughout its rich history, the idea of paying homage to the sun hasn't changed. The name offers a hint as to why. Surya in Sanskrit means sun, but it also refers to fire, long associated with transformation in the yogic tradition. Namas refers to a bow or show of respect, while kara, which shares an etymological root with karma, means making or doing. 

Taken together Surya Namaskara means "making reverence or acting respectfully toward our own ability to learn and change." By practicing sun salutes, we invite the warm glow of enlightenment into our lives to grow more grounded, open, supple, and strong. That morning as I looked beside the man sleeping next to me and the two adorable kitties who were purring with contentment, I knew that I had nowhere to go, nowhere to be and nothing to achieve.

Yoga is at its heart a mysticism that turns our common way of perceiving, evaluating and living our lives on it's head, one that does not define progress in terms of success and failure, but instead defines progress as becoming free from success and failure. Yoga teaches that we get unstuck by staying put, remaining steadfast in our own wisdom while delving deeply into it. Beyond letting go of ideas, beyond making the mind still and thought-free, there is an experience of fullness, plenitude and enthusiasm within that the texts of yoga describe as "purno-aham-vimarsha," the experiential awareness that in our innermost nature we are already perfect and complete. We always have been, and always will be; there is nothing to achieve and nowhere to go. We just need to entertain that understanding and become quiet enough to experience it, even if just for a moment, and then gradually make it a steady state of awareness through our practice. This experience is no further from you than your own breath. Just as your breath is always with you, so the experience of perfection is always close at hand.

After a huge inspiration sprung upon me to spend the next few hours staying put in bed and not feeling guilty about it, I grabbed my borrowed library book and returned to the page I had bookmarked. It read:

"Life’s work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into the circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will. It’s going to stick around until you learn your lesson, at any rate. You can leave your marriage, you can quit your job, you can only go where people are going to praise you, you can manipulate your world until you’re blue in the face to try to make it always smooth, but the same old demons will always come up until finally you have learned your lesson, the lesson they came to teach you. Then those same demons will appear as friendly, warmhearted companions on the path" - Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape.

Namasté,