Yoga for Death. Namaste Yoga Ep. 146 – Confronting our Mortality and Discernment

Yoga for Death. Namaste Yoga Episode 146 – Confronting our Mortality and Discernment

Reflecting on our own death allows us to consider what is important

Am I ready to die?
What unfinished business to I have left?
What priorities do I want to change?
What do I want to achieve still in my life?

Other things to consider are that worldly possessions and wealth can not help you at your time of death. You can not even take your friends and relatives with you as you pass over. Even your physical body must be left behind as you die. The only thing that can help you is that state of your mind or the state of your mental or spiritual development … [Thank you to www.buddhanet.net/spirit_d.htm for the beautiful reflections on death and dying included here]

Which brings us to the next point that we should take away from the story. It really didn’t take much for Vishnu to create a man who would persuade even the great sage Narada to follow a completely bogus religion. It is so important to have discernment on the spiritual path and not to follow blindly. It is so important to cultivate acute judgment and discrimination to cultivate a spiritual life with intelligence, clarity, and authenticity. I highly recommend checking out Mariana Caplan’s book Eyes Wide Open Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path and Jeff Brown’s Documentary karmageddonthemovie.com

In today’s class we will draw on the elements of the Tripura Story and practice balancing postures (standing on one foot), breath practice (living on only air for 1000 years), yoga mudra (standing on their heads of 1000 years), bow pose in its different orientations to gravity, as well as sitting with the Shiva Linga with the mantra OM.

The Poem I shared at the end of class was:

Before We Leave by Khalid Albudoor from: sites.google.com/site/khalidalbudoor/selected-poems

Morning tea is dark
Like the night behind our house
Where the sun lost its way
And the air did not stop to greet our trees.

We gaze at our place where we sat last night
we know
we’ll leave everything behind us
And won’t collect the scattered words between the chairs.

Night was long
The candle is dusty and cold like our fingers
Why do we wait for tomorrow
If only to throw our words like pieces of papers
on the table and leave?