June 16, 2004
"There is very little value in teachers' certificates. The value is in the teacher's way of approaching teaching."
- B.K.S Iyengar
Early morning meditation. Tibetan incense fills my home, moving in waves across space like a manifestion of my pranayama practice. Breath makes for the frontier of my day. Body moves with alacrity from teaching a love-filled HP Yoga class last night to 21 spiritual athletes. Fortune Delight into a water bottle, preparing for a nice long bike ride through Pacific mist. Observing clutter as i reach beneath a kitchen cabinet. Been wanting to clean out that clutter for nearly a year. My Teacher's voice rings out from within, "Aparigraha!"
"No, no! Not now, not today! I want to ride my bicycle!"
"Aparigraha, you feeble yogi!" comes His voice impacting my cells with the force of a Tibetan Yak back-kick.
I sigh as i drop into a yogi squat on the kitchen floor and begin pulling out months of unused grocery store bags, dinnerware, and odds and ends.
To practice the fifth committment of Yoga - known as Aparigraha or non-hoarding, greedlessness, or absence of possessions beyond one's means - requires a firm stance of self. The Warrior must travel light in order to be nourished by the Light. Renunciation of unneeded things, tendencies, habits, and outdated emotional patterns must first be rooted out by ongoing Awareness, then grasped like a sword, and finally tossed out for go(o)d.
Five sacks full of clutter and an hour later, i emerged from my yogic Practice of engaged Aparigraha. Damn does it feel great to get that crap out of my h(om)e. What was i doing waiting for so long to clear that stuff out?
"I am a feeble yogi," i thought to myself as i felt a twinge of guilt for not keeping my life as simple and clear as i could.
"Oh, you are not that feeble a yogi," my Teacher's voice rang out again from my mind.
"I'm not?"
"No..for you chose to miss out out your bike ride - one form of Yoga indeed - and exchange it for another; clearing the clutter from your home. This engaged act of Aparigraha was a strong show of prioritizing yoga over ego."
Teacher went on to encourage me, "Oh Feeble One; You are learning to begin, again and again...and that is what will make you a very strong yogi...for what truly makes a yogi a yogi is to begin again and again."