Space Is Love

While at Kripalu, I went to a lecture given by Randal Williams, a professor of yoga philosophy, and director of yoga teacher training. He was talking about the yamas and niyamas--the 10 moral precepts that make up classic yoga. He said something that really stuck with me: "Space is the prerequisite for life--once a gap opens up, life force and inspiration occur. Wherever there is space, life flows."

I suppose this stuck with me because I have so much space in my mouth, so much that quite literally needs closure. To think of all these jagged, gaping holes as a place where inspiration and life force are brewing seemed like an absurd concept. After all, being shackled by wires and brackets has felt like a jail sentence for a misunderstood crime. But I've recently begun to hear the words of Nathaniel Hawthorne: "What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart? What jailer so inexorable as one's own self?"

Every ending is also a beginning--there was much I had to say goodbye to seven months ago. I grieved. I moped. I hid. But something has begun shifting for me along with my teeth, and I think I am just beginning to get an inkling of how much life is going to flow into this new space. Truth be told, I'm starting to get excited by the prospect of the pleasant surprises that may be in store.

Elena Brower mentioned the word diksha during the course of our yoga retreat. The word means "initiation," taking from the root "di" meaning "to give" and "ksha" meaning dissolution, disintegration, or disapation. She said that diksha can be small, meaning to initiate one simply into another possibility. What choices do you give yourself? How can you initiate yourself into another thought, another idea? Another future? "What do you have to give to make your fear go away?" she asked.

Albert Einstein said, "We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." I love this quote because it means that you have to shift your position to get a different view in order to solve all that is unsolved in your heart. It doesn't mean that you have to be better, stronger or braver. The great vista always is before us, it just depends on how high we're willing to climb in order to see it.