YES

Today is overly full - bursting at the seams with so many things I've said "yes" to. Tonight I start teaching a 6 week meditation course. Tomorrow and this weekend Rainey and I co-teach on shoulders. And of course there's all the other stuff of life going on simultaneously.  Consequently, I didn't think I could sit down to write.  But here I am. 

I have been engaged in an ongoing contemplation on what it takes to invite and sustain Inner Body Radiance. That contemplation has taken on a life of its own and demanded I say "yes" and write at least a short bit. 

A true "YES" - it seems to me - is an inner gesture that is both intense and effortless. Getting to Yes may be full of effort. But YES itself is a expansive thing. When YES is in place (and the breakwater of ambivalence and "maybe" is breached) radiance flows in naturally because Shakti is very interested in YES. -  organizes and responds in sequences of unfolding around YES – and is not so interested in MAYBE

The main relationships and work of my life evoke a complete "yes" in me.  Of course there is resistance along the way - but at the end of the resistance it always ends up at "YES". I like to keep an eye on this dynamic - "yes" leading to radiance -  with the aim of applying it to all my doings. If there is something in my life that is requiring significant time, attention, money or energy and towards which I have an attitude of ambivalence, I know that "something" is diminishing Radiance.  I will need to either realign my attitude so I can say "Yes" to it, or I will have to disconnect from it.

The things and circumstances which evoke YES for me are not simply "easy" to say yes to.  In fact - all of them require a great deal of work and energy. More to the point, saying YES - is not about "following your bliss" or some such thing. For me, its about observing myself, from the inside out, and seeing what brings expansion and greater light - over time - and what contracts and dims - over time. and then doing the necessary re-alignment. The expansion and the radiance of each life - feeds the expansion and radiance of the whole. It matters that we do not dim out.

"Yes" is what is at the essence of the exclamation of "Jai Guru"......Jai means. essentially, "yes" or "victory". The phrase as a whole is like saying "YES" to Radiance.  I say Jai to That!

Thanks for Reading!

“Might we not hear…..a call, like ours, needing to be answered…..and call back across the darkness of the valley of not knowing the only word tongues shape without intercession:  “ YES”…”YES….”     ~~~Galway Kinnell

True freedom lies not in the power to say “yes” or “no”, but in the power to say “YES” only.     ~~~Saint Anselm