Hello my friends, How are you all? How are you really I wonder? There is so much to give thanks for isn’t there …. ✨we live in a safe part of the world ✨we have food in our bellies and clothes on our backs ✨the people we love are cared for and safe ✨and for the most part 🤔😔….we live in a place where we are free to express ourselves However, I know for some of you there are deep concerns. For many of you perhaps, there is concern that that right to express freely, for example, is slowly being eroded. All looks the same on the surface – our systems still work in the same way, we can still travel freely, buy the materials we want to read, sleep warm and safe at night, and get in our cars and go to the store. And yet, like many across the globe, you recognise a quiet erosion of our rights, a gnawing away at all that has been familiar and held dear. In fact, multiple sources recognise alarming trends in democratic decline and erosion of freedoms globally. A quick Google or a conversation with AI will confirm it for you. 😔 What has all this got to do with Yoga you may ask? Can we cast our minds back for a moment …. to the Soothe I sent out some weeks ago on dharma – obligation, duty? Do you remember that as well as our personal dharma, we have familial, social, and even global dharma? Additionally, the Yoga Sutras tell us that harming – in thought, word or deed, whether done by us, caused or allowed by us – causes endless misery. I believe most of us are concerned about events playing out across our planet – wars, famines, fires, extreme weather systems, cost of living crises, health services and their capacity to meet demands ….so many services and their capacity to meet demands, rights. Life as we’ve known it seems to be hanging in the balance, doesn’t it? Structures, systems, international and national laws that we have counted on – for our safety, security and our humanity – appear to be crumbling or at best diminished. I’m guessing many of us feel at a loss, helpless, unable to do anything to change the current plight of our world. And here’s where Yoga has a lot to do with all of this and here is where Yoga can help us to be brave, bold, to speak out – with discernment, without divisiveness, but to speak out for the well-being of all where we see it being violated. We can look into our hearts to find truths – truths beyond what the media, our governments, and others are telling us which only leave us questioning and uncertain, ready to numb out and turn away. Our hearts are uneasy and tell us something is not right but it’ just too damned hard to look at the picture that faces us, as it is, square on, right? …..when it’s all apparently so out of our hands., so confusing, so non-sensical. And so, let’s remember again that non-harming is the highest precept in Yoga. And that harm causes endless misery not only when done by us, but when we permit it to be done. The implication then is that on the path of Yoga we are not to even permit harming – a definite call to action, yes? Endless misery means ripple effect upon ripple effect of more of the same, travelling down through the ages, passed on for generations. We see this playing out on the world stage right now, yes? We see it playing out in our own families to one degree or another, perhaps – one hurt causing another hurt, causing another and so on, down through the generations. Repeated patterns – betrayal, abuse, manipulation, illnesses, weaknesses, fears, drives. Until someday, one brave soul in our family line sits up, takes notice, owns the whisper of wisdom in their own heart and decides “Enough is enough”. That person becomes the spiritual warrior for their family. They do the big, often unseen yet ever so significant work on behalf of all family members. To the family, they may be the black sheep, the odd one who walks a different path. What is rarely understood is that in doing the healing and positive-change work for themselves, they do it for all….those who have gone before and never had the chance to resolve and heal, and those who are yet to come. It’s a “buck stops here” kinda deal. Centuries old patterns are dissolved, new positive and liberating, healing ones arise in their place. The same is true for each one of us on the social, national and global stages too. Our social dharma, our global dharma is to sit up, to take notice, to ask “What can I do to heal the hurt, the divisions, the suffering? What can I do to help strengthen the collective path of love, of peace, the path of non-harming, of cooperation and coming together? How can I act – without bringing harm – to myself, the ones I love, to any others, to reduce even a fraction of the hurt?2 We ask ourselves and sometimes the response may be that….we donate a little money here and there ….as a salve for our conscience perhaps and then we can turn away- we’ve done our bit. Or we donate because we genuinely want change and for all our soul searching, we can find no other way to contribute that sits well or that is even feasible for us. We may choose to use our voice. Is this not our dharma when others are silenced or have no voice? I have always felt strongly for the voiceless and spoke out even as a young adult and as a child – for prisoners of conscience, and for prisoners of mankind’s insensitivity to animals as sentient beings for whom we should be nothing but benign, loving custodians. These days we can use our voice through social media to good effect – sharing what matters, sharing that which can unite and benefit and uplift and heal us all. We have our vote too, yes? …..not only in elections but in the all the different petitions out there, asking for just a moment of our time. It all counts. Each tiny act is another positive injection of energy into the collective pool of consciousness looking for positive change, right? 🤗 I heard this past week that boycotts are making a huge difference as people try to force the change they want to see – the call for change that they feel their elected governments seem deaf to. We may think what difference does it make where I buy my coffee? Where I shop? Which car I buy? It’s just a drop in the ocean to the big conglomerates. Apparently it’s all making a difference. The teaching is in Yoga – if you can so something good, something that will benefit even just one person, do it. If you have the idea for an act of kindness, follow it through. Our world needs it. Your heart and soul will benefit from it too. This all reminds me of the starfish story – you know the one? I’m sure I’ve shared it here before….about the boy throwing a starfish back into the water, one of many washed up on the beach. A man mocks him, telling the boy he can’t make a difference. “I made a difference to that one.” The boy replies, at which the man joins him. Soon many passers by join and before they know it ….all the starfish are back in the sea. And so let’s take heart. There is much we can do. We can all do our small part. Every small act – however insignificant it may seem to you – follow it through….and acknowledge yourself for it, This is all making a difference to our ailing world. We all want a better world, a more loving humanity, a healed planet, yes? Even the perceived perpetrators of so many horrors going on in our world……they have lost connection to the love and wisdom of their own heart. They are misguided……clearly. Often it turns out that the worst perpetrators in history have themselves been violated. That’s not to condone – it’s just those ripple effects of endless misery, right.? And it can only be that if they were to awaken to their own compassionate heart, and the wisdom and discernment of the heart, they too would heal and in that healing would instantly know and act for the good of all – turning from divisiveness, cruelty and harm, to uniting people and lands, to a care for all, And so when we find our hearts infected by the ripple effect – infected by hate and anger for example….turn back to love. Make that conscious decision to be part of the light collective and not to let your own light be dimmed by darkness in the world around you. This is one of the best things we can do – for our own wellbeing, and in service of the well-being of all. And so…nil disperandum. Yoga guides us into all these ways and more so that we can truly be warriors for our own inner and for the outer collective evolution. We can aid both. The Yoga path is not about sitting in some detached state, passive and dispassionate towards the suffering and wrongs that we see around us. It does not ask for some display of remoteness and transcendence. The Yoga path is the path of the warrior. Every day on the Yoga path, when we are committed, we fight the good fight within ourselves. We make all our choices – lifestyle, diet, home environment, company we keep, places we go – in support of a desired triumph of higher over lower mind, of more elevated states of being over lower and darker thoughts and actions. The path of Yoga asks us, when we have a choice – how do we respond, what do we say in response to any circumstances, always choose that which brings most harmony, that which is uniting and integrating. On this path, as Yoga warriors, we work to transmute our anger, greed, jealousy and harming into love, kindness, compassion and healing through the cultivation of harmonious, unifying choices, and through commitment to regularity in the transformational practice of Yoga. Ultimately, higher mind begins to assert itself over the lower mind. Likewise, we rise to our dharma – social, national and global – to do whatever we can to make this world a better place. To reduce the divisive. And spread the positive and healing, and peace-giving. The Yogi knows that in essence, there is more that unites us than divides us. We just have to awaken ourselves to it, and through the radiance and presence that yoga gives us, sooner or later we become living loving examples of the spiritual warrior and we begin to awaken the same in others. I’m driving around in an old hatchback at the moment that a friend has lent me. With the back seats down it’s the perfect vehicle for Ellie, my old arthritic lab x Spanish mastiff. It is now the “Ellie mobile”. Ha ha. You can see her in it in the photo above. She’s so comfortable there. My friend has great taste in music and always finds great pieces I’ve never come across. This being an old car, we’re talking CDs. 😄🙌 I put one of his CDs on today, on the way back from the supermarket- just as I was going over in my head what I wanted to write to you today. A song came on which is just perfect and sums up the way of the Yoga warrior. It’s a song called Within You by Ray La Montagne. Do you know it? The lyrics are simple, few and potent. Perfect for us all too at this point in our human history. I’ve added it below for you, 👌✨ The song describes the Yoga warrior’s ultimate weapon. The return to, the anchoring in, the unsurpassable and unshakeable wisdom, peace and love that dwell at the core of who we are. Through lifestyle, diet, Yoga practices, inner enquiry …all that make us fit for the path of meditation and the awakening to our essential Self, we know ourselves to be part of one with and born from the one source of all,. And that everyone, and everything in this world is born from that same one source. We know it to be a truth then that we all feel the same love, know the same pain and suffering, long for the same security and safety, love the same life. At this point we can only be warriors of light, of love, emissaries for peace and harmony, and dream-weavers of a world where……. “…all beings are free from harm, all beings are happy, and all beings know peace” This week – no evening or week awareness practice , no thought for the week. Just an invitation to ask “What can I do? Or “What more can I do…to be a force for peace, for love, for the positive change I want to see in this world – for my children, my grandchildren and generations to come?” And it can start in the smallest things – checking out the divisive thoughts – replacing the hate or judgement even for the perpetrators of harm, even for our own families and friends, neighbours who don’t seem to be on the right side of tolerance and compassion ……..for all of it, the whole messy lot – only love, only understanding, only the compassionate embrace of our own hearts. Let’s stay this week in the collective pool of light – mentally, emotionally- still aware, still connected and present to all that happens around us – yet anchored in our own essential grace and goodness and beauty. Amen Amin Aum The divinity within me sees and bows to the divinity within you. May we all know the light within Sara ✨✨🙏🙏 | 
