my mind is on fire to understand this most intricate riddle

~My mind is on fire
To understand this most intricate riddle ~~ (Confessions of St Augustine)

Practicing Iyengar Yoga for twenty years --the fascination & interest in the subject continues to grow. 
Intricacies of action within the practice of the postures keep the mind engaged in the NOW. This is how Yoga happens. The pose is the vehicle to Yoga. “Yoga is the vehicle to heaven” (heaven=union/ transcendence of duality/ going beyond identification with impermanent states of nature to experience Oneness)

the subtlest heart

“To a yogi, the path toward spirit lies entirely in the dominion of nature. It is the exploration of nature from the world of appearances, or surface, into the subtlest heart of living matter. Spirituality is not some external goal that one must seek but a part of the divine core of each of us, which we must reveal. For the yogi, spirit is not separate from body. Spirituality is not ethereal and outside nature but accessible and palpable in our very own bodies. Indeed the very idea of a spiritual path is a misnomer. After all, how can you move toward something that, like Divinity, is already by definition everywhere? A better image might be that if we tidy and clean our houses enough, we might one day notice that Divinity has been sitting in them all along. We do the same with the sheaths of the body, polishing them until they become a window to the Divine.” —BKS Iyengar, “Light on Life” p. 18

keep going

On this path no effort is wasted,
no gain is ever reversed;
even a little of this practice
will shelter you from great sorrow.

2.40 Bhagavad Gita

to be willing to be dazzled

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts

And maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.

I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—
that the light is everything—that is is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

~Mary Oliver, from “The Ponds”

stay on the track

Anyone who genuinely and constantly with both hands
looks for something, will find it.
Though you are lame and bent over, keep moving toward [it]. With speech, with silence, with sniffing about, stay on the track.
Whenever some kindness comes to you, turn that way, toward the source of kindness.

~~Rumi (III 978-981)

"just finishing candle"

A candle is made to become entirely flame.
In that annihilating moment
it has no shadow.
It is nothing but a tongue of light
describing a refuge.
Look at this
Just finishing candle stub
As someone who is finally safe
from virtue and vice,

the pride and the shame
we claim from those.

~Rumi,  v 672-682

But what is it then that sits in my heart?

“And still I’m looking at everything—
in the wide morning and the strike of noon
I’m humming and clapping my hands,
and I can’t stop
not for any reason
not even the easiest thought.

And, anyway, what is thought
but elaborating, and organizing?
What is thought
but doubting, and crying out?
————-
But what is it then that sits in my heart,
that breathes so quietly, and without lungs——
that is here, here in this world, and yet not here?

—Mary Oliver, from “Riprap”

Jennifer Beaumont demonstrating Urdhva Kukkutāsana from Śīrsāsana II

Who can open the door?

“Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?

Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself continually?

Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone...

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window, and the opening of a window no more difficult than the wakening from a little sleep...

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters, caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!”

~~Mary Oliver