Inspiration
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A Path Into Yoga: Part Three
Western medicine couldn’t heal my body. This realization – and my acceptance of it – slowly sunk into my bones. A couple of months after my last cortisone injection, I tried a “medical yoga” class, a synthesis of restorative yoga and physical therapy intended for injured people, taught by a nurse from the local hospital.… Continue reading
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A Path Into Yoga: Part One
The ego-mind lives in fear of so much that cannot be avoided or controlled: change, failure, loss, weakness, judgment, shame, pain, and death. My ego-mind, for instance, does not want you to know that I have a son who I was never there for, because my life was a mess, and I was a mess.… Continue reading
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Stanley Kunitz’s Poem “The Layers”
The Layers By Stanley Kunitz I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my… Continue reading
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Pilgrimage
All day long, I see things a painter would paint. What is there to complain about? Even my own pain has been endured by thousands before me, and depicted by master sculptors. Pilgrimage, penance, failure, learning to hold one’s self tenderly, in friendship – all these have relevance to my experience of life. Honoring the… Continue reading
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Basho’s Traveling Companion
On the jade-colored plate, yellow fruit. Between the window and folding screen, a bed, some clothing. In the stillness of the forest, water flowing. On the mountainside, plum blossoms. In the rain and mud, wild horses. From a bowl in the hermit’s shelter, steam rising. In the iron stove, embers glowing. At the edge of… Continue reading
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Big Sur
A whale spouted by and I dreamt of the story my life could tell. I remembered many loved and lost, I received the world, had a conversation with the cosmos. A whale spouted by, the vastness deepened. I sat, hands in lap, left over right, palms up, thumbs touching. A whale spouted by, I smelled… Continue reading
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Dragon Gates
While drinking cold tea from a glass jar and dividing your thoughts between Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Neruda, you cut a kiwi in half the long way and consider the oval ring of black seeds at its heart. You always see Our Lady Of Guadalupe there, proving that eating a piece of fruit can be… Continue reading
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Merlyn
The mountains are alive with fire, transcendent breath, vigorous and endless. Though they have been given a name, a part of them will always be nameless, and I could say the same about myself. I heed the call, after all, of mist-laden glades. I walk among stones with broken blades. I come to you, mountains… Continue reading
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Refugees Welcome
There are places to rest along the miles of all your days, if you will only sit… Continue reading
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Old Inuit Song
I think over again my small adventures, my fears, those small ones that seemed so big, for all the vital things I had to get and to reach. And yet there is only one great thing, the only thing. To live to see the great day that dawns and the light that fills the world.… Continue reading
C.M. Rivers 