OMnibus: April Newsletter

Satsang with Lisa
On the day before Easter my son Jed was outside playing in the beautiful day when his 12 year old imagination got captured by what seemed to be some kind of nest in a tree. Yes, he had seen this nest before, many times, in fact, over the three years since he had moved onto the Preserve. We both had watched that nest repeatedly blown by blizzards, soaked in the rain, and completely dried out in the summer heat.
Today he was going to get it down by whatever means necessary, investigate it and solve the mystery of it's origin. How had it stayed there intact for so long withstanding the battering of the elements? Was it a gypsy moth caterpillar nest he wondered or a real bird's nest?
He had his work cut out for him. He went out armed for the fight. This was one tenacious nest! Two hours later, following a barrage of attacks by rocks and pellets, slingshot, rake and ladder, with a little help from his friends and neighbors (the activity had attracted a small crowd) Jed emerged victorious with this object of fascination!
After careful examination Jed joyfully proclaimed it to be an actual abandoned bird's nest. What kind of bird was unknown, but it was surely a bird's nest of some sort.
Still it wasn't just any bird's nest. This was a very special nest. It was made of something very unusual. Even I had never seen one like it before. No one had. It was intricately woven with a flaxen thread that resembled straw but was far less brittle and more durable. It was made of horsehair Jed announced! (There are horses living on the Preserve). And it had a little blue ribbon running through it. How amazed we all were.

"Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment." ~ Ellis Peters

But this nest was special beyond it's architecture. It was a bona fide manifestation of the original (read Pagan) "Easter" basket; theharbinger of spring and renewal. Like a port-key from Harry Potter it had transported us beyond the limits of our minds, and into a place of awe. It inspired us. It connected us to spirit! We were in that moment, like the rest of nature, reborn, filled with life force.
I thought about the word spirit and how it is the root of the word inspiration, meaning to fill with spirit, and how universal that experience is. It is precisely that shared experience that unites all of life on this planet. When this awareness of eketvam (oneness) is awakened within and without, via bird's nest or through yoga practice, we are in love.

"And Spring arose on the garden fair, like the spirit of love felt everywhere; and each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast rose from the dreams of its wintry rest." ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

This is what we call transcendence. (Transcendence is the experience of going beyond our limited notion of self, our stories and circumstances, into a more expansive experience of open-heartedness, and love and gratitude.) As we fill with love we shift away from fear and doubt and into a place of compassion and hope. Coming from this sweet place we are able to see and receive the gifts and magic present in each moment of our lives. When we feel better in our bodies and clearer in our minds we are also better able to show up and create what we truly want in this life. That is what we practice for. We practice to so that we may have the clarity and courage needed to surrender our armor and really BE in each moment of our lives. It is a simple shift into spirit. And it makes all the difference.

"If we practice the science of yoga, which is useful to the entire human community and which yields happiness both here and hereafter - if we practice it without fail, we will then attain physical, mental and spiritual happiness, and our minds will flood towards the Self." ~ Sri K. Pattabhi Jois