Deep Within.

 Deep Within.

“Deep within is a Divine Spark,” whispered my teacher during deep relaxation in my first yoga class. “Deep within, a divine spark, an inner light, eternal, beyond space, beyond time, unbounded and free,” she read by candle light. “Sunlight, Moonlight, We call on the Light within,” she sang.

Goose-bumps burst up all over my body. Hairs stood to attention on my neck, arms, and legs.

 Her words “rang a bell” in my soul… my previously unarticulated sense of eternity, spaciousness and freedom at moments in my life…

…when I stared into the coal fire at eleven and felt connected to an ancient, unlimited, unnamable power…when I performed an improvisational dance~story in London at twenty-three and had an “out-of-body/in-bodied” transformative experience during the applause …and when I faced death in the Sinai with a gun to my head a year later. As I looked into the eyes of the soldier who held the gun I felt his pain so exquisitely my fear evaporated (I “knew” I was dead)…and my heart opened. Suddenly, he was just one of my angry, confused little boys back home in my classroom. He was my brother. He was my friend. We were united in some cosmic drama, neither of us understood, connected by our humanity and divinity.

I didn’t have words for these experiences for years. Not until the late 1970’s when my yoga teacher read and sang verses from ancient Sanskrit texts. Then everything came together as recognition and the humbling task began of trying to name the unnamable!

In each of those moments I had gone “beyond” my everyday self. I had dropped into or risen up to a transpersonal level of awareness for which I’d had no vocabulary.

Many people have spiritual experiences, but we tended not to talk about things like that where I came from. Many religious and spiritual traditions talk about the light, but I’d been brought up by atheists!

My yoga teacher’s “spiritual seed thoughts” gave my left brain a way to fumble with words and begin to make sense of the isolated spiritual experiences. She led me to reading and studying stories of others who’d experienced such moments of Illumination and Grace.

When I sing to my yoga students during savasana, “Sunlight, Moonlight, We call on the Light Within,” I sing the soul of my sweet teacher, Janie, and the gratitude and joy in my heart. Perhaps now I can “give back” some of the “blessing~love” so freely given during moments in my life. Thank you, Spirit of Yoga. Thank you, Spiritedness of Life.

 FOR MORE STORIES—-and more details of these stories…stay tuned… I’m developing a “One Woman Show &  Tell” to perform, and I’ll be writing them over time on my blog and for later publication in a collection. Also, visit www.jvyoga.com for the March 6th, 2010 “20 years of teaching yoga celebration and story share.” Let me know if you are planning to attend.