Coming back home

I placed this song at the beginning of my post today because I came across this song and it instinctively made me bubble up, start bouncing in my seat, slowly join in the singing, and finally found myself smiling and doing a dance of celebration to life and feeling happy.  


Today the sky is blue and i have a ray of sun hitting my left shoulder, caressing me.  And how grateful i am to be receiving this light and warmth! I am grateful for the water that bathed me today, I am grateful for the air i'm inhaling and exhaling, I am grateful for the earth that is holding me now as I sit cross-legged, I am grateful for the food I placed in my belly this morning that nourishes me and gives me energy.  I am grateful for the loving people I have around me that has contributed to me being here..now.  Where i am. I am grateful for those I will meet, come across, interact in an hour, in the upcoming days, in the following months and years.  I am grateful for every creature in this world for their existence is beautiful and an inspiration, I am grateful of life: for allowing me the opportunity to be here, open-hearted, today.  For today's chance to experience life with the option of traveling a road of higher light and love. 


As I began my yoga practice this morning, I took the precious moment of allowing me to be here.  Svādhyāya (self-study) is not an easy task, and i did find moments of my mind wondering off somewhere--i literally visualized how it followed a wave outwards.  In the turning point of inhalation-exhalation, that tiny moment of suspension where there is lightness and a curious stillness, I reached out to Ātha ("now"), and gently felt re-grouped.  It's beautiful to "come back home".  This was all happening during my practice, but it also translates and digs in to life outside the yoga mat. 


Coming back home...going back to basics, praising simplicity, cherishing essentials, the natural beauty of things and actions.  Just starting with our skeletal, muscular, nervous system.  Our organs.  How it all works with tremendous precision, with exquisite beauty to keep us here.  Ātha, now. 
Thank you.


Coming back home...the people we know and love.  How they have shaped us, how they keep us company (close and far away), how they show flabbergasting faith in who we are, who have made us smile, laugh, cry.  Who have in many ways given us a purpose to life, a company in this life's journey.  How just being around them, smelling them, seeing them, hearing them is enough.  Basics.
Thank you.


Coming back home...the world, this planet.  Providing so much for our existence. Water, earth, air, fire, spirit.  Giving us the gift of day and night.  The sun rising every morning providing light, warmth, new possibilities.  The moon and the stars, allowing us to rest, inspiring us with the beauty of it's vast darkness. The creatures in this world surprising us sometimes with simplicity of life--a squirrel chewing on a hazelnut, a flower blooming, a group of ducks floating together just receiving sunlight. Essentials.
Thank you.


Simplicity, the origin--we all come back home.  Even life and death works that way. 
Devotion to life, a celebration of life, surrendering--letting go of false expectations and empty "extra-needs".  Devotion to our actions and gratitude to what we truly have.  The place we come from, what we have and where we are going. 

A bunch of ants came out of the darkness of their underground nest in search for food.  It was early in the morning.  The ants happened to pass by a plant whose leaves where covered with morning dew.
"What are these?" asked one of the ants, pointing to the dewdrops.  "Where do they come from?"
Some said, "They come from the earth."
Others said, "They come from the sea."
Soon a quarrel broke out-- there was a group who adhered to the sea theory, and a group who attached themselves to the earth theory.
Only one, a wise and intelligent ant, stood alone.  He said, "Let us pause a moment and look around for signs, for everything has an attraction towards its source.  And, as it said, everything returns to its origin.  No matter how far into the air you throw a brick it comes down to the earth.  Whatever leans towards the light, must originally be of the light."
The ants were not totally convinced yet and were about to resume their dispute, but the sun had come up and the dew drops were leaving the leaves, rising, rising towards the sun and disappearing into it.

**Finishing up with this song: