An Imaginary Life

Hey Guys,

Just finished a great book by David Malouf called 'The Imaginary Life'.

Summary:

The Roman poet Ovid (who wrote 'The Metamorphosis'), in exile, tells of his experience losing all known culture, landscape, language, and the story of his encounter with a wild boy, brought up among wolves in the snow. At first the poet assumes the role of protector of the boy; gradually, however, the roles of protector and protected are reversed as the two form a curious and touching alliance.

A couple of my favorite passages:

'We have some power in us that knows its own ends. It is that that drives us on to what we must finally become. We have only to conceive of the possibility and somehow the spirit works in us to make it actual. This is the true meaning of transformation. This is the real metamorphosis... Our further selves are contained within us, as the leaves and blossoms are in the tree. We have only to find the spring and release it. Such changes are slow beyond imagination. They take generations. But it works, this process.'

'What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness in the mystery of what we have not yet become, except in dream... What else is death but the refusal any longer to grow and suffer change.'

OUR FIRST POP-UP PRACTICE WAS A HIT!

Many thanks to everyone who came to our first pop-up practice. We had a great turn out and there was a wonderful energy in the room.

We'd especially like to thank Kylie, for hosting us at her gorgeous Body Maintenance Studio, and Heather, for teaching a beautiful class. I guess you could say our theme for the practice was 'spontaneity', and Heather put together some fantastic quotes that touched on this. Great food for thought...

'The goal of wisdom is laughter and play-- not the kind that one sees in little children who do not yet have the faculty of reason, but the kind that is developed in those who have grown mature through both time and understanding. If someone has experienced the wisdom that can only be heard from oneself, learned from oneself, and created from oneself, he or she does not merely participate in the laughter-- the person becomes the laughter itself.' Philo (circa 20 BCE-50CE) Alexandrian Jewish philosopher

'Without the interference of the ego, actions become spontaneous, appearing as a smooth flow (like vinyasa). Truly enlightened beings have an economy and elegance of movement about them that is absent in the unenlightened, because they have removed the obstacle of the ego.' George Feurerstein

'When I am not preoccupied with going TO someplace, the going itself can become joyous.' Yun-men, Ch'an Master


And a few thoughts from Heather herself...

'For me, yoga is not about the obliteration of the self. It is the obliteration of a false perception of self-- one that inherently limits our vision of who and what we are. Call that process a loss of ego, call it whatever you like. But in the end, I think yoga simply makes us recognise that we are 'more than'-- 'more than' our mind, 'more than' our physical body, 'more than' what others think of us, 'more than' our past, and so forth. And once we awaken to that reality, I think we find NOT that we are nothing, but jsut the opposite. We find that we are limitless, connected with everyone and everything, never wholly separate, and therefore, never alone. For me, this realisation is a source of vast comfort and empowerment.'