Watching the Mind and its many Fluctuations

Last night, we had class with Prashant. Christina wrote at length about it. Let's just say it was a dwi pada viparita dandasana and philosophy lecture marathon. Prashant focuses a lot on the idea of "preparation." How do we prepare for the circumstances that confront us. He says prepare yourself. Prepare your body, mind, and breath. I realized that my sense of preparing is often very goal oriented. Preparing for comps, for assessment. I preparing to teach or preparing a meal... What does it mean to prepare yourself without knowing exactly what you are preparing for. Be prepared, for what, for any eventuality I imagine. Which means prepare yourself to be open and receptive to whatever circumstance you find yourself in, whether than is 90 minutes of backward bending over a chair, or dealing with a long line at the More grocery store, or the challenges of an upcoming move not to mention the tragedies and traumas and the joys and jubilations that come our way.

what are the sorts of things that keep us from being prepared? In the yoga philosophy context, the kleshas come to mind: Avidya (ignorance), Asmita (ego), Raga (pleasure) , Devsa (aversion), Abhinivesha (fear of death). Related terms that come to mind.... Inattention, forgetfulness, lack of present moment awareness, not knowing what the context requires, not realizing our own lack of preparation... not seeing things as connected... not thinking criticism applies to you even if it falls on you...

it has finally gotten somewhat hot here. Still nothing like I was "preparing" myself for, but it is true that hot weather is one thing with air conditioning and quite another without it. Last night, Christina and I moved our mattresses out to the living room and slept under the fan. There is a fan in the bedroom but it has two speeds (off which leads to sweltering quite quickly) and high which sounds like a helicopter is landing just above us)..

I was, nonetheless, pretty tired this morning. This morning pranayama week started. Geeta gave the most illuminating talk about the various types of pranayama and how we prepare ourselves for pranayama that I've ever heard. It was so informative and inspiring. The class ended up being a somewhat sobering experience in that several people didn't know how to do digital pranayama or were not doing it to her satisfaction. But again, it all fit in with the above theme of preparation. Do we depend simply on what our teachers show us? How have we prepared ourselves to be here? Have we read the books? Have we really learned what is in the book? Being here is an ongoing call to deeper and deeper levels of attentiveness to what practice requires.

We have practice in an hour or so and then we plan to hit Roopali for dinner.