Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

 This weekend was my last Yoga Teacher Training before the final exam!  We chanted with Irene Solea Antonellis and taught our last community class.  It's crazy that this amazing journey began a year ago.  Teaching my first Yoga Class at South Boston Yoga was amazing, it felt so natural and comfortable!  I love the safe space that David and Todd have created :))))) 

Wish them luck with their expansion!!!!!!!!!!

A Great Longing 

There is an extraordinary peace
that comes
when we at some early or late
moment in our lives,
realize that we don't have to be
anyone else
than ourselves.

We suddenly discover that it is
sufficient, enough, more
than enough to simply be who we
are with our face,
our voice, our body, our thoughts,
our feelings, our loves,
our choices, our walk. There is no
need for pretense
or apology, no need to follow
another's road to find our value.
Our limitations as much define
our way of being in the world
as our virtues do. There is no need
to keep going back
and forth over the sum of our
lives, searching for what
was simply never there. What is
there, what has happened,
what will happen, are the lessons
that have brought us
to this day.

There is a great thirst, a great
longing within us
that reveals our true nature.
This longing is not the desire to be
like someone else,
which leads only to the madness
of competing
for attention, for honor, for
pleasure, for control.

This longing reveals the openness
of our heart and mind
toward everything that is good, not
only for ourselves
but good for everyone. Such
longing reveals the fragile
nobility of our human nature,
limited and unlimited, suffering,
struggling, concerned, respectful,
full of the release of laughter.

This longing is the base of the
energy of our awareness,
which is like a door opening and
closing,
a door opening to the
understanding and compassion
around us,
both coming into us and traveling
out from within us.

When this door of our awareness
opens for ignorance
and envy to travel in and out, we
try not to hold and nourish
this madness, but instead let the
Ignorance and selfishness
that wants to make a home in us
be transformed
Into something new.

In this way gradually only
understanding and kindness
travel in and out on the wings of
our awareness,
and like some of our great-
grandmothers we begin
to wish only blessing for the
breadth of the world.
  -Pat Twohy, S.J.