By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
A single candle flame washes the dark out of a whole room. No scrub bucket needed, you can’t wash the dark away with water. Only light devours dark. This theme pervades the holy days around the upcoming solstice. The shorter days of the Northern Hemisphere celebrate light when we’re missing it; the longer days of the Southern Hemisphere celebrate light in the abundance of its gifts. Yoga celebrates light all year long, but it’s the inner light that matters.
The pandemic changes the outer landscape, probably affecting your holiday traditions. It makes each person matter more, because you get to see them or because you don’t. It’s like your life lights up when they come into it. As meaningful as that can be, yoga urges you to focus on your own light. That inner light that you so readily share with others is meant to lighten your own inner landscape. When you base yourself in the light of your own Beingness, it vaporizes all the dark memories, dissolves all the dark predictions of your future (worries) and makes your burdens easier to carry. Light banishes heaviness as well as darkness so only one thing remains: the light of your own being.
This is yoga’s focus. This is Svaroopa® yoga’s specialty: to open the doorway inside, to make it easy for you to find your Self. This is why I have posted free teachings online for you, hundreds of audios and articles that shine the light for you, illumining the pathway inward. Please allow me to help you discover the pathway inward, especially at this powerful time of year.
Enjoy the lights shining outside and the people parading through your life so beautifully, but don’t forget who you are while you see all these forms of light. Be the light. As you’re looking outward, check and see — who is looking through your eyes?
There is only One Reality, being all and seeing through everyone’s eyes, including yours. There is only One Presence, being you as well as all. There is only one Light, shining in all, shining as all. Find the sacred source of that light within you. You are that candle flame that lights the whole room. When you bring your Self with you, everyone and everything you touch is made sacred.