That Darn Pendulum Just Keeps Swinging.

Photo by striatic, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Te Pratiprasavah Heya Sukshmaha. (Patañjali's Yoga Sutras 2.10) My teachers, Eddie Modestini and Nicki Doane translate this sutra as follows: "When the obstacles do not appear to be present on the Path and in Life, do not be fooled. They are always there and serve as a reminder to be ever vigilant. We would do well to cultivate and maintain a Beginner's mind and to never assume that we know anything. That way we can be open to learn new things. Expectations are the root of all suffering."

Well, I'd say that just about sums things up at the moment. Just when we think we've found that center point of balance on the swinging pendulum of life, that darn pendulum just keeps right on swinging to an extreme we thought was far behind us. All we can do is hold on and try to enjoy the ride. Of course, we've learned much from our time on the pendulum leading up to this moment, so we handle unexpected, unfortunate, and/or unpleasant events with more maturity and equanimity. But, we're still newbies on this path of Yoga, so of course we're also still whining quite a bit about life's little dualities.

The road is rocky, but the view is spectacular.

There may just be something in the air, maybe the stars are aligned in a mischievous fashion, or maybe we're all waiting around for a superhero to show up. Whatever it is, things seem to be a little out of whack all around us. As for our end, it has certainly been a pileup of the vehicles of misfortune, partly due to our own poor planning and partly due to entirely unforeseen circumstances. The pendulum seems to have taken our poor financial planning for a ride straight into a steaming pile of potential illness, bureaucratic red tape, friends in heartache, and injury. In the not too distant past, I would have said it's just a gnarly case of bad timing/luck. Yet, I've come to believe even more so that times like this pack powerful lessons that we need to learn, or will otherwise confront again and again until the message sticks. 

So what are we learning? Well, first and foremost we've become painfully aware that proper financial planning is an enormous part of yoga-fying our lives. Sure, yogis don't need money when they live in caves. But modern yogis trying to live in Western society find money an annoying necessity at times.  I'm the first one to admit that I am something of an infant when it comes to intelligently and maturely managing family finances. The few things I do know how to do are basic (i.e. savings, emergency funds, priority allocation of funds) and I still have a lot of work to do before I master them. Moreover, I remain ignorant of the more sophisticated financial planning practices that someone my age really and truly needs to learn in order to have a secure nest egg for late life (because yogis notoriously live long lives!). Recently, we've become big fans of a few money blogs that have provided us with fantastic tips. To name some of our favorites:

Get Rich Slowly
7 Million in 7 Years
Erica.biz
Zen Habits
I Will Teach You to Be Rich
The Motley Fool

Disclaimer: Obviously, we aren't doing, nor do we endorse, everything on these blogs. We simply find some very helpful tips there for our personal and professional finances. Maybe you'll find something useful there, too.

That pot of gold must be around here somewhere...

As we scratch and save to try to recover from a holiday trip that was planned and paid for on a bigger income than our current situation, we are also faced with moving to a new house about 6 months before our finances would have been ready. We have been emotionally ready to move for some time now, but were hoping to put it off long enough to recover from our trip's expenses. Yet, our duplex neighbors and friends have decided to part ways, providing ample impetus for own move. Fingers, toes, and eyeballs remain crossed to find the right place for us!

But this also brings us to friends in heartache. How do we, as good yogis, provide comfort and solace to our dear friends when they are in pain? We do what we would want from our friends: having those tough emotional talks, providing whatever advice we can, and even doing some restorative, healing yoga together. It's yet another reminder that no matter how yoga-fied we think we are, we're still part of this earthly life and have to face all the suffering and dualities that come along with it. The pendulum keeps swinging.

Photo by Jen Fry

Adding injury to insult, I write this post delicately balancing ice on my mysteriously injured shoulder. My teachers would tell you that I'm often an "intensely intense" yogini. Give me a direction and I'll probably find a way to overdo it. Somehow, unbeknownst to me, I tweaked a very small and particular part of my shoulder. The result is a joint that operates perfectly 99.9% of the time. That remaining .1% sees a certain small movement sending a lightning bolt from my shoulder to my elbow. At the moment, I'm in the wait-and-see period, icing and trying to rest the shoulder to see if it will heal itself. Again, fingers, toes, and eyeballs are crossed! In the meantime, I'm taking stock of my "intensely intense" tendencies, trying to back off a bit in my practice even though practice doesn't hurt my shoulder, and learning a bit more about using my words to teach rather than relying on demonstration. I actually thought it would be a while before I had to start learning these lessons about my practice and teaching, but I guess I've landed myself in an accelerated class. I'm doing my best to keep up!

Being a good yogini, I know that all of this is temporary. That darn pendulum we're on will soon reach the extreme end of its period and begin it's movement back to equilibrium. And as long as the Earth keeps turning, it will surely then keep on swinging to the other extreme, certain to venture into new lessons to learn and sights to see. I am sure of this. That doesn't mean it isn't challenging, though. In the meantime, we're working to keep our Beginner's minds open, receptive, and alert. Equilibrium will come. We have only to enjoy the ride. 

NAMASTE!