Is there a goal?

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature. ~Joseph Campbell

If there were a goal to our practice of yoga I would like think of it as being something along the lines of what Joseph Campbell describes. There is instant recognition upon reading the words "to match your nature with nature" of what occurs within the practice of yoga. The very act of breathing with consciousness starts the journey of alignment to our nature--the return to primordial essence. Primordial essence in this case refers to a concept laid out in "SHAMBALA The Sacred Path of the Warrior" as meaning without condition.

It is a place that we can attune to through a disciplined engagement of movement and breath--synchronizing mind and body to unite with Spirit. It is through this union that the heartbeat of the individual connects with the beat of the universe.

It is an amazing discovery that can be made on the mat with a dedicated practice. The promise of practice, rather than the goal, is a heightened sense of connectedness to the underlying current of aliveness contained within the world around us. The poses and breath unite to act as pathways into the rich energy of the universal beat--which provides a cosmic metronome for us to step into rhythm with.

For brief yet increasing periods of time we march to a larger rhythm than ourselves and rather than being the sole instrument, we play in the grandest orchestra that surpasses all that we have ever felt, heard, or played for.

The practice and life it offers us deepens our relationship with the world and all sentient beings because it connects us to the source of where we have come from and where we are going. For moment after precious moment that we are in this space--which is spaciousness itself, we are all that ever was and all that ever will be.

Stepping onto the mat is an act of celebration, creation, performance, giving, receiving, acknowledging, sacrificing, surrendering, and opening. It gives us access to the cycle of life and the story of our place in it. It is the wow factor, the hugeness of what we are actually a part of--and the recognition of the sacredness of being alive.



"There are moments when one feels free from one's own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable; life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only Being." ~ Albert Einstein