My Space

Nah, I don’t mean that popular social networking site.  (I think that’s MySpace anyway.)  I mean MY SPACE; ME.

Let me explain.  Last night I was sitting on my mat at the beginning of yoga class, and my teacher (my favorite yoga instructor whom I loooove) invited us to use our breath to guide us into our yoga practice, to kind of “fall” into our own space.  She said something like:  “what’s going on in the world is not your business, what’s going on in your friends and families’ lives is not your business, what’s going on in your space IS your business”.  And suddenly I felt so glad to be in My Space, to have it be my business.  Tears started pouring down my cheeks and I had the thought:  “I love myself so much.”  I think it was the deepest moment of self-love in my life thus far.

Later in the practice I had a similar experience.  I had just been in Child’s Pose, and as I was coming out of it, I looked at my left forearm.  And you know that unconditional love you can sometimes feel for the body of a loved one, a child or a lover?  I felt that for myself.  I saw the candlelight in the room reflecting off the blond hairs on my arm, I saw it’s familiarity, I saw it’s freckles dotted here and there, and I felt another huge swelling of love for myself.

I’m having the thought that the eyes I saw my arm through in that moment were both my eyes AND God’s eyes. That this was the true experience of what I call Sacred Union in the One Body, the merging with the Divine in one body, mine in this case.

I’m not saying I’ve arrived.  This is the nature of human beings.   Just a couple of weeks ago I was blogging about digging up the roots of the last vestiges of self-loathing in me.  I can’t predict tomorrow.  That’s how it works.  Sometimes it’s one step forward and two steps back.  But I am convinced that taking many many small steps, like the hundreds of times I have consciously chosen to love myself, does work.  And that loving ourselves is not an exercise in conceit but rather an important part of any spiritual journey.  For we cannot have true union with the Divine without loving ourselves first.   And we surely cannot have Sacred Union in the Two Bodies before it’s prerequisite.