The Yoga of Sweeping
November 2011
By Heather Eilering
As most of you know Santosha recently celebrated 5 years of community, yoga and business. The more time I spend running the entity called Santosha the more my mind stretches and opens to see how vast & complicated yet purely simple this world really is.
This month being November I think it’s appropriate to speak about how my yoga practice has taught me more about gratitude.
Gratitude can be tricky business when it comes to spirituality. Most of the time we say thank you when someone does something special for us. We were trained from early childhood to say thank you. But those words have become simply an auto response to good deeds. The question then remains, how does gratitude become something truly given and received?
Santosha has a volunteer program called seva. Seva on a yogic path means selfless service: giving of oneself without expectation of benefit, reward or thank you. The practice is to offer of oneself and learn along the way where you are not authentically giving in order to move through the fears that hide one’s ability to truly give of oneself. This process helps the practitioner discover their limitless potential.
When I was at a yoga training at the Amrit Institute we were asked to do seva duties, something I was very familiar with having practiced seva at Anahata Yoga School for 2 years. My duty was sweeping the steps in front of Gurudev’s home. It was autumn and the acorns were falling from the tree. Each morning I would sweep the acorns off the steps and by afternoon the stairs would be filled with acorns once again. I quickly became frustrated because with all the other work I was doing in the training I didn’t have time to constantly sweep Gurudev’s steps and personally I didn’t want to spend all my time sweeping, yet the darn acorns kept falling! Since I had the privilege of being in the midst of a yoga training with Amrit Desai, I had the capacity to consider quietly and ask Spirit for help with this “problem”. The answer that Spirit offered was crystal clear. Seva was not about sweeping the steps, it was about giving myself consciously and fully to what I was doing in moment. By being conscious I was offering the gift of myself to myself and sweeping became a celebration of my life.
Consider, how does one give to Spirit who needs nothing? One can’t, but one can learn from Spirit (the only One who gives unconditionally) that giving should never require any sense of loss, which means fear is no longer a factor. What was I afraid of? Well, I was afraid that I wouldn’t have time to do all the work in my yoga training, afraid that I wasn’t a good enough person to keep up with the falling acorns, afraid that a tiny acorn was more powerful than myself. Seems crazy yet underneath I was giving all my power to an acorn! How many times a day do you give your power away to the proverbial acorn? If you’re anything like me, hundreds!
Ever since that training and the gift of clarity that Spirit offered to me and I offered to myself by listening, I have been lucky enough to have people in my life to reinforce the idea that giving is always about me and what I am willing to open myself to. The more I am willing to give, the bigger I become. I’ve had a lot of practice, I can’t tell you how many times the vacuum or the dirty dishes or the litter box have become the messengers of Spirit for me. The more I practice, the more I appreciate everything in my life and see every moment as a blessing. The so called good and bad circumstances are opportunities for me to see myself completely and then grow into an even larger vision. Therefore, I can appreciate taking in the garbage cans. And I appreciate when my boyfriend comments on liking the figure of another woman, because I’ve learned that when I become upset it’s really only my own feelings of inadequacy surfacing. I simply need to create space for these feelings to emerge so they can be integrated. Everything in my life becomes an opportunity to give of myself. Thus I release the limiting parts of my personal self-identity, creating room for limitless Spirit to shine in the open space. This is why the purpose of yoga is to be still; within that stillness Spirit shows you the truth of your limitless nature. All of life becomes a constant flow of gratitude.
Back at the Amrit Institute I learned the simple joy of sweeping acorns off the steps, and when one fell after I finished sweeping I simply smiled and laughed. Another opportunity to be present within myself, thank you thank you thank you! What a beautiful gift given and received, Yoga – Union… No difference between giving and receiving.
Each moment of your life you are giving of yourself. What are you giving right now? Consciousness or unconsciousness? Are you offering the solution or the problem to yourself and the world? Be grateful for the gifts that others offer you, not because they have anything you need, you limit yourself far too much with that attitude. Be grateful because they are offering the solution to the problem of separation. Whether they know it or not, now you know it. Use it!
In Loving Service,
-Heather
