Spiritual Gangster

Thank you Eight year old Marlie for presenting me with this yoga book you wrote and taught to classes in your school. I appreciate your interesting chapters~  Yoga that keeps me calm Yoga that keeps me Grounded Yoga with more than two people Yoga with two people Yoga that keeps me happy  and your very helpful notes~ Remember you will not get it the first time Breathe slowly Remember to lean  your beautifully detailed art~ and your permission to share your work on our blog~  I am grateful that you have been a grounded student for three years and you continue to serve your school with yoga.  With love, Cheryl Crawford

Hmmm, Our Monkey Mind
Our Mind Monkey~
Is restless, and random,
Rebellious, and junky?

Silly, and scattered
Like a toddler in its movement~
Won’t settle down,
And needs vast improvement?

The mind is a problem,
That we need to control.
It’s random, and restless
And a bit of a troll?

That’s nonsense, we say!
And quite derogatory!
The nature of the mind
Is going for glory!

The mind is evolutionary,
progressive, dynamic.
Always seeking and moving
toward that which is magic.

So, think NOT monkey mind
More like, mind is royalty~
A King to Serve
With Love and Loyalty.

But, how can we Serve,
The Great Intelligence of our minds?
By meditation and mantras
And movement refined.

By exceptional quality
Of the company we keep,
What we see, what we hear,
How well we do sleep.

By lavish feasts of sutras,
Of songs, and of silence,
Of settling, and stillness
And speech for your Highness.

Much of your activity
Will settle in bliss~
Yet portions of Royal Mind
Will continue to hiss.

And that, my dear friend~
Is the Great Intelligence~
It wants more and more
Of higher elegance.

The Discipline of yoga,
Now, you see,
Is in permitting and inviting
This process~ to BE.

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

“I suppose you are real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive.

But the Skin Horse only smiled

–  From the Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams  –

What are these sutras
You speak so about?
Are they stitches like sutures
With some sort of clout?

Good question, my friend~
Why, yes, yes indeed,
These sutras are potent
In times of great need.

In times of great need,
And in times of great bliss,
These highly condensed words
Should not be dismissed.

The most essential core thread,
Of deep subtle meaning,
That runs through the fabric~
It supports out of gleanings.

Gleanings of insights,
And wisdom fused pearls~
From the direct experience
Of wise boys and girls.

Sutras express so much
In so very few words.
With vast significance,
It’s not for the birds.

Sutras are formulas
To be memorized and studied.
To solve the perplexities~
Of minds getting muddied.

So chose your text wisely~
Yoga, Shiva or Seuss,
Buddhist, Tao, Platform,
Tripitaka or Mother Goose.

Then write them in BOLD~
Where you’ll see them each day!
Melt their magnificence
In every which way.