Spanda

via Leanne:

We chose to focus on Spanda for this training but we still talk about all of them as we go along because they are qualities of something that is not just ever one thing. The reason pulsation, or Spanda, is so important is because the place between these pulses- the place of seemingly stillness- is the place of the middle. That place of the middle becomes a point, a “bindu”, and a gateway to the Absolute. It’s the pause at the top of the inhale and at the bottom of the exhale.

Everything pulsates – down to the smallest atom- and pulsation can’t happen without two things in contrast. (Think sun/moon, light/dark, and open/close.) How can you know light unless you have ever experienced dark? The pulsation arises from the dark and goes to the highest pinnacle of light, the apex, and from there slowly fades back into the dark to wait for the next pulse.  Spanda exists in the cycles of the day, the year in our own life. We are created, we reach the pinnacle of life and then we return to the dark.  Contrast increases our knowledge; it doesn’t have to be a seemingly negative thing. Diversity helps us understand our own world better. So even in diversity there is a place of the middle and around it from that core line everything expands out into ever increasing complexity. Think of a tree- from a trunk, to the major branches, to the smaller branches, to the leaves and then finally the flowers- ever expanding complexity all from the middle.

After the morning talk we went into a basic practice that worked on seemingly simple stuff but it was all down in a way to work with the Spanda, to start from the place of the middle.  Things like aligning your feet and your hands rather than going all the way to skull loop right off the bat. It made me feel better about how I teach because I seem to talk every class about choosing to align and how we even set our feet and our hands in a way that is full of desire to know ourselves better- to know the One in us. Maybe it really is just that simple.

After lunch and buying a new pair of yoga pants- left all my clean ones at home by mistake- we settled into an afternoon of deep discussion.  John launched into the second stanza which mentions the shaktichakra- wheel of Shakti. John described the wheel as literally the wheel of time, of climbing apex and dissolution. So when the Absolute manifests, time is the result of the Absolute becoming aware of succession: the passing of time. Therefore everything manifested has a sequence-how does that happen? How out of pure consciousness which has no limit, no time, any sequence- comes this deep order of nature?

Quote

“Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.”

Rumi