Here is my muddy story. Part of the yoga journey is that it brings its own unique way of awareness. You become aware of the “muddy” parts of you, as well as the “lighter” parts of you, ie: the good that you have done, but also the bad.
I drank in high school, quite a lot. I also didn’t know where to put the empty bottles after I drank the beer, so I threw them out the window, on the way home. Definitely knew better, but getting caught with a bunch of empty bottles of beer was enough incentive to look the other way when I trashed them. Long story short, after a sickening evening, I gave up my alcohol, not looking back a minute.
That brings me to today, 40 years later. This is how yoga works. Every action you do creates either “mud” or “light”. I know back in high school, trashing those bottles was a hassle to the home owners who had to pick them up. I had created some mud in my body, mind and life.
I love to swim every day, it doesn’t matter in what condition, I usually swim in the Little Miami River, close to my house. In my favorite swimming hole, for the past couple of years a big Rumpke trash can has found its way along the bank, and settled in amongst a dead tree. There on the bank it filled up with sand, lodged its self into the tree and stayed put, even when spring rains came, and the river rose. The other day I decided I was going to dig this out, and clean up this very pretty spot on the river, in lue of the bad karma I had planted years ago with the bottles. Got my husband, the dog, a shovel, and my suit on, and started the task.
Lord, I wish I knew how much those big trash cans can hold, because this one had concrete like silt sand and mud wedged into every crevice of that can. I began to dig, curse, shove, rock back and forth, and dig some more. After 4 hours, and a broken lid, it finally freed its self from the tree. Covered in filth, little knats were all over me, and needless to say, I was a cranky camper. While I was digging, I thought about stamping out that “bad” deed I did, so many years ago, and vowed never to do this again.
I “saw” that trash can only because I had planted some bad deeds in my life years ago. I should expect to see cleaned up areas in my life, because I had taken a drastic step in cleaning up my mind and life. You see the seeds we plant, either good or bad, never go away, unless we take action against them. In fact, seeds that you plant years ago, not only don’t go away, but they get bigger, kind of like the action of someone cleaning up maybe 30 bottles of beer, that would equal an hour of time, to 40 years later, to cleaning up a trash can along a bank that equaled 4 hours of time. Seeds get bigger over time.
When you step on your mat, you do more than stretch your body, you CLEAN it out. You clean out the clutter of your mind, and the tightness in your body, so you can reflect on the good you have done, along with the bad. This is really beautiful, because it puts us completely in charge of our destiny. We can control our future. For what you sow, you shall reap. They say the lotus flower that blooms a beautiful pedal flower comes from the muddiest part of the lake. I understand that now. if we can right our actions from the past, think on how the whole world would change from people cleaning up their past wrongs.
See you on the mat,
Paula
