I've recently been re-reading this book because of one of my students, a very intelligent and devoted yogi named Gayle. As part of Black Dog Yoga's Level 2 Teacher Training, Gayle asked me to be her mentor (what an honor!). So I asked her what book she wanted us to immerse in for the next year and she suggested this one. Now we are both diving, immersing, contemplating this most sublime text together. 

I gave her some homework about this first sutra, what it meant, to define every word, and to journal what it means that we are innately free; That the Consciousness which creates, sustains, dissolves and is embedded in every  particle of the universe, is inherently free.

Since I'm also immersing myself in this text, I too have been thinking about how no matter what we go through in our lives, we are free enough to choose how to align to the highest, at every given moment.  We are so free that when we go to a yoga class, we can align biomechanically with nature, or not. We are so free that in our day to day lives, we can as well as align our hearts to the wisest, most generous aspect of our being. We are so free that we can align the physical to the subtle; the individual self to the universal self.

We are free enough that we can choose to see the light in others, and reflect it back.

Last night, I went up to the roof of my apartment building -as I've been doing all this week- to look at the moon. Last night was Guru Purnima, and as I looked at the moon, so fat, so yellow, so bright, so powerful, I remembered that the moon not only receives the light of the sun, but it reflects it back completely. 

May I reflect back the light that my teachers have so generously shared with me.

May I reflect the best part of me, even when I'm tired, sad, in a bad mood.

May I remember my breath as I attempt the most difficult asanas.

May I remember that no matter what has happened to me, I am so free, I can choose how to perceive it.

May I remember that I am free.