Ms. Morris and Cyber Dharma

Ms. Morris and Cyber Dharma


I have never meet her. Her teachings have I stumbled across via the web. Yet her recommendations have shaped how I practice yoga. One thing that I feel very fortunate to receive is e-mails from her this one which I will share with ya'll really touched me.....more so now that I rediscovered my spiritual roots.

Sometime ago.....last year I think I wrote a letter to Ms. Morris (one of the best and most honest yoga teachers in the Jivamukti lineage) and she gave me an amazing response.....one which I know keep on my alter....I hope her words will help someone else in their journey in becoming the best version of themselves.

for more info or FREE downloads please go to

www.kellymorrisyoga.com

Hello

Please help..... I used to be a devout jivamukti yoga
practitioner -- I loved it. Twice a day could not ever
stop chanting or doing asanas. I was a veggie eater.
Read all I could about animals and ahimsia. One day it
died. I just stopped caring about yoga, ahimsa. I was
an aspiring Jivamukti teacher....I wanted to help
others wake up from illusion --- but within 24 hours the
thought of sweating to some bob dylan while I stretched
my hamstrings made my eyes roll. This brings us to the
present movement I feel that I am at a cross road I
can leave this path that I have done for six years (I
started in High school and I am now 23) or eat meat
like the rest of America and vote republican. I think
at the heart of it is I am scared to take that leap
into fully living my yoga because I feel it will
alienate me from my friends and family who are already
puzzled enough when I choose cranberry juice at
cocktail hour. Do you have any advice? Have you ever
been through this?

Thanks
Chris


Dear Chris,

Namaste! Thank you for your thoughtful and funny letter.

It sounds as though your loss of yoga has alienated you more than the loss of friends/family ever could. Anyone who has ever chosen the spiritual path does so, almost always, at the expense of society and all it holds valuable.

On the other hand, if friends aren't supportive than one could say they were never really friends to begin with. If you make your path as small as concern over cranberry juice, then the big picture will always escape you.

You are the being who will save the world. Losing all interest in
ahimsa, animals and so on suggests to me that your commitment was insecure at best; I say this gently, because it is often the case at Jiva that students are seduced by the fanfare, the dramatics, the passion and so take on beliefs and values they have not fully explored or digested and made their own.

Many students there are searching for answers and the spiritual thirst is such that even a drop of something better than what they have will suffice, for a little while. Eventually, the student casts off what starts to feel like another cultural imperative and wonders what happened.

Let's just say that 'waking up from the illusion' involves more than
simply being vegan, voting non-republican and listening to Dylan. Those injunctions reflect Jiva's highly personal agenda; aside from ahimsa, none of things you mentioned have much to do with yoga, they have to do with politics. Yoga goes much deeper and wider than their idiosyncratic, narrow understanding.

I started teaching over ten years ago. If you think the social climate now is tough for yogis, try back then. I was disinherited from my family, I marginalized at cocktail parties for years and still today, often people place me somewhere between a manicurist and an aerobics instructor.

Who cares? We have bigger fish to fry. Your life is almost over and
soon,when you are on your deathbed, struggling for your last breath, you will look back on your life and ask yourself what it stood for. You are young now, so it may not have caught up with you yet how brief your time here will be. The yogi is constantly striving to understand where their world is coming from, to help other people and to reach enlightenment quickly, for the sake of all sentient beings. Until we do that, anything we do to take care of others is flawed and remedial.

I don't know if this helps at all. I hope that it does. The fact that
you care at all is extraordinary; most people don't.

Blessings,
Kelly

May we only plant the very best seeds, may the world then bloom with
compassion and kindness, may we hold the teachings always.