I am not a scholar but I can claim being a seeker.  At 12 years old, I started reading Psychology Today to try to understand why people’s minds work the way that they do.  More important to me, why were the people around me so crazy?  I have enjoyed seeking.  I did a Fire Walk in the 80’s to see if mind over matter was true.  it was. You would say that I am an ordinary person living life the best way that I can.  Somewhere around 20 years old at Rutgers University, I took a yoga class.  In my forties now, it is obvious to me that the path of yoga is most extraordinary.  Yoga is available to you just as exercise or available to you to be in union with something more.  I think it is a VERY good thing that yoga is many things to many people.   As a seeker, not a scholar, I recognize that yoga has so much in common with other spiritual texts and views of modern mystics.  BUT what draws me in and draws in so many ordinary people is that it is accessible, doable, non-dogmatic and real. 

So, go for it.  Just do a yoga class for exercise and tune out when the yoga teacher starts talking chakras. OR be completely into the depth of yoga practice.  One way or another, yoga is extraordinary.  Yoga works to bringing peace to a wild time.

I am blogging about the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali as a seeker.  A BIG task, you say? I SOOO understand that I am only scratching the surface and that what I write is pop culture circa 2007. Yoga practice is expanding by millions of people.  Blogs are well, blogs.  I seek to practice yoga in my western life as someone in 2007 that has NOT studied Sanskrit but is dedicated to yoga practice and yoga study.  I seek to compare the ancient practice of yoga to the modern mystical path and to the culture of the time.  I hope that we laugh.  One of the best books to help us and will be referred to in this blog is The Unadorned Thread of Yoga, a compilation of translations of the yoga-sutra of Patanajaliby Salvatore Zambito.

1.1  atha yoganusasanam~~Now the teaching of yoga begins~  Patanjali practiced yoga and compiled the teachings of yoga so that the teaching of yoga would continue.  It began thousands of years ago or began today.