Yoga - A dark and beautiful path to a lifelong practice
(not for the sentimental)

Not only is nature creative, nature is destructive.

The most difficult and terrible moments of my life were in my childhood. The more mature I become, the better and lighter my mind. The ‘purer’ you could say my life becomes.

My most painful memories are of my stepfather beating my mother. She periodically went to the hospital intensive care unit. This was my childhood from 6-9 years old. It was a normal and continual experience to just watch everything and not be able to do anything. I used to fall asleep in bed with a kitchen knife, hoping to kill this person who was hurting my mother, but I couldn’t do it. I was afraid to stop him. I just prayed in front of the icons in my bedroom that everything would be fine while my mother screamed.

I didn't know then that our minds shape our reality... I didn't know then that we were forging our own destiny. I just held on to my mother, and that was the hardest part.

Later, I had another stepfather, who for the first time told me about personality, about karma, about energy. He taught me how to do the lotus position, read books, and talk confidently. But over time, this marriage also broke down and our world continued to collapse. We lost cars, apartments, money - and at the same time there always seemed to be a reason for parties, celebrations and drinking. Over time, everyone just got drunk. That stepfather was a good teacher, but not for long.

Later, when I was a mature teenager, my mother, like the Earth during a volcanic eruption, was destroying herself and everything that belonged to the family. When I'd meet her, I felt like my heart was breaking into pieces. It was crashing. I clearly remember how everything inside me was rotting...and I didn't want to live. And then I just, as usual, prayed ... (later, I realized that I should be immensely grateful to her, because she destroyed everything inside me that clings to this world).

When I was at university, my mind continued to be gloomy. I went to live with a guy who was a little better than my mother. He drank a lot, smoked a lot, was dirty and very handsome. Like a desperate Johnny Depp. Once he hit me hard in the face. I must have woken up at that moment. I started looking for a martial arts school, but I found a yoga school instead - and a great teacher Y.N. A few yoga classes and it suddenly became clear to me that everything was too dirty around me. It was too dark in the life I was living. It was time to take my life into my own hands. I left everyone.

In order to practice yoga fully and efficiently, I left my boyfriend for my grandmother. She is a long time gone from us now, but at that time, she was my island of salvation. I moved into the attic of her house, took out all the carpets, washed the floors, and immersed myself in my personal yoga practice. It was a sacred and cleansing moment in my life.

I remember how much light was in the rooms there where I was all alone. One window looked clearly to the East, the other clearly to the West. I remember the apricot trees blooming outside the west window in the spring and the bees buzzing by. Apricot trees are special to me, they accompany me everywhere in this life somehow. I remember sweating from my attempts to master the asanas, and a lot of incomprehensible things came out of me. I wanted to die before that, and then I found a way to die and be born again every day. The unbearable practice of yoga turned my days into purgatory. I kept a calendar where I evaluated the quality of my practice. Basically every day was 5 stars - with the occasional 3. The best yoga practice brought me the deepest "shavasana" (corpse pose).

During that happy period (it was the last years of my studies at university) I stopped communicating with people. I clearly remember this state, when suddenly, you no longer understand what to talk about at all. People lost all interest for me at that time. Fortunately, it was rarely necessary to appear at the university, only to hand in reports on course work.

I read a lot, I drew a lot, I covered up the mirrors so that I wouldn't look at myself or think about myself. It was clearly a sharp turn in my life. From then to now, my life has become lighter and lighter.

I have come to realize that the best period of my life is now. But not because everything is fine now. But because now is all there really is, and everything else is only in the mind... And was it all real then, or was all that just in my imagination? It's not quite clear to me anymore.

This whole life, this whole path, can be called sacred. After all, if I hadn't had all these trials in my childhood, would I be reflecting on it now... about the value of life and practice?

My mother is and was my best teacher. I was somehow very lucky to survive the mental surgery at the beginning of the journey, and to lick the wounds before I started on my own personal path.

As for the dependent children of dark souls - this is heavy karma many of us have to bear- an inevitable lesson of fate, which, if there is one, must be passed... the main thing is to remember who you are, who you were at the beginning of your story, and before.

Now for me one main rule is clear: I need to be where my heart is good. It is necessary to do things that fall easily on the soul, and not things that your intuition struggles against.

If you are afraid to follow your heart - just stop and look inside - what is the nature of this fear? Is it real? Usually - our fears have the impermanent nature of clouds.
We always need to find and act from a state of peace. And the best is when you act from a state of peace combined with inner fullness and abundance, when you realize that you are Nothing (Hiçhane /Hiçbir), and therefore you are Everything, and there is no reason to be afraid of anything.

But this is a separate conversation, which we should continue one day together with the help of the great poet Rumi.
As they say in yoga: Om Shanti

It is better to lose with Love than to win with Fear. Then Fate itself will deal with the rest..

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 I give all due respect to Mother Earth and the deep lessons from the dark (destructive) side of life