Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.
Brilliant!
Like the grain of sand that becomes the oyster so too is the illness, the imperfection, or the improbable life-circumstances that beset us and therefore makes us perfect. Truthfully, it is not our problems that make us perfect but the practice we must develop to problem-solve around them that does. Choose a problem, any problem, and whether or not that problem ever resolves, in working toward overcoming (or sometimes simply yielding to it) you will be put on a path of understanding and mastery that will illuminate all your gifts, that will enlarge your soul, and will teach you more about the Universe and yourself than any other thing. An easy life free of problems does not ask you to give birth to that immense but perhaps latent power within you, the being of light within.
The university decal I want for the back of my ride is one that says I attended Knocks University, The School of Hard Knocks. And if you’ll forgive the dad joke (I am a dad now and those come readily), it's actually quite true that those things that have taught me the most have been my struggles and challenges. This is why one of my teachers, Judith Lasater, says, “My gurus all share my last name,” meaning that while close relationships are sometimes hard, they are the things that will teach us most poignantly about our True Nature and place us on the path to our own understanding.
We celebrate and even embrace the natural process of our own growth through our challenges as we bask in the heat of our own transformation through our yoga postures. Knowing and celebrating that we are all imperfect allows us to practice yoga without any end in mind other than simply practicing. The same way that we are not perfect, none of our poses can be perfect. Or better said, we and the poses we express are all perfect in their imperfections, the well-earned pearls of our textured existence.
Come and celebrate your own divine nature through your imperfections and see how the light gets in.