Really Knowing

Last weekend I spent hours sitting with a group of yoga teachers longing to delve more deeply into the practice through the advanced yoga training. The training is set up so we meet every Wednesday night and one weekend each month. We began at the very end of August. In that short time I have watched as the deep longing to train has evolved into a deeper knowing not only of the practice, but of themselves and of each other.

This past weekened, we discussed and contemplated, ruminated even, on the deepest level of our experience of being human that is the experience of joy. Not pleasure, but joy that is separate of experience itself and is eternal, unchangeable by circumstance. An experience of being that penetrates the layers of physical circumstance, or emotion or thought, and offers us a peace that passes outer understanding. This joy, it is said, is the ultimate knowing that comes from resting in our beingness that is connected to the whole of life, larger than ourselves and connected deeply to one another. Connected to God.

One of the women posed the question, How do we teach this to our youth? How do we teach them of this understanding of joy when life often seems so futile and so heavy for them?