Retirement starts...

Monday October 1, 2012: retirement's first Monday!
Today the 2013 New Fiscal Year begins. As in 'politically hot potato': what will the nation's leaders do as regards the U.S.'s fiscal outlook and life in a world of diminishing (?) resources.

In a sense, today I no longer accrue the day's salary to a monthly payroll check: I am lawfully not working, and there is no reason to feel strange, bad or even ashamed over it (as in Mr. Romney's condemnation of the 47%). No - it is a stage in life. It is one day many look forward to. And it is one day many run away from!

I become a householder now - a role change. Wonder how that really feels...how it will really feel. After all, I started working (as in income pursuit) as far ago as 1961...phew! I worked as a "bagger" in a supermarket that had just opened in my home town of Ponce, PR. It was a new thing then - 'the modern' way, much as it is now. The beginning of the end for the corner store, 'la tienda', where groceries and other goods were purchased 'over the counter', and the purchase amount written in a black notebook, like the ones used in school, waiting for end of month to be paid off, as my parents' checks would come in. Wow - that was a long time ago!

As a way to break into it, I attended a seminar during the weekend, at my Yoga school, Kashi of Atlanta.  Check out the link here: Kashi . It was a great experience, joining 7 other participants in breath and meditation themes, taught by Senior Kashi Staff, Agni Ma and Kim Candika. To them, thanks for a great gathering: lots of breath-work, review of types of breaths, their mechanics, benefits, contraindications, and their relationship to yoga and their influence in readying the mind-body-soul for meditation. Neat!

Well, this morning I picked up Susan Thesenga's book "The Undefended Self", and as it always seems to go, themes are interrelated. I opened page 28 and my eyes fixed on: "The Goal of spiritual growth is union. Union is accomplished by 'the reunification of every piece and fragment of consciousness that has ever split itself from the original union with God." It continues: "True spiritual growth is always a unifying process. It always implies bridging a chasm, mastering a conflict, resolving a contradiction or apparent contradiction. All of life is a progression to attain further unity and eliminate more and more areas of disunity."

But isn't this - the same meaning and even the words - used by so many yoga teachers, that "yoga is union"? For example, from Wiki we read: "The interpretation of the word 'yoga' as union is the result of later, external influences that include the bhakti movement, Vedanta and Kashmiri Sivaism." In this reference, "yoga" for Patanjali meant "rest", as in "samahdi". In another wiki reference, it is written: "But the same compound is also given a technical meaning in the Yoga Sutras (2.1), designating the "practical" aspects of the philosophy, i.e. the "union with the Supreme" due to performance of duties in everyday life^[9]".

English: Male figure in a "yogic" (?) posture, 
surrounded with animals, resonating with the images of the later Hindu god Shiva. 
Mold of a seal from the Indus valley civilization, 2500-1500 BC

Isn't this neat?: i.e., thru the performance of duties in everyday life one can attain "union"...wow! So that now, as a retiree - including the chores that life may throw at me, including those of 'householder' - term rich in meaning also for Eastern Traditions - life becomes a spiritual practice in which a unifying process is going on, getting aware of "the good, the bad and the ugly" within - including conflicts - and, instead of walking away from them, exploring them, bringing them out, unifying them (melting them inwardly, as we say in yoga class), where they "stop looming so large so that we can transform them, and welcome them back into our total being" (p.28).

The author puts it clearly: "The developed aspects of ourselves welcome into consciousness the undeveloped parts ready to come into awareness. All human beings, however evolved, have human flaws. No one is immune from the blindness and the limitations of the human condition. ...The undeveloped aspects are brought into incarnation for purification and our spiritual task is to focus specifically on these faults in order to transform and integrate them." (p.29)

Is that a wink?

I thought retirement was 'work-free'; seems it is not.
 ...
Well, I better start 'bagging'. 
 ...
Welcome, retirement!!!