"Stop Looking, Start Living."

-Mark Whitwell

My idea of what it means to be a yogi has been expanded by the fact that today I spent 3 hours in Macy's shopping for shoes.

Yes, I spent 3 hours picking out heels to wear to my friends wedding. It took 3 hours because heels are something I never buy, and since I was deciding between two dresses. Mostly, it took 3 hours because some aspect of the feminine in me just wants to look really good.

So how did this challenge my idea of what a yogi is? I'm just usually less the girly type and more the kind who goes to Kirtan, like last night's chanting with Suzanne Sterling, a badass blonde from Los Angeles who can amp a room of people into a tizzy of dancing and freedom. I'm also someone who has spent the last 6 years putting Sadhana- or spiritual practice- above anything else. Like, not going out on Friday night because I want to sit. And that's how I've understood what spirituality is.

So, the shoes- along with the whole new side of me that is emerging that wants to be beautiful, adorned, a little softer- at times feels like a swerve off the yogic path. My old ways, parts of me that care deeply about expanding, serving, making a positive change, feel threatened. Will this new side take over? And wait,

I've always thought it was practice, hard work, and service that = spirituality.

Really, is attending Kirtan more spiritual than shopping for shoes, and why? I consider things in my life worthwhile if they are geared towards God, the benefit of All, Light- whatever you call it-

but is my concept of what is God-ly too contracted?

Stewing over whether I'm turing into a monster, I remembered something read at Bhaktifest, a yoga festival held in Joshua Tree, California, that I recently attended. A sweet-singing, sari-adorned Kirtan walla commanded the attention of her audience as she read the "19 Inherent Qualities of Radha." It is (to some) a description of the Divine Feminine. The qualities are:

Boundless love

Sacrifice competing with that Love

Universal Compassion

Changing emotional nature

Selflessness

Sweetness of Speech

Expansive Generosity

Simplicity

Helping Nature

Clarity of Intellect

Dispassion of Volcanic Power

Magnetic Purity

Childlike heart

Motherly Concern

Moon-like coolness

Softness of a flower

Himalayan power of will

Sacred Nature of the Ganges

Merged in Bliss

Whoa!

Look how MULTI-FACETED divine Radha is. In this picture of the Feminine there are so many opposites! Radha is at one moment cared for (softness of a flower), and the next moment caring (motherly concern). She is both of this world (changing emotional nature) and of another (Sacred Nature of the Ganges). As is called for in the moment. And I'll bet she can switch on a dime.

And ALL these qualities of hers fall under the umbrella of 'divine.' Like Radha, perhaps the different aspects of myself- instead of threatening each other- are actually meant to compliment one another. One can feed PRANA (life force) to another if I allow them to.

Radha and her 19 divine qualities are helping me widen my idea of what a yogi is, of what being spiritual is. Think of what you consider to be "non yogic" in your life- is there actually room for it somewhere?

Patanjali says that yoga is the stilling of the mind, yogas ctta vrtti nirodha- not one activity or the other. The mind can be still doing any number of things-

whether I'm chanting the name of the divine or buying patent leather heels for a wedding.

I can keep my deepest intentions close.

We are allowed to start living, yoga goes with everything.

finding the holy in what I choose to do

I make it holy.