Dharma and Grace

get it? it's a play on dharma and greg..maybe not that funny and I didn't watch the show..anyways...all two of you readers don't faint that I am writing again so soon.

Being the yogi that I am, I have heard this word dharma thrown around a lot. Over the years I have been studying yoga, I have never really understood what dharma means, at least not in a way that I could explain it to anyone else. I believe it is a Buddhist term or teaching and the other day in an on-line yoga magazine there was an article about dharma. I thought to myself, here we go again, I wish I could "get" this but as I read it to my surprise I got it. Your dharma is your life path.
For me, yoga draws me closer toward my dharma, it helps me be centered, in tune with myself and more aware of what is happening right now. It helps me begin to quiet my mind or at least begin to create enough separation that I can listen to what is circling through my mind as opposed to just being the thoughts, or letting them run wild. Some might argue that our life path is whatever path we are on, but you know when you are on your life path and when you are not. It's that little voice inside your head that reminds you, after you said something not nice about someone or did something deceptive, etc...that you should have made a different choice. So, in my great epiphany of what dharma is I had this aha moment of knowing what at least a piece of my dharma is...listening to people's stories. It may sound simple enough, but I think sometimes its hard, to sit with someone in a time when they are struggling and just listen, without judgement, without expectations, without needing to fix it...just listening. I find I am often times a magnet for this (which sort of drives my husband crazy). But, I don't mind (the being the magnet part that is). I feel like I embody the most grace when I can carve out the space in my life to give someone else just what they need and for me, I feel like it's something beyond me. I get to feel connected to something greater than myself, and I think that is really what dharma is all about...staying on our life path because it helps us to be our best self.
Which brings me back around to my last post about facebook, I sort of think there is a correlation here...I think people want to feel connected to something bigger than themselves, isn't that why we are here? And so, facebook, in our busy lives, moving so quickly in so many different directions at the same time, gives us the opportunity to feel connected to someone or something else, even if its in a quick, sometimes superficial, kind of way.