Luxury Yoga

Only in places like Boulder do you see this signage.  You want to learn how to be happy, fulfilled, deepened or whatever you read about yoga, but you don't want any suffering, this is for you.  You will be pampered in your transformation.  This has an appeal for many, but it is neither yoga or transformation.  All paths have the cross whether it refers to cross or not.  The Buddha says all life is suffering as part of the four noble truths.  You do not escape suffering in a spiritual path.  Nirvana is not about being free of suffering.  The spiritual path is recognizing what brings the suffering, finding a way not to let its energy control you, and then become a deeply loving person.  Example: You are unfulfilled, unhappy.  It is the world's fault. Escape, buy more stuff, exercise more, drink/drugs, move or whatever.  These solutions bring no diminishment of misery.  You get on a spiritual path.  You discover you are selfish and self-centered, full of fear.  Then you begin, in the spiritual process to learn to let go of this energy so it does not control your response to the world.  You now become more loving.  This is a suffering, but transformed.  Suffering in selfless love, not co-dependence, is quite transforming.  This is the cross.  A yogi knows this.  Just because you "do" yoga, does not make you a yogi, any more than becoming baptized makes you a transformed Christian, or Bar-Mitzvah makes you a transformed Jew.  It is hard daily work.  But it is not a luxury.  It is a necessity if you want happiness, or as we say in my religion, "eternal life."