I remember hearing someone say to me years ago, “You know you have babies if you drink your morning coffee in the shower”. The funny thing was that having a coffee in the shower was so normal to me.
I had been practicing yoga for years before I got married and had children. During those early years, the popular yoga image was so drastically different than the yoga I was living. Instead of sitting alone on the beach in padmasana, I was between diapers and dishes trying to find bliss. I felt separate from this popular image of yoga. I began to feel alienated from yoga.
When my children were first born, shifting from my self-centered universe was often a frustrating, love filled journey. I loved them more than I loved myself. But it required an adjustment to accept some of the aspects of having no time to think about myself, or to even think at all.
It became impossible for me to keep up almost any of the life I used to have.
Two worlds were in collision, unable to align harmoniously. I was fighting to balance preserving the old sense of myself and dedicate all my love to my children. I exhausted every avenue, and gave up hope of any sort of resurrection. My only choice became surrender. It was dark. But that’s when I saw a spark. The path of least resistance began to unfold before me.
Karma literally means action. To do our duty or to devote our actions for their sake alone. Without concern for rewards. As a means to connect with the Divine.
Do your duty but do not concern yourself with the results. – Baghavad Gita
Surrender to the path the universe was holding out before me but that I could not see. Letting go of the illusion of control. Trusting in the bigger picture and how it would unfold. Releasing my mind from the bondages of definitions and ideas. That’s what the karma of being a mother taught me – the love and devotion of being a mother.
When I was too tired to keep holding on to old ideas, too exhausted to try to be anything other than who I was, that’s when the lessons of karma kicked in.
They say a child’s soul choses the parent. Because it is in that parent that they can best unfold and blossom into their dharma. They say that some people need to have children so they can learn the importance and the beauty of setting their ego aside to emerge with more compassion and experience of interconnectedness through the lessons taught by love.
The path of karma yoga enabled me to embody everything I was. To see the freedom a simple shift in awareness can bring.
It is sometimes in surrender that you find love is all that’s left. It gives you the strength to devote. To devote to love. And in the process of devotion, without being aware of direction, that direction reveals itself. Old patterns clear. New paths can begin to unfold. Daily life becomes infused with divine perspective.
Samantha Howick
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