Darren Main Quotes

It is easy to make the mistake of thinking yoga is about touching your toes when in fact yoga is about learning to touch others. Likewise, many people think the purpose of meditation is a perfectly still mind, when in fact, it is a more compassionate heart. Spiritual practice is measured by one's ability to ease the suffering of the world one breath at a time.

Can an atheist practice yoga? Can an agnostic sit in meditation? Absolutely! Belief in God is not a requirement for practice. The only requirement for practice is the willingness to accept that you are not God. To surrender to
the possibility that while an all-knowing God may not govern the universe, neither do you.

Gratitude is both a vaccine and an antidote for grief. Grief may be an inevitable fact of life, but gratitude has the power to transform the experience of grief from agonizing suffering to profound joy.

Try to let go of the idea that you need to do yoga perfectly in order to see its benefits. Rather, let it be a process of waking up to who you really are. If you do this, you will know joy. And that joy will be your gift to a world that very much needs our healing.

Each time we come to savasana, we practice dying - we surrender the body to the earth and prepare for our destiny in this life. Facing death and embracing mortality is the key to living. We may fear it, resist it, and spend untold hours dreading it, But our mortality is the place where our human nature comes face to face with our divine nature. In a very real sense, death is
our greatest teacher and the one true guru.

The miracle of yoga is not that we get to reshape the external world - to bend the laws of time and space. The miracle of yoga is that we get to reshape our perception of the external world. Where we once only perceived injuries, illness, and pain, we now see an opportunity for growth. Where we once perceived acrimony and discord in relationships, we are now able to experience deep empathy. Where we once perceived darkness, evil, injustice, and vexing social issues, we now perceive the opportunity to serve. Yoga is like a purifying fire that burns away false perceptions of the world and of ourselves to enable us to see clearly.

Life is a series of choices that are made in the present moment.

Fundamentalism wears many masks, but always claims a monopoly on the Truth. Many people buy into fundamentalism in much the same way people buy cola to quench their thirst. There are elements of truth in fundamentalist thinking, just as water is an ingredient in cola. But just as the water loses much of its value when artificial flavors and colors are added, Truth loses its
value when guilt, shame, and rigid dogma are present. Fundamentalism is to the soul what artificial sweetener is to the body.

We have become masters of projection - pushing the responsibility for our own thoughts outward so that the consequences of our thoughts become someone else's problem.

Yoga and meditation not only give us the ability to enjoy the beautiful moments in life, but also the ability to fully embrace the difficult and ugly moments. So often we define success in our practice by the way we feel in a given moment, but practice is never about select peak moments. Practice is about celebrating the fullness of life - the difficult and the easy, the beautiful
and the ugly, the savory and the sweet

A bird doesn't attempt to swim, and a cat doesn't attempt to fly. Yet both are
completely content. Their dharma is anchored in instinct. Humans are continually trying to live out of accord with their dharma and so contentment remains elusive.