Recently I went to a yoga workshop (shocking i know, you'd think I'd be workshopped out by now, but i can't get enough). It was at Sanctuary for Yoga in Nashville. Martin Kirk was the guest teacher. I'm always a bit hesitant about the beginning part of the workshops, the time when the teacher lectures. Sometimes I agree with what they say, sometimes I don't. I am just careful because of my faith as a Christian not to get wrapped up into the self awareness and discovery parts of yoga. I don't want to claim to have a lot of knowledge. I think it's much better for me to give God the glory and encourage people to find their strength in Him. I've found that when it's about me, I get disappointed every time. When it's about God, there's no chance for failure. He won't ever let me/you down. Yoga for me is a time to meditate and focus on what God is doing. I don't empty my mind. Instead, I concentrate on the cross on other things that lift me higher. I'd rather fill my mind with the thought of a wonderful thing than empty it.
Anyway, back to the point of this post. I was pleasantly surprised when workshop teacher Martin used The Wizard of Oz in his talk. Now that got my attention, using one of my favorite movies and relating it to yoga and more importantly, life. He stressed that sometimes we search for something, when it was there all along, when we already had it. For example, Dorothy stepped onto the yellow brick road, on a search for the wizard. She thought the wizard would bestow knowledge on her, give her something better than what she had.
As everyone knows, the wizard was a disappointment to Dorothy. Long story short, he was a fraud and had no power. Dorothy suddenly became disenchanted with Oz and suddenly desperately wanted to go home. It dawned on her how wonderful life in Kansas really was. She had already been happy, but it took comparing Kansas to Oz and being away from her family for her to realize this. She pleaded with Glinda, the Good Witch to help her get home. Glinda the Good Witch told her, “You don’t need to be helped any longer. You’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas.” She told Dorothy that all she had to do was click her heels again and she'd be home. Dorothy was stunned, and so was the scarecrow. “Why didn’t you tell her?” Scarecrow asked. “Because she wouldn’t have believed me. She had to learn it for herself.”
So too have I embraced this concept. As I get older, I'm realizing that what I want most in life I already have. Faith, family, friendships. Everything else is secondary and only further enhances my already incredibly high state of happiness. Not to say that I don't wish for things and sometimes want to click my heels and go to a faraway place, but when it comes down to it, I always end up clicking my heels at the end of the day (or at the end of a trip when I am physically somewhere else on my travels) and saying "There's no place like home, there's no place like home."
