I just finished reading Anna Karenina, for the second time. I read it about five years ago and absolutely fell in love with it - and Tolstoy. I always find after finishing a book like this (insanely long) that a few days after putting it down I start to miss the characters. They've been a part of my life for so long, and then all of a sudden they're just gone.
The last two paragraphs of the book made me skip a breath.
There's something about this that makes me think about yoga. And yes, I know that all I think about lately is yoga. But there was a change that I thought would just drop down upon me as soon as I started to seriously practice yoga. Like all of a sudden I would just 'get it' and become enlightened.
And that didn't happen.
Changes, have happened over time. But slowly. Organically. Breath by breath. I'm still me, with all my flaws and indulgences, just now with more awareness, with more tools in my belt to bring about the good. Does this make sense?
Maybe Leo should take it from here.
"This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the feeling for my child. There was no surprise in this either. Faith--or not faith--I don't know what it is--but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul.
"I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it."
Now what am I going to read?
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