Running

Yesterday I went running, headphones in listening to "the Voice of Knowledge."
I stopped running.
What are the truths I have learned to believe? I need to be capable, responsible, perfect to be loved. I got good grades and never felt they were good enough, I ran and never came first. I never got tall, or developed larger boobs. My body was not beautiful enough. I climbed and never was the best, I wrote a book and it wasn't a best seller. I married and now I am divorced.
I was running, despite the pain in my low back, not for fun, but for fitness. I was running to try to make this body stronger, leaner and better. I was running so I would maybe be loved by others. As Swami Rama points out, when we do something not for the joy but the outcome, we are never happy in the end, because the outcome can never make us happy, only the path does.

As I prepare for a week of Yoga with Rod Stryker, I see how much self-rejection is happening. Do i need to be more content, which of my bad habits should I change, what should my goal be? My goal is to love myself as I am, to appreciate the degree of practice I do, the contentment I have; accepting all of me as I am and allowing, not beating myself into more and more truth.

Today I will do as my heart wants. I will sand if that is done with joy in my heart. I will discern the difference in feeling good while challenged and bad and uncomfortable. I will do my duty, which is to follow the love in my heart, even when it is tinged in sorrow.