what I'm reading at the end of tomorrow's yoga class

In the worldly life, one needs money to pay the rent or mortgage, to pay for transportation, insurance, clothes and other necessities. Without money, one cannot get these things.

But, there is a limit to what one can buy. One can buy a fountain pen, but one can't buy the ability to write. This, one has to acquire oneself. This experience cannot be bought.

One may pay for someone's help for just about anything you can imagine, but the help given by friends and family is something different. It is given with feeling. This feeling cannot be paid for with anything. It can only be given.

Likewise, in yoga and meditation, there are books and DVDs to give you knowledge, and knowledge certainly IS valuable. But more and more and more knowledge does not guarantee a deeper, richer or more freeing yoga or meditation practice.

Unless you make it to the path, knowledge of that path is not going to help much.

Instead, it's helpful to couple knowledge with regular attempts to teach the brain to follow the breath. Cultivating a hint of care-free joy within the practice is also helpful -- joy unencumbered by fears of whether a pose is imperfect; joy free from concerns that you are doing certain poses worse than you did them last week, last month or last year.

Joy that is free from any expectations that we put on ourselves, or expectations we imagine others are placing on us.

*adapted from the beginning of chapter 13 of Good Company by Sri Shantanand Saraswati