Gurupurnima happens every year on the full moon in July and is and a time to honour and celebrate the guru principle. The guru principle is anything that connects us with an experience of that which is bigger than our limited sense of ourselves. The word guru is often associated with a person but viewed in a broader way the guru principle can come in so many forms … I find the natural world offers the experience of the guru principle in abundance! Having returned from Malaysia on Saturday I have been reflecting on the ways I felt blessed by the guru principle, particularly when we visited Bako National Park in Borneo. We were lead by a guide who was so deeply connected to the elements, to the land, the trees, plants, the waterways, the snakes, frogs, the many species of monkeys. He moved with a springy lightness over the roots and round the rocks. He was quiet and observed and pointed out what we did not immediately see. Our time there felt as though it connected me to an expanded sense of the world, and to a sense of timelessness. The guru principle lifts the cloaks (known in yoga as the Kanchukas) that conceal us from the unlimited sense of the capital ‘S’ Self. Kala is the cloaking of the eternal nature of our essence and results in us feeling bound by time and that we need don’t have enough time and can result in our constant rushing through our days. Our practices of yoga can help open up our experience of time so we literally feel more spaciousness and even a sense of timelessness. Oliver Sacks speaks of this as the experience of ‘deep time’.
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