Divine.

The word of the day is divine. It's a weighty word. What meaning does the word divine evoke? Think on that for a bit.

Holy, spiritual, something else? Sure, why not.

Words adapt with culture. They are like tiny myths and stories that evolve over time. You can garner an interesting perspective when you explore the etymology of a word.

If we go back in time a bit, the word divine at one point meant "to conjure," "to guess," or "to make out by supernatural insight." Think of the word "seer" or "soothsayer." Interesting! Nothing too holy there.

If you travel even farther back, divine harkens to the word deus, or, "deity." The farthest back I can find is the root word dyeu, which just means "to shine."

Divine means just to shine!

I love this. To be divine is to radiate something--to emit. From an internal locus, you to turn to, participate in, and be alive in the world. It isn't an exclusive club, or something for only the uber pious. We can all do that. We all do that already. It's called waking up!

In the yoga tradition, Surya is the lord of the sun. He is the great emitter. He is not cryptic or unavailable; he is accessible to all. Look up and he's there. Surya represents an overtly visible form of the divine; you can plainly see him day by day by simply showing up in the world. He is a reminder that we all emit.

If that's our definition of divine, we are all certainly conjuring and shining in yoga. No extra effort needed. We step into the fullness of a self-driven experience. We gather, create something, and emit bit of heat, austerity, and effort. We turn to our own sun, to our own divinity, to ourselves.

Just being here, in this space, on this earth, today, now, is divine. We organically shine in the beautiful complexity that is life and its movement. We turn to the world and turn to ourselves as recognition of our own capacity and divinity.

Showing up to the ritual is enough. Showing up to your life is enough. May the heat and purity of your practice that you create mean something to you. May all of your movements remind you that you already shine!