Yoga, Awareness and the energies of the Selves
“Definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Albert Einstein
The above quote reminds me of the person who dreams of winning the lottery week in and week out - they somehow have a feeling they may win one day...only trouble is.... they never buy a ticket.
Life has so much to offer us but when we’re chained to habit, conditioned responses, and buying into world scarcity, our fears shut us down, we become fractured and stuck like a dog continually chasing its own tail, convinced that if we just do things faster, work harder, we’ll eventually ‘get’ somewhere new/be safe in the constant media story of an unsafe world. Because of this, time seems to have become a priceless commodity to be traded at the expense of ourselves: we spend time, bend time, waste time, serve time, fight time, chase time...meanwhile time keeps rolling on like a giant tsunami - finally reaching the shoreline - our time on this gentle planet all used up.
Having practiced yoga and other consciousness practices for over 25 years now, I feel I’m finally coming closer to being able to share, from my own experience and learning, the deep energetic and psychological nuances of these amazing practices and how much more in sync and friends with time and ourselves we can become through them. We actually get time to press the pause button: take time out and go inwards where all the subconscious drivers to our lives live and in that have a choice to step off that universal hamster wheel and literally inspire ourselves to a healthier way of being or just unhook and rebalance for a while from all that speed. Practices that very much mirror the same benefits of downloading a new revised programme onto a computer.
Key point to know is that it doesn’t just happen through ‘doing’ a set of yoga practices - that’s just an entry point through the gateway of the mind and body link. First, we learn to make peace with our bodies and to nurture rather than force. By cultivating time, space, patience, compassion and self acceptance of where we are at that particular time/day in our lives we learn and deepen to a new level in ourselves. Through mindful practice we connect to the ‘Witness/Observer” energies (selves) in us and become aware of the often madness, repetitive and negatively damaging nature of many of our thoughts that direct and play out in our lives.
Part two, having cultivated that 'witness' state, as we take time out on the quiet mat space and turn the beam of our focus inwards, we begin to hear and question into our judgments and to tune into the shadow selves (the disowned parts of us): maybe we don’t like the music/the silence in the class; we might feel immense fear at the thought of doing a handstand, notice we’re overly dependent on a particular style of yoga; deeply inflexibile in our hips we might one day during practice feel tearful or an old memory is triggered that feels uncomfortable and we try and push it away. We may have a judgment on the cover teacher that day; the mats being too close together in busy classes; we may dislike the choice of poses because they push our conditioned buttons of ‘not being good/bendy enough’, or we really like them because they’re the ones we’re “good at”, we get to “shine", to compete a bit, be the ‘best', maybe teacher's pet.....and in that how our egos love the up-sides - feeling our 'specialness' either on the mat or off and how good that is and right to feel it and have fun in it......and then.....
Part 3 is where we feel the down-side to the ups and realise that perhaps on some level we are addicted to those times, realising just how much of our self worth is vested in, for example, doing a pose well and that feeling of ‘specialness’ it gives....and on that firey path of judgement/button pushing, special vs ordinary, wherever we choose our lesson to come from, brings with it an element of uncomfortableness and being at our edge, our insecurities revealed to ourselves - we lie naked to our truth.
At that edge, is the house where enlightenment lives and if we truly wish to grow and learn, that's exactly the time we need to stand and feel that heat and uncomfortableness intensifying - the gift we're being given if we're brave enough to stay with it is transformation, a shifting of consciousness, a re-calibration to a new state of being - just like a phoenix rising from the ashes - but it's not for the faint of heart. In shadow lies the judge, the critic, the perfectionist parts of our personality - we're not born with these selves, but as we grew up and were educated in certain systems, we took on protectionist strategies, cultivated good critical/judgmental energies (selves) to protect ourselves from the criticism and judgment in our external worlds. Our strong intellects and good minds on auto-pilot still mistakenly believing they are protecting us and keeping us safe in fact keep us locked up in fear in the frozen ice palace of our minds - where things may make logical, practical sense but there's no juice - no spontaneity - no place to try out things and practice - with a belief running that "there's only perfect and even that can be bettered". This is all well and good in those times when these criteria are needed and called upon for discernment, maybe a good presentation etc, but unfortunately these old guardians are still rigorously running our shows in old out-dated patterns of protection - we're no longer children but grown adults able able to see things from a new empowering adult perspective if we did but know it and see beyond our projections, fears and past life stories.
Part 4 is where we realise we're entangled up in a giant spider's web - the web of illusion that the ancient teachings say Maya weaves at the edge of the universe. We find our egos and strong minds preferring known territory (however uncomfortable that may really be - there's an illusion of safety in the known lands of our stories and past experiences). At times we can grasp too fiercely to the "ups" of life, to the point we can't let ourselves fully enjoy them because we know life, just like nature, is based on impermanence, the rolling of time and everything will come and go and they too shall pass. So the 'downs' become unwanted bedfellows, that we push away and do anything to avoid being in. Maybe we only go to a certain teacher who keeps us in our comfort zones for fear of their own unconscious issues; we might change practices because the heat of what it triggers in us has become too close for comfort so instead we prefer to skim the surface, flitting like butterflies sipping up the sweet nectar, between a variety of classes and styles kidding ourselves we're getting closer to understanding ourselves. I call this the "pick n mix" road to enlightenment ;)
Part 5 is the AHA! moment of awakening. Where in all that stuff, noise and judgments unravelling in our heads, thoughts and behaviour we finally meet self-acceptance and become ok with it all. We learn to just sit and smile and find compassion for ourselves as we would a small child learning to do things for itself. We see it all for the madness that it is and the child-like emotional needs that are going unmet and playing out in us. So part 5 is about taking responsibility for ourselves: finding the adult/mature energies in us to look after those younger/vulnerable parts - and yes, how much more seductive it is to yearn to stay in child having child-like tantrums and melt downs. Without a set of practices for waking up to ourselves, we'll look instead outside for our emotional crutches, we'll be drawn to folk around us to fill the gaps and holes in us whilst failing to realise that they in turn are perhaps just as fractured as we and are looking for those same neediness holes to be filled. Tom Cruise in the movie "Jerry Springer" speaks from that exact same needy energy (self) when he says to his girlfriend "You complete me". How delicious and seductive for our egos and those 'specialness'/romantic selves in all of us, to hear such words of wholeness being mirrored back to us - WE complete someone and in that, feel complete ourselves. All beautiful and wonderfully exciting but when the shine starts to wear off in the cold light of day and the passing of time we need such practices to help find ourselves again so we can still be WE but from a healthy, non-merged, we complete ourselves perspective.
It’s all such good, rich, fertile, life-long learning that comes to us, if we’re brave enough to look inside and "simmer" a bit in the heat - otherwise we’re just sticking plasters over gaping needy wounds and spending our time trying to fill those holes with yet more 'stuff' or other people. If we can't stand to be with ourselves on our own and like what we meet there, how can we expect others to want to do the same with us? If we can't find compassion, respect and understanding for ourselves (the good and shadow parts) how can we expect the world to do it for us? The beautiful healing thing is with such tools of awareness, life gets easier, we catch our patterns quicker, we learn to walk a different path rather than ‘around the hole or keep falling in it”.
With all this comes the profound realisation that we can never beat time and there's no real end in sight - no line to cross - no certificate of completion to attain, and that, for many i have seen on this path, is quite a shocking realisation for their minds to take in. We never ‘get‘ there, we never have the lessons stop coming at us ....there’s no place to ‘get‘ to/hide in - we will continually be met by challenges (that’s the nature of life and the life of nature)....we unfold, we surrender, we peel back the protective layers, we 'own' our stuff, we meet our vulnerabilities, we get more real with ourselves and our loved ones and in that we grow to be who we truly are - not a big bag of beliefs, tribal patterning, fears and habitual responses, but an integrated human being: awake to our neediness and our games and strategies, with new tools and choices and in that we live from an expanded not contracted space, where time itself becomes more full and abundant as we find ourselves living out of who we truly are today, right now, not living out of our histories. In that living, comes the 'goal' of a yoga practice - Moksha - freedom - and when that time comes that our wave finally reaches its shoreline and we disappear back into the collective consciousness of anti-matter we will feel we learnt, we grew, we lived a life worth living.
As Gabrielle Roth once wrote:
"it may sound self indulgent: war is raging, and you are doing yoga. But cultivating a practice that opens you up to the direct experience of war and peace in your own body in an honourable and even necessary way to go. The ego is the force that gets us into global messes as well as personal ones. It sees the world in black and white, good and evil, left and right. It has to be pro or con it can never just be......Freedom comes when you are receptive to the voices of the oppressed, whether they be your hips, your mother, or down-trodden people. Through deep listening comes right action".
