Separation
Yoga is a Gift, generously offered from India to the world, it helps us to deal with the tangible ‘reality’ of what it is to be an incarnated Human and how to learn & evolve using the particular circumstances we’ve each been given as our cirriculum! The philosophy of Yoga guides us to realise that we are, in fact, the Infinite Awareness which observes the Human Life that we’re living AS WELL as the Human Being…Now, while we know that this sounds like a paradox, fear not, this alleged ‘knowing’ is just your mind trying to make sense of a linguistic explanation of the Union, Integration or ‘Yoga’ which is already perfectly present and the confusion comes when we attempt to define & equate using the gorgeous, yet limited tool of the intellect! Are you with me so far? Of course you are! You just ‘think’ you aren’t! In other words, that which you already understand from a place more deeply wise than your academic mind, cannot be satisfactorily verbalised and so the mind picks holes in the conceptual ideology, in order to prove itself right that that which can’t be measured doesn’t exist! However, it can, we are existence itself and that’s what we connect with in our Yoga Practice.
Most of us live our lives and begin our Yoga Practice from a place of complete separation from who we truly are, we neither consider nor do we wake up to the fact that we are conditioned to act, think, work, socialise, speak, eat, etc in ways which are crafted by our families, countries, religions and cultures of origin, everything is mapped out and so we fall into those pathways without question until, there comes a time in our lives….doesn’t matter what age we are, when we, either suddenly or in fragments, start to recognise the silent depths instead of the noisy surface and yoke ourselves, not to the patterns which were manufactured for us to blindly follow but rather, to the Truth of our Potential.
Then we, especially those of us already in a Spiritual Practice, begin to engage in that Practice from a place of integration and the, in our case, Yoga becomes more authentic and in turn so too does the expression of ourselves. I remember hearing a recording of Alan Watts describing the Western attempt to intellectualise the Eastern Teachings as ‘Eating the Menu instead of the Meal’ How Excellent this is! It’s exactly what we do and when we bring the Practices into the realm of language, not only do we separate ourselves from the deeper experiences, we also create more separation within ourselves…..and when we remind ourselves that Yoga is a method for integration….why on Earth would we practise it from DISintegration?!!! Valid question isn’t it?!!
I observe it in all people, myself included, we journey through our relationships thinking ‘I am this and they are that’ separating & alienating ourselves from each other, I see it in the Asana Practice (Yoga Postural Stuff) often we’ll practise from a separation between mind & body, we do our Sun Salutations and we’re thinking of what we’ll do afterwards….or even within the body itself there’s a separation between the anatomy & the energetic flow, we push ourselves into a pose which the muscles aren’t strong or flexible enough to be in and the breath goes awry, or in another way, we have a disconnection say, between the rib cage and the hips and we practise a backbend from THAT kind of separation and not only fortify disconnection but risk injury! CRAZY….we are crazy little beings….practising a beautiful ethos of Unity from all sorts of separations! It’s kinda funny though and indeed we shouldn’t take ourselves tooooo seriously, it’s good to laugh at this stuff, humour facilitates our ability to self-improve and ditch our bad habits with a flavour of Love and Love is at the root of all worthwhile Practices!
So, invite yourself to merge, to see opportunities where separation can grow into collaboration as you open to a higher standard of focus, this is our Practice, let’s integrate the mind & body, the breath, the intention, our communities and ultimately our Souls….because we’re already ONE anyway….we might as well wake up to it and enjoy!
