I do believe we have lost our way…
Expectations are a dangerous business; unavoidable as they may be. For example. I teach yoga. It is my life, it is what I do, what I know and how I survive. Who would you expect me to be? Perhaps I should have the right kind of voice, be vegan, never drink, never get angry etc etc etc. You get the idea. Often times our expectations of others come from the attempt to satisfy our own needs. We walk into a studio looking for something; soft music in the background, calming candles and complete benevolence. A respite from the world outside. We need this, desperately seek it and come to expect it. It is disconscerting to think that our yoga teacher, of all people may have been flipping the person off in the car next to theirs on the way to the studio, ( I of course never do this… ) or having the type of day that drives us all to the mat in the first place. We have come to believe that the practice of yoga is all of these things. That meditation, spirituality and enlightenment are brought about by the absence of mess. By the candles and the sage themselves; and the more of these things you have, the more of this you project, the farther on “the path” you are. I do believe we have lost our way… Not because I believe everyone is broken or because I don’t like candles and music; rather because I believe we have confused these things with the heart of the practice. The meditation is not the environment. The balance and compassion are not brought about by the presence of water features ( lovely as they may be ). It is us. The practice is us; showing up to our mats days in, years out, in the spaces where grace is with us and the moments when we feel most abandond by it. It is not something we buy or something we create. It is who we are at the deepest core of our being. Truth told, compassion is found when one human recognises themselves in another. Perhaps it is true; we are all one. Not because every action is something to be forgiven, or because we love all things all the time; but because of the complete opposite. Because we all know how hard it is to frogive and have struggled with it ourselves. My most profound teachers are not those who are enlightened beings although I revere and am grateful for them everyday. My most profound teachers are those around me who wake up to struggle I can only dream of, and keep going. Some days it is with a smile on their faces and some days not so much. The teachings are not the trappings. Living our yoga does not mean we have no ailments. It rather describes how we approach them. When everything goes wrong in a day do we fall apart or breathe through it and find a way to make it flow. I believe we learn in the trenches. That is where we open our hearts and where we have the chance to be human in it’s most beautiful form; raw!
This entry was posted on Saturday, March 27th, 2010 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Anya's Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.