When I took my Yoga Teacher Training with Prasad Ragnekar ten years ago, and in the following lectures I have attended with him, he always emphasizes the importance of creating clarity in our life. In the context of Yoga, clarity is important to reduce stress and distress and thus develop a calmer state of mind. We cannot reach self realization, as far as I understand, with a mind that is “all over the place”.
I have written before that one of the aspects of Yoga that appeals most to me is Yoga of Meditation, precisely because I know how noisy my mind is, so when Prasad talked about clarity, it made sense. Like oftentimes, back then, I thought, I get it, easy! However, clarity requires more reflection that I first understood.
Clarity isn’t just thinking “I want this chocolate, I take this chocolate.” Clear! Done! This want needs to go through the process of me reflecting first, is eating chocolate in line with what I think a healthy diet is? Am I hungry now? How many sweets have I eaten today already? How much does this chocolate cost? Does anyone else want this chocolate?
Ok, silly example, but maybe you get my point? I am lucky enough to have a Sangha, and this Spring, we’ve been discussing values. We’ve been exploring individually and in our gatherings what our core values are and how they influence our lives. I have come to realize, that many of us grow up in homes where we don’t talk explicitly about values. This was the role of religious institutions in the old days, but as many people, in the West at least, we have taken distance from these institutions, and thus we have lost the place to talk about what is at the core of our actions unless we have a conscious relationship to them.
When I studied The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, I decided that my core value was to be “ahimsa” or no harm, and it has been very useful in many situations, but it hasn’t been enough. Therefore, I believe that sitting down with a list of values and reflecting on which are my top 5 and why is a useful exercise to create clarity. Actually, some recommend no more than two, but I think that 5 should be fine. Maybe, if we look at the top two, we realize that the remaining three are derived or result from the top two.
So, lately, I reflect about this a lot! What are my core values, and how can I better use them to lead me in my walking through life? They are useful to create clarity while planning short and long term, and also to make decisions in my everyday life. They are also useful when facing challenging situations because I can use them as a reference to how I want to act.
Brené Brown writes in Atlas for the Heart that “language has the power to define our experiences”. Therefore, I believe we can create better clarity by spending time putting words to what drives us. Maybe there is some discrepancy between what we believe in (values) and what we do. Looking at a list of values, exploring their meaning and reflecting on how they look like in practice can help us expand our awareness in our own lives.
In the same book, Brené Brown explores different emotions and their influence in our mind and actions. She is convinced that the more knowledge we have about the different nuances each emotion described has, the more capable we are to understand ourselves. It has been said in different contexts that emotions are messengers. Me experiencing an emotion is a result of a thought process inside me, and Marshall Rosenberg explains in his book, Non Violent communication that an emotion is always a result of a need. Brené Brown seems to agree with this, we are encouraged to explore our emotions and strive towards understanding where they come from. If we can recognize the emotion and the need behind it, we can often break the pattern of trigger-emotion-(undesired)reaction-regret-repeat. This also brings clarity of mind, because we, ideally and eventually stop banging our heads towards the wall every time a specific trigger happens and an emotion arises.
I don’t know about other people, but I am a constant flow of emotions. For years I have tried to suppress the ones that have been source of distress for myself and others, guess what, it hasn’t worked! So, now, I am invested in creating clarity for myself about what these emotions try to tell me, what I can do about them, and which (few, as few as possible) expectations do I need to be clear about with my environment to live in line with myself and my values. Which choices I can make to reduce the unnecessary flow of thoughts and distress in my mind based in the clarity created by reflecting on my values and my needs.
I am excited to give this thought experiment a try. It seems easier for me to create clarity with a “map” in my hands.
Yoga of Mukti 