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My daily practice

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The mind spreads like a big blanket throughout the day
Covering all the areas of our life that require our attention
Once a day, morning or evening, I unroll my mat
My mat is my space where I can slowly fold the blanket
My mat is the place where I can get a taste of my inner strength
My mat is the place where I create the space to see
That everything I need is inside me
My mat is the place where I pray to God to give me the courage
To meet the world with the right attitude
Allow me to be brave
Allow me to be kind
Allow me to be curious
Remind me to be and let be

We all live in the practical world where quite a lot is expected from us, both by those around us and mostly by ourselves. We often feel we need to be better, stronger, improve is the mantra we all go around repeating in our heads.

The yoga practice – asana and/or meditation- can be a vacation from this. The yoga practice can be the time of the day where we are more curious than expecting. We observe our body, we observe our breath, and with care and patience, we move for our general well-being. We can strengthen, we can stretch, we can refine, but for the health of the body and mind.

We can learn to be kind to ourselves on the yoga mat, we can learn to see our weaknesses and our strengths. We can practice acceptance of the weaknesses, and patience to refine our strengths.

We can learn to calm our minds, and to connect with our inner love. We can touch the inner peace. With practice, with awareness, and with patience we will little by little take with us small pieces of these states of mind to our practical life. From the yoga mat can all good things grow inside ourselves, and like a tree spreading its branches to give shadow, shelter and its fruits, we will also be able to share in the practical world.

Reflection on death, love and life right now

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A very dear friend died this week. He opened the doors of his home when I was a young adult (or an old child), he shared his culture with me, helped me learn the language, and opened my horizons to other ways of seeing the world.

I hadn’t seen him in the last five years since we no longer live in the same country, but we stayed in contact through social media. He would write a message from time to time with a picture from where he was, or what he was doing, and I would do the same.

He was what we could call a dry person, not effusive, but through the years I knew him, I learned to see his way of showing love and care.

From what I observed from the distance, I think that he struggled to see the love in those he loved the most. He had his temper and his very specific way of perceiving the world which at times came in the way between him and those close to him. I think that the last few years had been very difficult for him in this sense, and therefore, today, when I learned about his passing, I started refelcting on one phrase I heard on a podcast earlier this week “we see what we are looking for”.

I can recognize myself in this too. Sometimes, the void inside is so strong, that we can’t manage to see the love around us. I think is sometimes difficult to say where the void comes from, maybe past experiences, ways of percieving life, genetics? The orignie is maybe even irrelevant, what I think is important is to notice the void inside us. To have the courage to see it. Only then, we will be able to heal it, and feel the love. Maybe, if we recognize our inner void, we can acknowledge other people’s void, and then be able to show more empathy, more understanding regardless of their behavior.

I hope from the bottom of my heart that my friend died knowing how much we loved him.

I hope from the bottom of my heart, that we all find the force to clear our vision and see the love in everyone and evertything around us.

Self-centered

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The other day, I dreamed that someone called me self-centered. I can’t remember how I reacted to it, but it stayed in my mind beause, from time to time, I do ask myself if I am self-centered.  If I play a bit with the idea, I have to say, that yes, I am self-centered. The world around me unfolds itself through the lens of my mind. This lens is tinted with my own perceptions. Thus, every experience is a self-centered experience.

I am also self-centered in my practice of Yoga because I want to improve my interactions with the world around me and the only way I see to achieve this is by directing my vision inwards. I believe that spending my energy on getting to know, accept and refine my thoughts and perceptions is a better investment than trying to change the world to make it fit my expectations.

I also believe that through this inner work, it will become clearer for me how to invest my energy in the world in a more positive and meaningful way instead of blindly engaging in everything with unconscious and sometimes conscious expectation that the world around me will fulfill my deeper needs such as love, peace and happiness.

Through my study of the Yoga philosophy, I have learned that we all have something called svadharma. Svadharma is our individual duty in the world and it is connected to our capabilities. For what I understand, it has an element of service for the benefit of the whole.

The challenge for some of us is to find out what our svadharma is since from birth, we play many different roles in life (i.e. son/daughter, student, friend, boyfriend/girlfriend, employer/employee, etc). An interesting idea to reflect over is that none of these roles can define who we are.  Each role has its own sort of “job description” and we put our own personal touch to it, but if we were to stop playing any of these roles, we would still be who we are. These roles are here to help us realize ourselves as we learn something new at each experience.

Some of us play many roles, some of them by obligation, and there is nothing wrong with that as long as it doesn’t become a struggle for us. But I believe that the thiner we spread ourselves in the practical world, the less we have to give, and evenmore, we might end up loosing ourselves in these roles without knowing who we are and what our capabilities really are.

Therefore, I think I benefit from prioritizing the roles I believe are important, and letting go of those that I can let go of. I want to give my best in my roles and still have energy for myself. So, yes, I am often self-centered but my theory is that at the start of the inner journey we need to let go of a lot that we are not. Such as things we do and roles we have out of habit or social expectations. Then, as we start feeling more confident and comfortable with who we are, the opportunities to engage positively and meaningfully in the world will present themselves to us.

And then, these roles will be played more naturally, with what in Yoga is called “effortless effort”.

 

Intention and visualization

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The more I walk on the path of Yoga, the more I want to learn and apply its teachings to my life. It is like running a life experiment. We all perceive life in different ways, but at some moment in life, not so long ago, I came to a point where I had to question where I was investing my energy and why. I kept pointing my finger out, until, with the guidance of my Yoga teacher, I started studying the principles of Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga as well as Meditation by reading and reflecting on the Bhagavad Gita.

What I like about the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita is that they are applicable to practical life. The adjustments that are required to make in order to reach an independent state of inner peace are internal and they all are my own responsibility.

I like the idea that my well-being is my own responsibility, at the same time as I find it challenging and sometimes overwhelming. In the Gita and following the teachings of Karma Yoga, we are encouraged to engage in the practical world, to play our roles, but with a change in our attitude, perceptions, and expectations. I will elaborate on this in another post.

The Bhakti aspect of Yoga is one that I have been reflecting about in the past months. The teachings in chapter 12 of Bhagavad Gita are inspiring and I can see the liberating aspect in them because as we all know, most of the time, we cannot control what happens around us, but we can with practice and patience control how we act and react in different situations, and this has a direct impact on our well-being.

During the last few days, I have taken the task to read one verse every morning and imagine how it could look like if I put it into practice during my day. I use the verse to set myself an intention and I write a few lines on how I think this could look like in practical life, like a visualization. Here is today’s verse:

18-19  “I love devotees whose attitudes are the same toward friend or foe, who are indifferent to honor or ignominy, heat or cold, praise or criticism—who not only control their talking but are silent within. Also very dear to Me are those generally content with life and unattached to things of the world, even to home. I love those whose sole concern in life is to love Me. Indeed, these and all the others I mentioned are very, very dear to Me.”

So imagine a day where you can skillfully move from task to task, interact with people around you without spending time or energy on judging whether you like or dislike the situation and/or the person you are dealing with. With grace and peace of mind, you deal with what you need to deal, and you move forward to the next task/interaction. Such a liberating idea! You would then “neither be a source of agitation in the world nor agitated by the world” (ch. 12 v.15) You keep your inner peace.

Further, we are encouraged to control our talking and cultivate silence within. This is also a beautiful idea. Through the practice of Yoga and meditation, we learn to let go of thoughts and emotions that do not serve us, we learn to quiet the mind, and thus have clarity of mind. When our mind is clear, we have more control over what comes out of our mouths. By doing so we are “neither a source of agitation in the world nor agitated by the world” (ch12 v.15). This one is often challenging for me because I talk a lot, but I am trying to practice being clear about the intention of my words before I allow them to come out of my mouth. Are these words going to help or am I going to make things worse? I use what some of my colleagues use with our younger students I “THINK” before I speak: is it True? Is it Helpful? Is it Important/Interesting? Is it Necessary? Is it Kind? This way, I also take responsibility for my well-being because I don’t need to go around with either bad conscience for my words or have to deal with people being angry/annoyed at me.

Detachment and contentment are also important principles in the practice of Yoga. Detachment from material things, detachment from habits, from thoughts and emotions and even from people. For an intense person like me, this one is very challenging because I’m often an all or nothing person. The idea is not to leave everything and everyone and go live in a cave. The idea is to engage with the world, enjoy the things we have, the people we interact with, but be aware of the fact that we don’t own any of them. That their nature is ever changing. People change, things deteriorate, things get lost, our perceptions can be modified, etc.

Contentment is something that we have to develop inside ourselves and for ourselves independently of what is happening in the practical world if we want to improve our well-being. When we develop contentment, we gracefully and skillfully deal with whatever is. So, when I am standing in front of a class with a “super” idea of a lesson and my students are not the slightest interested, I can be content with the effort I put to prepare this lesson, acknowledge that it is not working, and grasp the opportunity to move forward together with my students instead of against them.

The last part of this verse talks about the idea of total surrender, total trust in something bigger than us. Instead of expecting some kind of reward from the practical world for setting the mentioned principles as our intention, we dedicate our actions to something bigger than us, whatever we want to call it. I definitely see the liberating aspect of doing my best, giving my best and not expecting anything in return, but I often fall in the trap of becoming a victim, especially when I’m tired. In thinking that it is unfair that I do my best but “the rest of the world” doesn’t. Quite a useless thought and a big waste of energy, but I still get into this space.

It is so easy to go back into old habits, so this is like learning to do something new. I have to keep practicing, and I have to keep reminding myself, and hopefully one day, this will be part of my habits.

If you also would like to cultivate a peaceful inner life, I encourage you to try at least one of the principles in this verse. Set it as an intention for the day, imagine your day and in which situations you would use it. Try this for today, or for some days, or for some months and see what happens.

Convictions and Perceptions

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I cherish those devotees who are ever content; who, through meditation, are steady of mind; who control themselves; whose convictions are consistent and strong; and who offer their hearts and minds to me. The Bhagavad Gita ch12 v.14

Since I work as a teacher, I have breaks throughout the school year at the same time as the students. During the last years, it has become a habit that every time I have a break, I spend some time reflecting on the period between the last break and this break. I reflect on how I felt, how I interacted with everyone, and if there were tensions, conflicts or challenges, I reflect on my part in them and try to make the necessary adjustments. Not only in my work but also in my personal life.

When I am on a break, I also have more time to go back to my Yoga studies, and that is why there have been so many posts this week.

Talking and writing are the ways I internalize things and my intention when I post texts is to share my reflections and even invite to a discussion. It doesn’t necessarily mean that my thoughts are “done”, I am in a way, thinking aloud.

Yesterday, I posted a text about perceptions. I had been trying to organize these ideas for some days now because as I wrote before, I’ve noticed how sometimes I am so convinced about my perceptions that I push too hard, spending unnecessary energy in unnecessary things.  But one thing was bothering me, the word convictions. I was thinking that all the people in the world that have fought for a good cause had the conviction that they were fighting for something important, going often against the mainstream.

Then, this morning, I read the quote that opens this text from the Bhagavad Gita, and if you see, Krishna mentions the word convictions. This text is a further reflection on the topic of convictions and perceptions.

Perhaps we can say that perceptions are a combination of expectations according to what we imagine is “good” or “bad” and opinions that we have forged through experience.

I have an example. During many years, my birthday was a difficult date for me. I often experienced that day as the proof for people around me not caring enough for me. I had a double set of expectations. Negative expectations as  I expected my loved ones to forget or not care, and hopeful expectations as I was hoping to be surprised by the same people with I don’t even know what that would make me feel special and loved. Since I already had a pre-made idea of how everyone was going to behave, whatever happened on that day was a confirmation of the negative expectations and a disappointment related to the blurry hopeful expectations.

Until one day, I decided to stop and reflect a little on this mini-drama. Are things really how I perceive them? What is the real problem here?

If I make a real effort to remember my birthdays as a kid, most of my memories are good. I think that we often went out for dinner somewhere with my family and have a good time. I think I also had some birthday parties like any other kid. Actually, this is even irrelevant, the point is that whatever happened once, or twice in the past is already gone, I have to let go of it.

So perceptions were not allowing me to interact in a skillful way with the practical world since they were distorting my vision of what was happening and how people were showing their care.

The cited verse from the Bhagavad Gita allows me to take this reflection even further. Whose responsibility is how I spend my birthday? I know it’s a pretty banal example, but I’ve realized that my mind operates a lot in this way. At the end of the day, the only person responsible for my well-being is me. Why do I expect others to guess? It is my responsibility to cultivate my own happiness. Ideally, by being satisfied with the fact that I have one more year of life to share with the people I love, and if I really want to feel like a superstar that day, I have no choice but to organize my day and invite the people I love.

Further, Krishna talks about the steadiness of the mind through meditation, and it must not be misunderstood with sitting for some time every day in a specific position and “clearing the mind”. Meditation in the Yoga tradition is much more than that. It is the attitude with which we live our lives, through, among other things, the detachment from fixed and erroneous perceptions.

Then he talks about strong and consistent convictions, but how can I know which convictions I should cultivate? The only answer I can find is those convictions that are based on universal values such as nonviolence, love, and compassion towards every being without exception.

This means that to achieve a steady mind I must make sure that my words, attitudes, and actions are in accordance with these values regardless of how  I perceive the practical world.

I am too used to living in a give-and-take system where if I give this, I should receive that.  Maybe if I leave aside my expectations and opinions of what it is to “receive” something in exchange for my actions, I will see that I receive much more than I imagine when acting according to these convictions. I receive inner peace and spiritual freedom although the practical result of my actions might not be as I expect it to be.

The last lines of this verse are a subject that I know is difficult for many: faith in something bigger than us. Unfortunately, the idea of God has been distorted by institutions throughout history. For some of us it is hard to believe in the God we imagine based on what we learn from certain religions. I still don’t have a clear way to express this but the only thing I can say here is that, when trying to live a life based on universal values such as love, by setting us the goal to give the best of ourselves independently of the result, it is necessary to offer our thoughts and actions towards something greater than ourselves. We do not need to call this something God, but we can call it the well-being of the whole, or universal love. A form for energy that is there for us and that we have to feed into with same energy.