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Historic Anniversary and Yogic Discernment

ByElizabeth

January 6 is yet another day so historic it warrants reflection and impetus to action on every anniversary. (That might be resting, by the way, if you spend much of your temporal, energetic, and emotional resources in the efforts to make change and ward off evil.)

One of the yoga practices is exercising discrimination and acting with discernment (viveka) in response to changes in the world, the human collective, and ourselves. Discernment requires learning and admitting to the difficult truths and learning from experts and innovators.

Meditation, contemplation, reflection, and being present to oneself is all very nice, but without study and discriminative participation in the collective, it starts being more like spiritual bypassing than not.

What are your thoughts on this day? How does staying present to the reality of it make you feel? How are you balancing taking care of yourself and participating in shifting the narrative?

It seems somewhat fitting that DC has been crippled today by the first significant snow storm in quite some time.

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    “If there were lights to turn on…” (and Purna) (at the Anusara Grand Gathering)

    ByElizabeth

    The first two days, including the Solstice, of the Anusara Grand Gathering were bright and blue and sunny and pleasantly cool in the morning and warm in the afternoon–“perfect” New England summer days.  The third morning dawned cloudy.  By the time the morning session was underway, a pleasant drizzle had turned into a deluge.  Rain started coming in from the sides where the tent was open, and then the roof started leaking.  The clouds were sufficiently dense that the light was no more than at dawn or dusk.  It was getting pretty dark and wet in the tent.  At one point, after having told stories about rain being regarded as blessings in Hindu rituals and exhorting us in surya namaskar to jump forward and splash in a puddle like a kid, John said, “I would turn the lights on, but there aren’t any lights to turn on.  So this is perfect!”

    One of the conundrums in explaining the philosophical principle of purna, which means “perfect” or “fullness” is reconciling it with the evident fact that our divine perfection or fullness aside, we are still working to shift and realign our minds and bodies through the practices.  The divine consciousness, which is everything, say the yogis, is utterly perfect as it is and completely full (or fully empty and thus all potential, depending on how you look at it).  We are told that we (and all of being) are the divine consciousness manifest and then given a slew of techniques and instruction to help us change ourselves.

    If we are completely perfect and full, what is the point of learning all the technique and seeking to expand and shift our bodies and minds?  The yoga teachings say that we forget that we are this fullness and perfection, and it is our forgetting that leads to suffering (which is different than pain, but discussing that distinction will have to wait for another blog entry).  The practices are not to perfect or improve us, but rather to shift our alignment (mind and body) so that we remember the perfection of ourselves as spirit.  When we remember, we are better able to recognize the perfection in ourselves, other people, beings, things, or events, even what we find challenging or difficult.  From this space of recognition, in my experience, we naturally become happier and more generous of spirit.

    I think that moment at the Anusara Grand Gathering is a perfect (word choice intentional) illustration of the apparent dichotomy of seeking change and appreciation of the perfection of every moment.  If there had been lights to turn on, John would have turned on the lights so that we could have observed the alignment better during the demonstrations and he and the assistants could have seen the students more easily.  The universe did not have it in store for us to have a light-filled dry day; we were getting a wet and dark one whether we liked it or not.  Having no lights to turn on, John reminded us in a light-hearted way that the teachings and practices would invite us to fully embrace and enjoy the weather we got and practice space we had (while staff were busily making alternative arrangements for classes later in the day), getting the most out of it.  I thought it was pretty fun to practice in the cool rain, though it’s easy for me to say since I and my things stayed dry, and the rain was a welcome respite from the worsening drought in the DC area.

     

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    It’s a Fine Line Between a Grimace and a Smile (and satcitananda murtaye)

    ByElizabeth

    The New York Times just published a blog entry on the perils of faking happiness.   The first problem with the article was that I could not get to the study to see if I agreed that the actual premise was that “faking a smile” was what led to a deterioration in mood or feeling unduly pressured by a need to do so regardless of what was going on inside was the problem.  The second is the definitional problem of what it means to “fake” a smile.  I think it not unlikely that contorting the face into a fake smile (i.e., grimacing) because one feels one has to do so does not improve mood when one is in physical or emotional pain.  According to the little cover blog, though, those that made an attempt to smile from the inside by thinking a positive though–even though it was a conscious effort– did experience an improvement in their mood.

    Any good method actor will tell you that to make an outer expression believable, one has to cultivate inner thoughts to go with it (though that is still “acting”).  Having been taught by my mother by age six in preparation for my first school play performance, that to act I should try to “be an apple” a la Stanislovski, I disagree that intentionally putting a smile on your face cannot help improve your mood. It’s all in how you fake it ’til you make it.  I have long advocated to my yoga students, based on my personal experience with the practice of smiling whether I think I mean it or not, to try smiling on the outside improve mood.  Even leaving aside the inner experience, just walk down the street with an open posture and a smile on your face and see how people respond, though I caution to do this at your peril in New York.  When you smile at people and be polite, they generally respond in kind.  You are then much more likely to feel good than if you are scowling and rude and people respond back in kind.

    What on earth (or in heaven’s name) does faking a smile until you feel one have to do with satcitananda, you may find yourself asking yourself at this point.  The second line of the Anusara invocation is “satcitananda murtaye.” Murtaye, from the same verbal root as murti or statue, here is usually translated as saying that Siva (from the first line) embodies the characteristics of satcitananda, being (what I like to call is-ness), absolute consciousness, and bliss.

    Another way of looking at this phrase, though, is that when we open to the possibility of discovering our siva nature, which is the reason we practice yoga, and when we use the principles of alignment to help do so, then we discover how to be, if even for a moment, simply present, fully conscious, and blissful with the consciousness of the ultimacy of being.  In a word, when we soften and look within, using the knowledge and experience of our teachers and our practices, a smile of recognition lights us up.  If we start out having a bad day, feeling stressed or anxious or in pain, or just plain grumpy from reading the news, we just have to practice with more depth and sincerity to find the smile and not beat ourselves up if we are struggling to find the smile despite our desire and the intensity of our practice.

    Is that faking a smile or being the smile?  Does trying to smile when we are feeling blue really make us more unhappy?  I think it is all in how we do it.