Okay… I was away…

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks. I’ve been out dogsitting/housesitting and generally away from the details of my life.

But, I’m back and this afternoon, I’ll get down to the brass tacks of doing some work!!

Namaste and thanks for reading.

Kate

Dear Jenni – YSP I: 49

His knowledge is no longer based on memory or inference. It is spontaneous, direct, and at both a level and intensity that is beyond the ordinary.

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 1:49 – Desikachar translation

This knowledge is not based on memory. It is beyond that which has been attained from external sources.

www.pantjalisutras.com

Dear Jenni:

Egads, woman, we’re on the home stretch of Chapter 1. Who would have guessed we’d go this far this fast??

And it’s in these last sutras that we’re getting to the heart of the matter. Why do we go through all this daily grind of stuff – asana, pranayama, pratyahara, etc, etc? The short answer is that we do it because it works. We do it because our brains work that much better when we do this stuff.

A few columns ago, I wrote about how our brains and minds are the survival tool of our species. We don’t have sharp claws, or long pointy teeth. We don’t run so well, but by the Jiminy, we’re a pack of thinking monkeys if there ever was such a thing. The success of our species depended on our ability to think with others of our species so we could combine our efforts and resources. Without it, we’d have perished long before we migrated off the Serengeti plains.

Language, the ability to communicate with one another was instrumental in our development. Each of us is not required to reinvent the wheel. We learn from our ancestors. Right now, that’s exactly what you and I are doing. We’re studying out of an ancient text, in order to have a roadmap for our own journeys inward to Source. This kind of learning is all very rational and logical. We learn A and then we work on B – one sutra a week, so to speak.

For the record, I’d like to say that I love logic. I excelled at formal logic in university. I like reason and I like rationality. I like little inconveniences like facts and proof and evidence to show up in my transactions with the Universe. Alas, the Universe didn’t get that memo because all too often, what the Universe downloads onto my brain is sadly lacking in facts, rationality or reason. It comes in the form of ‘intuition’. I don’t know why I know it; I just know it. It drives me absolutely bats but I’ve also learned to trust it.

I have no explanation for that phenomenon that the psychologists call “intuition”. My dictionary defines it as “understanding without apparent effort, quick and ready insight seemingly independent of previous experiences or empirical knowledge.” And that’s what we’re talking about in this sutra – that clear and absolute understanding of a person, a situation, a process, that is whole, nuanced, complete and developed within a millisecond. There are no great building blocks of knowledge. It’s not like math where you had to learn the rules of adding and then you learned the rules of multiplying, which lead to the rules of division, then fractions. I have NO idea where this stuff comes from. I just know it when I feel it. For me, I feel it in the back of my neck (the old ’spidey sense’ a-tingling) or in my hands.

Intuition is a clear and powerful tool. It does come with one major downfall. You need to be clear in your head to use it. If I let myself wander around in flights of fancy, without doing the hard and consistent work needed to clean up the Kleshas, then I’m likely to do more harm than good. I need to be able to separate true knowledge from Source from the myriad of wishful thinking, biases, attachments and aversions, all simmered to a gummy soup of ignorance and fear. Without the clarifying work of practice, ‘intuition’ can get turned into just another means of deluding ourselves.

For those of you following both sides of the conversation, Jenni’s post is here.

Thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate

Passages: Sri Pattabhi Jois 1915 – 2009

News just in that Sri Pattabhi Jois is no longer with us. He has passed in India at age 93 following a brief illness.

He is, of course, the founder of the Ashtanga sequence and was one of the most famous students of Krishnamarcharya. He started his studies with Krishnamacharya in 1927 at the age of 12.

I have long taken his famous quote “Practice, Practice and All will come.’ to heart. It has encouraged me and kept me on track more than once.

His gifts to humanity will live forever.

Namaste,

Kate

Yoga retreat.

Wow.. I’m just consolidating a weekend retreat on the history and impact of Krishnamacharya on yoga as we know it today.

I feel so blessed. I met some wonderful new people who I hope will continue studying with me in the months to come. Right now, I need to go and consolidate my notes before I forget this weekend.

Namaste and thanks for reading,

Kate

Dear Jenni – YSP 1:48

Then, what he sees and shares with others is free from error.

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 1:48 – Desikachar translation

Dear Jenni:

I’ve been reading the best book this week. It’s called Brain Rules by John Medina. It’s funny, interesting and informative. It also makes some very salient points about how our brains evolved and the development of the brain as an organ on human survival. One of the things that really struck me was one of our best survival tools that we developed as a species was our ability to imagine what the brain beside us was thinking, or extending it, what that group of brains across the river was thinking. By being able to ascribe motive to others and being able to see problems from their perspective gave us the capacity to work co-operatively or engage in combat with the “other brains”. Our ability to appreciate the content of other brains gives us the capacity to predict future behaviour of others and so the dance goes on.

So let’s put this anthropological stuff into some kind of global context. Our survival as a species depends on our ability to think clearly. We need to see things as they are, not as we wish them to be or fear that they are and we need to be able to communicate that to another clearly thinking brain. I’ve been sitting here for the better part of the past hour, imagining what political, social, economic, environmental problem we face as a species that wouldn’t be radically changed, if not evaporated, if suddenly, we ALL started to think clearly.

So here’s my solution. The world is divided into two kinds of people. There is THEM– loosely described as anyone who espouses different political, social, economic, philosophical, religious or cultural perspectives that are different than mine. And there is US – a group of people who share my unassailable cultural perfection. Okay, the US group is really just me but I didn’t want to sound snobby about it. Inclusivity is in these days.

I can spend my days, and Lord knows, I’ve spent lots of them, yelling about what’s wrong with THEM. And it’s not hard because THEM are wrong about everything. And if only THEM would get their collective act together, my life would be so much easier. And it’s not like I haven’t tried to educate THEM about the error of their ways. But THEM are a stubborn lot and furthermore, they talk funny and I don’t like the smell of the stuff they eat – bloody McDonald’s eaters.

And so, US and THEM stand on opposite banks of a valley, yelling at each other from megaphones behind our brick walls of truth, morality and bias. I think the overall strategy is to drown them out, outshout them, with our hymns of cultural perfection. Eventually, they’ll capitulate if only they’d stop stupidly putting more bricks on the front of their fortress.

I think one of these days I’ll take a break from my own brick making efforts and put down the megaphone and go take a walk in the valley for myself. I might even meet one of THEM and hopefully, both of us will be thinking clearly that day. Maybe the THEM will be able to share his perspective with me and both the sending and the receiving will be free from error. Maybe we’ll stop trying to beat each other over the head with facts and arguments and rationalizations and precedents and … Maybe we’ll stop trying to outshout each other. Maybe we’ll both just shut the hell up and listen to our common human condition.

And then maybe, our species will have its best shot at survival yet.

In anticipation of that day, I think I’ll head for the mat. I don’t know when I’m going to meet the THEM so I want to be ready and able to think clearly when it comes.

Namaste and thanks for reading,

Kate

Dear Jenni — YSP 1:47

Then the individual begins to truly know himself.

Yoga Sutra of Patanjali 1:47 — Desikachar translation

Dear Jenni:

This is my second go at this column. In a fit of sheer dumbassedness, I overwrote this column with what now appears in YSP 1:48. That’s what I get for trying to short cut.

It was a brilliant column, I’m sure, if only I could remember all of its subtle nuance. But basically, here’s the point I want to make: we’re putting in the time and effort to clear our minds because it makes our life so much easier.

The analogy has been done to death but it keeps getting trotted out because it works. Think of a tidal pool in the rocks, warmed by the sun. Life is teeming in those little pools and as a kid, I loved squatting at the edge of them, watching all the little critters moving about. In a fit of anthromorphization, I would imagine them looking back up at me. We were learning about each other because the water was still and clear. On really windy days, or if some one was jumping in the tidal pool, all the sentiment would be stirred up and I wouldn’t be able to see the critters and they couldn’t see me.

It’s the same with my mind. When I still the ego narratives, the clutter of aversions and attachments, I can see the world around me and at the same time, I see myself. Not the self I project out into the world but the one so rarely seen (if ever) by others.

I wanted to get caught up and back to our schedule so I’m going to hit the publish button on this. It’s been a little awkward running a week behind you.

Namaste and thanks for reading,

Kate

Dear Jenni – YSP 1:46

All these processes of directing the mind involve an object of inquiry.

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 1:46 – Desikachar translation

Well, Jenni, I’ve struggled with this sutra for nearly two weeks. I see you’ve managed to keep to our timetable. I’ve decided that the biggest problem with these sutras studies has been my attitude towards it. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve found myself feeling very frustrated with these concepts and ideas. Grappling with them has not been the proverbial walk in the park. This, of course, was exceedingly annoying to my ego. What do you mean, after nearly 12 whole months as a student of deeper yoga studies, I’m not fully conversant in the philosophical and conceptual intricacies of a dead foreign language? Vote me as the ‘dummy of the year’ then.

And interestingly enough, it was the beating of my skull against this sutra that more or less snapped me out of it. Yesterday I was feeling guilty over being a week behind in this project of ours, so I picked up my books and papers and headed out to a local coffee shop. If nothing else, at least it would minimize the distractions associated with being at home. I would have to work. It was an interesting exercise. I didn’t manage to get much done because I was the very portrait of distraction. I’d get up and walk around the bookstore part of the shop. I’d go back to my chair and try to read. I’d write a sentence and get up to wander again. I managed to talk myself into buying a book. I got my hair cut in another part of the mall. I came back to my studies. I bought shoes. I came back to my studies and scribbled a few more lines. This went on for the best part of the afternoon. I’m sure I walked 10 kilometers in my attempts to avoid tackling this ‘incomprehensible’ sutra.

Finally I steeled myself into doing some actual work instead of expending all my energy to avoid it. As I was grumbling into my coffee cup about “why the heck is Chapter one, aka Mission Impossible, at the front of the book… grumble, grumble, grouse, grouse… I started to tear apart the sutra.

The words “an object of inquiry” seized my mind. Up until now, I’ve been very frustrated that I’ve not had a mind as transparent as a diamond, or anything even in that neighbourhood. I was bashing my ego up against the rock of a theoretical standard. I had to ask myself, “What kind of yoga teacher would I be if I demanded that my students fully take every posture, completely, in its fullest expression, the very first time they tried it? Or even the 90^th time that they tried it?” Answer: I’d be a very poor excuse of a yoga teacher. We understand that people start at one level and proceed, intelligently, progressively and persistently in their own evolution of their practice.

So why am I treating the training of the mind through meditation as something different than the training of the body through asana work? What’s with the ‘el-perfecto’ standards? If I’m not 100%, I’m useless? What’s with this? Where did that come from?

And there we have it – an object of inquiry. In order to direct the mind, I needed to select an object of inquiry. It could have been a mantra sound, a philosophical meditation, a prayer, a word, an icon. In my case, directing my mind towards the origins of my lousy attitude towards the Sutra studies turned out to be perfectly functional in directing my mind. And there we have it – still not clear as a diamond but my mind certainly has a fully appreciation of its own make up, which is nicely segueing into our next Sutra adventure.

Namaste and thanks for reading.

Kate

Dear Jenni: YSP 1:45

Subtlety of the object is limitless, except that it must manifest itself.

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 1:45 – Bouanchaud translation

Except that the mind cannot comprehend the very source of perception within us, its objects can be unlimited.

Desikachar translation

Egads, there’s late and there’s LATE and considering that the next installment of this column is due tomorrow, I’m thinking it’s now or never for my ramblings on YSP 1:45.

And here it is …. (drum roll please)… I haven’t got a danged clue what it means.

The fact is all this mind stuff is just a bit beyond me. I’m more or less lost at the “source of perception’ bit. The mind cannot see itself? Is that the point they’re getting at here? I’m thinking that it really doesn’t help that the two sentences above are allegedly translations of the same piece of Sanskrit.

I know all this stuff is dealing with subtle realms – so subtle that mere mortals can’t fathom it. I’m finding this very frustrating, Jenni. It also makes me feel like a bit of an idiot because technically, I’m a native English speaker. I’m supposed to understand the meaning of sentences written in grammatically correct English. And yes, dammit, that’s Ego talking.

Okay, let’s tear this sutra apart word by freaking syllable… Subtle means elusive, difficult to detect or grasp by the mind and analyze. The word manifest (as a verb) means, among other things, to reveal its presence or make an appearance. Except: exclude. Must: a necessary or essential thing – in short, a requirement.

I think we’re firmly back in the realm of “the mind can’t see itself”. Do you ever get the idea that Bouanchaud is reluctant to use clear language? I get all the words. I just don’t get what they mean when they’re all stuck together in that order.

Sigh… I dread my advanced training session coming up in August. We’re tackling Chapter 1 of the Sutras and it’s sutras like this that make me want to jab pencils into my eyeballs. I fear that seven days of non-stop beating what few neurons I have left against the brick wall of Chapter 1 should be sufficient to render me completely and absolutely simple.

I’ll try to get the next column written in a timelier manner. I think the key is trying to develop some sort of rational and lucid commentary on stuff that is so evidently outside my realm of comprehension. Hang in there, Jenni. Chapter 2 is just around the bend. We’re six weeks away from more familiar realms.

Jenni published her comments a week ago and here they are.

Thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate

Dear Jenni: YSP 1:44

Such contemplation intuitively grasps subtle objects in their reality and beyond.

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 1:44– Bouanchaud translation

Bouanchaud starts off his commentary on this sutra with the question “Am I more at home exploring concrete realities or metaphysical concepts? “

Put me firmly in the category of “I want to weigh it, measure it and catalogue it before I believe It.”, so the entire realm of metaphysics has the slightest flavor of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party to my sensibilities. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy most likely to cause my brain to bleed. Frankly, I suspect I avoid the subject because I’m not smart enough to figure it all out nor am I engaged enough to give a damn. What are the origins of the universe? What is its first cause? Are our actions casually connected by an unbroken chain of previous events or are we agents of free will? Do things change at all or is change continuous? What is the meaning of identity?

Just writing it down is enough to make blood vessels in my grey matter quiver and threaten to rupture under the strain of it all. Consequently, I have a lot of trouble wrapping my brain and my imagination around the “subtle” objects. How do I perceive that which I can’t see, can’t hear, can’t taste, and can’t feel? My problem is when I have a potential encounter with one of these ’subtle objects’, I strongly suspect it’s an overactive imagination at work as opposed to anything with any real substance to it.

Take for example my recent forays into Dr David Berceli’s Trauma Release Exercises. For the rest of you, Dr Berceli has put together a series of asanas that engage the psoas muscle and the anterior spinal muscles in order to cause them to tremour. This tremouring releases tension in the muscle tissue and reduces overall levels of stress in people. It’s used largely for post-traumatic stress disorder treatments. And assume that this paragraph is the world’s greatest short shrift to Dr Berceli’s work – it’s a back of the napkin sketch at best.

Now, getting back to topic, there can be a lot of emotional release for a person doing these exercises. Most yoga practitioners are probably familiar with the body’s capacity to release emotional memory. I cry every time I go into the bow position (Dhanurasana). Why? No flipping idea. I just do. The same sorts of things happen during these TRE exercises. In fact, I distinctly recall one practice session with the TRE exercise when I had this great sense of opening through my mid-chest and I had a great sense of compassion for all who were around me. I also visualize (through closed eyes) a beautiful shimmering translucent apple green light that filled my visual field. Opening of the heart chakra? Maybe. That would be one explanation that would fit within a yoga friendly model of reality.

My questions to myself are plentiful. While I can report the sensations that I had at the time (green colour, openness in the chest, emotional outpouring of compassion), I doubt myself when I start labeling that experience. First of all, I don’t know if chakras even exist. Their noted lack of any kind of physical concrete reality puts them a bit into the category of the Tooth Fairy for me.

I also had to study the theory of the chakra model when I was doing my yoga teacher’s training. I have an intellectual model inside my head of what the chakras are and what they look like and what colours are associated with them. My question is when I had this experience of the ‘heart chakra opening’, did it exist in and of itself or was it a product of my prior knowledge of the chakra model? In short, did I imagine it? Did I filter my interpretation of the sensations of my body through the construct of chakra theory? If I never heard of chakras before, would I have had the same sensations? The same interpretation?

All of this is very curious to me and at the same time makes my head hurt because there are no answers. I’m a statistical universe where n=1. There is no control group. There are no random selection protocols.

Which brings me to the next question: why do I doubt my own experience and sensations? Excellent question but one based on experience. After 46 years of stumbling around on this planet, I’ve see a lot of people delude themselves. I’ve spent a lot of time living under the spell of illusion. Humans have an uncanny knack of being able to construct their reality to a great extent. Depending on how I chose to interpret an event has a huge impact on how I perceive it. If someone I like makes a foolish decision, that’s unfortunate because she’s only human. If the exact same decision is made by someone I don’t like, that just proves they’re an idiot.

See what I mean? The metaphysics stuff always gives me indigestion. What is the nature of reality? Did my heart chakra open or not? I’m reminded of that scene in the opening of A Christmas Carol when Scrooge meets the ghost of Jacob Marley.

‘You don’t believe in me,’ observed the Ghost.

‘I don’t,’ said Scrooge.

‘What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Scrooge.

‘Why do you doubt your senses?’

‘Because,’ said Scrooge, ‘a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!’

Like Scrooge, I doubt my senses because I appreciate the role imagination and wishful thinking play in our construction of reality. So in truth, these “subtle objects” that Bouanchaud speaks of make my head ache. What is real and what is imagination? How much of perception is a mental construct? These are all questions for which I have no answers.

Thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate

Dear Jenni: YSP 1:43

When the mind is well purified, the knowledge of the object in concentration shines alone, devoid of the distinction of name and quality.

Yoga Sutra of Patanjali 1:43 unknown translation.

How often do any of us look at something in and of itself? Just it and nothing else? I’d wager not very often because we’re usually looking at the world around us with the ‘value added’ option on full strength.

I look out the window as I’m typing this and I see the sunshine. I like the sunshine. It reminds me of summer. And I see the ice in the river. I don’t like ice. It reminds me of cold and I don’t like it when I’m cold. It reminds me of when I was biking in the rain and I got so cold. What was the word for that? Oh yeah, post-exercise hypothermia. I got that from Rev Cathcart, he lives over on Canada St. He has a big tree by his house. And I see the trees. Soon there will be pollen and I’ll have difficulties breathing. I wonder what the pollen season will be like this year. And the river’s coming up fast. I wonder if it’ll flood like it did last year. I hope Ralph is all right. Ralph’s a nice guy. He’s sure been helpful to me the past couple of month. He’s got quite the sense of humour…

That’s my mind at work in the world. No ‘clear as a diamond” stuff going on here, that’s for dang sure. Reviewing objects in my surrounding, my mind is a non-stop commentator on the relative value of each thing in terms of its emotional content and its relationships with other things around me. I add history (memory) and future (imaginations), like and dislike, without being conscious of what I’m doing as I scan my environment. It’s an automatic process.

It can also blind me. One of the fantastic things about being human is we can extrapolate information from one event and project it to another similar event down the road. It’s called learning. It’s called generalization. We’re good at it. In fact, we’re so good at it, we often don’t realize we’re doing it at all. And I think stripped down to its most essential, yoga does something very valuable for us. It brings the unconscious short cuts of the mind into consciousness.

When I bring the focus of my mind onto a single object and sustain that focus, eventually the chatter of associations and relationships, of memory and ideas, fades away. All the fluttering of the mind as it works from the particular to the general and back again, from the real to the abstract and back again, drop away until there is nothing left but the object and the perception of the object. The “value added” option has been turned off.

It’s a skill we need to practice on a regular basis. For most of us, we don’t go through our lives thinking in this clear manner. Frankly, I don’t know if it’s even possible or for that matter, desirable. But I do know that when we get in the regular sustained habit of turning off the ‘value added option’, then we see turning it on for what it is – it’s what we’re adding to perception. My likes, dislikes, fears, prejudices, prior conditioning, emotional associations stand out for what they are. They are something I am ADDING to the situation. They don’t exist in the object itself.

And right there, in that consciousness of the moment, I have the opportunity to accept or discard the stuff I’ve added. When I can label it – that’s just my fear of spiders at work – then I can evaluate the new situation on its own merits. If I can’t see through my added stuff, then my mind and my decision making process is held hostage by my unconscious mind.

Yoga brings my mind’s workings to a more conscious level, giving me a chance to choose my reaction and that, my friend, is very liberating.

Thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate