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

Getting down in the neighbourhood…WoYoPracMo

It’s WOYOPracMO… a mouthful of barely pronounceable syllables that indicates someone has called for World Yoga Practice Month. Cleaver idea really, surely developed by someone who figured out one of the most difficult things for yogis to do is establish and keep the daily practice.

It’s an interesting concept – the idea of fostering a daily practice. First of all, why bother? In the parlance of our times, “what’s in it for me?” I’d like to confess to all that I had some great spiritual revelation way back when and committed myself to the daily practice as a means of armouring my spiritual self. Not so fast – the truth is my daily practice came about because I didn’t know better and I’m cheap. As in frugal, parsimonious. Not mean but a wee bit thrifty.

The fact is my first yoga classes weren’t planned (i.e. budgeted) and the tuition took a bit of creative juggling. I can’t remember what it was … some where in the vicinity of $120 for a 10 week course and it was coming out of the familial electric bill. $12 a week was the cost for my classes unless I did it on a daily basis. $12 divided by 7 days works out to about $1.71 a day. In lean budgetary times, I might not be given to a $12 weekly indulgence but when it’s under $2… I can take that out of the weekly coffee budget and still have change. So my daily practice really started out with the intention of getting my money’s worth out of my classes.

There’s still an element of that going on but it’s fading long into the recesses of what else comes from daily practice. In addition to the whole bit of getting my head together, a topic for another day, there was the physical aspect of practice. Everyday, the stack of blocks I was going towards for my forward bends was getting a little bit easier to find. I remember a sense of ah-ha when I was moving in and out of Parsvottanasana, the intense side stretch. My hamstrings had loosened and softened that suddenly that front leg was straight and my weight was on my back foot. In my very goal oriented brain, this was progress.

I’ll tell you for nothing that I’m not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination. My body and my brain filed for divorce by the time I was 12. I was the last one chosen for any team in gym. And by the time I was 40, I had developed the slack and idle body that was the envy of no one, most particularly myself. Being able to physically do something .. beautiful beautiful Parsvottanasana, was that moment of revelation where my brain finally forgave my body. Maybe there was hope for a truce between them. A dim flutter of hope for reconciliation and forgiveness peaked up from the wasteland.

In retrospect the other saving grace was that Yoga Culture, if you will was completely foreign territory. Until I’d signed up for classes at LifeSong, I’d never darkened the doors of a yoga studio. I had no idea that studios usually supply mats. I just went out and bought myself one before my first class because I was going to need it. If I was taking swimming, I’d need a swimsuit. If I were playing hockey, I’d need skates. If I’m taking yoga, I need a mat. I got a mat. In retrospect, this conveniently provided one less excuse for not practicing.

Not that I needed it. It honesty hadn’t crossed my mind that one wouldn’t practice this on a daily basis. By way of explanation, my formative adult years were spent in the Army. Of course, you roll out of bed and do your yoga, just like you used to roll out of bed and go to PT, back in the day. Yoga, even when it’s done on the Army time of “Oh Dark and Stupid”, usually doesn’t involve running with ruck-sacks in the pitch dark and rain. I now consider Yoga an eminently civilized way to start one’s day.

Ironically enough, the only time my daily practice went to hell was while doing my teacher’s training. I’m still trying to puzzle that one out. But the last month has been about reclaiming the realm of the personal practice. Just my mat and me.

So there you go, it World Yoga Practice Month…have a WOYOPracMO on me. And for my American friends, Happy Independence Day.

Thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate