It’s up to you

It’s up to you

In recent episodes we have explored a variety of useful techniques for becoming more familiar with our awareness and its contents. These practices help us to experience our awareness directly. As a result, most of us can feel more relaxed and at peace. Today we will zoom out from specific techniques to clarify our perspective.

We have defined YOGA as You Organically Growing Aware. It is really important to remember that your awareness has been with you from the very beginning of your life. As we are probably noticing through these exercises, we just seem to lose connection to our clear awareness. It may feel as if our awareness is clouded by all the activity going on around you and within you. Let’s recall that all that activity is what Patañjali told us about at the beginning of the Yoga Sutra in Chapter 1. He said that Yoga is modulating those activities (1.2) so that we can experience our natural open awareness (1.3); instead of misidentifying with the contents of our awareness (1.4).

The episodes What Is My True Nature? and Returning to your Nature invited you to explore your own clear awareness. Other episodes (Attitude and Curiosity, Improvising and Experimenting, Awakening, Essential Question) guided you in exploring some of the beliefs and assumptions that may be influencing your perceptions and tendencies. The theme that runs throughout the Yoga Sutra is that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with you, but often, instead of staying in our clear awareness, we follow some of our habits, inclinations, and preferences (our ways of being in Yoga Sutra 1.2, and in Sutras 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, 1.10, and 1.11), and as a result we end up believing that we are the temporary contents of our awareness.

There are four aspects to this approach to yoga. First is the realization that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with you (this is so important that it deserves to be repeated). Second, yoga is a process of developing sensitivity to the quality of our connection to our consciousness, so that we can more easily notice if and how our ways of being obscure our clear awareness. Third, yoga offers us ways to modulate our ways of being. Fourth, it is up to you to embark on this journey and go through this whole process of self-discovery. That is why this definition of YOGA begins with you. You know yourself better than anyone else. Even if you follow someone else’s advice, you’re the one who has to decide if their advice makes sense for you. Then you are the one who decides to do the work. You are also the one who will live with the consequences of your decisions and actions. It is entirely up to you. It makes sense because you are the world’s greatest expert on you.

The fact that this journey of self-discovery is entirely up to you can make yoga the easiest or the hardest thing to do, depending on whether you are your best friend or your own worst enemy. As wise teachers have said in the past, yoga cannot change your beliefs, dispositions, intentions, and actions, only you can! And because this is a lifelong, personal process, it is imperative that you make the conscious decision to do it for yourself. For even if you are committed to staying with this process of exploring the depths of your inner world, you will need the unwavering intention that Patanjali mentions in Sutras 1.13 and 1.14. Patanjali also suggested in Sutra 1.15 that we release our attachments to the results of our actions, perhaps because striving for a specific outcome may preclude us from noticing all the meaningful feedback that we are receiving at every moment. Gradually, over time, you will notice that you begin to develop a new tendency or habit, the habit of noticing when you let go of your connection to your natural awareness, and the tendency to return again and again to the presence of being, right where you are, doing what you are doing.

I hope that you find these ideas worth your reflection and contemplation and that they give you enthusiasm and motivation to continue on this exploration.

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This is an excerpt from the book Unravel the thread: Applying the ancient wisdom of yoga to live a happy life

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