So you feel sad? So you feel pain? So you feel like life isn't right? "Don't run from it", said one of my hundreds of teachers as I held my asana.
I thought, "what the fuck?"
"I dare you to stay there in that space for this is the sacred place, it is the only place where true change occurs", wasn't said then, but this feeling grew in my bones over the years like a calcification of the spirit. I thought, "am I being understood for the first time in my life? But isn't this why we do yoga? To let this shit go?"
It was like a brief glimpse of the ugly side of my life, defining the most beautiful. I hesitantly surrendered to allowance and to the consideration that this is really the true toughness many of us don't know.
It was like a brief glimpse of the ugly side of my life, defining the most beautiful. I hesitantly surrendered to allowance and to the consideration that this is really the true toughness many of us don't know.
It was there, in that ever-so-brief moment of acceptance, that peace started its growth in me. So, even though “the end all, ever after all, isn't a direction after all” became a mantra inside, I still went on for many years not feeling content with my life directions, personal relationships or physical achievements. When the energy highs and tuning from the daily 1.5–3 hrs. of yoga practice faded, I fatefully returned to negative, retrospective thought.
|
What was this thing that gave me such appreciation and struggle? Kept me in a state of questioning if something was right or ok, but with a feeling that it wasn't? Was it the fact that my life or perspective was wrong?
As yoga became the door to the moment, retrospective thought built itself into the cage that kept me holding onto thoughts that something too difficult was being held onto in my life. And, as the teacher dared, I stayed.
This to me is yoga — the light to a reality that doesn't colour life but removes the veils of reaching, grasping and non-allowance. It isn't so much that this knowledge frees me but it now connects me to what life brings. Yes, it is a state of appreciation and gratitude for those that dare go there.
For if distance be important, it is only the rough road between the head and heart that one must travel. I dare you. Stay there in that which maybe isn't what you think it is. Perhaps it may be the actual beauty, instead of the beauty it will help you see. You are a traveller of the greatest distance any of us go through. Head to heart or heart to head, the meaning is somewhere along the path that you take. Don't run from it. Run for it. Run with it. Share it. Feel it. And no matter what, stay only in that state of loving toughness, for like the head to heart and heart to head, toughness is always moving towards loving if you allow it.
Postscript — Somehow my retrospective thought evolved into sharing this with you. “Somehow, somehow” evolved into a two word poem written where I dare not look. Go practice yoga and I dare you to really look.
Jason Loutitt