It happens quite frequently that I will be going through my day and encounter some frustration or obstacle when all at once I hear my mother's old adages come into my mind. Lately, I haven't been able to shake one of her oft quoted sayings, that she didn't necessarily coin but one that she certainly believed herself, "We're human beings, not human doings."
It's actually a rather profound concept, all things considered. I have fallen into my default mode of living, which is the default of doing. I make lists and I carry them out. I have an idea of what needs to be accomplished for my day, and I set about accomplishing it. Even on the grand scale of life, I have the somewhat hazy vision of what I want my life to look like in 20 years from now, and so I attempt to accomplish whatever I think needs to happen in order to get there. It's not all bad really, this habit of doing that so drives us as humans. But what's going on internally amidst all this accomplishing?
It seems, from my perspective, that we go about life trying to do everything right. As Rodney Yee, a renowned yogi and guru, puts it, "they're always trying to do their life right."1
As I've been immersing myself in the study and practice of yoga over the last few months I have found this approach to life--the approach of "trying to do my life right"--fails miserably in this area. Well, really it fails us in every area, but yoga is managing to expose the fraudulent life I lead. I have been trying to approach my practice with the attitude of "Just show me how to do it right, and then I'll imitate that." I've been trying to approach the philosophy of yoga with the mindset, "Just spell it all out and I'll memorize the essential facts." All the while, no internal dialogue is happening. I'm doing the poses and my mind is somewhere else. I'm not really asking, "How does this pose feel? Where can this resistance lead me? Where is my breath?"
It's a profound experience for me to be immersed in a particular practice and philosophy that I can't "accomplish". I can't just simply acquire the knowledge and the how-to and then add it to my resume. I mean, I suppose I could do that. I suppose I could just go through the motions of it all and perpetuate this unhealthy trend of living a checked out life and finding my identity in my merits. But I want something more. I want something deeper. I want to fall into yoga. I want to really fall into living. I want to live my life moment to moment. "Yoga teaches you to continue to be present moment by moment by moment."2
I'm tired of running away from life. I spend too much time reminiscing and too much time planning. Instead, I want to live in reality, not the illusion of reality. "People think [yoga] is about stilling the mind. It's not about stilling the mind. It's about following the mind. It's really about deeply following something. What we're doing is we're disciplining the mind so that it can continue to follow the present moment, watching things arise as they arise. Watching thoughts arise as they arise and actually being cognizant of life as it's arising. To really be in it--otherwise you're not living a life. You're living an illusion of a life. You're actually disassociated from what's really going on."3
This is the opportunity I have in beginning my personal yoga practice, to "accept all that it means to be human."4
1. Rodney Yee, Yoga: The Poetry of the Body, p.46
2. p.123
3. p.126-7
4. p.52
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