Typical filthy hippie, captured here in natural, imaginary environment

I’ve been hashing out this theory lately, and it goes a little something like this:

Many artists and yogis, and many fans/readers/students, believe that the life of the Creative Person is somehow free of responsibility. In fact, in many cases that’s why people BECOME artists, and in many cases that’s why people become yoga students. They perceive, not wrongly, that there is an ease of being on the other side of the practice that isn’t seen in other lines of work, like, say, being a Starbucks barista or an international merchant banker. I certainly did.

When I started singing and pursued a career in music, I considered the more prosaic aspects of a career in the arts [like getting a GST number or a grant application] as being the same sort of sordid nonsense I had come to music to escape. I wasn’t trying to hear that I should save my receipts. Obviously, practice was essential and I did work hard, but I did sometimes ponder the inherent difference between myself and those who seemed born to slog the hard path in the practice cubicles in the basement. I did my time because it seemed expected of me but I didn’t seem to derive the essential joy my classmates did. I speculated on this matter at length, but never really examining the axiomatic premise that Art=Freedom. I just figured why the heck else would you bother with art? I could have been an accountant, I don’t need to deal with this nonsense.

When I began my yoga practice I felt the same way. I was constantly looking for the Trick, for the Short Cut that would suddenly, easily, shift my perspective and enable me to stick Pincha Mayurasana [my friends and I had a peculiar lust for Ole Pinchy, as asanas go]. I’d read all the exciting picture-filled bits of Yoga Journal and skip over the sweaty tales of kicking up against the wall for 3 decades because, ew.

I now see I fell prey to the romantic fallacy that my greatness would strike out of sheer awesomeness…it would be so easy to come into oneself, it would feel “natural” and “effortless”. When you see a great musician performing, you see the ease only. It takes a different mindset than the one I had to project backwards and see the huge support of daily, rigorous practice to present this seamless, joyful performance. This might seem like common sense and I suppose it is, but it’s been a hard lesson for me to learn.

The intensity with which you must approach your art, your practice, as a vessel of the bigger spirit, is more work than an MBA [with all due respect to many excellent and hardworking MBAs]. More than physicians and cardiologists [see above]. I suspect that the great MBAs, physicians and cardiologists actually already know this and that yet again it’s me who lacks this uncommon common sense. Georg Feuerstein has talked about the body being a transformer for this huge energy and using asana [posture practice] to create a strong enough transformer to step down this energy into the world in an intelligible way. I am daily gaining a deeper awareness of how strong that actually is.

3 Comments »

November 10th, 2008 Leanne Says:

mmm…yes that really is a great ponderance. I actually call my ongoing training my yoga MBA- it least it will cost almost as much as one by the time I am done…
and yes, sticking pincha is still one of my many pursuits also.

November 10th, 2008 einajs Says:

My goodness you are a blogular force; I just made this up! how did you get here so fast!>!>.1!!

Everyone, big ups to Leanne, http://shibuiyogablog.wordpress.com/, who was my inspiration for beginning here and whose blog is thorough, well-researched, and generally excellent. Also, fun as all heck. As soon as I figure out how to create a blogroll you know you’re on there….

November 10th, 2008 einajs Says:

I figured it out

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