The One True Path | Heavy Metta

Posted by einajs in Writing, Yoga on 07 16th, 2010 | 2 responses>

This is a public service announcement: Avoid people who think they have the answer. In particular, avoid people who think that

I stole this.

there is only one way to the truth. In particular particular, avoid teachers that think there is only useful aspect of human experience, either heart, mind or body. I’ve found some serious pitfalls and personal conflicts with those who seem to find merit in methodologies that favour only one of this trinity, and it’s freaking me out a little to see that that’s really where the wheels come off the rhetorical cart: there are SO MANY PATHS. There are strong camps delineated within a subculture [yoga] that SHOULD be loving and graceful, and most of them have to do with a blind obeisance to only one of the three. This blindness usually manifests in code:

1. “I don’t want to have to think too hard about yoga, I just want to have an experience” [body]
2. “If you can’t intellectually defend what you’re doing, it’s either dangerous or stupid or both” [mind]
3. “I know it doesn’t make sense and I can’t explain why but you have to give yourself fully over to this person or method before you will truly reap the benefits of yoga. You THINK you’re getting something out of it but you’re really not.” [heart]

Holy sweet moly, what a s***show. The very fact that these conflicts exist, to my childish brain, seem to be indicative of a deep misunderstanding of our nature, which is of course the uneasy coexistence of all these aspects as they duke it out in the inner world. I also enjoy these Underpants-Gnomes-esque syllogisms where one of the opposing teams’ beliefs shows up as the consequence of working with your chosen team:

1. Work with the mind only
2. ???
3. Experience a oneness with all creation even though you’re so, like, totally different!!

1. Work with the body only
2. ???
3. It knows what it wants and has an intellect that’s like, smarter than your intellectual intellect, and wait, what?

1. Work with the heart only
2. ???
3. ???????? [ha ha, that's my dig at bhakti, but seriously folks, tip your waitresses]

Look, stop the violence in hip-hop, y-o. If you’ve found yourself in any of these camps at any point in your path, and ESPECIALLY if you’ve come to see merit where you previously thought there was none, then we collectively acknowledge the possibility, however slim, that your mortal yoga enemy actually has something to offer the world, even if their chosen one of the 31 flavours is not yours. One of your students who’s been getting Rocky Road from you for the last 6 years needs some Pralines’n'Cream from your nemesis, and WE as teachers need to dig that if we really wish the best for them we’ll let them go with a good, if salty, grace. There are many, many paths and many, many souls, and may we keep what John calls a “luminous spaciousness” towards those who make us gnash our teeth and wail.

2 Comments »

July 18th, 2010 Sylvia M Says:

*like like like like like*

I like variety in my flavours, even though Half Baked is the flavour I keep comin’ back to. Mmmm… half baked… chunky, fudgey, yummy goodness…

I wanna learn more about this whole luminous spaciousness thing…

July 20th, 2010 Vandana Says:

I love this post!

Y’know, after only 8 years of practising many types of yoga, and watching how my grandparents practised, reading my dad’s yoga books as a kid, and trying to find answers in India (I didn’t), the only thing I have learned is that (unlike what I have previously thought) I don’t want to commit only one yogic path, because yoga is yoga and it is so vast, and it appears that I need different methods of opening at different times of my life, and even on different days. And I am finally learning to be ok with that, because maybe after a few years of struggling, we become our own best teachers in listening to what is going in our minds and hearts and souls, and deciding which teacher to learn from today??