Are you authorizing imbalance? A reflection on our busy lives & our practice.

I’ve written about balance before, a couple of times.   It seems to be a theme in my writing & teaching, and is probably indicative of where I tend to struggle most in my personal practice (and life).   A practice of trying to find the balance between busy & manageable, between a quiet mind & chatter, between effortful action & relaxation.   I share this with you as part of my own practice - a continuous endeavour consisting of effort to change while letting go of expectations & patterns.

As we settle into February, and the New Year’s resolve is beginning to wear thin - our familiar, comfortable habits and patterns begin to creep back in.  We allow a little more sugar back into our diet, the trips to the gym or to a yoga class begin to drop down the priority list, and the household organization project comes to a standstill.   What’s changed?   Yoga philosophy can give us some clues as to how we slide back into patterned behaviour, and perhaps provide us with a framework for lasting transformation.

According to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, the practice of yoga consists of three components.  The first component to our practice is something called “tapas”.  Translated, tapas means “heat".   It is how we describe the effort we use to continue working on the process of self transformation.  It means the prioritization of our yogic practices.   The second component is “svadhyaya”.  Translated, svadhyaya means “self study”.     To study the self means to explore the inner landscape of the mind and experience of the body in order to discover patterns of behaviour and of movement that keep us from experiencing stillness.  Stillness, or yoga, is a state in which we experience the true nature of the self as unchanging, unaffected, pure awareness.  We achieve such a state by controlling “vritti” or the fluctuations of the mind through our practice (tapas).   The final component of our practice is “Isvara Pranidanah”.   Translated, this means “surrender to the Lord”.   In terms of our yoga practice this refers to the role of “Grace”.  To surrender, we understand that there is a flow to our lives that is ultimately going to offer us the experiences through which we can pursue the highest task of self Realization.  The Universe, as one might think, is not out to get us.   That whatever happens is as it is, and as such is perfectly unfolding in every moment.    To resist would be futile.

Yet,  the paradox is such that although the Universe unfolds as it should, it also unfolds as we consciously or unconsciously allow it to.    We can understand that our “karma”  is a groove in which we can spend our entire lifetime, and left unexamined that groove will remain unchanged.   Upon “waking up”  through the practice of yoga or mindfulness we can begin to enact free-will to help us break us free of our karmic patterning offering an opportunity for freedom or self Realization.   The deprogramming from the Matrix can begin.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that once you understand that you are not your patterned behaviours & thoughts that they won’t still impact you daily.   Shit will still happen!  We are working with lifetimes of karmic patterning here.   What we can recognize is that the Realization of the Divine aspect of the Self allows for a deeper allowance of Grace that can facilitate our transformation process.

Channeled Guru, “Rajpur”, has a wonderful body authorization phrase that I’ve been working with lately.   In class, I often ask students about what experience they are authorizing in their body, be it consciously or unconsciously.   The intent of this statement is to allow practitioners  to recognize that while the patterns of the body mind might be comfortable, familiar, and deeply entrenched, they are also changeable if they are not in service of our transformation.   When the patterns are in conflict with our "perfect functioning", it can and should be our intent to change them.  

"I authorize my body to release whatever is not necessary to its perfect functioning and I withdraw any prior conscious or unconscious authorization to the contrary” - Rajpur 

A powerful statement.   It is a brilliant and empowering sentence that immediately gives the practitioner control over their body.    According to Rajpur, this authorization statement “reminds you that your are not at the mercy of anything else, that you are in authority.  This does not mean that you are in authority as a little ego.  But it means rather that as the direct expression of the Father/Mother, you are inviolable. And if you are inviolable then you are in authority relative to what is true about you.  Nothing else is” ("Gathering with Rajpur", Ashland, Oregon, 1989, taken from the Erich Schiffman Freedom Yoga teacher training manual)

I authorize my body to release, and I withdraw any prior conscious or unconscious authorization.   What do you authorize?   Do you authorize habitual patterns of tension?  Or do you authorize relaxation?  Do you authorize your “story” about weakness, pain, difficulty?  Or do you authorize choice?

Which brings me back to balance.    The physical practice of balance perfectly illustrates how we should practice yoga.    We need to be effortful, to arrange the body in a way that best facilitates balance.   We can align, utilize our core, and otherwise train our body to move in a particular way to help find balance.   This requires practice and some degree of effort.    We also need to be aware of our “story” of balance or imbalance and be very clear on how our ego wants us to be a particular way.   Do we authorize imbalance by believing we are “not good at balancing”?  What if we authorized an experience free of judgement?  The success or failure of balance not being the key factor, but rather the fearlessness of trying instead.      Finally, a surrender to the innate desire of our body to simply just “Be” in balance.    The body will make calibrations seeking balance without much influence consciously from us .   We can trust this, or we can fight it.   The fighting will come from believing that the external experience of balance is more important than the internal Truth of Balance.

We can carry this same Truth off the mat as well.   Particular when we are attempting to find balance in our daily lives.   How often do we put our practice or something similar (a healthy diet, home organization etc) on the back burner thinking that we are “too busy”? Busyness exists because we authorize it’s existence.   When we believe we are busy, we are.   When we step back and recognize that the busyness isn’t the problem, it is instead our prioritization process that is the problem, we can begin to shift our experience.    If something truly is a priority, and the process of self transformation certainly can be considered a valuable priority, then there will be time. Stop authorizing busy.   Balance can be facilitated by aligning one’s life in such a way that we are truthful with our priorities.  We have done the investigation and have decided what we know to be important and as such we align our time with that in mind.   From there, we can recognize that our natural state is already perfectly balanced.   When we know what is true on the inside, it can be more obviously reflected on the outside as well.

Ultimately, yoga is a process that moves us inward.    We have external practices, but in the end, the path of yoga is a movement toward the recognition that all that we seek, we already are.     As we practice we will begin to notice the quiet, still, alway present aspect of ourselves.  This is the witness, the unchanging, always present awareness that lies above our thoughts.    When we rest in this awareness, we will become aware of our true nature.  Perfectly balanced, perfectly functioning, and perfectly at ease.    And isn’t that what we are all looking for?