The culture we live in tends to encourage us toward extremes, and then chastises us for falling off the edge. We have instant access to everything, and the media we constantly imbibe normalizes extremes in our minds. In nature, unless we were at war, we would probably never see the aggrandized death, murder and violence we see in horror or action movies. What we see on the internet every day has no filter. The most grotesque, disturbing things come right in with no warning, and the more we are exposed, the more normal it becomes.
This constant exposure stirs up the mind. Another issue with media is that when we watch, the brain thinks it’s the one going through it. Can you relate? I remember watching The Matrix for the first time when I was younger and feeling so amped up after the movie, like I could do wild martial arts and defeat all my enemies. And so it goes: whatever we imbibe through the senses, the material body and mind become. Even with food, what’s considered normal in our culture can make us very sick.
It’s as if our culture is sending us on a GPS route right off a cliff. What the yoga system provides is a new route, toward the center of the self: toward inner self-regulation, which leads to inner peace and clarity. But when you take a new route, you may find that others in your culture resist your breaking of the self-destructive cycle that is considered the norm. So in your sadhana, your spiritual work, the yogic texts recommend that you be more tolerant than a tree and more humble than a blade of grass.
More tolerant than a tree
Tolerance is so important, because when you get on this path you may fall off a lot. It may be very different from how you functioned before, and that’s OK. We have to be able to tolerate falling and picking ourselves up again. Even if we fall 100 times, we pick ourselves back up and try again 101 times.
We learn to tolerate others, too. Let them tell you how it should be done, how it always was done, how you should do it, how you should feel. With the deepest love and compassion, forge ahead toward what your wisdom is telling you anyway. We have to continue to love those around us and tolerate those who have different ideas. People won’t change because you lecture them. Only you, as a living example of grace, compassion and peace, can change anyone else.
More humble than a blade of grass
The blade of grass gets stomped on all day long, but through its deep humility it is resilient. It bounces back up, over and over again. Humility requires deep presence and a change of mindset: none of this is mine to own. None of this stuff, these people, things, ideas, even experiences, are mine to hold forever, because the material is temporary. Everything in the material world is transient and impermanent.
We use the resources gifted to us by the universe to serve that same universe. We use our possessions and our energy to serve others. Even our minds and bodies are impermanent; they are not ours to hold forever, and we use them to serve as well. This mindset gives humility. It takes us out of scarcity and into a selfless place of abundance.
The hardest austerity
In India you may see a practitioner on the side of the road holding one arm up in the air for 20 years, until it is shriveled and gnarled. The yogi is trying to teach himself nonattachment, tolerance and humility through severe austerity. It may get him those things, but the texts teach that this is not balance. Abusing the vehicle we have been gifted is not a first-class kind of intelligence.
The texts say the hardest austerities you can actually practice are the yamas and niyamas: the observances for how to deal with the world outside yourself and the world inside yourself, resulting in peace of mind. Being kind to others no matter what, even to those who are unkind or cruel to you: that’s a hard austerity. Speaking the truth even when it’s scary or you have a lot to lose. Not stealing anything: not time, not energy, not money. And the list goes on. It’s the road map to real yoga, to the center of the self, to deep, pure residing in consciousness.
Guardrails for the soul
We can’t get there if the mind has many waves. If we lie, and then have to cover that lie and remember the new lie, will we have peace of mind? No. There will be many waves in the mind. And what about the disturbing things we take in through the senses? They create impressions in the subconscious mind that bubble up into our dreams to be processed, then into our thoughts, and eventually, if the impressions are deep enough, into our actions in the world.
So yoga puts up guardrails for us. If you’re driving and you blast through a guardrail, you don’t fly off the cliff right away; there’s a little space before the edge. These yoga practices keep us on the road, so we can master and calm the mind enough to rest in our true inner splendor. Guardrails for the soul.
