Last weekend I visited one of my teachers at his home upstate. During a philosophical discussion about the nature of the human being, he shared a very practical and meaningful analogy.
“The human is quite similar to a glove over a hand,” he said. “The glove is created to perfectly cover the hand. The glove is in the image of the hand, yet it is not the hand at all. It has certain benefits and certain drawbacks. But if we identified the glove as us, we would be sorely mistaken.”
The glove and the hand
Our true being has the glove of skin, bones and flesh formed around it. The energetic body and the mental body are all part of the vehicle encasing the true being within. That pure consciousness animates the vehicle, and it continues to exist whether we change gloves, mend tears in the glove, rip the glove or take it off entirely. Deep contemplation shows us that the glove is not who we are. We are something deeper. Settling into that being is yoga, and that’s what brings us peace.
Another teacher used to joke that he could easily have fallen in love with his wife’s skin glove, but over time that glove would change, so loving the glove was never sustainable. His love had to be based on something deeper: the true person within.
Beneath the thin layer
We so often cause ourselves and others suffering because of the false identities we build around that ever-changing glove: woman, man, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Black, white, brown, freckled. Underneath that very thin outer layer, we are a single consciousness, born of the greater consciousness. What a different world we would live in if people kept reminding themselves of that. The idea of “I” versus “them” is an illusion causing us all trouble.
Through your physical practice this month, try to connect to that deeper, unchanging self as it moves its necessary skin-and-bone glove around. What a blessing, since this is how we are able to exist in the material world.
True ego and false ego
The ego, ahamkara, sometimes called the “I-maker” in yogic philosophy, creates an identity that lets our willpower move forward in this world. It is said there is false ego and true ego. False ego drives us outward, identifying with the glove that changes. True ego draws us inward, toward the true self: pure consciousness.
Through yogic practice, we watch false identities fall away one by one. Sometimes it feels bad. It can feel like dying, because it is a kind of dying. We change the glove. We die to the previous self, to be reborn over and over again. But the closer we get to the center, the more beautiful and alive everything becomes!
So watch this path with kind, loving, forgiving and patient eyes. We don’t scold a newborn for crying at being born. We smile and recognize there is a bigger life waiting ahead, and it has no idea of the beauty to come.
