Another ripple of change to dance with as we hear further news with COVID-19 and the Delta variant. With mask wearing being highly recommended in the Bay Area and enforced in the LA area, it feels like an endless game of who has the highest tolerance to emotional turbulence, the best flexibility against the winds of change and the willingness to think of others before themself. How would you do in that game of life? And needless to say, that is part of the game of life that we’re all living. It can also be a debate around privilege and education, around COVID fatigue and inconvenience, around survival and spiritual belief, and around street-smarts versus scientific research. Given we’re a dynamic race with minds that are influenced by all the possible stories one could create, it is difficult for truth to rise to the same conclusion for all.
Integral Yoga, my yoga homebase, offers the slogan that I have always loved and attempt to define regularly through self-inquiry: Truth is One, Paths Are Many. It offers the idea that at the heart of all efforts to live on this planet, there is a common, universal belief to honor life. I think this refers to a personal wish to be at peace and to find happiness. But the path to find that will be different for everyone and even for each individual, will often change over time. We may struggle to know what that truth is and come up with some pretty terrible options along the way. Options that satisfy self interest for better or for worse, and often at the expense of others’ well-being. I know that I have struggled more times than others with knowing when I’m being selfish or selfless, when I’m dancing between the painful and the painless state (see quote below). That’s where chemical or behavioral addiction and/or compulsive ways can come the most alive, to the point that we adapt to life a certain way and even expect everyone around us to have a similar logic. Or we figure out a way to adapt our life around our addictive mindset and feel frustrated when others are different. Maybe we even wish for that peace and happiness to spread to others. But is it actually our ignorance and limitations (that we imagine are most highly evolved), our own attachment to living life a certain way that we’re actually trying to enforce our life-thinking on others?
By having answers, we often limit the creative mind. By asking questions, we can expand the potential of our brain. By not knowing, we may come into contact with our inner knowingness. By going deeply inward, we might become open to the meaning of existence. We might discover what remains after we close our eyes to all the fluctuations of life, after we become exhausted enough with the outside, that we see with-in-sight.
“Patanjali says there are five kinds of vrttis (thought forms), and again these are grouped into two major categories. One variety brings us pain; the other does not. Notice that he does not divide the thoughts into painful and pleasurable. Why? Because even a so-called pleasurable thought might ultimately bring us pain. And, again, we cannot easily know in the beginning whether a particular thought will bring pain or not. Some thoughts begin with pain but end leaving us at peace. Others appear to be pleasurable but bring pain…. Instead of “painful” and “painless,” we might be able to understand this point better if we use two other words. Call them “selfish” thoughts and “selfless” thoughts. …we should analyze all our motives and try to cultivate selfless thoughts. That is our first and foremost duty. …say to the mind, ‘All right; if you want to create some thought forms, go ahead. But if you create thoughts that will bring you pain, you are the one who will suffer. If you are selfish, you will suffer later on.’”
–Sri Swami Satchidananda, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
It’s wild to consider that if everyone would wear a mask, we might have seen better, quicker results. This fact that has been made clear: Mask wearing reduces the spread of the virus and it noticeably lowered flu cases last year according to my friend that works for Kaiser here in SF. (The CDC also made note for more accurate evidence on cdc.gov) Another fact – you may be carrying the virus and not even know it, making it possible to spread just as one person can spread a cold or flu. Even knowing that possibility of prevention, and even if you’re not concerned you could die, wouldn’t it be worth giving it a try versus being one of the ones who sense there is no virus or that our bodies should be able to handle it without it? Even if someone could sense that out with their highly evolved intuition and smarts, there is something that is plaguing our world and causing many to die. A recent report noted in Newsweek gave a story of un-vaccinated people who begged for the vaccine as they were being intubated offering insight into how long we’ll wait til we personally experience a truth. It’s as simple as not wearing a seatbelt until you’ve been in a car accident, and then you start wearing one. It’s not a mystery that viruses spread from person to person – we’ve had enough epidemics and pandemics throughout history to see that. But why do we conveniently want to act like that doesn’t count now? Simply because we’re accustomed to a life without having to deal with a pandemic? That’s a good thing and it does mean that we don’t actually have immediate reference for how to handle this type of situation.
On one level, we have made incredible advancements in this human journey and we’re doing better than ever. We’ve figured out and declared that slavery, ethnic cleansing, torture and many others are labeled as crimes against humanity. And yet, these still happen all across the globe though they now have a name and a declared value by a governing body that states what these are. We have greater knowledge on how to handle food and store food, how to get clean drinking water and how to travel easily and efficiently from point A to point B. So many advancements because of all of those things and of course, also some issues like contributing to global warming and the increase in disparity between communities. On one level, because the population keeps growing, more ways to manage people and life on this planet keeps evolving. We’re able to get to the moon and back and now, offer a recreational trip into outer space. Meanwhile, we also are plainly aware that that cost could help solve hunger in some portions of the world. Just like the spiritual teachings, life is ironic and paradoxical. We do things that on one view seem absurd, but in someone else’s view, it’s the most profound and amazing thing ever.
Where does this get us then? Well, it brings me to a place of humility. I get that I will likely always struggle with finding a way to bring everyone together with the most beneficial thinking…because it’s my own limited thinking! So instead of being fixated on that, I prefer to practice being honorable and thoughtful to others while making sure not to harm myself. I don’t need all of us to think the same thing and be just like each other. I love the diversity, the mixture of ways in the world. It feels clear to me that the cycle of harm done to other humans, animals and other sentient beings may be endless as it’s been evident from the beginning of our recorded history. So rather than wish for world peace, I simply wish for world tolerance and moments of universal kindness. My hope is that we can learn to truly honor one another as useful guides, that we see one another as our teacher. I’ve learned the most from some of my more difficult, frustrating, annoying teachers and then, by honoring them versus hating them. And while I don’t seek out these folks or try to set up this dynamic, it is deeply clear that I learn and grow the most through adversity. I wouldn’t change any of life’s events for it is from them that I feel I have the most potential to be useful on this planet.And quiet practice on our mats can be the perfect salve for our nervous system, but it’s a bold awakening to our highest and best truth that we find there, that I hope we can take off the mat and into the remaining hours of our day.
