A Beginning

Hello fellow yogis!

It's been my wish for a long time to write a column, or a blog as they're called in this day and age. I've started and stopped, written lots of pieces but never got there because of the thousands of excuses I would create. Excuses such as: 'It won't be good,' 'no one will read it,' and my favorite, 'I don't have time.' Well, there's no time like the present! How many times have we heard and used that phrase without stopping to think what it really means?

The first Yoga Sutra states, “Atha yoga anushasanam: Now, the discipline of yoga” Now, not before, not later, but now. We have an image of our timeline with the present moment as an insignificant little dot, the line of the past extending infinitely behind, and the line of the future extending infinitely forward. Has anyone ever experienced the future as present? It may be easier to believe that the past comes into the present when we recall emotions, memories...yet, is that old moment really in the here and now? A teacher once described an alternate timeline in which the entire 'line' that we perceive to be past, present, and future, is in fact, all this present moment. So why is this a transformative idea?

With this new image of the present moment as the entirety of time, we may become more aware of how often does our mind reaches back into the past or dreams into the future. Both of these actions bring us out of the present moment, bring us out of contact with what is here in front of us now. We may miss a great opportunity, perhaps one we have always wished for, because our image we created in our mind does not match how it actually arrives. When we pull our past experiences into the present, we color that moment with what our history tells us, limiting the possibilities for the experience of the now. We often see this in relationship when we react to someone in a way we habitually reacted to another (say, our parents) in the past. We forget that this person isn't the other. We confuse past and present.

These ways our mind continuously pulls us forward and backwards, round and round, are called vritti or 'turnings' of the mind. The second yoga sutra states, “Yogash chitta vritti nirodah: Yoga is the cessation of the turnings of the mind.” Yoga, unification, happens when we can quiet the mind, when we become aware that we are not our thoughts, there is something, someone watching the thoughts that stays the same no matter where we are pulled in our mind. This watcher is the Purusha, or true seer. The third sutra: “Tada drashtuh svarupevasthanam :Then the Seer rests in it's own nature.” This Seer is the unchanging, non-judgmental, observing part of ourselves. The watcher of our thoughts, actions, feelings. If you are watching your thoughts and hear yourself labelling, judging, naming that which you are observing, than this is still the mind. The Purusha is just behind that curtain. It's the part of you that heard the judging, labelling or whatever. It is the part of our selves that is eternal, infinite, divine. “Otherwise,” sutra four, “the Self believes itself to be the turnings of the mind: Vritti sarupyam itaratra.”

Some say these four sutras describe the entirety of yoga practice. Some say that simply the first is the totality of yoga and all others describe that one. Being in the now, this moment here, where neither past or future exist, brings the mind to stillness and the Purusha, our infinite nature is revealed. And please, don't trust my words, try it out! How about now?