What is it that You're Looking For?

What is it that you are looking for in your yoga practice, your spiritual practice or in your life in general?  Where do you think your practice, whatever form it takes, is going to take you?  Where do you want to be?

Our mistake, too often, is that we feel that we need to be moving towards some other place in order to be getting anywhere.  We're hooked on the deferment of happiness... when I have that job, I'll be happy; when I move into that house I'll be content; when that person is out of my life, things will be better; when I've finished that project, things will be easier...

The truth is, that any spiritual practice should be a journey home; a trip into the heart of yourself.  In your heart, you already have everything that you will ever need. 

This can be difficult.  If we believe that we already have in our hearts everything that we will ever need, then we must accept and love who we are now, not some idealised future version of ourselves.  It might also make us face up to some serious questions about the way we live now, because if there are things in our lives now that are making us deeply unsettled, or unhappy, or unhealthy, then we need to address them; not ignore them on the basis that in some imagined future, things will be better. 

In your yoga practice, you are not adding to yourself, or taking yourself to any new place; you are stripping away all the stuff that you fill your mind with, so that you can look honestly and quietly at what is.  This can be very uncomfortable, but ignoring the things that make you uncomfortable does not make them go away.  It can also be emboldening: you don't have to hide!  You don't have to be afraid!  Who you are today is just right, so go out and do stuff on that basis - not because of what you'll get, or what you'll earn, or who'll be watching, but just because you can and are living your life to the full.

Here's something by Maya Angelou that I saw from a bus in San Francisco; it was written on a school building, built into the brickwork:


This is the work of our practice: to be at home in this one body, in this one life.  It is simply not possible to be anyone but who you are, anywhere but where you are right now.


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