The Yoga that Turns Inside Out

The Greatness We Seek is in the "I" We Place on Offer

Given the heartbreaking state of the world, it’s a good time to return to our yoga for the practices that address the complexity of emotions. We’re going to need greater composure, honest insight, a nimbler awareness. We’re going to have to become more vigilant to practice more of what we preach, which means also making time to restore, recollect, and revise. Yoga isn’t about arriving at certainty; it’s about not needing certainty to improve on ourselves.

Let’s assess and reassess, take up where yoga has offered examples that don’t conceal its options---for better and for worse. Allow me to point out a few that concern us.

Pretending it’s “all going to be alright” would require meditating until, like the sage Valmiki, you find the ant hill growing around you. Yoga has often been procured as inoculation from our infirmities, individual and collective. Generate enough heat (that’s tapas) and either the light crowds out the darkness, or one becomes too hot to handle. This is the liberation from position. Get yer samadhi while supplies last. And once the house has burnt down around you, well, you might live to see the moon in the darkness. To this I say, I’m gonna need some shelter. Don’t fade away.

At the other end of the historical rainbow, the required bypass proffers domination over an unruly reality that can be vanquished or, at the very least, circumvented. Liberation will rout our discomforts; it may even wear an irenic face. You don’t need to be mean to claim superiority, just assume a placid guise and allow the will to power to dictate your own version of reality. The one smiling in saffron (n.b., not a sartorial requirement) may make us believe they’ve really got the power to resolve our human condition until we find out that what those 108 shris are meant to disguise.

There are elements of coping in all such methods: we must endure the senses, as Krsna famously puts it (Gita, 2.14, 12.58, etc.), and alas, we must get on with it. But precious little is said about integrating, incorporating, or conjoining with our apprehensions, much less our sufferings and their consequences. In the meantime there’s plenty of talk about greatness, mahā and much that is disparaging about aham, the “I.” Now we might be getting closer to the matter than is comfortable. Let’s call that a good start.

I’ve already written about the putative arc of moral justice, but unfortunately this requires some or another kind of theological projection. Thinking morality is a feature of the world and our collective being begs further the question why a universe that’s supposed to be good is so blithely indifferent or worse. Unfortunately, it’s more likely up to us and there’s ample evidence that achievements once claimed may be compelled to retreat in the face of indolence, venality, and dare we say the victories of evil. What to do?

We could make yet another appeal to the claim of an inherent sattva, a being-ness that speaks to a more natural and salubrious equilibrium, not unlike some of the early Daoist ideas of instinctive virtue. The argument here is that we need fewer arguments and instead a deeper connection with an essential, universal and uncontested conciliation. Who could disagree? Allow me?

If only we let ourselves be who we are, we can revel in the ease and inborn affluence of being without effort (maybe more wu-wei, non-action, is what’s called for.) I wrote about this a few weeks back and wasn’t surprised (more honestly relieved) to find out that many of you reclaimed your time with an appealing skepticism. Funny how we can’t seem to wish ourselves into better than we are by simply claiming we’ve already arrived.

This is no time merely to abdicate or acquiesce to the forces of malevolence, become self-satisfied with a convalescing rancor, or admit to ineffectiveness and impotency without further recourse. Instead, we can begin with the recognition that the encircling malady will soon turn to enervation, make our limitations all too apparent, and that our insistence on better will challenge us to be better no matter what we can (or cannot) do. We need a yoga that addresses the terms of life we neither control nor fully comprehend. We’re going to have to find in this meager “I” (aham) the courage to turn things around, to capture again the possibility of greatness (mahā).

Yoga is always about taking accounts, it often seeks accountability though by now it should appear plainly enough that we’re not going to get everything we want, maybe not even get what we need. Enter again here (Saint) Mick’s voice, rocking us to yet another fine sentiment, perhaps more wishful than true. Our needs and wants are up for grabs. So whadda’we do now?

I was taught a yoga of possibilities but that those too are not to be confused with the infinite. Infinity (or at least incalculability) may be real but it is also likely irrelevant. To claim endless possibility requires metaphysical hope and as consoling as that may feel, it’s never too late to recognize the difference between worlds we wish and the ones we’re living in.

The only thing worse than resorting to yet another story about the limitless fecundity of possibilities for the better is to concede defeat and stagger into nothingness. Nothing matters? Nihilism is just as unaccommodating, and we hardly require another reason to join in the vulgar incivilities that saturate our discourse. We need shelter, not places to hide. That’s not going to be easy or always safe. So even as we admit the human condition is going to remain human, we must imagine, dare I say, resolve, revise, even cultivate meaningful response. Just because your “I” is just you doesn’t mean you are alone or need go it alone. That’s the beginning of refuge.

Yoga often overpromises solutions, but its better purpose may be to make what is possible more commonplace. We’re asking too much from the cosmos when we make the offer too cosmic. We need not abandon any of our wonder, astonishment, or fascination if we make ourselves just as curious about the everyday, the ordinary, the stuff we know we can do. Human achievement depends on who we want to become. “Reliable” sounds boring until we find out its among the hardest things we ever practice.

Yoga works best in paradoxes that unravel into helpful explanations that bring us purpose and invite meaning made. When we look too hard for the grandiosity of solutions, ultimate becomes a capital letter offense: the Ultimate is more often an anesthetic and excuse than a prompt to the meaningful.

However, if someone uses the language of a magical god, for example, to prompt others to do what’s right, let’s call that skillful means (upaya) and yield to the willing delusion for a positive result. Theirs may not be your language but meaning is what can be received, what penetrates, what causes change for the better. When we can’t be wholly honest, being true means using the tools on hand to create a better outcome. The auspicious is often more exigency than commitment to unassailable truth.

This means that we might need the occasion of Ultimacy but let us not to the marriage of true minds admit that its impediment will improve ourselves. This betterment we must conjure and implement in little things, in the commitment to an everyday goodness in all its flawed and moody incantations, with all its gremlins and disfigurements. Keep looking in the mirror for that self while you look to make an offering, a remittance of the good you can attempt now and then do again.

Yoga comes through the little by little, again and again commitment, in the cumulative, in showing up when it counts, when you can. And when you can’t, ask for help, that’s how we got here and that is a way forward.

Addressing the somatic self is always good place to begin---for what comes into feelings and thoughts surely comes through our bodies. Yoga on, I say. Make connection with yourself. Never underestimate the gifts of health; self-care isn’t indulgence, it’s discerning priorities. Choosing to connect requires making the choice. It’s when you start with you that it’s possible to be present for others.

Age, time, commitments---these are conditions and limitations not to be dismissed but elemental features of the yoga that is connection. Take care to carry forward the self you want present when you speak and act. And when this seems difficult or feels inadequate or is just too vulnerable, breathe into the attainable and make the likely a potential rather than a liability. Check in with good company.

Yoga is equanimity, not perfection. Remember not to equate imperfection with failure. Imperfection reminds us to care about what is. Care about that “I” to bring “we” more fully into the story.

When you don’t know what to say, or feel helpless about what would make a difference, take care for the embodiment that gives you the opportunity to be. It is from within this vulnerable gift you find your own expression of heart and mind. Greatness is not remote, it’s turning inside out what is right before the eyes.

Your mind may feel exhausted, your heart distraught. But that is not all you are. When you have power to choose, be the yoga that makes “I” the chance you give to others: nourish with food, become good company, and surrender not to those who bring no value. The connection you can make is the yoga of values that sustains life worth living. The great mahā is not a pipe-dream; it’s the aham “I” made inside out.

Life of course is never less sobering, after all we know how humans are capable of treating one another with little regard for our shared humanity. And this is never less mournful. But perhaps knowing that we still mourn is enough to remind us not to forsake the love we can make. Let that grief become a reminder that the power of your conscience is an invitation to act.

Those reliable, everyday acts may seem mundane but that is the point: the mahā is the palindrome of the aham: it is not the metaphysical self of eternity (ātman) but the I-maker (ahamkara) making the “I” your “great” offering.

Make some everyday “I” that speaks to your intentionality, your good faith effort, and let the fruits of those actions fall how they may. Yoga doesn’t disregard outcomes or diminish the power that lies in the fruits of action, for better and for worse. Rather, it brings them into the equation of greatness: how to imprint greatness into an everyday “I”? We can live with fewer transcendent solutions if we choose to make more meaningful reverberations.

No one of us may be able to stop this madness but when we bring even a shard of goodness into actions, we heal in proximate ways, and we experience our worth in living consciously. We need that feeling of worth and value, for it reminds us when we feel small that goodness grows by making even the smallest efforts. When heartlessness runs roughshod over our hearts, we can still choose to be who we want to be: this is the greatness, the mahā in yoga. We find it every time we make aham, the “I” into the humanity that is our offering.