December 18, 2023
Me (after leading the pose of the past two years for the final time for some people): “Self-evaluation. Did you pass or fail?”
A student: “Pass, because I love myself.” (This is also the month for the “I love you, I love you, I love you practice” which I’ve written about previously.
I love two things in this response. First, she was endeavoring to practice what I was teaching all class this month. Second, as a teacher I so appreciate the people who are brave enough to speak up and share in class. They always add to the experience. And they are usually voicing something that others in the room are thinking or experiencing, too. After the fact, it turns out this was true in this case as well.
I write, though, to encourage all serious practitioners and intelligent people, please, please, please, do not self-assess and give yourself a passing grade just because you love yourself. No! Love yourself—definitely!—and honestly assess yourself and give yourself a well-deserved Fail if that is what you think you deserve.
As we continue on the spiritual path, loving ourselves, all beings and all of Life is hopefully moving toward being unconditional. However, if we grow that Love at the expense of our clear-seeing, it’s a bad trade off. We desperately need both on this path!
Stephen Cope, in Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, which I’ve been reading in classes, has talked about us needing both clear seeing and calm abiding on the Path. “I give myself a Pass because I love myself” is an attempt toward calm abiding—and good job with that. However, it comes at the cost of clear seeing. In that case, essentially, I don’t need to really look at how good a job I’m doing; I’ll just automatically give myself a Pass because “I love me.”
In the best possible situation, the sentiment comes from a good place: “I love myself, so I do the very best I can and would never let myself fail on account of my own actions.” But is that really the case? Have you ever done something that was clearly not for your own good, and then failed or experienced negative repercussions? Of course! Are we—every one of us—capable of failing, even by our own power and free will? Without a doubt. So giving ourselves a premature “Pass,” is clearly unwarranted. (Feel free to (re)read my I Am…Perfect blog in case you need company in that.)
The dominant world religions—Christianity, Islam and Judaism, among others—endeavor primarily to give their followers calm abiding, something that is clearly lacking in our world and which people clearly need! This fact of religion is what prompted Karl Marx to correctly say, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.”
Being an opiate with the primary function of easing the pain of Life, it comes as a package with diminished awareness and ability to see clearly. To get both clear seeing and calm abiding, you need either another path or some additional practices. Yoga can be one of those—either as a Path or simply as additional practices to help cultivate clear seeing. Given that we are practicing Yoga in—and coming from—our culture, we may still also be tempted to use yoga to give us just calm abiding without necessarily giving us clear seeing.
Calm abiding without clear seeing has allowed people to do horrible things to other people and animals for millennia! It is part of what has prompted our oldest son—also rightly—to hate religion, all religion, period. (He professes to love science, which has also created untold horrors for people and non-human beings and is probably the “religion” that will ultimately wipe out the human beings.) Seeing the realities of calm abiding minus clear seeing can easily serve as a warning of the dangers of cultivating only calm abiding.
Equally important for an introspective, mature, loving and service-ful human being, is clear seeing. One potential downside of clear seeing is that often it too quickly gets hijacked by the inner critic. Paradoxically, it can also lead us to be overly critical of others, a trait that many followers of the dominant world religions seem to cultivate at the same time they are cultivating calm abiding for themselves. Many devotees in the world seem to be very clear about how other people are failing and overly intent on correcting them instead of themselves. At the extreme, these people are simply intent on wiping out the supposed others. This approach is, of course, much easier than looking deeply and honestly at oneself.
However, if we cultivate clear seeing and calm abiding simultaneously, Yoga teaches that a human being can come to fully realize—meaning feel! and directly experience—their complete Oneness with all Reality. Truly, amazing and inexpressible experience is available to a human being who arrives—finally and fully—at the Present Moment. Pure, full-blast unconditional Love is within our reach. Without calm abiding it won’t happen; without clear seeing it won’t happen.
So assess your pose(s), your life, your mind, your actions honestly, but lovingly. Love yourself no matter what, for sure! But your neck, for example, won’t be helped in any way if you “lovingly” give yourself a “P” on the seated spinal twist without looking honestly and deeply at how you are using—or not using—your neck in the pose. Maybe you really deserve an “F” coupled with a recommitment to being more loving and attentive with it in the coming year.
May you have peaceful Holy Days and a blessed New Year. You are in my Heart.