RELAXING OUR EFFORT: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
JULY 24TH, 2009:
Relaxing effort and fixing the mind on the infinite (asana is perfected). Yoga Sutras 2.47
To me this sutra is about how we relate to the questions and answers seeking in our lives. In class it is that opportunity to stop working so hard at finding answers for life (why things happened in the past as well as reassurances for what is going tO happen in the future) and just be in a state of now. Some psychologists call this “easy speed” This is that place of just pure awareness of the questions of our lives instead of the constant striving for the answers. This is the advanced practice.
A right effort an effective effort and why the poses need not be exotic to effective. I want the poses to be familiar enough that we can find the ease and all the technique becomes effortless so we can be here right now on all levels (emotional, mental, physical, spiritual). So let the poses be the questions, be the breath and unite your focus to breath and move. This then allows us to love the questions as poet Maria Rilke says in her poem:
From "Letters to a Young Poet" by Maria Rilke
I want to beg of you much as I can to be patient
toward all that's unsolved in your heart,
and learn to love the questions themselves,
like locked rooms, or like books that are
written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you,
because you would not be able to live them,
and the point is to live everything.
Live the question now,
perhaps you will then, gradually, without noticing it,
live along some distant day into the answer.
When we find this infinite state then the unknown becomes less scary. We are in the isness of now (as Eckhart Tolle puts it so well). So let yourself feel your emotions around the unknown. Remember all of us are wondering about the future (it’s a trick and delusion of the human psyche). The thing is none of us know the outcome of any given day, the future is an illusion. Einstein said, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious…” The way to avoid suffering is to learn to be present in the isness and be less afraid of the unknown so we can relax our effort and simply enjoy being here and seeing what is real and beautiful! I love you all, Silvia