Day 8
Last December, I was in a weekend workshop with my teacher’s teacher. We were learning about the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which are a collection of short teachings on the theory and practice of Yoga. The book is short. Less than two-hundred pages, but full of rich content. I still have not made it through my first read of this text. The weekend was like this, too: full of rich teachings, not all of which I was ready to internalize. Or even remember.
But one simple teaching from the first night remains with me: she was talking about how when people start practicing Yoga - especially once we start diving into the philosophical teachings - we begin to alienate ourselves from our families, from our friends, from the people around us. Well, they just don’t understand. Or, my that family member is just not that deep. Or, my partner will never get it. These statements - this attitude - was so resonant for me. So familiar. And what she said next (paraphrased here) is the thing that has remained: If what you believe is alienating you from the people around you, causing division, that is not Yoga. That is something else. Yoga literally is to unify. It can only ever be the unifying force, never dividing.
And essentially, she said, if you are pushing people away to practice this thing, you are doing it wrong.
I reflect on that teaching, and watch my mind cycle through all of the ways I have allowed my belief in something to cause division in my family and with the people around me. To alienate myself. To think myself special or chosen or equipped in ways others aren’t (maybe we can attribute this attitude to my enneagram four). I did it with Catholicism. With my anti-racism work when I moved to St. Louis. And, had it not been for my teacher’s teacher, I would have done it with Yoga.
But Yoga is the thing that unifies us. Yolks us to something greater than ourselves. And to each other. I believe that liberation work should be like this, too. That maybe, if we are creating a me-versus-them (as I did with my family when I started doing work around racism) we are working toward something, but is it really freedom? Maybe, like we have been taught, my liberation is tied to yours. And if I allow my search for my personal liberation to alienate me from you, then collective liberation is not possible.
A Practice for Today:
The Internet tells me that it is Lilla Watson, an Indigenous Australian visual artist, who is credited with the statement that “your liberation is bound up with mine.” What does that mean to you, when you think about the people in your life? How has liberation work alienated you from them? How has it connected you? What are the things that might begin to reunite you with the people you feel disconnected from?
