Jai Bhagwan!
Yoga is, very often, a solitary journey. This is true even when one practices in a room packed with other practitioners. Yoga is a journey of the individual and because of that, one often feels alone while on this journey and yet nothing could be further from the truth! Yoga is a solitary journey, that is travelled alone but it is always travelled in the company of others! Firstly, unless one is living the life of a hermit on a lonely mountain top, one is always surrounded by other people and yet, even on the mountain top one cannot travel the path of Yoga alone. On the mountain or on a crowded city sidewalk, there are always those who have faced the same challenges you face. Because the journey of Yoga is a solitary one, it is easy to forget those others who have faced this very challenge which now rears up before you and dominates your horizons.
There exists a very simple solution to this fallacy that one is isolated from all others in this journey: Sharing, share the trials and obstacles you encounter on the journey with those around you and you will soon find that another has faced the same obstacle you now see. More important than sharing the challenges—and never forget that sharing challenges is vital—is the sharing of moments of peace, stillness or realization. Without sharing, it is easy to believe the ego when it says, I am the only one feeling this, I must be a failure!
or when it snidely remarks, Whoa! That was a little weird, I must be crazy!
So it is that the ego mind works to tell us that we cannot succeed because the challenge is too great and it tries to push us to the fringe of society by denigrating the marvelous experiences we have. This has nothing to do with Yoga, this is life and the lies that ego tells every one of us. Of course, these are not all of ego’s tricks but I will save those for another day.
Gurudev’s favorite part of any lecture is the sharing. He encourages those present to share what they have experienced so others in the room, who have likely expereinced the same thing, will recognize that they are not alone in their experience and that they are not crazy because others have experienced the same things.
Along the lines of sharing, one of my students has started sharing her experiences via a blog, Yoga Yammer. Remember to share and in sharing you will hear footsteps walking with you on your solitary journey.
Namasté
