Live Your Yoga: Making A Decision, Part 1

I have struggled with decisions. Especially the big ones.

Questions such as:

• should I be a single mom
• should I stay in this relationship
• should I leave my job
• should I end this friendship

Even if we’re not up against a “major” life decision, we face a myriad of choices every day. We all want to make “good” choices. But what does that mean? And how can our yoga practice help?

In this three part blog, we’ll look at the three tools that are unveiled in the The Bhagavad Gita, one of the yoga tradition’s most beloved texts. The Gita is a smaller part of a huge epic called The Mahabharata. 

To set the stage, in the Gita, our hero, Arjuna, is a warrior who is faced with a terrible decision: should he take up arms and fight a battle against his own family? Although his cause is just, the destruction will be great.

Arjuna is our everyman. Just as him, we too are embroiled in our own daily battles. Right now, think of a battle/choice that is currently in your “field.” Pause for a moment to consider your quandary. In our conflicts, the “right” choice is often obscured in ambiguity. All options seem terrible. The outcome is uncertain. How do we choose? And how can we be yogis when our actions may create pain?

Arjuna’s first instinct is to simply not act. He throws down his weapons. (Can you relate to this desire?) Arjuna turns to his friend, Krishna (a god), who is his charioteer to beg for guidance. Once Arjuna has opened himself to instruction, Krishna lays down some wisdom to help guide Arjuna to his best path. Through the Gita, Krishna lays out three paths for being a practicing yogi in the world.

Krishna represents our higher power, our inner voice of wisdom, our inner sage. Even in the midst of battle – perhaps most keenly in the midst of battle – we can uncover our highest self.

Path 1: Jnana Yoga

Simply stated, know your true self.

You are not your thoughts, your feelings, your body, or your ego. You are not the habitual thought/feeling patterns that make up your personality. Rather, the True Self is the power of Consciousness that lies behind all of these mini-dramas and fluctuations. Imagine that you have gone to a movie: as a spectator, you are caught up in the the drama of the story. But that personality on the screen is not you. While that little character is having its dramatic escapades, you are safe in you chair, watching. Your true self is the Witness, the Seer, the Observer.

Try it. You may set a 5-minute timer.

• Come into a meditation seat and close your eyes.
• Start to watch your thoughts and feelings arise and go.
• Can you create space to watch them arise, without getting caught up in them?
• Who is the Watcher?

When you can begin to watch your thoughts, you will begin to realize just how compulsive your mind actually is! It chases its own tail: reliving victories and defeats, anxiously scrabbling for control, and “hamster-wheeling” through thought cycles. The mind constantly compares. It creates names, labels, judgments and patterns. However, as soon as our minds begin to dissect reality, we lose our ability to experience the totality of what actually IS. Our minds are too busy comparing what we’re experiencing to everything that we have already experienced to take in the present moment unvarnished.

Try this: open experiencing.

• Take yourself on a walk, preferably outside.
• Breathe. Take in the world through your senses as it is. You will need to slow down.
• Experience the world freshly, avoid stories and labels.
• Stay in the space of open experiencing, without expectation or interpretation.

Once you have settled into the space of the Experiencer (rather than the experience), consider: how does your battle feel now? From your higher perspective, what choice is the most elevated?

Stay tuned for Part 2.