Slowing down

It's hard to be aware. One of the lessons from Gio's class Saturday was that to be unaware sometimes is normal -- being a yogi means experiencing the joy of rediscovering awareness, and not berating yourself for the daysmonthsyears you not have been fully awake.

Sometimes I feel like as soon as I set a goal, I immediately start doing my best to do the opposite.

"Be aware." Immediately, denial.

"Focus on work." Immediately, no focus -- I may work harder, but frenetically. I start too many projects and, after a short time, feel unfocused, lost, unproductive, unsuccessful. I berate myself for not being focused.

I'm thinking that part of this "being aware" is to slow down.

Slowing down also creates the opportunity to discover your own wisdom--to discover what you really think, what you really know. I've been thinking about this more and more lately. This something beautiful about the yoga practice. If you let it, yoga prepares your body to allow real reflection. That was the original purpose of the asanas -- to prepare the body for meditation.

But I'm not talking about physically conditioning the body so it doesn't start aching during a long meditation practice. I'm talking about something I don't quite have words for yet. But it's something I've started to experience in yoga workshops, and in popular education training. It has something to do with the mind in the body, the mind as body.

It has something to do with slowing down and letting the mind body process happen before leaping to the next thing.

So, this is something I'm thinking about lately.

It's related to new insights I've had on Svadyaya. Sometimes this concept is defined as study of the self. Sometimes it's defined as study of scripture. How can it be both?

Studying the Gita, I read this (Sri Swami Satchidananda): "Written scriptures are only here to show you that since they also say the same things, we can trust our own experiences... " They confirm what you already know. They validate your experience. The trick is knowing what is your own experience. And to do that, you have to slow down.