The Map is the Terrain
The Map is the Terrain
I'm going to be quite frank about my feelings in a way that I haven't before. I'm also going to go back on some very fundamental beliefs that I held when I was a fresh yoga teacher, just out in the world. I was very vocal back then about what I thought yoga was. And while at that time, and in that place, and within that reality, what I said about yoga was true, in this time, place and reality, it will not stand.
I used to say that yoga was a physical practice that will enhance your life in every way. I used to say that if you felt better you would be better. I used to say that you could ignore the deeper spiritual practices--and just do the asana--and the benefits of them will come to you anyway.
I wasn't wrong--back then. But things are different now. The world is different. And the practice of yoga is different. It has become the worst, most extreme example of what I once believed it was. As 98% of us practice it today, yoga is a farce of what it should be and is now beginning to cause more harm than good.
That's hard to hear; I understand. But bear me out.
At its most fundamental core, yoga is a practice of using the physical to realize the divine. When I say "divine", I don't mean some deific out in the ether to whom you pray. I mean the true nature of yourself, that piece of universal ("divine") spirit that has aspected into the separate being that you are now. That core piece of you--the true you--has immense scope and power. It holds reality in its hand, and can wield that knowledge to advance the knowledge of the whole.
However, when we came here and took on the burden-blessing of this body, we covered that understanding in layers of maya --illusion--that help us to function in this limited physical scope. We need that illusion to interact with others who have done the same. We need to understand our separateness in order to remain sane in this aspect of physicality. But we also need to understand that we should understand that.
In other words, we need the veil. But we also need to know that we wear the veil and in doing so, we experience certain consequences of that garb.
Enter yoga. In its purest form, it is a practice of using this physical body as a map to reach the true terrain of being, or our divine nature. This is done through subtle practices that change the energetic signature of the physical body so that it is easier for us to see the veil, wear the veil with awareness and ultimately remove the veil to know ourselves as god.
So we have this map--the body--and we have the destination--divine nature. And we are using our physical map to try and understand the terrain. The problem is that our map is completely miswired. From a very young age, our parents, our families, and our culture has written the map in a certain way that keeps you locked within the physical circuit so that you will continue to serve the culture. This is not a bad thing for tribal survival. This is a terrible thing for personal evolution.
Your nervous system, your endocrine system, your energetic systems, your very core has all been programmed from outside of you. Your reactions to life events can all be traced back to the belief systems that were imprinted upon you. You got handed a map and you have been walking that map everyday of your life looking for the destination. Probably without really knowing on a conscious level what it is you were looking for.
As it stands, that map won't ever get you there. That map serves your tribe, and if that is what you want, sat nam , wahe guru, go for it. But if you want to get to the destination of divine realization, you are going to have to re-write that map. You have to make the map reflect the terrain so that you can actually get there.
This, my friends, is yoga.
Practicing yoga is about refining your systems to support this realization. Your nervous system must be ready to handle this kind of energy. The practice of slow, sustained asana and focused pranayama helps to refine this system. Fast yoga, power yoga, hot yoga, vinyasa yoga (as I am currently seeing them taught) actually warps this process, tuning the nervous system to accept adrenaline-inducing transition as the norm. Couple this with our outside lives which are changing and moving at a brutal pace, and you can see that we are hard-wiring our map to lead us back to cultural programming, not away from it.
Our map stays the same.
Your mental systems must be ready to accept the volume of information that will come when you reach realization. Given that your mental state is so deeply linked with your emotional state, and the emotional state is so deeply liked with the hormonal state, the yogi must bring his endocrine system under control. Advanced pranayamas, the practice of mudras and silent meditation are the techniques that must be practiced to tame this beast and put reins on it so that we are not diverted by fleeting, false information. But again, much of the popular yoga being taught (with no pranayama, no mudra, no meditation) actually re-inforces our self-soothing, self-satisfying, emotionally-justified pathways (It feels good, so it must be good...) so that we continue to run around in our own mental-emotional feedback loops.
Our map stays the same.
Most importantly, we must clean up our energetic bodies so that they are all functioning optimally. We must be able to move through all of our own energetic circuits with conscious will, choosing which action-reaction will bring us closer to our goal (physical or metaphysical). If we do not do this, if we are not even aware of this, our circuits function on auto-pilot. They live us; we do not live us. The chakras, the 10 bodies of Kundalini, the 5 bodies of Hatha, the Neurogenic circuitry must all be understood and mastered so that we experience freedom from the map we have been given. Most yoga classes don't bother--how can they? The masses have come to expect a good workout, a little stretch and a little 'bliss'. Asking someone to sit down, shut up and shovel through their shit using tools that can't be seen by the physical eye--and goes against the current cultural map--is hard. Many instructors (forgive me) simply aren't equipped.
And, therefore, the map stays the same.
Maybe most people out there are okay with that. I'm not. The practice of yoga is a practice of mastery in every way shape and form. If you master the map, if you write it as you see it in the terrain of source, you are blown open. You are truly powerful in ways that our common understanding of the word can't quite express.
The practice of yoga is the practice of transformation. It is the sorcerer's stone. It is not easy, cool, or popular. It can't be learned in 200 hours and it doesn't belong in a gym. I still encourage people to not only do yoga but to do as much yoga as you can. But now I temper that with a bit more caution.
Do good yoga. Do spiritually hard yoga. Find a teacher who knows about all of the subtle aspects of the practice and is willing to share them with you. Please, please, please....
....change the map.