Sebastian Brosche · 4 min · 771 words
Previously titled: 12 Taoist View Of Life 1.5
Ultimately, how you do your yoga, no one can do yoga like you, any of you, whoever I'm talking to. No one can do yoga the way you do it. A snowflake is never repeated in this pattern. You are 27 trillion snowflakes strung together.
Your fingerprint will never be repeated. Your iris pattern will never be repeated. Your bony structure will never be repeated. Your vocal tension and resonance will never be repeated for the rest of time, ever.
You are unique, absolutely unique. And there's this endless spiritual tension in the world of we're all the same, aren't we? And we're all unique, aren't we? Both are true.
We need to learn to embrace that paradox. We're all the same, aren't we? But we're all absolutely unique, aren't we? The reductionist wants to say, look, make up your mind.
Either we're all the same or we're all unique. The Daoist says both are true. We are all the same. We are all absolutely unique.
Both are true. That's what the Western mind has a huge time dealing with. Aristotle said there's a law of the excluded middle. Either something is or it isn't.
It can't be in between. Nagarjuna and the other philosophers in India said, no, no, you don't need to make that choice like that. All the Western logic until the modern era is based on the law of the excluded middle. You are or you aren't.
There's a 2500 year old tradition in the Orient that no, you can develop a completely logical coherent system that includes maybe yes, maybe no to both. We're all absolutely the same. That's why we can love one another and have empathy to one another. Because underneath it all, we're the same.
I'm staring at myself through your eyes. That's true. We're all absolutely unique, never to be the same again. That's true.
That's Daoism. It's even in yoga. It's Arhajas, Tamas. What unites them together?
Sattva. In China, it's Yin, Yang. What unites them together? The Dao.
When I breathe, I breathe in, I breathe out. I cannot breathe in and out at the same time. So are they the same thing? No.
Are they part of the same thing? Yes. The Dao of breathing is inhale and exhale. But I can never inhale and exhale at the same time.
Muscle contracts and it relaxes. I can't do both with the same muscle at the same time. I cannot contract and relax at the same time. If I couldn't do both, I couldn't move.
The Dao of moving is contraction and relaxation. Two seeming opposites are united at a higher level. In the physical dimension, we are different, unique, never to be repeated. Energetically, spiritually, higher up, we're the same self with a capital S.
So in the practice, in the physical domain, your diet, your voice, your mantra, your spiritual path, everything about you is unique and should be your own. Spiritually we'll come to the same place. Vivekananda said, you know Vivekananda? Vivekananda said, it is very good to be born in a church.
It's bad to die in one. If you haven't outgrown the container in which you grew up, you've never done any spiritual practice. It's good to be born into a church, whether it's the church of Ashtanga or the church of Ayangar. It's good to be born in a church, to have a form, to have a focus, to be guided, to see where you bump up against the walls.
If you die there, who are you? If I can predict everything you're going to say, why do I need to meet you? You're all going to the same. How you bend your body, how you move your body, what postures are good for you, what are bad for you, are unique to you, absolutely unique to you.
And one of the great things about growing old in a yoga practice is letting go away what doesn't work for you. That doesn't work for me anymore. I believe that if you don't outgrow the little rules of thumb that I or anyone else teaches you, you've never trusted the spirit that lies inside you, ever. And if that's the case, you've missed the point of yoga.
If you've never gone through a crisis of what you experience is different than what you were taught, if you've never faced it and humbly said, this is what I've lived through, this is what I'm going to teach, no matter what I was taught, if you've never faced that, you've not found the spirit inside you.
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