In yoga, I see people try to ‘hire-out’ their practice by trying to find shortcuts to results. These are the same people who leave their practice early because the ‘results’ are not what they expected. The message of the practice doesn’t always happen in the moment. The message may happen in the reflection, like when you’re weeding the garden or walking the dog. Integration doesn’t happen because you told it to.
Some old yoga texts were written in code. The only way to break the code was to do the work. As the person did the work, they would come to a part they didn’t understand. So they wold interpret it and try different things to unlock the meaning. Only when they were going in the right direction could they unlock the message and move on to the next. Just imagine if that was how we approached yoga now.
There is a story about a man who was looking for a spiritual guide. He went to a very popular guide and asked what the guide could teach him. The guide told him he could teach him all the secrets of the universe.
This man went to another spiritual guide and asked what the guide could teach him. The guide said he didn’t think he could teach him anything, but the man could join him each morning to watch the sun rise.
The man joined the guide at sunrise the next day and every day after.
Allow time for integration to be a piece of your practice.
~Carmen