A Yoga Side Effect

There is an unlooked for side effect of doing yoga. It is an awareness of my thoughts, often not very nice or healthy thoughts. Thoughts that shame or depress me. Thoughts which lead to actions that were better left unacted upon. It isn't that before yoga I was blissfully unaware of my less than shiny thoughts, I was but it was easier to let them slip under the radar unexamined. Now the general tone of my thinking is cause of concern. (Two blue faced honeyeaters have just enjoyed an intimate moment in the poinciana tree just outside the window). Isn't there a quote about the unexamined life not being worthwhile or something like that? Thinking, always thinking, is really living life with my eyes closed. One of the eight limbs of the Yoga Sutra is pratyahara or turning the attention inwards. I don't think that means thinking. When I wake up in the morning I now notice, where I didn't before, how I immediately vacate myself from being by turning my attention to the surface of the thinking bubble. I must do this and this and this and what about that and so forth. It's as though I've put myself in a rocket and shot through to another galaxy far far away. Now I am starting to catch this runaway rocket and turn it around. Whoa! Stop, be and breathe. Yes, there's the bird song, there's the pressure of my body on the bed, there's my breath and oh, surprise, there *I* am.

That's a start but soon of course I'm away, behaving and thinking from habit and therefore thinking, saying or behaving in a way that is not in a sense, true. It's a daunting task to learn mindfulness and in my weak moments, I don't believe I am up to the task. Not only in my weak moments but most moments of the day when I am not mindful and therefore unaware. Despite the seemingly insurmountable mountain before me I suspect that the way to peace and serenity lies in that mindfulness, of living life examined breath to breath.

Then there's the act of measuring. With our literal logical minds we are always weighing up, comparing, labelling, dissecting and defining. Somehow in all this the essence of the thing is lost as is the person doing the measuring. I went to an art date a week or so ago. Enjoyed the day but in reflecting upon it later I noticed how much I compared things, not only the art work but the people, the environs. What good does this do? Of course the measuring is all in relation to me and the idea of what is good that I have formed (based on what shaky foundation - there's a dissertation in that!). In some things the ideal is exceeded, in others it is not met. I suppose it's another way of asking what is truth. It's all in the perception and what's true for Richard, with his colour blindness in blues and greens for instance, is not true for me. If reality is just different vibrations of packets of energy than the truth is fluid and only fixed when it is observed and compared to the past experiences of the perceiver. So a truth that is only fixed by observation and defining is no truth at all Is that part of the reason why we should "Judge not, that ye be not judged"?