There has been a lot of talk going around on social media about people needing to find things to do to while away their time in isolation. Personally I haven't had time for any of that. I have been busier than ever bringing the studio into an online state, battling technology, helping staff and students battle technology, dealing with change at every turn, being frightened.
Frightened of what? For me, not so much of the invisible virus, but of the impacts to our wonderful yoga studio, our yoga community, our neighborhoods, our livlihoods.
Part of the challenge has been that we cannot plan for this. We do not have a set period that we can expect this to go on for, and hey presto, by such and such a date we will all be back to normal. We cannot even be sure what normal will be on the other side of this pandemic. Even today as I write we are awaiting the results of todays National Cabinet wondering if maybe we can start going out again soon, maybe the studio can open again soon, as they plan to ease restrictions. But we don't know, and we do not know if we might have to close again if the dreaded second wave comes.
Isn't it so that the not knowing is one of the hardest things? When we recognise that we radically DO NOT KNOW we become aware that things are not within our control. But here is the thing. They never are! All this so called knowing, based upon the predictability of so-called "normal" is pretty much an illusion.
Vidyā - the veil of limited knowing
Of course it is not that we don't "know" anything. The power to know is an innate power of Consciousness. It is the limitation of that power of knowing that we are encountering in life, and that is what is scaring us.We can understand this limited knowing, vidyā, as one of those limitations that Consciousness takes on in order to become immament, in order to manifest as us and everything we perceive. It is the limitation of the power of Consciousness known as jňāna-śakti.
Vidyā is constantly pointing us back to jňāna-śakti. In the words of awakened spritual teacher, Adyashanti:
"The door to God is the insecurity of not knowing anything. Bear the grace of that insecurity and all wisdom will be yours."
Surrendering to the limitation of knowledge
Well that is all very well for Adyashanti, awakened person, to say, you might be thinking. But this is exactly one of those times we can use the situation that is current in our lives to practice and potentially learn something really deep. And Adyashanti is pointing directly at it. "Bear the grace of that insecurity" he says, by which I take to mean a surrendering to vidyā, not fighting it, "and all wisdom will be yours".Wisdom is a kind of greater knowing, a wordless, conceptless knowing. In Sanskrit, widom is a translation of jňāna. What Adyashanti is pointing to is a great potential for breaking through the veil of our limitations to be more intimate with Consciousness itself, that which he has called God in this quote.
Noticing the difference between grasping to know and surrendering to not-knowing
Take a moment to sit. Be still. Be quiet.Connect into your plans for the future. They do not need to be big plans, they might be a plan to log on to do a yoga class tomorrow, or to take a walk to the coffee shop to pick up your take-away. As you do so, feeling your way, sense the resonance of the thought plan, to do a yoga class or walk and pick up coffee or whatever it is. Take your time with this, especially if feeling the resonance of a thought is a new thing for you.
Stay with that resonance for awhile. Feel into the assumed certainty that you will take that online class or that walk with the coffee stop. What does that certainty feel like. Beyond the thought construct, find the feeling in the body.
After a little while begin to shift your attention to all the things you don't know - not knowing when you could take a yoga class back in the studio, not knowing how we will recover economically as a nation, all the "not knowings" that are here right now, whatever they are.
And sense into the feeling of it all in your body. Beyond the concept and beyond the emotion of fear and uncertainty, find the feeling tone in the body.
Allow yourself to welcome that feeling tone, to settle into it, to relax into it, to love it for its own sake. This is not a trying, it is an allowing. Surrendering.
Staying with this, surrendering to this insecurity, to this entire feeling of not knowing. Stay with it. stay with it.
The longer you can stay with it, the more fully you are able to surrender, the greater the potential for the blossoming of wisdom. Which, by the way, may not be a bolt of lightening, but a simple, settled grace of deeper knowing than the mind could ever have.
