Yoga means unity - a thing I never quite understood. Today my teacher explained the meaning of the word. Unity refers to the mind body connection and thus Yoga is about directing one's awareness to the body (here) and the present moment (now). What you do ought not be in the center of attention, but who you are (be).
After a lot of thinking about how I deal with time and scheduling, this was an inspiring insight. While planning, your mind is in the future and out of the body. Walking home from the gym I resolved to not decide what to do in advance this evening. Promptly I met a friend at the bus station and found myself taking way more time than usual to talk to her. I was also able to listen closely and with an enormous interest. This is the power of now (referring to Eckhart Tolle's great book of the same name).
For the first time I had a glimpse of understanding why spiritual teachers attribute the absence of decisions to the state of enlightenment. A friend had told me about it, but I didn't know where he knew that from. So I just did a bit of research and found this article which names four sentences to be repeated daily:
“Today I will make no decisions by myself”
“I will make no decisions today because it is no longer intelligent to do so.”
“I will make decisions in silent counsel with the Infinite.”
“I will do what You have me do.”
If that sounds somewhat esoteric and unapproachable to you, regard it as an attitude of total trust in your intuition. And that just means that you know what you want and have no doubt that you are on the right track with whatever you engage in.
It seems as if the idea that came to me on my way home has been around for some time and had a huge impact on a lot of people's lifes. From eastern philosphers to (yet another) friend of mine, whose tattoo on his wrist reads:
Be here now.
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