Duality

Traveling my own path all of a sudden, I am inspired to realize how much of me was not me prior. I was working so hard to grow into something, I did not recognize, I already was. And yet, it is true, I am nothing. I am not sure how that works. Am I switching back and forth dangerously between being something and nothing? That sounds dangerous. It reminds me of a Bible verse where Jesus explains how we can not be both hot and cold. We can not be in one friends yard and at the same time in another, unless by chance we are sitting on the fence seriously hurting our genitalia. In that case, I’d say, it is physically dangerous. However serious I may be, when I think about the vast intricacies of God, nothing is all I am and yet with God, I am something.


I watch. Fully absorbed in the scenes, I gather the heavy energies I have been working hard to dispel all day, and watch. A novice yoga student has traveled all over New York and India per the yogini director, looking to locate enlightenment and understand the makings of Yoga. I am immediately debunked by the people this novice has no idea he is meeting. These are the people I wish to meet. To be honest, he meets people I wish to be. As I watch, my Netflix connection coming and going so often I am left with time to think about what is happening inside myself, while it is buffering, I find myself happy to be experiencing someone else’s confusion. Someone else’s uncertainty.

I watch until the credits, hoping I can reach out to the director and tell her that I am grateful but Google only takes me so far. I am left with a blank piece of computer paper on the screen of my laptop and a jumble of thoughts on which to reflect. I have been practicing yoga for 7 years now. My practice has been inconsistent as far as asana goes, so for the sake of clarity, let’s say, 6 years now. I love the way I feel after a good yoga class. I love the way I feel after I meditate. I even loved teaching yoga, when in subtle moments, I could locate my true self. I feel like something then, but it doesn’t stay. And I wonder, where it goes, hours after a yoga class when I am yelling at my son or crying about my hurt feelings? Sometimes I feel as though I have bound into a “United States of Tara” show staring myself. Transitioning in and out of my yoga-Courtney and my Life-Courtney, I wince at the b.s. in my mirror. I claim to have found what yoga is, claim it can help others. I suppose the most I can say about this fence of sorts is that I know what I love and what I don’t.

I did not always feel this sure about what I am affectionate about or what repulses me. I am not sure how I have come to know either. Is it yoga? Is it the asana, sweat and tears of a yoga class, and the meditation that have carried me to understanding something about my little/big self? Or simply, God? Can it be both entities, must I choose a side now too? I have learned about my God during yoga classes. I have even felt a deeper connection to him on my mat. Opting not to attend church but rather some asana appareled class. I know that I love God, though often I have stuttered to not sound fanatical in front of people opting to call Him “Universe” or “Higher Consciousness”. Justifying my passivity, I raise my hand in favor of politically correct. I do not want to scare anyone away from my class. They would come or not, they came sometimes, sometimes not. I was still left with a self that wanted so badly to be liked and so lost.

Growth, even in inconsistencies is possible. I am a true believer in the religion that admits we must never quit quitting. I did that for years with cigarettes and all the while I felt like a cheater because I was so stressed about not knowing who I really was after a yoga class, I craved a cigarette to take the edge off. A cigarette or maybe a little weed. I stood in my best friends yard crying about the lawn I wanted to be standing on. I wanted desperately to locate my own lawn, my home. I felt awakened to my abduction. How had I been blindfolded and gagged for so long without starving? All the tools I had could not suffice the goal. Church was a show. Yoga was a show. I was a star and yet, I was nothing.

I hope every day that I am past this… and by this, I mean all the self defeating energies that I am. I hope that my third eye relaxes into a peaceful forehead and serene eyes. I imagine kundalini rising up my sushumna and light pouring out of my crown. This light of me so profound, I need sunglasses to deal with my glare. I imagine myself speaking of God to everyone and not seeming like some weird zealous crazy. I don’t feel comfortable in church raising my hands and feeling God in the air because someone has told me to, but I do feel comfortable lifting my hands toward the ceiling in the Yoga studio knowing that God is all around me and in me, feeling like I am something with him and not a body in a pool of people moving because they have been told to stand when the music is playing. I am not against church. I like it sometimes. Sometimes, I need it. So I am not sure what this duality leaves me, if I am not to be warm. I can say very honestly and dearly, that I am watching myself, on the outside of myself, doing Yoga, respecting life and dialoguing with and about God, in all his glory, while I am in mine.