I am sick of being sick… this has been my thought pattern when I loose my steadiness and become a victim of it. I have been sick all week, actually this is the third and worst week of being in bed. I have never lived a real winter before and now I can tell you that the worst time to have the flu is during a cold winter. On my recent posts I have been writing about how much we engage with the need for achieving, which is a clear manifestation of what in yoga philosophy is called: Raga. Raga is the attachment to the pleasure or satisfaction achieved by the accomplishment of the desires. This has been a very controversial topic most of the times I have had a conversation or a class about it, so I want to dive deep into it. We have created this society in which expressions like “Super busy” and “there is no time” are not only common but expected. We have created a lifestyle where multi-tasking is considered a talent, where having a full schedule is translated into worth, we have learnt to glorify the state of “being busy” and "rushing". In this state we have learnt that we have to be successful, and that success is a synonym of happiness. We have learnt that to be successful we have to achieve things, for example and in the first place, we have to achieve money, the more you have, the more you are worth. To be successful we have to be “the first”, “the best”, “the most”, and we have to be able to prove it. But we don’t care about being truthful. We have learnt to care about being the most beautiful, the one with more followers, the one that discovered that trick first, the one that can hold that difficult yoga posture for long time, the one who has the most original style, the one that has the most fit body, the one that studied at the best university, the one who has the best job. And most interesting is that we find “joy” in all these things. I quote “joy”, because I don’t think that this is really joy, but merely a temporary pleasure that disappears the moment it is achieved and transforms into something different. Many philosophy teachers in India make a very beautiful comparison about the desires, they say that the pleasure that comes from the desires is as drinking salty water, we will never be fulfilled because the more we drink the more thirsty we become.
We live in this never ending cycle of desires and pleasure, confusing the pleasure with a whole and steady satisfaction. We think of happiness as the moment we become the most, the first and the best. But that day will never arrive because those concepts will always change, once you get to experience what you believed it was the most, you realize there is something else, so now you have to become that or achieve that. At this point is where you will tell me that desires are human nature and that we can’t live without them, that is our nature to experience pleasure. So, here is where I tell you, I absolutely agree! But there is a vast difference between experiencing desires and pleasure, and believing that those desires and pleasure are what will bring happiness to your life. That is why it is said by many thinkers throughout history that “ignorance is the root of all suffering”. All these days I have been sick, it has been easy to be drawn to a state of suffering, of being the victim of this situation and rejecting it because “it is not fair”. I get to think that I have been sick too many days and because of that I have had to “stop practicing”, right when I was starting to “progress again”. I had to “stop teaching”, right when I was “building a following again”. And booooom… there it is, in front of my nose the big learning of life slapping me in the face one more time and telling me I am getting attached to the ephemeral satisfaction of achieving, I am getting attached to the satisfaction of being approved as a teacher. That’s the moment when I smile on the acknowledgement that my asana practice is just a part of something bigger that is called a Path, and still, it is just the path. The gold is in being truthful and present in each step. I find myself smiling after this realization because that is the moment when I remember that teaching is not about my satisfaction or about me feeling good about what I do, but about service, about sharing and adding a little grain of sand to the search of learning to look inside.
Yoga philosophy invites us to experience happiness through a very simple way: being kind (Ahimsa) and truthful (Satya) without conditions or with equanimity. Yesterday, I read an inspiring post in Instagram of a very unique and authentic girl who called herself @freedivegirl where she says: “I don’t need to accomplish anything merit-worthy, but I do need to be steady”. I love how this words landed perfectly in my whole vision of life. So yes, I believe we must practice everyday three essential things: being truthful, being kind and being steady.