Svadhyaya. To Un-know Thyself is to Know Thyself. Huh?

Know Thyself

What if the key to knowing thyself was to un-know thyself. So instead of living in my opinions about myself and my experience, I could allow myself the opportunity to be the unbiased experiencer of my experience. 

The same moment I think I know myself is often the very same moment I am lost; because it is in that moment, I have become more invested in explaining myself than in experiencing myself. What if I could be more excited about hanging out with myself then I am in judging and justifying myself? Only then, can I become more interested in you, then in the belief I have about you. I want to be more interested in you, than in agreeing or disagreeing with the thought you are sharing with me.

For most of my life there has been a really dense fog composed of really dense thoughts that go something like this, “what are they thinking about me? What do I think about what they are thinking about me? Here’s why they should think like I think….(insert a multitude of my beliefs here). Here are the reasons I cannot think like they think (Insert even more of my defensive beliefs here.) I still want you to like me though, and I believe, that you believe, we have to think the same for you to like me, so maybe I will pretend to think what you think.” Ahhhhhhhhh! This is madness and the fog now starts to harden into a solid brick wall. That wall is the blockade between myself and my source, and myself and you.

Days, months, years, even lifetimes, are spent fixated upon outcomes and incomes. Let’s untangle that distorted knot and free ourselves to, ‘come in,’ so we can finally, ‘come out.’ As ourselves. Fully and freely. Let’s throw our own parade and dance down the street with no restraints. Let’s live out loud, free from the oppression of both real and perceived rejection from ourselves and from others. 

For my whole entire life, I have been so scared to be rejected that I have developed a long term habit of reserving my heart….. because, what if they don’t like me? What if I make them feel uncomfortable? What if I’m just too much? What if I’m not enough?

That restraint is actually the ultimate rejection. I, am rejecting me. I, am telling myself to stay quiet, to not laugh so loud, to not love so hard, to not cry so much, to not full on dress like a unicorn, fairy goddess. The hurt that I am feeling, the real suffering, is actually me stifling my own light and my own dark. It is on that cusp where my ‘enoughness’ resides. My ‘enoughness’ is the same thing as my love and you know what? My love is big; it’s really big. It’s so big that it can't even discriminate between light and dark. And so is yours. Our love wants nothing more than to come out and play. And here I’ve been, the pursed lipped, scolding, nag of a teacher, insisting on studies over snuggles, labor over laughing, and hero-ing over healing. 

By ‘coming in,’ we get to ‘come out,’ full on, as the parade of thyself, marching as the embodiment of all archetypes.

Svadhyaya is the fourth of the Niyamas. The yogic system consists of eight limbs all together. The first is the Yamas (there are five and they pertain to the ways in which we relate to the outside world). The second is the Niymas. The Niyamas are all about diving deep within yourself and exploring your inside world. There are also five Niyamas. If you are interested in learning more about the Yamas and Niyamas read back on previous blogs and also feel free to reach out and connect with me. I have studied these two limbs many times over the past few years and each time they integrate a deeper, more profound, truth within me. You could spend lifetimes on just one of the Yamas or Niyamas, that’s how potent and powerful their composition is. I find them to be timeless and always a mirror to help me see what lesson life is serving me in the moment as well as understand more deeply why life has served me with past experiences, as well as guide me into cultivating the most authentic version of myself with each present moment that I am privy to.

I bow to you dear one. I am in awe that you have read this far and I want you to know just how much I value your time and interest in yoga and in my current perceptions/translations of what yoga is trying to teach us.

Blessed Be,

Andrea Dawn