Pioneer or Placater? You Decide.
What would you choose your life to be like if no one else had an opinion about it? Or even better yet, what would you choose your life to be, if no matter what you chose everyone fully supported your decision? How much of your life is being dictated by an unknown, or known source, that is outside of yourself? Viveka, in yoga, is the Sanskrit word for discernment. I like to describe it as: keen, intuitive, discrimination.
Discernment is a proficiency that must be intentionally fed and nourished by your own conscious drive towards freedom. For what you choose in this very moment will be of direct consequence to: this very moment, and then to this one, now this one, and so on. Self-liberation lies in the commitment to the constant renewal of moments to refine ourselves into whoever it is we want to be. This very same freedom is countered by the non-attachment required to shed the false security that we are even guaranteed a next moment in the first place. Waking up to life with death as a daily possibility is our incentive to clarify our purpose, then to clear away all distractions, then to consciously choose to occupy each one of those limited, precious moments with all of the life and the love that we are. Viveka is the recognition and reconciliation with each moment as the most important one that has ever existed. It is giving the moment a proper salutation, a mutual understanding of its undeniable power to re-invent this rigged subversive reality.
When we live with this kind of urgency and emphasis on the moment as the only monumental place to be, we open the portal to pioneer our own personal happiness right through a pandemic or a bogus presidential election. It is essential that we begin to discern distractions and how much time we are willing to be distracted given that death is sitting right there on the couch next to us. Do you hear yourself having the same tired conversations? And if it’s actually a conversation you want to have, is your contribution to the conversation problem painting or solution serving? How do you spend your time and is it congruent with your goals? What are your goals and why are they your goals, are they actually YOUR goals…or are they your parents or your spouses goals?
Viveka asks you to consider and reconsider all of these questions on a regular basis, so that when you put one foot in front of the other, you are not just walking in a circle with your shades on and head down. Oh hell no, you are walking, unrushed, barefoot, smiling, with the sun beaming, on soft dewy grass towards something magical that you get to imagine and create as you desire. It’s just that now, your desires have not been dug from a pit of fear, spoon fed, and delegated to you, but, dreamt up, from a pool of love, and watercolored by you, for you, of you, as you.
Thank you so very much for reading and considering my current understanding and observations of yoga philosophy. I find yoga incredibly helpful in navigating my everyday through boatloads of distractions to the station of truth and love. Every time I take a detour, yoga gently, with grace and wisdom, draws me back OM…..or home to what’s actually important and then gifts me the tools to make it so. I relish in connecting with all perspectives so as to continuously expand my own and and realize every single day how much more is unknown than known, and that each person’s “known” is of contradiction and truth all at the same time. How interesting!
Blessings and Namaste,
Andrea Dawn
