Sutra 1.16 delves beyond non-attachment into an even greater way of being, supreme non-attachment. This makes me chuckle on the inside considering just how difficult the first kind of non-attachment is. It's like when you are at the store and you are so stoked to see chunky peanut butter, but then, from the corner of your eye, you spot SUPER chunky peanut butter. As a super sized nation we should already be used to this, now we just have to shift from supersizing the stuff that kills us to the stuff that enlightens us, from whoppers to awareness, and from gulpies to gurus we go.

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Sutra 1.14, on the intricacies of "practice," is like discovering your great grandma's secret recipe stash in the attic, but instead of baking delectable chocolate chip cookies, we are baking our very own ability to experience the bliss of our pure unchanging nature. And while some may compare the taste of grammy's fresh baked cookies to bliss, this bliss will not make you fat, leave you on the couch with a tummy ache, or filled with regret because two cookies has multiplied into twelve in the blink of an eye.

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We have all heard the term, practice makes perfect and I beg to differ. Practice can very well make you very good at very bad things. I have heard no one ever declare, “hurray, today I have achieved, perfect at self-sabatoge.” or, “today I toast myself with this flute of champagne as the most very perfect passive aggressive partner,” or, “guess what mom,? I have finally made it onto the perfect list of liars!” Practicing behaviors that are not backed by your whole hearted intention, can make your life as far away from perfect as you could possibly imagine.

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If yoga came in a box there would be an instruction manual packed on top waiting for you to open. This manual is way more detailed than the, Ikea picture only pamphlets, but likely just as frustrating. Before we even consider opening this sacred Yoga manual, there are three prerequisites that must be met in order for these instructions to hold any power. You must first acknowledge that you are wearing bliss blinders. You must decide that you truly want to take them off, and finally, that you don’t actually know how to take them off (let’s be real, if you already had the bliss recipe, you would have been baking is blissdom years ago).

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More often than not we go outside looking for our happy and our whole versus going inside and removing all of our ridiculous rationalizing of the rubbish that does not belong there. The bliss is not to be caught or sought after, it is to be trusted. How many of us believe that we are born of bliss? Or do more of us believe we are born of nothingness or even worse, badness. What if we all identified more deeply with our bliss than our names or our ages or our feelings or our jobs? What if we just knew that bliss was our base line? And the only reason we can’t feel it is because it’s covered up with our piles of bullshit.

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Identity theft is one of the biggest issues we, as humans, on planet Earth are faced with. And while we can certainly point our fingers at the internets and faceless men behind computer screens for the uprise in these attacks, they pale in comparison to the real real thief, who is in fact, you. Not the unchanging pure you that we spoke of in sutra 1.3, but the version of you that is passive aggressive with your partner when they don’t meet your expectations, or the you that snaps at your child because you are hangry, or the you that believes those extra ten lbs make you not sexy and unlovable.

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Wether we are shopping for internet providers, or tile, or gym memberships, the question we all really have for most situations in our life is: so what am I going to get out of this? This is sutra 1.3. It is offering us what we will get by committing to yoga. And the answer is YOU. You are going to receive you. Not the you that you can fill out the answers for an online horoscope quiz like: sex, age, occupation or even the latest pronoun that may have been slung your way.

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Memories tend to hold a whole lot of power. They have the ability to romanticize or wreak havoc, on a particular happening or relationship. I can remember the same prom night as a wild, passionate, fun-fueled evening, or an out of control, too drunk, crying miserably in the street evening. I can remember my dad as a wise, generous, and integrous man, and two stories later, he is so clearly an insensitive, know it all, bully.

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Patience, perspective, and possibility are all born from the love affair we have with rest. Two minutes of breathing, listening to the birds, and looking up at the sky, can be like ten cups of coffee sans the jitters and stained teeth. Five minutes of journaling, yoga-ing, or nestling your bare feet into our Earth mamma can be like the ultimate exhale after metaphorically holding your breath for what might have felt like an eternity.

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Vikalpa is when the what if’s, if what’s, should haves, and could haves, bully themselves into your brain and act like they belong. They are like maggots, leeching and breeding themselves into your every moment until all of your interactions are poisoned, and your intentional actions dissipate and morph into habitual, unhelpful reactions. Vikalpa vrtti’s are when your past hurts wreak havoc on your present moment powers.

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