Sometime ago, a friend of mine posted a photo quote on Facebook: “No one is you and that is your power.” I replied saying, “But also everyone is you and that is your power.” We had a chuckle over that and even more so when someone else weighed in to say “You aren’t even you.”
The Sanskrit word avidya is sometimes translated as ignorance. While adviya does mean ignorance, it also means misconception. It’s the word that describes mistaking illusion for reality or the mistaking the impermanent things for permanent. In other words, incorrect knowledge.
In B.K.S. Iynegar’s translation of the Yoga Sutra he writes, “when asana is practiced with steadiness and ease, the infinite being within is reached. From then on, the practitioner is undisturbed by dualities.”
Mr. Iyengar’s read on Patanjali is that we’ve got to bring our whole selves – body, breath, and mind – to each pose. When we do that, we can be steady and easeful in asana practice, and we recognition more fully our capacity for connections in this microcosm that is our individual self. We are undisturbed by dualities when we acknowledge the separations for what they are. The divisions that are a covering for the ways things are deeply connected.
When I think back of the moments when I’ve feel the most distraught and disturbed by the challenges I’ve faced, it’s always because I’ve identified more fully with the way I was separate from others. And this distress continues for me full-force in today’s contentious political environment.
It’s easy to say that the folks who disagree with us are inferior, uneducated, separate from us. It’s easy to just disregard them or maybe outright argue with them in an effort to make them change their minds. How many times have I tried to point out that I’m not like THAT person!?
But what happens when we say, “they are us too”? Is it possible to recognize ourselves in the other? How can we do this without validating racism, misogyny, bigotry, lying, and just plain bullying?
I don’t know the answer. And maybe it’s just the peace, love, and understanding hippie dippy part of me that is foolish for even thinking this is possible.
But think about this: if the body is a microcosm for the way the world, nature, and all of humanity interact and it’s possible to practice asana in the body in such a way that we know without a doubt that we are connected to ourselves, then I think it’s possible to make this jump too:
Everyone is you.
Even the awful racist, misogynist, bullying, lying, egotistical maniacs.
And believe me, that guy scares me. A lot. But perhaps there is more power in saying that we are connected. We are responsible for that guy. We are that guy. Whoa.