Guest Post: Accepting What Is

I am delighted to announce our first guest post is here! It was written by one of the original Athens Yoga Collective members, Adam Dudley, who is no longer Athens-based but offered to write a blog post in order to stay active in the Collective from afar. He is currently residing in Orlando and practicing at the studio where he began practicing Ashtanga many years ago, College Park Yoga. Adam has seventeen years of martial arts experience and is co-founder of Location Liberated. We miss Adam (and Heather!) but are so glad we're staying connected. Enjoy!

When we practice yoga consistently for a certain number of years, we sometimes begin to experience subtle but significant shifts in how we perceive and how we operate in the world. We might find that we are more compassionate towards others, more tuned in to nature, hyper-sensitive to the suffering in others, more gracious, better listeners, or, we may briefly fall into the ego's trap of thinking that our yoga practice makes us superior, more knowing, than others in some way. What may also happen at some point in our practice, is that we will notice we are more attractive to some people and as repulsive as a green, slimy alien to others. As we begin to cross that magical threshold in our yoga practice, when we begin to awaken to the realization that when we are looking into the eyes of another (human or nonhuman), beyond the layers of that being's sense of "I", we are looking into the source of what we really are: Pure awareness. As that shift happens, we get excited. We want to reach out and touch everyone, tell everyone about what we've experienced and what we think we know to be true about what we are and how life really is. But, as we may find out, most people either don't want to hear about it, are frightened by it, or, are freaked out by our alien perceptions. That can trigger all manner of ego responses in us: anger, frustration, pain. Why won't they listen?!? That's all a result of not accepting what is. The truth is that not everyone, and in fact a small percentage of people, will embrace what we have embraced. Not everyone will do the work that we have done. Not everyone will respond well to our intuitive insights. That is what is. And we cannot be truly free, if we cannot learn to accept what is -- whether our minds labels it good/bad, positive/negative -- with equal measures of delight, compassion, friendliness and equanimity (or so says the Yoga Sutras). So if we find that others are responding to us in a not-so-friendly way, if they don't mirror our open gaze or if they react violently to our friendliness when we share our yoga practice with them, then we should sit with that in a space of non-reaction. Find delight in their reaction and respond with friendliness and compassion as best we can without further disturbing whatever pain lies within them. Paying attention to how others respond to our actions and being okay with however they choose to react. That is yoga practice.

---by Adam Dudley