Day #24 - Prashantisms
/I was in class with Sunita (Iyengar’s daughter) the other day and she said something like your brain is conditioned’ which was said in the context of us not grasping a point she was making
So this led me to think that if we could un-condition the mind we would not be limited in our experiences and views.
But how do we remove conditions, we are presented with conditions every day.
With conditions, it means there are parameters by which we are receiving, doing, attending to something.
Whether it be a physical condition, age condition, mental condition, every day we are practicing with conditions.
My question to you is, are you…
Practicing with a condition and altering the practice to the condition
Practicing with a condition and observing how the practice is altered due to the condition
I’d love to know in the comments what is your mode of operands.
Then today Prashant was talking about how our knowledge is partial. He was holding a watch and said you can see the front, but not the back. He called it dimensional knowledge.
That is the context for my post, the words from Sunita and Prashant.
It got me thinking about how limited I am by what I think I know and I will share an example with you to make this all a little more practical.
I realised that when I look at Light On Yoga (LOY) I am usually checking, verifying or confirming something I know, rather than looking in LOY for new information.
I am opening the book but my mind already knows. Do you see how limiting this is?
“Search” was the word Sunit used when we open LOY.
Whether we are opening a book, having a conversation, doing an activity, if we always come to it conditioned we are missing a huge opportunity for learning and acquiring knowledge.
Are you following me?
I’m going to take one more leap…
Prashant also talked about knowledge being a means for quietening the mind.
When we don’t know something there is more turbulence in the mind.
For example, the plane is delayed and you don’t know when it is going to board the passenger, then your mind is in turbulence, if you can get some knowledge about how long it will be before you board your mind will be more quiet.
Which explains why we love to say “I know”. Or in conversations, we want to demonstrate that we know because if things are as we know then the mind is settled. SO we all want to know and say I know.
Do you see the predicament we are in?
Knowledge is a means to yogaś-citta-vr̥tti-nirodhaḥ yet we have to abandon what we know to be able to receive the knowledge.
OMG, I think Prashant just channeled through me.
Thank you for your patience.