What's water?

I am currently reading a book by Haruki Murakami, whom I love for his exploration and merging of inner and outer landscapes which seem to blur at their borders. He is a narrator of the mystical human condition and the desire-shaped universe in which we live. In his book The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, one of his characters states to another," It is not a question of better or worse. The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up, down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down. When there's no flow, stay still."



In our world there is a certain amount of engineering that takes place in our minds from an early age, creating a spreadsheet of conditioning which imprints itself on our psyche and draws us to categorise that which we perceive into pairs of opposites: smiling in a photo is good, refraining from smiling in a photo is bad; getting up early is good, getting up late is bad; and there are infinitely more pairs of opposties than good and bad: light, heavy; big, small: courage, cowardice etc but ultimately we can categorise each item and idea as either good or bad. We regularly assess our adherence to these guidelines, scoring ourselves highly or low, depending on how many of our choices and outcomes fall into the "good" column. It is in this way we gauge whether or not we are "good" people or "bad" people. Most of us score as "could do better", with scores varying greatly according to the individual's self-esteem and hormonal state, which may rely on an infinite number of external factors.



This spreadsheet, to which we refer unconsciously when we make our tens of thousands of choices each day (when we decide which is the right way to brush one's teeth, the correct time to wash one's towel, the appropriate response to a friend's good news, the right thing to eat for breakfast), is of course of some use. It is the spreadsheet of culture and the blueprint for ease of communication between members of the same culture. There is one inherent problem in this spreadsheet however, and that is that every culture in every country is different and that every culture has several subcultures including the subculture each individual member of the culture. The data in one of these spreadsheets is never wholly compatible with another.



Murakami also observes the danger of generalities in his book, taking the unorthodox standpoint that the closer one gets to examining things, the more generalised they become. Therefore on observing and explaining the minute details of a situation or object, one's analytical instinct is to apply one's findings across the board. By abstracting, generalising and engineering our social formulae we have imprisoned ourselves in a rigid scaffolding of culture in which there are limited boundaries that inhibit organic growth, and which insidiously alienates those with a different blueprint - bearing in mind that there are 6 billion slightly different blueprints on the planet, that results in a hefty helping of alienation.



In our need for a paradigm or let's call it an external compass, we have sacrificed individual needs and supressed our internal messages. Having lost the skill to listen to our bodies and our intuitions, we have squeezed ourselves into the little boxes on the spreadsheet. We are unable to truly accept our natural instincts and we move with less grace and freedom in the world. We do not flow. However, there is nothing inherently bad (or good) about thinking everything must either be bad or good; this instinct for compartmentalising is an element of human nature and is essential for us to function healthily in the world but we must recognise that these categories are merely guidelines and represent stepping stones to a state which lies beyond pairs of opposites and value judgments.

In the Tantric practice of Hatha yoga, the body-mind is used as a tool to enter and experience the Self in its true nature. Nothing is added or taken away and what is ultimately found is the Self which has always existed in its perfect state beyond time, space and hair-straighteners. What makes it so difficult for the modern Western human being to realise the Self is the linear perceptions ingrained into each of us from birth. The modern yogi must strive to unlearn linear time and the notions of success through progressive accumulation which accompany it. A simple equation of this erroneous judgment would be more=better, making it counter-intuitive for us to absorb fully the axiom that we are complete and perfect just as we are. We are able to cognitively understand and accept that love is all around, that money can't buy me love, that the best things in life are free and countless other jingles we blithely mutter and hum in everyday life. Very few people, however, manage to untether themselves from the underlying conviction that we must race towards the end of our lives, amassing as many things as possible and ticking off the boxes of marriage, children, mortgage, divorce etc whilst barely considering whether possessing these things would even result in happiness.

My teacher Chetana Panwar describes yoga as "the unification of the web of dualities", which succinctly depicts the departure from wholeness that we experience when we enter the world and learn its paradoxical nature, followed by the return to wholeness experienced when we consciously realise the merging of all of our divided perceptions and the dissolution of our sense of separateness. When we stop fighting what is and enter the flow, we embrace life and suddenly wake up to the infinite abundance which carries us and supports us throughout our life. Paramahansa Yogananda writes of a yogi who listens to a young disciple remark on his renunciation of riches and comforts in order to seek God. The yogi, Bhaduri Mahasaya laughingly retorts "I have left a few paltry rupees, a few petty pleasures, for a cosmic empire of endless bliss. How then have I denied myself anything?". We adamantly believe that having more things will make us happy when it is proven to us time after time throughout life that this is not the case. Why then, do we insist on resorting to inane acquisition?

Another teacher of mine, Hillary Rubin, told a story in one of her classes about two fish who were swimming in the sea. Another fish swam by and said "The water's cool today!" and the younger fish turned to the older and said "What's water?". I love this story for its touching demonstration of our innocent ignorance of the infinite power, force and energy and mindblowing complexity/ simplicity of the manifest world. We are consciousness, we are surrounded by consciousness; nothing is ever added or taken away.