Spirit or Story

I knelt onto my yoga mat this morning, my head distracted by a ‘should I?’ or ‘shouldn’t I?’ The kind of question to which the answer determines if I am a good person. These are the ones that torment me the most because the right thing may not be as simple as at a first glance. So this particular morning I set up a little shrine in hope of finding it easier to stay focused. As I set it up I began to consider that if this is a devotional pratice, who is it that I am devoting this practice to. This is a topic that I am contemplating at the moment without any clear answers so far. So on my knees, I crossed one shin over the other and brought my forhead to the floor. Not only is this a devotional position (making me feel like I should know who the ‘who’ is!) but for me, it is one of great comfort. There’s something that happens or perhaps melts through my forhead, my third eye, that is resting firmly on the floor. Part of it is certainly tension and it is a relief as it flows out. My whole body feels this relief and gets a little heavier on the floor, melting just a little more. As the thoughts are still going round, the ones that determine my ‘goodness’ I wonder how I am going to let them go. I know that my yoga mat is no place for these thoughts. And while I ponder this it comes to me that I should devote this practice to my spirit and suddenly, in a moment of clarity I get it, the way to leave my thoughts aside. Devote this to my spirit. My spirit has no story. It’s not looking to do the right thing (if there is indeed a right thing or not). It doesn’t carry my history or my values or my patterns. It doesn’t even have my name. And yet my spirit, my story and my body are a whole here on this planet, on this yoga mat. So I very gently placed my story to the side and used my body to devote a practice to my spirit. Of course other stories and identities came in like “OOOh, I should write a blog about this,” and my ‘mother’ identity definitely popped in but I put them aside again and again and tried to focus on the lightness of my spirit. On the width, breadth and depth of my spirit which I don’t fully comprehend and yet I know that somehow it crosses space and time as pure as light, with no story to carry and yet to share with all other beings.

The epiphany I had kneeling on the mat was but momentary, the rest was looking for it or at best creating space for it to show itself again and who knows if or when I will have that level of clarity again but in the meantime I will do my best to remember that there are moments where I can let go of my story and my expectations and just be.