How often do we stop ourselves from doing things because we don’t feel we’re in the right condition to suit the circumstance?
For some time now, getting to yoga has been an outright struggle for me as I changed my job position, finished writing a tv pilot, and was just exhausted from doing double duty for such a long time.
And yet when I could make a class, I found myself not wanting to go because my practice had suffered and it was not as good as it used to be. I felt embarrassed, wondering if my teachers (or worse) my fellow students noticed I couldn’t do the same things at the level that I could perform before.
This similar feeling could manifest in other ways: Maybe you’re not attending a social engagement because you don’t believe you physically look as good as you should. Perhaps you’re not going for a job promotion because you’re convinced others are more qualified than you are. Or maybe you’re not asking someone out because you think they’d never say “yes” to who you are and what you have to offer.
These perceptions of shame, inadequacy, guilt, and discredit are actually coming from the internal world of the ego, holding us hostage to its control as it produces these false impressions and projects them onto our external circumstances. When we believe these thoughts and pre-judgements we sequester ourselves into a shadow of not living fully.
Marianne Williamson wrote in A Return to Love, “In the absence of love, we began slowly but surely to fall apart.”
The feelings above are a place of darkness and when we dwell there, we’ve forgotten about the love, compassion, and kindness that has a chance to find us.
When we can own everything that we are in the present, we empower forgiveness and understanding from within and it becomes a practice of silencing what the ego says.
Free yourself from the ego’s restraints and still show up, in tow with flaws and all, because it enables us and our situations to have the unique and perfect opportunity to connect in a way that we may not be able to imagine which is what makes magic possible…
evolvingyogi.com 