The Convoluted and Stillness

 How difficult postures help achieve peace and the importance of keeping the monkey[1] obedient to the Self

My sister Virginia and brother Eduardo were 17 and 16 at the time. They had both signed up for Tae Kwon Do and were competing. But my sister, who always went further, had enrolled in the university in little football; in addition, she participated in a project called Amigos de los Niños de la Calle (a project to rescue children from living on the streets of which she was a part for years until she went to live in France) and in the Centro Cultural Peruano Japonés, in Aikido and Judo. With that animosity you would think that she was doing poorly in her courses. No way. Not only was she very passionate about everything, but she also obtained the highest scores in the entrance examinations for the Faculty of Arts of the Catholic University (PUCP), and ranked 11th overall in science.

Virginia came every night and we all, even Eduardo (1.83m tall, about six inches taller than her, muscular and broad-shouldered) would run to look for hiding places or excuses. Her eagerness to achieve perfection made her strictly follow the suggestions of her instructors. Her sensey had told her that it was essential to practice each of her throws and joint locks daily, and those of us who lived with her seemed to have an obligation to be her practice dummies. All she had explained to us was that we had to relax. Do not worry, everything will be fine.

- What if I don't relax?

- You could be injured or even brake a bone or something.

- I don't want get a broken bone!

- Precisely, I´m not going to hurt you if you relax.

My sister was very good. Those who know me well know that I do not make any compliments if they are not true. I am, or have been, a highly critical person. I don't know how she used to do it, but she had me spinning as if we were dancing. My arm was twisted behind me and I spun around her face first until I landed skidding like I had no weight on the parquet. Nothing hurt me. Perhaps it was thanks to her that I learned to relax 100% at a muscular level.

She once told me that the joint lock she always practiced was the most difficult of all, and the first one she had to learn. Her sensey had told her that since it was the most complicated one, to be a master at it, you had to practice it during all your life. There you had a martial art in which there is no competition because it would be a butchery, which also has a name that opens a special dimension: the path (do) of spiritual harmony (aiki). I understood that an essential part of that philosophy, or at least of the philosophy of my sister's teacher, was that the most difficult thing should be practiced throughout life.

Edson and I finished the photo shoot in record time. We were really efficient. I decided to shoot again the first Yoga posture proposed for that session. I balance on one foot, raise the opposite knee, twist my trunk so that my opposite shoulder touches the outside of that raised knee, and wrap my arms around that thigh, one under it, the other behind my back until that my hands meet Then I go down until the raised knee is over the other, which I have flexed, and the foot of the upper leg is twisted until it is locked around the standing ankle. When there is a lock or binding of the hands or arms around some part of the body, usually a thigh, it is given the Sanskrit word Baddha; twists are called Parivritta, and this specific type of leg lock is called Garudasana or Eagle Pose. I decided to do it before the others, just after warming up so as not to get so tired and beig able to do it without much problem.

Among other clear goals, you do it to find peace of mind. Reaching equilibrium in it without any type of bodily tremor and keeping it that way for a while is an indication that the waters of the mind are finally calm. From the beginning of the session, it did not go well for me, for one reason or another, perhaps also because it is more difficult to do it in front of someone than in the intimacy of personal practice, my concentration was gone, I immediately lost my balance. Truth be told, I sucked at it. I suppose Edson must have found difficult to understand how that posture that appeared to be less difficult and demanding than the others could be knocking me out. I didn't get stuck on it, that´s why I just went for the others.. However, we were done with our job in half an hour, so I asked him to repeat the first posture, the seemingly impossible one, before we could call it the day: Parivritta Baddha Pada Garudasana. This time, I told him to just shoot non stop, that I wasn't going to give any instructions so I could stay focused. And I made it. The happiness of having kept that asana on the grass, a difficult surface (ideal for improving balance) lasted for days.

Picha Mayurasana at the time was a challenge. Yoga Postures that are a personal challenge, 
as other things in life, help increase your will power and patience.

The Monkey Mind

I like monkeys. Even as a metaphorical element, the mind has that quality of being both an infant and an animal. It is not its responsibility to be in control of our lives. By culture, because that is how the evolution of humanity has become, we have learned to give it our free will. We have believed the information that we have received our first years, or we have acquired, through it, the filters of knowledge with which we have aligned ourselves from the beginning when defining what is good for each person (it allows me to live or I dig it ) or bad (it puts me in danger or I don't like it). So you have to treat that monkey with care, befriend it, and little by little take away grenade by grenade, cartridge by cartridge, until the mind works for our true evolution instead of keeping us indefinitely in an unconscious sleep.

If you are aligned with the idea that we have come to this existence to evolve as a species and as individuals, not only physically but also internally, perhaps you would agree that we cannot take real possession of our lives if we do not clarify the hierarchy between the mind and the Self. Who rules who can answer the essential question about freedom: am I really free inside? Beyond that, why would answering that matter?

I recently became part of the croud who try to live according to the belief that the body is not the self. I am not my body. My body is the temple of my being, of the I Am without time or space, which is nevertheless manifested here and now in this way. And just as I say my leg, my spine or my soul, I also say my mind. This feats bring to life this current manifestation that is Úrsula and that allows me to relate to the world. If I say it like that, it´s just philosophy, only an idea. But if I observe myself, I observe what I think, what I do, what I feel and accept it (acceptance as recognition, first step for change), I understand the perfection of this moment and of this manifestation. I understand, for a second, and if I am lucky, for a longer time, for more nows, that I simply am and that there is perfection in every moment. In this apparently passive action of the being, it is possible to realize the difference between the I Am and the thinking program. Thinking can be observed, the gap between that action and me is noted. However, I can only observe the aspects of my manifestation, including the monkey.

When performing a difficult posture such as Parivritta Baddha Pada Garudasana is for me, we live a metaphor of life: finding peace and balance in what is difficult for us is a triumph. And if we can resist difficulties voluntarily, as in fasting or deprivation of some situations that our monkey wants, we make our body of will grow, become stronger, we increase the muscle of decision, that of perseverance and that of inner strength. That muscle also gives physical energy. Once that state is achieved through some deprivation, it makes us recover light and stamina that we normally drain when we put our attention -our life- in objectives that do not contribute to us, that keep us distracted, and that increase the ability of the monkey to govern us. This is the critical point: Do we know who we work for? Are we serving ourselves and our highest interests or are we adrift, in unconscious slavery to the animal that governs us?

If depriving yourself of what your monkey likes is something that you don't have the strength to do right now, such as fasting, you could try a few days without internet or without social contact and go to a place where you can practice quiet self-encounter activities: walking, playing music, contemplate the night sky, find another way to approach your cooking. But you should get yourself out of at least two desires, that represents for you a difficult -however doable- challenge. Those feats must not be impossible to meet for you then and there. It'd be like going to a soul gym, if you will. You start using machines and weights that are challenging for you, that demand a lot from you but achievable under your current strenght.

Parivritta Baddha Pada Garudasana, my personal challenge

Many ancient myths speak of this duality between Self -your own divinity- and the mind. In almost all of them, the being or the Self is a human or a deity and the mind is a powerful animal. The myth of the Minotaur was later translated into the ancient bullfighting tradition. Just as in the Andes, the struggle between the spirit and unconsciousness was transferred to the success or failure of the harvests with, for example, the rites of tojto and chiaraje (you could Google it)[2], so the Iberians forgot that the fight between the bullfighter and the bull represented the fight between the Self and the mind. If the bullfighter won, it would be a year of spiritual awakening. If the bull won, a year of darkness.

When I came out of the posture I remembered that phrase transmitted by my sister, the one about this difficult thing you would need to be doing for life. There has always been conflict within me: between my knowledge, between my beliefs, between my emotions and between all those experiences at the same time. Even now that I seem to be more aware, reaching more often what is fundamental (which for me is harmony as the basis of conscious contact with my Self) seems increasingly distant in time. But, since something I (we?) have to work on continuously is patience, I noticed that this contact that I seek so much, this state in which I feel myself to be when I am present, is not something that I have to achieve, because it is here now, and yet it is something I have to work on all my life in order to stay, make it a more permanent feat, my access to the ultimate reality. I can´t leave this life without experience it, how could I? Knowing this, my being smiles, and my soul tells me: it´s going to be our pleasure!