An extract from Vincent’s forthcoming book …
By many, contemplative practices are seen as passive. This is far from the truth. There is a real struggle when we engage the reality of our minds, there is no other experience like it. Here we realise how elusive, clever and elaborate our mind is and that it cannot be subdued by force or overcome by any effort.
The weaponry that is needed to succeed in this supposed struggle is tolerance, patience and time. What we have entered is far removed from the world we normally live in. There is no fanfare or flags waving when we triumph over our demons, and no one to console us when we lose or succumb yet again to forces that tempt us. The only witness to these events is you.
From the outside it seems yoga has the ability to reclaim if not offer more useful supportive strategies to enable smoother passage through these difficult times, if we perceive yoga in this way we can be misinforming ourselves if not misdirecting our efforts in trying to restore balance.
My experience of what yoga can foster is more towards developing a keen eye for compensatory behaviour or habitual motivations. These happenings generally operate at a level that is subtle and lightening fast.
The practice is all about increasing our ability to see, yoga is not something that we do, yoga is a “state” that emerges out of a life time of practice.
Our purpose when we begin this journey is to develop an environment where eventually awareness flowers. Here deep within this process we start to define and clarify what our habits are and the reasons why we continue to nurture them or how strongly addicted we are to the conditions we exist in.