No Illusion, Just the Experience (Building From the Ground Up, Part Five)

Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit
Wisdom is not putting it in a Fruit Salad
the Internet

...was reading this major political/philosophical French novel on the plane, then turned on the computer, put in a Netflix to watch some episodes from a T.V. show...the older woman next to me said she liked my choice of amusement, from Malraux to Buffy....I said somehow, in my mind it all fits together...

...read blog posts recently from a couple different people lately talking about their disillusionment with yoga...and, believe me, I understand...been a disillusioned activist for a wide variety of causes and candidates, disillusioned fan, disillusioned student, disillusioned member of a number of different subcultures, disillusioned friend, disillusioned traveler and/or resident in numerous supposedly cool places, etc...

The pure products of America
go crazy—
William Carlos Williams

...thing is, in order to be disillusioned, ya gotta be illusioned in the first place...and I came in to yoga as a serious skeptic...or, ya might say, a cynic....never saw a room full of blissed-out smiles without suspicion...never got all warm and fuzzy thinking about India or listening to old men in robes with thick beards and thicker accents...never had any doubts about the ability of the marketplace to corrupt the purity of ancient traditions, but never saw that as a problem, since I never bought into the idea that any of those ancient traditions were pure in the first place...

There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: a people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time—or even knew selflessness or courage or literature—but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.
Annie Dillard

...mostly, I came to it thinking it might help with a few physical and psychological issues, and trying to be open to other possibilities...and certainly, along the way, I’ve gone through my moments of irrational exuberance...thinking this next yoga retreat in paradise is gonna cure everything that ails me...(viewing my own wistful notions with irony, or course, and laughing at them, but, secretly, believing all the same)...and—guess what?—it didn’t...and, certainly, I’ve gotten sick of it...

...like not long ago, almost went all weekend without any yoga, after a week of not much...(or, at least, not much by the standards of somebody whose gotten to the point where he considers going a weekend without yoga a big deal)...and really didn’t feel at all inspired to do anything about that....but, then, late Sunday afternoon, decided to at least roll out the mat, stretch my neck a bit since it felt stiff...as it does when I don’t practice...maybe a little pranayama, since that’s always good for a little buzz, at least...ending up going pretty intensely for an hour and a half or so.....and feeling awesome.....like it may have been the best practice I’ve ever had on my own...better than most classes...not that there’s a competition, or anything...even with distractions of various kinds...calls that had to be taken, as tends to happen outside the cozy confines of a class...but even those seemed somehow to fit...yoga and day to day life seeming closer than usual...making the practice feel both awesome and incorporated...(not to be confused with immanent and transcendent...though a headier and/or more spiritual yogi than I might wanna get into that)...finding value, in the end, in saying namaste to myself...no illusion, just the experience...