Me, My, Mine

Do you ever get caught up in the mental dialogue of me, my and mine?
Lately, I have run into some challenges with this... and have noticed how constricting and asphyxiating the concepts of them can really become. It is one thing to begin to choke off this language externally. We all know how self centered it sounds when someone continually partakes in this kind of verbalization. But thinking repetitively in these terms internally can also become somewhat problematic.
Observing these bubble up and watching how they actually shape my life is so interesting. Noticing the moment of ownership and how it eventually backfires - is too! Not to mention how the residue of stress makes my hips and spine feel tighter and my digestive and circulatory system feel knotted up! (another worthy topic!) No matter how big the membrane of the bubble of ME becomes, it still creates a boundary... a sticky veneer that prevents me from seeing the whole landscape.
The bottom line is that when ME, MY or MINE start dancing in my cerebrum I become less in tune. I am stuck in concepts and made slightly claustrophobic.
Regardless of all this... me, my and mine take me away from being in my body, out of feeling the pulse of my experience... and into my head. This makes practicing yoga very challenging...

Sound familiar?
This is a difficult and maybe even almost impossible pattern to break, because we may need an identity and to pose an opinion sometimes, but I think we can all feel when it gets out of hand.

Just being aware of how much this happens is a pretty neat process. At least it puts another spin on the ballistic ramble, or brightens up a moment of repetitive boredom.
It can show me that the seemingly insignificant moments, in the absence of these feelings of separation, ARE my life.
The feeling of jumping into a cool lake on a hot summer's day.
A quiet interaction with four raccoons.
The feeling of my skin relaxing.
The moment of trying to suppress a laugh, but it just gushes forth making it all the more hilarious.
Happy Moments.

Often I find myself trippin' somewhere else!
But this recognition sprinkles humility on the concept of Me, and keeps alive the looking into the vast unknown that isn't.

"To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe."
Dogan


If you would like to read some more on yoga check out www.patagonia.com for a little excerpt that I wrote. It is posted in the Blog section and you may need to scroll down a post or two to find it.

See you at the Yoga Jam with Ron!!
xoxo
Lydia