The Conversation: Inner Peace
I’ve been in teacher training all weekend and in Leigh's class she mentioned a jungle. This brought me back to a dream that I had about a year ago. My entire life I've been anxious. I looked at work like something to get through, even though I considered myself a hard worker. I looked at people like something to navigate. I never felt safe. I never felt like I could truly let my guard down and just relax.
The dream I had helped unlock so much for me. In the dream I was in a jungle and every creature in the jungle including myself were all fighting for a key. The key unlocked a room in the middle of the jungle and in this room I could tell that I would finally be safe. Throughout my dream I fought with the other animals. I felt an intense amount of anxiety and needed to get ahold of this key so that I could finally relax and feel safe. I got knocked off a ledge at one point and was constantly on guard about the intentions and motivations of the people around me and felt unsafe of the environment around me. After a long while fighting I fell off a ledge again and woke up from the dream. Immediately I was hit with this overwhelming sense of, "why in the hell did I even want that key? Even if I got in the room I would have just been lonely and disconnected."
I immediately went back to bed and my chase for this key to safety and this key to peace halted. In the second part of my dream I sat down next to a river, next to all the other animals and I was reading. I've never felt such peace.
The way that I apply this to my life is that there are multiple ways to cast the scenery around you. You can look at a yoga pose as a means to get to shavasana or you can cast the scene in your mind that each pose is a place to be at peace. A place where you can rest by a river and read in your mind even if there's opportunity to indulge the utter chaos that is goddess pose. There's just as much opportunity to stop, take a deep breath and take the scene of your mind to the peace and beauty of everything around you. Life's not about getting out of the jungle, or navigating the threatening environment around me to get to the place where I think I'll finally be happy or at peace. It's about enjoying the connection and peace that already exists WITH the people around me. Yoga is not about getting out of a tough pose. It's about finding peace in it. I don't have to fight my way out of the jungle to feel safe the same way I don't have to fight myself out of goddess pose. There's a peace and a river in each and every moment of life. Sit down by the river.
Jacob Cavalier