Does the so-called "yogic journey" necessitate an instagram account? a hashtag? a facebook page?

As i practice into the body of my yoga, does it need to be on display to be loved, to be true, and to be worthwhile? Why do I struggle with my ego each time I see a handstand photo online?

(How can I even write this? So many people who i love finding art in their asana. Do i betray them?)

Do i betray myself if i never shine as bright as them? If I never achieve asana-greatness will I never be a yogi? Am I not trying hard enough?

What does it mean to be a yogi?

Do I need to have long legs, supple hamstrings, and colourful eco-friendly tights?

Is that one rung on the ladder to G-d's golden treehouse? 

If I become a yogic body will i come closer to a yogic mind?

I can't find G-d in that.

But then these days I don't even want to try. I just want to practice being this.

This. Being.

How can I love it more?

I ask. I feel. I navigate emotions like captain ahab. From a pile of bones sitting on a floor. The rising and falling of waves.

I am the white whale.

This isn't even a yogic journey. Because, really, "yogic" doesn't mean anything. It's just a word. It's just the way I'm expressing coming back to myself. But it's nothing really. It's so simple, it's not even good or bad. It's just becoming more right where i am. 

I think on that journey everything becomes more and more like love. Each moment is of utmost importance. In each encounter i meet a soulmate. 

The journey is so vast it includes all of life, yet so simple it becomes narrowed to one task. The practice of peace. 

Asana robs me of peace when it stirs my ego. Asana draws me into peace when it shows me the ever-changing nature of feeling, breath, circumstances. 

When I practice with the intention of peace, Asana is just another way I love myself.

proximity is also an illusion

In quantum physics, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle tells us that when two particles collide they are put off their original trajectory and forever affected by their brief encounter. Furthermore, by gathering information (on location or momentum) of one of the particles, we automatically know related information about the other particle. The impact of the encounter, however brief, is such that each particle is changed and neither are ever the same again.

And so it is with human relationships. 

Sometimes over many years, a lifetime, we grow with and through another - lifelines entwined like twisted tree trunks. But more often we are drawn into proximity with one another for the briefest of collisions. Seemingly insignificant are these moments, but somehow they are shaping, not only our days, but our lives.

We sit and have a coffee and one will tell a story about her child, for example. How the child might be struggling in school, or maybe how the child did something of wonderful significance. An emotion will arise in the woman telling the story - worry, pride. There is a moment of unveiling. Through the emotion there is resonance with the truth of being and you, the one listening, can feel that emotion in your body as well (empathy). 

It is the same as when you see people embracing at the arrivals gate. You experience their emotion through your body. 

That moment of emotional resonance is a portal into oneness.

Then you will pick up your respective handbags, pay the cheque and leave on your separate ways. 

But what has just happened here? Something has been shared. A chemical reaction has taken place in each of your bodies and even as you go about the rest of your day, that experience is touching everything you are doing in the most delicate and imperceptible way. 

 What happens when we love? That powerful feeling of connection and profound respect, appreciation, and unmasked regard for another's well-being - it is readily available to those who can open themselves to vulnerability. We can fall in love many times each day, in each of our interactions, with a stranger across the street, if we can sense that space inside of us that is the same as that in them.

I think that when we love we see and value each 'collision' with another (so to speak) as a sacred and monumental act. Sacred in its divinely encoded message, momentous in its power to expand [who we really are].

And this is why (coming back to specifics) I can't hate an ex-lover, for example. Those beautiful moments once shared are every bit a part of the now. Your light is part of the light that shines from me from now until forever. I can't thank you enough for that.

Our proximity will always be in relation to those with whom we've collided. We are never too far apart to erase love.

As if to confirm this principle to me in no uncertain terms, a man came and sat next to me in the cafe where I was writing this post today. We began to talk and the man told me a story about his days as a mathematician when he travelled to Germany and worked with Werner Heisenberg. I told him that it was crazy because I was just writing about Heisenberg and showed him the first lines of this blog. The man smiled and said, "see, this is what I'm trying to tell you. We may not understand the magic in life, but it is there for us to enjoy."