Discipline, Acceptance and Auto-Ahimsa

I've been thinking about a blog entry I recently saw.

The message there is to "not be afraid of who you are." I think that is fine. But I also think that it can lead to a type of permissiveness. I understand the point about there is no good or bad and so on, but I also think this type of thinking can play into the New Agey type of thing that says anything goes. Or as the mantra of the sixties put it, "if it feels good do it." That feeling good led in someways to the coked out, disco era of the 70s for many. The question I think is to find what really does feel good and to do that.

At least what I have been finding is that with consistent practice you definitely start to choose things differently. Or at least I do. Slowly, certain things just fall away. In the "Damn Good Yoga" blog there is an old entry about how she just stopped smoking after she practiced yoga for awhile. It just sort of fell away. She had no withdrawals. When I first read about this happening with yoga I thought, "no way. There is no way that is going to happen with me and coffee." And yet it did. I guess the thing is that it-- along with other things-- just sort of fell away. I like that way of describing it because it wasn't like I consciously pushed them out or went through a 12 step program or something. I was not judgmental. I think that is where the blog entry is right, there should be no judging, simply acceptance. Here is where we can practice ahimsa on ourselves. I don't think of myself as a "good" person for having stopped eating meat or that coffee was evil and so I must stop drinking it. They were just things that sort of happened all on their own. Similarly, if someone eats meat, drinks or whatever, I don't think of them as a bad person or of myself as any better than they are. And with myself, if I do any of that stuff, I have to be kind to myself and forgive myself. But I also realize that when I do it, it doesn't feel that good in the long run. Because of that, the practice of eating sweats or whatever it is, slowly falls away. So I have to practice auto-ahimsa, or ahimsa on myself.

But the acceptance also has to be combined with a discipline of some sort. And I think that Ashtanga, for me at least, is that discipline.

The word discipline also has resonances with education-- in college you study a "discipline" or a field of inquiry-- just as it also means that you "bring something under control" or you train something or yourself to act according to certain codes. If Ashtanga is a discipline, then it is a way of controlling certain things, my breath, my movements, my thoughts, when I am practicing. But it is also a field of study. And the thing I am studying is the union of mind, body and spirit as I move through the asanas. I also study how I interact with things and people around me.