Always be a beginner

Who is doing the better yoga?

Compare this photo of son Kyle and I doing a forward bend. My bend is the result of decades of bending, while Kyle’s represents more the beginning stages of a forward bend. In truth though, we are at the same stage; we are both beginners. Any activity you do fully always places you at a virtual beginning. In this case, doing yoga fully means I thrust forward to the point where I am at my limit. Kyle is doing the same. We are both at our limit, we are both beginners.

This is not the way we usually see things. When judging ‘the book by its cover’ it appears that Kyle is the beginner and I am the master, far beyond his stage. Seeing it this way is false, as well as unfortunate. One easily comes away with the view, “I can’t do that”, thinking that the goal is to bend forward a certain degree. Again, the only goal in yoga is to do the task at hand fully and honestly. And this applies to all action: giving yourself to the task at hand is ‘consecrated action‘ as the Bhagavad-Gita puts it. When one does that, one is always a beginner, regardless of how it appears to the outside world.

If one is always a beginner why bother showing images of what appears to be advanced? That just sets up false goals or false limits, i.e., “I’ve got to do that” or “I can’t do that”. This is somewhat unavoidable for we are innately driven to compare and compete. Even so, this is an essential stage in its own right. If we are inspired by a ‘book’s cover’ we’ll look inside. We need competition and comparison along with role models and ideals to help us begin.

Alas, we’re unable to appreciate being a beginner in the beginning. We want to get better! So we struggle on to the next stage. Chapter 36 sums up all this perfectly: If you would have a thing weakened, you must first strengthen it. Once those competitive, comparative and idealistic aspects are weakened, we’re able to return to the beginning. Patience though, it took me decades of yoga to return here – and I’m still arriving.

I suppose you could say we begin at the end and travel back to the beginning. From a correlations point of view that makes total sense, i.e., time stays backward, energy move forward. Odd.