“Being aware of being aware is the essence of meditation,” Rupert Spira frustratingly quips in his book, Being Aware of Being Aware. If the name of the book itself doesn’t drive you absolutely insane, perhaps the other 127 pages will do it. The book was among the required readings for the yoga teacher training I attended. I read it twice and still didn’t understand it. Throughout the book, Spira speaks about awareness as the nature of consciousness, and my consciousness couldn’t comprehend the idea that my thoughts are not my thoughts.
By the end of the second reading and the group discussions in class, I became convinced that I was missing some piece of essential knowledge that would have allowed this book to make the smallest amount of sense to me.
I was in yoga teacher training for the same reason many people are drawn to it — because I had experienced profound change through the practice of yoga and wanted to learn about it more deeply. I understood the asanas — the physical practice. I knew about breath work, or pranayama. I was learning meditation, had a general understanding of yogic history, and the rest of the 8-fold path that is the spiritual foundation of yoga.
What I apparently didn’t understand at all was the true nature of the self. I also wasn’t prepared to learn that in a yoga teacher training. Which is good, because that’s not where I learned it.
Shortly after completing my teacher training, I made a huge career shift that was a little heartbreaking and felt very public in my little town. Even if it’s the right choice, separating yourself from an identity that you’ve created is painful. I felt lost and lonely. It felt like many of my relationships were superficial and based on the roles I had been playing. When the familiar people, routines, and schedules fell away, I had no idea who I was. But at least I had yoga.
My yoga practice is my time every day that is just mine. I can allow my breath to clear my mind and to flow through my limbs. It’s my time to just enjoy feeling good in my body and to get out of my head. One day while on the mat, a portion of that maddening book came back to me: “We have forgotten who or what we essentially are and have mistaken ourselves instead for a collection of thoughts, images, memories, feelings, sensations, and perceptions.”
I had no idea who I was, because who I am isn’t any of the roles or labels I put on myself. It isn’t mother, or wife, or entrepreneur, or yoga teacher. I didn’t understand the nature of the self because I was trying to know the wrong things. I was trying to define myself by my actions in the world, instead of understanding that who I am has nothing to do with what I do.
Yoga isn’t physical fitness. What yoga does for us is it allows us to use the movement of our breath and our bodies to still our minds. And when the mind is quiet, that’s where your “self” really is. Who I am, as Spira and my amazing yoga instructors were trying to tell me all along, is just the awareness that I am. And that is enough.
