Chapter 14

Maintaining a balanced mind is the hidden key to all balancing poses. Balance is first an inner experience that is then expressed through physical form. Keep the mind calm, don't push too hard and if you fall remember all is good. Just get back up and try again. Just like life, when you feel you're losing your ground, don't try to squeeze the toes and hold on. Instead dig down with your roots and stabilize your foundation.

Sometimes it seems like your dreams will always remain just out of reach. It's sometimes so close that you can almost touch it, feel it, taste it, but for some reason it always falls through. If you're working on putting your leg behind your head, you may feel you make steady progress only to get injured. If you're saving money to travel the world, own your own home, or start a new business, it may feel like a sudden emergency always eats your savings. While it may seem like some people have it all, make no mistake, everyone who you think has it all has put in countless hours of hard work. But there is a kind of a magic balance between dogged persistence and open receptivity. For the hardest workers sometimes the missing element of success is just relaxing and letting it all in. For the most optimistic dreamers sometimes the missing element is accepting how much effort it will take to make something real.

Find the sweet spot of balance between too much effort and too little effort. Find the place where you work hard and remain open to receiving. This balancing act is itself the spiritual path. To walk the path of your life with balance, strength and grace is itself the goal.

Sometimes you just know. Not because of logic or anything rational, you feel it in your gut and you just know. It's like the confusion lifts, the clouds part and you wake up to a truth so pure and real that it almost hurts. Clarity hits you dead center, pierces your heart and you know. You just know. There is no more grey zone, no more wondering, no more confusion. It's like the satisfaction of watching an arrow hit its target after wobbling in flight. But here's the secret: the force that guides the arrow isn't you. It never is. The source of that knowingness isn't you either. You receive that knowledge when you're a clean and clear vessel, when your heart is pure, when you're ego is vanquished, when your personal desires are set aside. 

So often we know but we avoid admitting the truth to ourselves in a desperate attempt to preserve our attachment to a particular outcome. You know when it's time to leave a relationship, walk away from a partnership, or quit an old behavior. Once that seed of knowledge is planted you cannot run fast enough to get away from it, no matter where you go you will never escape it, no matter how loud and busy you make your life you will always hear it. Because you know. Deep down we always do. But so often we choose not to see. Yoga is about clarity, about the moment when we are finally strong enough to see the plain truth revealed in the light of day. You know. You have always known. Be strong enough to finally see.