Or I could borrow Joseph Campbell’s quote, “You become mature when you become the
authority of your own life” for the title of this essay in the Identity series.
I could title it, “Who
Am I?” or “The Pathless Path”, if
I wanted this chapter to be the beginning of the next section of my
autobiography!
The earlier essay, I left off with saying that needing
recognition seems to be one of my fundamental patterns. In fact, this had been occupying such density
in my being that it has taken all this time to stay and work with this part of
me and arrive at a location to pen it down.
The recognition that I wanted / needed from my world is
nothing but simple (or not so simple!) affirmation that I did not get as a
child. I had been an adult by age,
living and functioning as an adult outside, driven by the child’s need for
affirmation, inside. Carl Jung had said, “Until you make the unconscious
conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate”. This
is true for me, except that I don’t call it ‘fate’. This unconscious relationship with
affirmation that I have had made my choices, determined much of my action and
has also limited who I am up until now.
The relationship – I sought affirmation from the authority
figures in my life (either I set them up so and they colluded, or vice
versa). And my story has been that I
don’t get the affirmation that I want / need from them (since I didn’t get it
as a child). Hence I also set up the
stage for not receiving the affirmation from these authority figures. Then I
don’t conform, I rebel ‘against’ these authority figures and take up causes to
do so. I became the rebel against any
system (for me, authority), the angry young man syndrome. I constructed my identity, my idea of self, out
of this relationship with authority and affirmation. One of my primary narratives had been this: whoever
I see as authority will ‘fail’ me by not affirming me in the ways that I need, and
I will find some way to be the righteous rebel, try to get out of the web of
authority and strike my own path. There
will be a flash of brilliance as I try to find myself, but I will set myself up
to fail, because the sense of self was so enmeshed with the idea of being
affirmed by authority, that if there was no authority, there was no self. Who will affirm me? I was trapped in my cyclical
story for the longest while.
However, there is more than one story in the unconscious
that direct one’s life. In fact, there are several, and we collect more on the
way. I call in Thoreau along with Jung into
this essay, “We are constantly invited to be who we are”. And so, even though I chose the affirmation
one as my primary story, there were others whispering and flirting and
gesturing and waving for my elusive attention. I noticed one such when it simply wouldn’t be
ignored – my story of practice versus / and theory, also a gift from my family.
My well, rendered dry with intellect
alone, was searching for the water of practice. This took me to the practice of
asana-pranayama, and the path of yoga. This
ongoing story led me then to many others, and some more, and continues. They started knocking on my door time and again
as seemingly far-fetched opportunities, uncomfortable questions, bursts of colour, myriad
meanings and metaphors, insights …
The righteousness soon dropped away. The rebel is a warrior and this part of cell
memory doesn’t get erased that easily I find. However, she has learnt to set down her arms
and keep her sword sheathed unless she feels it necessary to fight. She has also learnt to see that there are ways
and ways of putting up a fight. There is
another story in this of course, that of finding the woman, the shakti. There is no cause or context for rebellion
in these tales. There is also a story of
what to fight for, which is a wondrous one, that of Mother Earth, as ancient as
she.
When these masks were
removed, I had to face my vulnerabilities: there is no authority to get affirmation
from. There need be none. I am not that child who did not get the
affirmations she needed, any longer. I
am an adult with many gifts, many stories, having a child of my own whom I need
to affirm in many ways while giving her space to grow independent. But where and how is my affirmation
happening? How can I design a wholesome feedback process for myself? Do I need
such a thing or is it my need for affirmation acting up? What would I be
without this need and seeking for affirmation from authority? What would I be
owning up to authority where it is required? Is authority even required or is
my mind playing games? What am I missing?
I turned to my asana-pranayama-swadhyayam, practice, as
usual, and a question that stayed is, ‘what would I be without this need, free
from this cycle?’ The practitioner and
teacher in me joyfully announced the experience: that the practice itself is
the affirmation – this moment is its own affirmation. I realised the truth of this somewhat. When I
am practicing, and when I am teaching someone for therapeutic purposes, I need
no validation for what I am doing. I am
deeply into the process, and it runs the show. Every step and moment speaks for itself and
illumines the next. My authority comes
from my personal practice and the needs of the process when necessary.
But, what does this mean for my question? Who am I by myself? What is my process
then if that is what I am looking for? The
stories that came knocking now were vague sightings into a dark wilderness that
I began to see from the edges but didn’t initially venture into, being fearful
of what I may find. Tentative steps and
short trips into the forest revealed more stories. Walking alone in the moonlight
breathes energy into this quest. Walking
alone, even more. Stories of art,
aesthetics, writing and beauty rose up from the unconscious. An avalanche of memory, I remember the numerous
instances that I had bypassed when life had been inviting me to be who I am. How did I not attend these stories earlier?!
But there is no path prescribed by any authority in that
wilderness. I need to plunge headlong
into it. I smell a story of fear here.
Fear holds me back from making that dive. Fear of what? Perhaps of making
mistakes. What is the question I need to
ask now? It strikes me that I am not afraid of making mistakes in my personal
practice, or even with a student. I
completely trust the process and the relationship and there is an element of something
much larger than merely ‘I’ that I give up myself to. I believe that this something may be the
grace of the universe, god… that is always available to each of us. The “Ishvarapranidhana”
that Yoga sutras mention. How do I open myself to receive it? How is it that I
can feel this in asana-pranayama and not with this fear that holds me a
prisoner? Or am I just trying to escape into a variable called Ishvara and say,
this is all I can do, that this is my best? What is the fear holding me? The fear that I may be wrong about all of
this: perhaps I am imagining the stories of creating and writing and art, perhaps
I am not this at all. But why does fear stop my action? Can I move despite
fear? I see a story of the habit of fear. How do I engage with this?
I remember the first time I went into Sirsasana (headstand).
It was a surprise. Had I known earlier that our goal posture for that day’s group
practice was headstand, I would have skipped the class. Just 3-4 postures
before our goal, it was mentioned casually that we need to prepare in that
current posture well, if we wanted to go up on our heads. My hands went cold and clammy, thinking of my
positional vertigo condition etc. But the environment of my yoga sangha, colleagues
and friends doing the practice, the instructor (whose sirsasana is to die for!), and my commitment to
improvement in asana-PY practice made me stay. I still can taste the ramyam of going up on my
head that day.
Perhaps I need to surprise myself out of my fear of being
wrong. How? And even if I am wrong, what
other choice do I have? All I have are
these stories and my practice. I have nowhere to escape, no masks to hide
behind, and I don't want them. I am in this space from which
there is no going back and the way forward and sideways is a jungle with no
path. Just many symbols and metaphors
and ideas and a quest for beauty.
I cannot see the path ahead all that clearly, and
I do not know for sure that this is a pattern that has stopped “directing my
life” as Jung says. But I can say definitively that my mind cannot even turn in the
direction of my affirmation-need without me being aware of it, and pausing to
look at it with careful caution and interest, and also keep the wilderness in
view. Perhaps my short forays in, will
prepare me to walk straight and deep into the jungle one of these days without returning
to safety.
