Yoga Michigan

If you were to ask people simple moral questions such as "Is disrespecting people good or bad? "Is losing your temper good or bad?" "Is being greedy good or bad?" most people would answer that of course they are all bad. Even an 8-year-old can answer these questions with confidence. Then why is it that people who should know better commit these types of acts on a daily basis?

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This is where the difference between "knowing" and "understanding" lies. While most people "know" that these acts are bad, many do not "understand" it. Understanding involves a deeper level of knowing which comes from direct experience. 

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Think of when you were a child learning to ride a bicycle. You saw other people do it many times before, and your mom or dad probably explained to you what to do, step-by-step, before sending you off. "Sit on the seat ... hold the handle bar with both hands ... place one foot on a pedal ... look straight ahead ... start pedaling ... keep your balance ..."  You already had a good idea in your head what you needed to do. You may have even found their instructions unnecessary and told them, "I know! I know!" But when you actually tried it, chances are it did not go exactly as you had imagined. It was with practice, in repeatedly trying, perhaps even falling over a few times, that you finally "understood" what it was to ride a bicycle.

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The spiritual journey works pretty much in the same manner. Knowing is the theory, understanding is the practice. A surgeon cannot claim to be one just by studying books, she must go through an internship and learn the practice before being allowed to operate on patients. A chef cannot claim to be a chef for simply having memorized dozens of recipes while never having prepared a single one of them. Theory gives us an important foundation, but unless we put it into practice, we cannot claim to have understood it.

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So what can we do to understand our own Self? We must apply the principals we value as a humanity to the individual "me." As an example, violence is wrong, not matter who does it and for whatever reason. We cannot excuse ourselves for the reason that we had justification for it. As painful as it may be, we must learn to see ourselves for what we really are, not what our ego convinces ourselves to be, which is always in the right. We must quit participating in the blame game and take responsibility for our actions. This is a practice called atma-vichara, or self-inquiry.

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We must see ourselves as an observer of our actions rather than a participant. We must persistently train our ego as if it were an unruly child. Mastering the ego is a lifetime process. Like riding a bicycle, or performing surgery, or learning to cook, it is not in reading about it but in practicing that we master it. And like other skills, the more we practice, the better at it we become. 

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