Tias Little - The Practice Is the Path: Lessons and Reflections on the Transformative Power of Yoga

NOT EVERYONE IN life finds a path that is meaningful and helps cure the spirit. Many never make it to the trailhead. More often, people end up moving through life in pursuit of the next best thing. Many, by default, end up on roads that lead them to strive for gainmaking money, achieving popularity, and being successful. These roads have fast lanes, enabling people to move at greater speeds and achieve their goals in less time. Some end up in cul-de-sacs, confined by lives focused on pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain.

A path is different. On a path, you are meant to meander, to enjoy each footfall. Every ascent and descent is part of the journey. And there may be momentsdays, weeks, and monthswhen you feel totally lost. A path is winding and circuitous and the experience of losing your way is part of the way. A path is wide enough only for footsteps. You cannot drive an RV equipped with a kitchen and flat-screen TV down it. By necessity, you must travel light.

Sometimes you find yourself on the path by happenstance, someone on a whim takes you there, or you look for it on the World Wide Web. It doesnt matter how you get there. What matters is that sure-footed, with shoulders back and heart lifted, you trust the pads of your feet.

The path I am speaking of is not a trail that cuts through canyons and meadows or crisscrosses the mountain. The path I am referring to is the Big Path, the Tao, the Way. It is a path that opens the lungs, fires the spirit, and awakens faith. It is the path of pilgrimage, one that leads straight to the heart of being.

This book is about being on that paththe Path. It is about an essential journey that begins the moment you hear the reverberation of an inner voice that says simply, I must. It is about listening to the voice of yearning inside, despite the odds, and the many competing voices calling you back to familiar commutes along paved surfaces.

For many of us, there is one year in our lifetime that sets the stage for all other years, one year that shapes our destiny. For me, it was when I was seven, and a voice prompted me to delve into the caverns of my soul. A strange yearning took over my young and impressionable mind, a longing to explore the labyrinth of my inner self. It set me on a journey through many landscapes, teachers, instructions, and techniques. This voice, this spirit-whisperer, coaxed me onat times gentle and merciful, and at other times fierce and uncompromising.

The trek has demanded every fiber of my being, and along the way, I have had to question the realities I assumed to be true. Through my teens and twenties, my internal navigation device worked erratically. I spent years traipsing off course, isolated in remote canyons and narrow tunnels. All too often I found myself stranded, having strayed from essential connections to myself and others. But despite years of disorientation and confusion, an inner longing, a hidden hunger, prompted me to persevere.

On a mountain path there can be many obstacles: mud, fallen trees, rocks, washed-out terrain. Yet the spiritual path is more arduous, for the obstacles are not external but internal. On my own path, I have had to contend with stumbling blocks that are essentially products of my own making. They include my urge toward perfection, a desire to be good, a tendency to push my way forward, restlessness, craving, and a fear of letting go. I believe these hindrances are common to many fellow seekers on the path, so I will attempt to address them in this book.

A path is made by the multitudes who have gone before us. Like river rock, smoothed and polished by the ongoing flow of water, the path has been worn by wayfarers on quests similar to yours and mine. Thus we do not have to carve out a new trail. At first, we must learn to follow. The intent to follow guides us away from the false notion that this is my way. As we follow we take faith, and the path itself is the guru, the guide.

It is a godsend to find a path that enables the maturation of the soul. For me the path has been yoga, but any craftsuch as acting, cooking, woodworking, or playing an instrumentmay suffice to steer you into landscapes unimaginable. In this book I reflect on the changing horizons I have seen on the trail. I look back on the time I first embarked from the trailhead, the expectations I had of myself and the assumptions I held about the journeys end. I see now that what I thought was enlightenment was part of a greater delusion.

In the first half of the journey, we adhere to order, security, rote discipline. We are more inclined to live by the letter of the law rather than its spirit. We may impose strict boundaries on ourselves and be quick to judge others. Idealistic and moralistic, we may approach spirituality from the side of our small-minded self, eager to be liked, obtain approval and succeed. Out of a desire to gain a solid foothold within ourselves, we get attached to our systems, our techniques, our memorized verses, our badges and brands. In the beginning we need affirmation that we are making progresssuccess and security are paramount. We may overidentify with a style of practice, a sequence of poses, or a system of teachings. In the first half of my journey, I held strongly to the code of Ashtanga yoga, vegetarianism, and mantra. Initially, these foundational practices provided important footholds that enabled me to climb. In the arduous migration of the soul, however, we all come to a crossroads where we must relinquish all title, rank, and name. This demands another kind of exodus, one that involves risk and surrender.