The lecture Richard gave a couple of Sundays back was entitled “The Supreme Ego” which had me, for one, worried. How could he do the talk without giving me a pre-lecture interview? And wouldn’t it be embarrassing to be the center of a public talk? Fortunately, I kept my egocentric fears to myself, and the lecture commenced without a hint to anyone that I’d been foiled by my own mind again into believing that I was the center of the universe and that my own little perception of reality had even a shred of reality in it.
A continuation of the previous two talks on obstacles to yoga, Richard expanded on the notion of avidya, or ignorance associated with seeing oneself as separate from everything else. There was an audible sigh of relief in the room at the idea that this form of ego driven ignorance isn’t to be squelched so much as it is to be observed, and that the yoga allows us an opportunity to glimpse the mind creating a split between the atman and the paramatman again and again, and again.One of Richard’s offhanded comments that shocked some, and rang true with others was that bars, are a modern place of pilgrimage for some. They can provide a shift in perspective that rattles the roots of avidya since they are institutions where it is both legal and conventional to allow the ego to dissolve. Unfortunately the dissolution and relief from ego is usually brief, and may not even be recognized at all. So that’s the drawback and why hitting the bars isn’t as highly recommended as is to catch a yoga class here and there.On the local front, we’re currently hosting a remarkable group of fellow yoga practitioners for the Procrustean Bed advanced Teacher’s Intensive. Right now it’s the end of day two, having met from 9:00 in the morning until 4:00 this afternoon. At the moment Richard is sitting in the living room, breathing through his sitting bones in a completely non-verbal state. Enough words for one day! We’ll have more on the training and other local developments next week.