Practice Makes a Practice. My Abhyasa (r)evolution.

Stillness is the result of devoted practice and non-attachment. {YS 1.12}

Practice is the effort of remaining present. {YS 1.13}

With continuous, devoted practice for a long time, the practice becomes firmly rooted. {YS 1.14}

Abhyasa/Practice.

As a girl and young woman, the notion of practice seemed to run afoul with my constitution. If I was not perfect at something without trying, I would give it up. Just reading that sentence, I am struck with its utter absurdity. As a parent, I pray my daughter finds meaning and confidence in effort, rather than effect alone. Perfection in product only seems so strange to me now. At present, I cannot imagine do-ing anything perfectly, nor can I imagine a world without practice.

Something must have happened to have so profoundly shifted my worldview and made me more accepting of the yogi’s path. In the abstract, I remember 1998, when I embraced the process-oriented education model of the (now-defunct) Paracollege at my alma mater, St. Olaf College. No grades. A self-designed concentration rather than a standard major. Where questions were more important than answers. This seemed significant to me at the time, but I lacked the discipline to really get the most from the experience and to honestly call my interest more than an abstraction.

No, in actuality, my practice developed much later. I noticed it bloom as a long-distance runner in 1999, as a yogi in 2001 and as an artist in 2008. I noticed it at distinct moments, but the groundwork had been laid months, years before. Committment to the process. The ritual of process. Even now, I’ll be startled to notice that I can actually do something. Create something. The product. The product is grace.

This can be problematic, of course, mostly for people who want me to be doing things and doing them faster. Work lingers for the sake of work. Sometimes I take such a long-view that I appear to get very little accomplished in the conventional sense. (My former lawyer-self would be appalled if she ever showed up these days. She doesn’t though, and I honestly miss her only when I need to get the house cleaned at warp speed.)

Practice.

Devotedly offering time to a particular vocation. For many moons.

Without practice, with either luck or genetic predisposition or astrological serendipity or whatever, actions often lack depth. Depth is where the good stuff resides. Depth is where we feel the heart-tones of ourselves, each other, the universe, and where we realize they and we are but the same. No, but reeeeeeeaaaaalllllly the same. Not just in the abstract.

Practice.

Conditions must be right. Begin where you are and let your innermost voice guide you. A habit will take hold. Nurture that beautiful habit.

The heart (the BIG heart, the cosmic heart) wants what it wants. It wants you to remember it. And to remember that you and it are the same.

It must engage. Even the practice of relaxing must engage to have staying power.

It’s in the do-ing (even if the do-ing is simply be-ing), that we find the path to meaning. It’s through grace/non-attachment/vairagya that we know meaning.

Practice. You must do to know.

Tell me about your practice.

Love. Kelly