When were born

As it goes in yoga, we are all born perfect. We’ve all heard that phrase, but the fact is, it’s true. What happens once we’re born is we are given an identity. With this we begin to fragment from our true selves and we begin our journey with the false self. With the false self, we learn the rules of our society (as well as laws), be Canada, Victoria, Toronto, Vancouver and with that  we develop our ego.

What is the ego?

There are a lot of ways to answer this question but lets look at society at large. Most people when they give you advice about how other someone treat you, usually the advice is who cares or you should respond to that they’re not respecting you.

And that becomes the key phrase of what the ego is! People use the word respect a lot in our society and people who us this word are saying  ‘respect.’  Which is directed to you, as an  entity. It’s what sociologists call the me and the I.

It’s the protecting of this image we have of ourselves or image we have developed for others that we in turn feel gets infringed or hurt when we are not respected.  Thus we feel the need to protect it! We do almost anything – at times – to protect the ego. Yoga tells us that this ego is what causes most of our suffering in life!

The simple truth!

So the simple truth is; it is all about us! You might not like how things turn out. We might not like the people in our  family! But these are things we have no choice over; what we have a choice over is how we react to them.

We have a choice! We need to remind ourselves (through yoga or yoga training) that we can separate this illusionary self (i.e. ego) from these things. When we do that we start to realize that the dislikes we have for most things in our lives really are things we should NOT be spending that much time or energy on.

So I am not  saying you are gonna like somethings in life, but as yoga teaches us, there are things we can’t change, and for those things that can’t change, we have to learn to accept them. There is no other way.