By Silvia Mordini
In Sanskrit the word Purna means wholeness. It is the concept of perfection but not the American view of perfect, it more correctly translates to imperfectly perfect, or otherwise complete. This is a beautiful reframing of what feeling perfect really means.
Implied in maintaining this balance is the active practice of remembering what is helpful and forgetting what is not.
“The concept of forgetting the things that should be forgotten adds happiness to your life. But the flip side is knowing what not to forget.”
This is a good day to ask ourselves:
1. What are you comfortable revealing about who you are?
What is seen and revealed externally is considered to be our solar side, the visable, this is the right solar side energy of our body. Who we think others want us to be.
2. What do you keep hidden that is true about yourself?
This is the left lunar side energy, that which is internal and not visible. In otherwords, how we feel on the inside and who we think we are.
3. How would you describe yourself completely to someone that didn’t know you in just a few words?
For some of us this is easy. For others of us, this idea of explaining our complete selves posed a difficulty because we are often really good at describing a part of us, a body part, one aspect of our personality, just our role at work but when asked to describe the sweet WHOLENESS of us we get stumped. We hold back the parts of us that are most vulnerable or we are ashamed about. We may find it easy to share the best parts of who we are but what about those shadow sides of our personality.
You practice this enough, it becomes a habit and you forget yourself.
When Donna Farhi was asked “what is yoga” she responded “In its broadest sense Yoga is a return to wholeness. There is an uncompromising belief in yoga philosophy that wholeness is our implicit birthright. But most of us forget our wholeness, or in yogic terms we forget our true nature, and we live in a kind of illusion that we are alone. We suffer from a kind of SPIRITUAL AMNESIA that makes us feel separate from our authentic selves, separate from others, separate from nature.”
I had Amnesia four years ago. I understand what it means to not remember a part of myself and my life. But you don’t have to.
Forgetting who we are or how our solar and lunar parts go together is like not remembering. When we are on the yoga mat coordinating the democracy of ourselves together into a pose we regain this connection, we practice remembering to remember wholeness is us.
We stop denying any part of us and stop forgetting ourselves.
The experience of wholeness is like a coming home after experiencing a lot of different things, like a bee visiting flower to flower, a real sweetness known as mudhurya exists here. My hope is that through anchoring our selves back into our body through Yoga and becoming present to our thoughts through Meditation we can use these practices to restore a feeling of wholeness to our lives.
Ultimately our sense of connection to the world is strengthened as we stop forgetting ourselves. Give peace a chance, give your whole life a chance and seek to bring wholeness back to yourself, your families, communities and world!
Love yourself, love your day, love your life!
Silvia
“Happiness? That’s nothing more than health and a poor memory.”
—Albert Schweitzer
