About 9 years ago, I found myself in this beautiful imperial-themed courtyard restaurant at the outskirts of Beijing. There was an intricate Chinese garden, the staff were dressed up in imperial period costume, and I was with people who were important to me. It was the picture of perfection. It looked from the outside that I had everything I wanted. There by the garden was a wishing tree, and I stood in front of it and I thought: All I want is to feel happy. No matter how perfect things looked from the outside, there was a gnawing sense of sadness and emptiness inside. Things are not what they seem.
We live in a world now that runs on appearances. We post our vacation pictures for all the world to see, our new haircut, things we've acquired, even yoga poses we've mastered. But it's a partial picture. We don't post photos of our sadness or despair or disappointment. We don't post pictures of us fighting with our mothers or our credit card statements telling us how much money we owe. We've been filtering and curating what we want the world to see, and hiding the rest for ourselves or if we're lucky, to a select few. Many of us feel the pressure to appear perfect and put-together, to create this facade that we're doing great, to let the world know that we're on top of our game. But by putting on the facade, we may lose sight of what's real, we may forget to honor our struggles, we may be pretending to live a life that's not truly ours. I find that for me, what eventually brought me to happiness is a willingness to let go of that facade, to be less worried about what others may think, and to examine and dig deep and find a life that is truly mine, one I live not for appearances but for myself. And when situations arise that negative emotions come up, it's okay to own all of those feelings. It's ok to invite these emotions up and acknowledge them. It's ok if we don't have everything. It's ok not to be perfect. It's ok to struggle. It's ok not to have everything figured out. It's ok to be human and have all of these human experiences. So in our practice today, I invite you to examine what's behind the facade that you may sometimes put on. I invite you to do nothing else but be you. I invite you to feel nothing else but what you truly feel at the moment. I invite you to feel what it's like to be you, not who you think you were or who you think you should be, but who you are at this moment. We've become so used to keeping up appearances that we sometimes forget that as long as we are comfortable being who we are, we create a safe space for ourselves. And that's all we need. Then we don't need to compare ourselves with others or be victims of societal pressure. Then we don't need to feel unloved or unaccomplished. When we are who we are with full unconditional acceptance, we are free in our imperfection.
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Are you Ultra-Spiritual? It's a made-up term that I heard in a yoga satire video. This YouTube channel Awakening with JP pokes fun at the spiritual community. He'd say things like "I'm not stealing because you and I are one. Therefore it's not yours to begin with." He twists and manipulates yogic teachings for humor, but I think it is also a cautionary tale for how we may misuse the spiritual tools we've come to learn.
Our yoga practice, meditation practice, spirituality, religion, self-help tools etc can be very potent. They have the power to transform our perspective, show us what is truly important, make us realize our responsibility in the world. But they also have the tendency to be misused. When we use the tools of spiritual practice to advance our ego, then it becomes spiritual materialism. The competition, judgment, desire to look good, projection to appear enlightened, etc within the misinterpreted context of spirituality do nothing for our freedom and only keep us trapped in our ego-centric personal agenda. The focus of the month Behind the Facade can be taken as a call-to-action: to investigate, to examine, to question everything, including not just what we practice but how we practice. To determine whether our yoga practice is working for us, we need to look beyond appearances. It is not how perfect our "performances" in asanas are, but how unattached we are as me move in and out of the poses. It is not about how spiritual others perceive us to be, but it is about how we truly think of others in the confines of our very private mind. It is not about who is better at yoga and how many hours we chalked up practicing, but it is about a genuine interest in treating others with gentle and loving kindness. When there is no public to watch our actions, when we are completely alone in our thoughts, are we truly free? Behind the Facade-- the more I think of this focus, the more that I find it fascinating. It's quite relevant to our day-to-day struggles. Things may appear one way, and upon investigation, we find out that the truth is a little or a lot different. The truth may be covered with false assumptions, half-truths, white lies, straight-out deceit, cover-ups, institutionalized dishonesty. And who contributes to these lies? We do. We blame society, but we are society.
A man named Dan Ariely dedicated his career to understanding human behavior, including why we lie. He conducted a series of experiments with this premise: A group of people takes a mathematical exam. When the time is up, each person declares how many answers they got right, and they got paid for each correct answer. They shred the exam paper themselves, thinking no one would catch them if they lied. What they don't know was that the shredder doesn't shred all the way through. The experiment then is able to determine if people lied. The results showed that 100% of the test subjects lied. The only difference was in how much each person lied. A few lied big time, with a big variance between what they declared and how many answers they actually got right. Most people, though, lied but with little variance. Most people lied "just a little bit". We may be quick to judge that the big liars are the "bad people", the corrupt politicians, those whose indiscretions are unforgivable to us. We think our own "small" lies are harmless-- omitting certain truths, misleading just a little slightly, telling an insignificant lie here and there. It is all too easy to point fingers at others and blame them for their dishonesty, all the while thinking our own dishonesty is excusable and "not as bad". But in the experiment, this point is made: The monetary loss from the few people who lied a lot is far less than the net loss coming from most people who lied only a little. It brings us back to the point that the world we live in is created by small actions of the majority. And in the subject of truth, the culture of dishonesty is not made by the few big liars, but by the normalcy of the majority of small liars. In the pursuit of satya or truth, in unraveling the layers to reveal what is behind the facade, it is necessary that we take ownership of the words that we speak. If I continue to be dishonest, how can I expect others to be honest? If I distort the truth for my benefit, how can I expect the truth to be accessible? If I speak the truth but in a way that is unkind, then how can I expect the world to be truthful and compassionate at the same time? “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.” - George Orwell
I watched this documentary called "The Mask You Live In", and I thought it's very relevant to the October focus of the month Behind the Facade. The documentary speaks of the culture of violence that is bred when boys are raised (and pressured) to live up to a certain idea of masculinity (non-feeling, tough, dominant, etc). Society created a mold of what "being a man" is, such that when boys are kids they are happy to be who they are, but as they start to become teenagers, they try hard to fit into that mold and lose connection with themselves and their peers, or are bullied when they do not fit into that mold. The narrow stereotype tells them that to "be a man", they have to repress their emotions, have shallow friendships, treat women like objects, and use violence to resolve conflicts. But studies show that the intrinsic traits of any gender do not in fact fit into a narrow stereotype. Psychologist Michael G. Thompson says that if boys and girls took the same psychological test, there would be a 90% overlap in the results, not at all what society forces us to think that "boys are this way, and girls are that way." So the over-masculinization of men and the over-femininization of women is simply hurting us. We are in effect telling them that how they truly feel will not be accepted, that somehow there is something wrong with them when they do not fit the stereotype. The solution is to break down this facade, to show that authenticity matters, to say that there is no mold to fit into, no mask to wear, no pretensions to keep up with. Gender stereotypes is one more piece of clothing that we wear, one more layer that hides who we are. All we want is to have genuine connection with others, to be cared for, to be loved. Satya or truth can often be covered in many ways, in many layers of misguidedness or deceit. We cover ourselves up so much, we even start with our clothing. Veering away from the practical use of clothes to keep us away from harmful elements, clothing has become a deeply-ingrained barrier that separates people into categories. Who's wearing cheap clothes vs expensive clothes. Who's wearing trendy clothes vs clothes from many seasons ago. Who's wearing the same clothes and who wears it better, etc etc.
I am not suggesting that we do away with clothes. But I am putting it out there for us to consider how we have been hiding ourselves, perhaps starting with clothes. In the "normal" world, we think the clothes that we wear, our interests, and other things are channels for self-expression. But in yogic terms, digging deeper into the identity of what the Self truly is, these exact same things are coverings. We are not revealed by them, we are hidden by them. Not only that. We also cover ourselves with our expectations, or others' expectations. We cover ourselves with our fears and prejudices. We cover ourselves with a face that we put forward into the world, a mask of sorts, so we show the world one thing, but we hide-- either knowingly or unknowingly-- the internal world of our truth. There are physical covers like clothes and makeup, and emotional covers like the personality that we show others, and intellectual covers like the image that we create. Most of us use all of these to hide. Yoga practices ease us into Satya (truth). We slowly and inevitably purify our karmas, let go of our emotional defenses, we become more and more comfortable in revealing our True identity. We learn that what we show the world is nothing but a mask, and we start to take it off, and we begin to show our vulnerability and our nakedness. We start to come out from hiding and embrace our truth. |
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