Perfect Pictures

by Dennis Green

When I studied and practiced yoga techniques for the first time, some 30 years ago now, I learned a very important lesson about how we see the world. We can see it straight up, just as it is, or we can see it through one or more of many different filters.

We can see it as we would like it to be, or as others have told us to see it. Our vision may even become so cluttered with “Perfect Pictures” that we no longer see it at all, not as an external, independent reality, but only as a series of idealized, stylized prototypes. Stereotypes. Or, if we are really cynical, even negative stereotypes. Perfectly Awful.

(Now, I’m bracing myself, for when I wrote in this space about “reading auras,” my old pal Georgie/Harvey wrote back, “I just read their mood rings. Saves time.” So I’m ready for him…)

That first yoga teacher, Donovan, saved “Perfect Pictures” for last, because it is the most difficult lesson of all. But he prepared the way with those earlier, easier workouts. First, he taught us how to feel, locate, identify the presence in our bodies of negative energy, which we humans store as pain or tension or stress.

Many of the aches and pains we take for granted, that we assume are the natural result of everyday wear and tear, and unavoidable, can actually be lessened, eliminated, or even prevented, with a few simple relaxation techniques, positions and stretches. Once you identify a muscle or nerve that is holding on to that negative energy, you can simply unlock its grip and let the stuff go. And there are various ways to do that.

But ultimately, you learn that you can avoid acquiring most of that tension, pain and stress in the first place. Some of it is planted there by other people, deliberately, to take control of us, or simply rack us up, and we can protect ourselves against that. But most of it we impose upon ourselves, with our expectations and our disappointments and our preferences — when they don’t agree with reality.

And when our heads are stuffed with Perfect Pictures of the ‘way it s’posed to be’ our reactions are bound to be negative, painful, distressed. If, for example, I have Perfect Pictures of the way human beings are supposed to respond to the sufferings of others, and I hear Pat Robertson come across with something less than perfect, I’m going to be, as another friend put it, “shoved out of my comfort zone.”

Likewise, if I’m so cynical that I expect everyone to disrespect the Haitians, and many millions of people show compassion instead, I’m going to feel great discomfort. If my mind, however, is empty of all such notions, one way or the other, my curiosity is satisfied, but I’m not particularly distressed. I don’t pass judgment on the Haitians, or Robertson, or those who help out.

Without those Perfect Pictures, I see the world as it is, and store a lot less negative energy in my body in the form of tension, aches and stress. A very similar principle is also summed up in Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer,” used by Alcoholics Anonymous, to break the grip of addictions:

“God grant me the serenity/to accept the things I cannot change;/courage to change the things I can;/and wisdom to know the difference.” Amen to that…even if you don’t believe in God.

©2010 Dennis Green