The Yoga of Knowledge and Action, Love and Wisdom, the Finite and the Infinite

There is a moment in the spiritual path when becoming aware of ourselves is already groundbreaking.

We start observing our thoughts instead of believing every thought. We become aware of our emotions, our

bodies, our conditioning, our wounds, our desires, and fears. We begin to understand that we can witness

our experience without necessarily being completely taken by it.

And this is essential. But I also feel that at some point awareness is not enough.

At some point another question has to enter:

Now that I can see, how am I going to live?

What am I going to do with what I know?

Because we can become very aware of our patterns and still continue repeating them. We can understand

ourselves beautifully and still act in ways that are completely out of resonance with what we deeply know.

And I think this is where the practice has to mature.

What I have found helpful in my own practice is intentionally inclining the mind toward a marriage between

knowledge and action, love and wisdom, the infinite and the finite.

Yoga means union. And maybe one of the most important forms of yoga is exactly this: bringing together

what we know inside with the way we actually move through this world.

Integration.

The Yoga of Knowledge and Action

There can be such a distance between what we know and how we live.

I can say that I want freedom while continuing to choose the things that keep me bound.

I can understand my wounds and still allow those wounds to make my decisions for me.

I can have beautiful spiritual experiences and still avoid the difficult conversation, the responsibility, the

commitment, or the change that life is asking of me.

There has to be a point where what I know becomes how I live.

The Bhagavad Gita is such a beautiful teaching about this.

Arjuna's crisis doesn't happen in a cave or while he is sitting in meditation. It happens right in the middle of

life. He is standing on the battlefield with his bow in his hands. His body is trembling. He is afraid and confused.

He no longer knows what the right thing to do is.

And Krishna (consciousness in action) doesn't teach him how to escape what is in front of him. He teaches him how to stand there. How to remain inside the complexity of life without abandoning discernment and without abandoning responsibility.

There is something here that reminds me very much of what we practice in ceremony:

Stand there. Stay there. Feel what is there. Don't escape it.

But then this has to come into everyday life.

The question cannot remain only:

What am I feeling?

It also has to become:

Given everything I can see and everything I know, what is mine to do?

This is a very different question.

The Gita reminds us that we are responsible for our actions, but we cannot control all the fruits of those

actions.

I can choose how I show up. I can choose the integrity of my action. I can choose whether I say yes or no, whether I stay or leave, whether I continue repeating something or finally change it.

But I cannot control everything that happens afterward.

I choose my action.

I offer my effort.

And I accept that I do not control the whole universe.

Perhaps this is why the Gita speaks of yoga as skill in action.

It is not only about knowing more. It is learning to act skillfully from what we already know.

The Yoga of Love and Wisdom

The same is true of love and desire.

And when I speak about love here, I don't mean only the love we feel for another person. I mean all the

things toward which we direct our longing, our attention and our life energy.

We can love a person. But we can also love an idea, a dream, a lifestyle, money, recognition, success, beauty, comfort, a

possession, an experience, or an image of who we believe we are supposed to become.

And there is nothing necessarily wrong with any of these things.

The problem begins when what we desire starts directing our life without the guidance of wisdom.

We can deeply love someone who cannot meet us. We can love and at the same time abandon ourselves.

We can care for someone and enable something that is hurting them.

But we can also become attached to getting the house, the position, the money, the recognition, the body,

the experience, the success.

We can tell ourselves:

When I have this, then I will be okay.

When this happens, then I will be happy.

When this person finally chooses me, when I finally achieve this, when people finally recognize me, then something

inside of me will finally feel complete.

And we can spend enormous amounts of our life energy chasing that promise.

Sometimes we are not even attached to something that exists. We are attached to a possibility.

To what could have happened. What should have happened. Who somebody could become.

What our life should look like. Who I thought I would be by now.

And then, without realizing it, I am no longer relating to what is actually here.

I am relating to a fantasy.

This is where desire becomes so interesting.

The Bhagavad Gita speaks very directly about the power of desire and attachment. And I don't understand

this teaching as saying that desire itself is bad.

We need desire. Desire moves life. We need it to create, to grow, to love, to explore, to build something, to change something that needs changing.

Without desire, there would be very little movement.

But desire needs to be in yoga with wisdom.

The question becomes:

Who is guiding whom? Am I conscious of my desire?

Can I hold it, feel it, listen to it, and still discern whether following it is good for me and for those around

me? Or has my desire taken possession of my consciousness?

There is a huge difference between:

I deeply desire this.

and:

I desire this, therefore I must have it.

And maybe an even more important question:

What happens to me when I don't get what I want?

Can I remain present?

Can I accept reality?

Can I change direction?

Or does my mind continue circling around the object of desire, craving it, fantasizing about it, resenting its

absence, imagining what could have been?

This is where desire can become a source of tremendous suffering.

And this is also where discipline becomes sacred.

Not discipline as punishment or repression.

Discipline as direction.

I think of a river.

The banks don't stop the river. They don't make the river less powerful. The banks are what allow all that power to move somewhere.

Maybe our desires also need banks.

Our values are banks. Our commitments are banks. Discernment is a bank. Responsibility is a bank. Our practice is a bank.

Wisdom is a bank.

The question is not: How do I stop the river?

The question is: How do I help this enormous force of life move toward something worthy of my life?

Maybe love without wisdom simply follows what it wants.

But love in union with wisdom begins to ask:

Is what I desire aligned with what I deeply know? Does pursuing this make my life larger, or does it keep me trapped?

What am I sacrificing in order to continue chasing it? Is this desire serving my life, or has my life slowly begun serving the desire?

This, too, is yoga.

Not the destruction of desire, but the marriage of desire with discernment, love with wisdom, and

longing with conscious direction.

The Skilled Archer

This brings me back to Arjuna holding his bow. I love the image because in some way we are all standing there.

The skilled archer doesn't release the arrow every time there is an impulse.

She stops.

She feels the ground.

She steadies herself.

She sees clearly.

She knows where she is aiming.

And then she acts.

But once the arrow leaves the bow, she cannot run behind it trying to control its trajectory.

We are responsible for the integrity of our aim, the steadiness of our hand, and the quality of the

release. We are not sovereign over everything that happens afterward.

Maybe this is what it means to become the skilled archer of our own life.

And maybe this is also part of becoming an adult spiritually.

There is a time when we need to ask:

Who am I? What do I want? What kind of life do I dream of?

But at some point another question has to enter:

What am I responsible for?

Not only:

What do I want from life?

But:

What is life asking from me?

Not only:

Who do I want to become?

But:

Who am I actually becoming through the choices I make every day?

And maybe instead of constantly asking, What is my great purpose?, we could sometimes ask:

Am I taking care of what has already been placed in my hands?

My relationships. My family. My friendships. My body. My work. My word. My responsibilities.

The people who depend on me. The gifts I have been given.

Sometimes we want purpose to be something extraordinary. We want to become the hero of the story.

But maybe spiritual maturity asks us to become less concerned with being the hero of the story and more

concerned with becoming trustworthy within the story.

Because purpose can also be incredibly ordinary.

Listening. Keeping a promise. Apologizing. Being there for a friend. Being present for our spouse.

Changing a behavior we have spent years explaining. Learning how to love the people who are actually here.

The Yoga of the Finite and the Infinite

In spiritual practice, ceremony, meditation, or sometimes simply in unexpected moments in life, we may

touch something that feels much greater than our individual selves.

Some may call it Divinity.

Some may call it Source, pure consciousness, wholeness, universal love, God, or simply the mystery of

life. The name is not so important.

What matters is that for a moment we may experience ourselves as part of something much larger. The

usual boundaries of ME can soften. There can be a sense of profound connection, love, belonging, or

wholeness. Maybe even a recognition that underneath all the movement of our individual lives there is

something deeper holding all of it.

This is what I mean here by the infinite.

And then the experience passes. Meditation ends. Ceremony ends. We come home.

We open our eyes, and there is laundry. There are bills. There is a difficult conversation waiting. Someone needs us.

A decision has to be made. A boundary needs to be spoken. We are back in the finite.

But maybe we were never supposed to choose between these two worlds.

Maybe the point is not only to touch the infinite, but to learn how to bring something of what we touched

back with us.

How does that experience of wholeness change the way I treat another person? How does divine love enter this disagreement?

How does consciousness enter this decision? How does wisdom enter this boundary?

How does the sacred enter the very ordinary responsibilities of my life? How does the infinite move through my finite human life?

Then ordinary life stops being separate from spiritual practice.

It becomes the place where the practice is expressed.

And maybe this is the real marriage of the finite and the infinite:

Not escaping our humanity to find the divine, but allowing what we recognize as divine to become

embodied through our humanity.

Bring Your Sadhana Into Your Life

Sadhana is a Sanskrit word that means our intentional spiritual practice: the practices we return to

regularly in order to cultivate awareness, deepen our understanding, and transform the way we live.

Meditation can be sadhana. Prayer, mantra, breathwork, contemplation, ritual, self-inquiry, and other

dedicated practices can all become part of our sadhana.

But sadhana is not only about what happens while we are sitting on the cushion, standing at the altar, or

practicing a ritual. Sadhana is not about how many hours I meditate or how many teachings I understand or how extraordinary my spiritual experiences have been.

The deeper question is:

What is my sadhana producing in the way I live?

Am I becoming more honest? Can I listen better? Can I repair when I hurt someone?

Can I recognize when desire has taken the steering wheel? Can I love without possessing?

Can I set a boundary without hatred? Can I tolerate not getting what I want?

Can I remain connected to what I know when fear enters my body?

This is where sadhana enters life.

Your meditation continues when somebody disappoints you.

Your pranayama continues in the breath you take before reacting.

Your mantra continues in the moment you choose not to say the thing you know will hurt.

Your contemplation continues when you see the old pattern beginning and choose something different.

Your devotion continues in how you care for another human being.

Your yoga continues in that little space between impulse and action.

Otherwise we create two lives:

My spiritual life.

And my real life.

Maybe the invitation is to have only one life.

So every once in a while, maybe we need to sit quietly and ask:

What am I craving? What fantasies am I feeding? Where are my actions contradicting what I say I value?

Who in my life needs more of my presence? What responsibility have I been avoiding?

What am I actually practicing every day through the way I live?

And perhaps the biggest question:

If I could stand at the end of my life and look back, what would I want to know that I stood for?

What did I protect? What did I cultivate? Whom did I love well? What did I contribute?

What did I leave a little more whole because I was here?

The skilled archer doesn't know exactly where every arrow will land.

But she learns to stand.

She learns to breathe.

She learns to see.

She learns to discern.

She learns to aim.

And eventually there comes a moment when thinking about the arrow is not enough.

The bow has to be raised.

The arrow has to be released.

Life has to be lived.

Maybe this is one of the deepest invitations of yoga:

Become aware enough to see clearly.

Become wise enough to discern what matters.

Become disciplined enough not to be ruled by every desire.

Become courageous enough to act on what you know.

And become humble enough to release the need to control what happens afterward.

Awareness and action.

Love and wisdom.

The finite and the infinite.

Sadhana and life.

Not two.

Yoga.

With much love,

Juliana