You Can't Make Yourself Whole

(Photo by Marianna Smiley on Unsplash)

A woman once came into yoga class apologizing.  She’d been practicing for a decade she said, but she hadn’t yet mastered handstand in the middle of the room.  She was so sorry that she wouldn’t be able to keep up.  But, she told me I could ignore her and keep the other people happy. {This woman clearly didn’t know that I generally don’t teach handstand in the middle of the room.  And even if I did I would offer other options.}

When I thought back on it later I perceived that she was coming to the class with a sense of lack.  She apologized because she felt that her practice was in some way incomplete without a handstand in the middle of the room.  And I wonder if she, too, felt incomplete without that pose.  As if the pose made a difference in her wholeness.  

I reassured her as best I could in the moment, but that exchange stuck with me for a long time.  It broke my heart that someone would feel the need to apologize for their yoga practice.  It reminded me how often we all feel disconnected from our innate wholeness.  Even me. I believe we’re all born whole and complete; but I don’t always feel that way.

If you’re anything like most people, you don’t always have a sense of wholeness either. It’s more likely that most of the time you experience other things like: lack, disconnection, or brokenness.  Unfortunately, feeling this way can lead to a downward spiral where you feel incompleteness and then start to think there’s something wrong with you for feeling that incompleteness. Then you feel even worse.

YOU’RE NOT THE FLAW

But, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not broken even if you feel broken.  Your wholeness is there, it’s just hiding… and with good reason. 

From the moment you were born our entire culture went about undermining your sense of innate wholeness.  As a baby you were likely separated from your caregivers and taken to a nursery where you were wrapped but not held by loving arms. From that moment you felt that there was something missing… AND THERE WAS.

That feeling was not a flaw in you, it was a TRUTH in you. It was a flaw in the system.  As you’ve grown it’s only been compounded - especially if you live in a body that isn’t celebrated by this culture. (and you know, prevailing religion, patriarchy… all the things)

But there’s more.

THE CLOAKS 

Deeper than culture there runs another force that separates you from your wholeness.  In Tantric yoga philosophy, teachers identified something called malas.  Malas are like cloaks or coverings that hide you from you.  They cover your wholeness and make you forget it.

Ānava mala is a cloak that creates the feeling of lack, unworthiness, and incompleteness.  It is a built in feature of being human.  Like a computer that comes with software already installed, humans come with the malas ready to go.

When you feel lack or incompleteness it’s part of how you function as a human, an important part.  The malas are part of how you establish your authentic YOUness.  Without them we’d all be in Unity Consciousness all the time.  The very unique person that you are would never emerge.  That means if you want to Be YOU, the malas have to come along.

They aren’t the whole story though.  They’re cloaks, remember?  And cloaks can be removed.

UNCOVERING YOUR WHOLENESS

Ānava mala creates feelings of lack because it is covering your fullness.  It creates feelings of unworthiness because it’s hiding your worthiness.  It brings feelings of incompleteness because it cloaks just how complete you are.  YOU ARE COMPLETE.

The yogic sages taught that whenever you feel that sense of incompleteness it is actually your innate wholeness calling you.  Those feelings serve the purpose of reminding you to reconnect with the fullness in your Heart. In fact, the inner call is often what brings people to yoga or coaching.  They wouldn’t necessarily know it… they’d probably say “I feel broken or lost.”  But underneath it all what’s really going on is wholeness calling out to be remembered.

The way to feel whole again is to remove the cloak of the ānava mala.  Easier said than done since it’s built in human operating software.  Most folks will never be totally free of it.    But it is possible to take off layers of it until it feels much lighter.  It’s also possible to get so familiar with it that you don’t let feelings of lack or incompleteness slow you down.

PRACTICE IS THE WAY (Science says so) 

Practice is the way.  Plain and simple.  Practice. Practice. Practice.  While I often talk about your practice being in your life, when it comes to the ānava mala, formal practice is a big deal.  Meditation and mantra both have been scientifically proven to diminish activity in the areas of the brain that keep us feeling separate and small. Every time you come to your meditation cushion you take off a layer of the cloak.  

You can also chip away at the malas by examining your thoughts. Catch the ones that tell you you’re broken or flawed, then remember your wholeness.  It’s a slow process but effective.  What will help is to do it in community.  Community can see and hold your wholeness even when you can’t.  Your community can mirror it back to you and remind you that you are an important part of an even bigger whole.  

YOU ARE WHOLE

No matter how broken, empty, or incomplete you feel, you are none of those things.  You do not need anything (or anyone) to complete you.  You are already whole and complete even with your perceived limitations.  There’s nothing you can do to make yourself whole because you are whole already. But you can help yourself feel it.

Allow moments when you feel imperfect or incomplete to call you home to your Heart.  Return in gladness to the memory of your wholeness.  Let it fill your being and radiate outwards, reminding others of who they are at their core.   In this way we softly change the world by refusing to succumb to the lies about our brokenness and lifting ourselves and others up in wholeness.