The Other Picture

"The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up." ~ Chuck Palahniuk Lullaby

  
We are faced with a Catch-22 in our yoga practice: do we look at the big picture or the little picture?

The goal of our practice is to be able to see all the pictures at once, something that we are not currently equipped to do.  The yogis even tell us so: we can't see everything until we become united with God.  See Arjuna being granted divine sight by Krishna to see His actual form.  Arjuna begged for the vision to stop because he could not handle it.

If we look at the big picture, full-blown enlightenment, joining our small part to the something bigger, realizing that all is one, we face the danger of becoming apathetic.

"It will all work out in the end."

"God will provide."

We can forget that there is actual work to do.  That God created this challenge, this job, penicillin, to provide us with the means to gradually develop the capacity for final union. Being unprepared and trying to plug into God is like plugging our toaster directly into the Hoover Dam.  Your bread will toast alright, into millions of tiny fried atom. Instantly.  Then what good are they?

If we focus on the details, the position and rotation of our spleen in relation to the spiral of our plantar tendon, moving .04 degrees medial, then we run the risk of forgetting why we are doing what we do.

We are kept in the physical realm.

Meat puppets.

Both pictures contain the others. Every strand of our DNA contains the code to the total us.  The total us is the sum total of our building blocks. All too often, we select to focus on one instead of the other.

Luckily, the yogis prescribe a cure for this: Do Something.

Whatever that something is, do a lot of it.

For a long time.

Gradually, like a series of Grandfather clocks placed against the same wall, the big and little pictures will sync up.

Do Warrior 1.  Sing. Breathe. Sit. Forget that there is a picture to look at. Do that thing until you forget that you are doing that thing. Then do it some more.

And someday, like one of those Magic Eye posters from the 90's, clarity will pop out from the clutter.

And we will see both pictures at once, all of the time.