Inside Yoga 36 (9/5/2011)
On April 29 an estimated 2billion people watched the royal wedding… almost 30 per cent of the world population. Leaving aside Republican and Royalist views, the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton was a celebration of love and partnership – an important part of human ceremonial life that dates back far into our past.
Is this why so many watched? Or did this wedding serve to fill a space in our hearts, more to do with ourselves than the royal couple – filling that place inside reserved for our eternal partner? This is a kind of Jungian archetype – the need to have a partner, a lover, our other half, which is deep within our collective consciousness.
Clearly for many this event was also that fairytale come true, a prince and a princess getting married. We are brought up on tales of princes and princesses, of tales about true love. This was a vicarious experience for so many who watched the wedding. A wedding can soften most hearts.
And it was an emotional event for many, and that is a real experience, but what I want to highlight, is that the depth of this experience also had a lot to do with a person’s sub-conscious, and perhaps conscious, search for inner union; for the inner marriage of our duality – which produces the oneness and the wholeness that we seek – be it conscious or subconscious.
And this is a major part of yoga.
What we witnessed was the coming together of two beings into a union – two parts that make a whole. It’s within our nature to seek a partner, to become joined with another – part for having a family, and part because that helps us to feel whole.
And this is the journey some people find themselves on – a search for wholeness. Even those who shout against being with another person, do have this instinct – it’s a form of denial or conflict that brings up the strong opposition: as the saying goes: “those who shout loudest against something usually want it for themselves.” For if they were at peace, this marriage of another would not affect them in this way.
Which brings me to yoga: the word itself means “union”. It is a reference to the yogic journey that seeks to bring an inner union to our life. When we achieve this union we feel whole and at peace.
By nature we are dualistic. Everywhere we look there opposites – female/male; dark/light; up/down, happiness/sadness; and so forth.
And in terms of our sexuality, yoga acknowledges that inside we are made of two parts – a balance of female and male. This ancient teaching, thousands of years old has been backed up by modern science, which has established that in terms of hormones, each human has a mix of male and female.
If we look at the sentence: “I love you because you make me happy”, therein lies the dependency on filling a void – a gap, where our happiness is missing? Do we need the person to make us happy? Yoga philosophy tells us that we learn to be whole, to be happy in ourselves, and then we can say to someone we love, simply “I love you” and this is because of who the person is not because of what he or she might give us – this is an unconditional love.
The yogic journey is about bringing to balance this dualist nature that is part of our lives, so should we take on a lover and companion, we do so without being in a dependent, grasping relationship, and conditional love. We aim to be with someone because we want to be with them and love them for who they are, not because we need them to fill a gap inside us.
So is this why so many watched the wedding? Did they subconsciously want to feel whole, or simply rejoice in the event, or both?
I do appreciate that this is utopian in many ways, as we are human and prone to mistakes and struggle to get things right at the best of times. Yet it is helpful to be aware of why we seek a partner in life – and how it is affected by our journey to become a whole being, balanced and at peace with who we are.
It is quite common that when we are in a good space, content with ourselves and at peace with life, that we attract lovers more easily than we do when we are in dark place, feeling alone and needy. And for those in relationship, maintaining this awareness of our inner duality is also relevant, as it helps to maintain the external relationships with our lover that is sustainable.
Love is complex, and as described here, it’s not always about the other person.
In philosophical terms, yoga is full of male/female references: all the gods have a consort/lover/partner: for example, Shiva and Parvati; Krishna and Radha; and Vishnu and Lakshmi. And many more are to be found. These are all characters in a huge pantheon of Hinduism; but this vast gallery of gods and goddesses can be rationalised and edited down to two basic words and one principle: purusha and prakriti.
Purusha (purusa) is described as the source of consciousness, conscious being, non-form; and inner spirit. It also the male form.
Prakriti (prakrti) is described as matter, form, the original form of matter; nature. This is the female form. Purusha needs prakriti to have form and prakriti needs purusha for consciouness. They are interdependent and one at the same time.
This is at the root of why we seek to bring the female and male within us together as one, and why we also seek a partner in the world. Union is yoga, yoga is union.
