There's a brilliant lyric from Leonard Cohen's Anthem that goes like this:
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.
~Leonard Cohen
Brilliant.
I love this for so many reasons but mostly I love how it suggests that you're not SUPPOSED to be perfect, that it's by your imperfections that you reveal your own greatness. Somehow through the process of working with you problems—your imperfections, your cracks—is how you arrive at illumination. There's no better way to practice to acknowledge our flaws than with a yoga and mindfulness practice. Consider, these practices aren't as much as finding our illumination in the immediate but rather they are there to help us get comfortable and work with our limitations, our weaknesses. Once we can get cool with that, then the illumination part just takes care of itself.
The Grain of Sand and the Pearl
Like the grain of sand that makes becomes the oyster so too is the illness, the imperfection, or the improbable life-circumstances that beset us and therefore makes us perfect. Truthfully, it is not our problems that make us perfect but the practice we must develop to problem-solve around them that does. Choose a problem, any problem, and whether or not that problem ever resolves, in working toward overcoming (or sometimes simply yielding to it) you will be put on a path of understanding and mastery that will illuminate all your gifts, that will enlarge your soul, and will teach you more about the Universe and yourself than any other thing. An easy life free of problems does not ask you to give birth to that immense but perhaps latent power within you, the being of light within.
Life Lessons
You know how people roll around with a decal of their alma mater plastered on the window of their car? The university decal I want for the back of my ride is one that says I attended Knocks University, The School of Hard Knocks. Its actually quite true that those things that have taught me the most have been my struggles and challenges.
This is why one of my teachers, Judeth Lasater, says, “My gurus all share my last name,” meaning that while close relationships are sometimes hard, they are the things that will teach us most poignantly about our True Nature and place us on the path to our own understanding. I love this quote by Judeth Lasater because it suggests that you don't need to run off to India to find some of your life's most valuable lessons. Your greatest teachers could be at this moment ditching school to smoke pot with their friends. It's simply by being in conversation with those things that seem like a challenges that we find ourselves growing toward our most illuminated being. Just take a breath. Your teenager might agree.
The Heat of Transformation
Yoga and meditation are excellent ways that expose our weaknesses. For me, it shows me exactly where my limitations are and in the very same breath helps me understand where I can go. It's incredible how once you can allow what is to be, growth is almost always the very next step. We celebrate and even embrace the natural process of our own growth through our challenges as we bask in the heat of our own transformation through our yoga postures and meditation practice. Knowing and celebrating that we are all imperfect allows us to practice yoga and meditation without any end in mind other than simply practicing. The same way that we are not perfect, none of our poses can be perfect. Or better said, we and the poses we express are all perfect in their imperfections, the well-earned pearls of our textured existence.
I invite you to celebrate your own divine nature through your imperfections and see how the light gets in.
Photo by Alex Adams
Scott Moore is a senior teacher of yoga and mindfulness in the US (New York, Salt Lake City, LA) and abroad and the author of Practical Yoga Nidra: The 10-Step Method to Reduce Stress, Improve Sleep, and Restore Your Spirit. When he's not teaching or conducting retreats, or traveling to teach, he also writes for Conscious Life News, Elephant Journal, Mantra Magazine, Medium, and his own blog at scottmooreyoga.com. Scott also loves to run, play the saxophone, and travel with his wife and son. Check out his yoga retreats and trainings in places like Tuscany, France, and Hong Kong , his online Yoga Nidra Course and his Yoga Teacher Mentor Program. Scott just moved back to Salt Lake City after living in Southern France with his family.
