Last week when I was in yoga class, my teacher was talking about Atama and Ego, and how Ego can get in the way of a yoga practice, and in the way of a fulfilling life. We all pretty much know what Ego is, and how the concern with how we are perceived, with maintaining a certain 'status' in life, all of that, can get in the way of feeling at peace with one's self. But what is Atama? Simply stated, Atama is the inner self, the real you. So in your practice of yoga, or any meditative practice (I know one person who meditates via Karate, and one via playing drums), your goal is to discover your inner self, your 'real you'. This got me to thinking, what if I discover the inner me, and I don't like what I find? Do we all have this fear, that there are aspects of ourselves that we won't like, once we delve deeply? Is it that we have an addiction that we mask, or a hunger for acceptance that won't let us move forward? I know that one place where my ego gets in my way is with work. I like my job ok, and I'm fairly good at it, but it's not really fulfilling. However, I don't feel driven to find something else, and perhaps part of that is that I don't really want to be the 'go getter', out there taking the world by storm. And my ego tells me that successful people are driven, know what they want and go after it. What if what I want is to be happy at home, with my family, and to write in my blog every day. What if I'm not driven to be working on interesting, exciting projects all of the time, like so many people whose drive I admire. What if what I need is to find something more low key, not so high powered and stressful. Is that OK? I'm going to have to do some more research on the Atama (mine that is), and see what's in there, and what it has to say about all of this. How about you? What do you fear that you'll find if you get to know yourself better?
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