Learning to Listen to the Wisdom We Already Carry
There is a beautiful saying often shared in spiritual traditions: “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”
We usually imagine the teacher as someone outside of us, a person who arrives with knowledge, guidance, or an answer we have been searching for.But perhaps there is another way to understand it. Perhaps, when we are truly ready, we begin to discover that the student and teacher is both within us.For thousands of years, different philosophical and mystical traditions have explored this idea of inner or hidden wisdom. Hermetic philosophy, for example, became a meeting place for ancient philosophical, spiritual and esoteric teachings all pointing, in different ways, toward knowledge that cannot simply be handed to us from the outside. Some things have to be discovered through experience. I want to share a nice quote from the book Kybalion : ” The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of understanding.” Perhaps these two ideas are pointing toward the same thing: the answers may be always present but we can only receive them when we are ready to listen them…
Yoga asks something similar of us. Each body arrives carrying a different story. And even our own body is different from one day to another.Some days we need movement.Some days we need stillness. Sometimes the practice asks us to stay, breathe and soften. At other times, there may be space to move further, to meet an edge, to add a little more effort. The deeper practice is learning to recognize the difference.
Where can I soften a little more?
Where am I holding unnecessarily?
When is it right to stay?
When can I explore a little further?
And when is my body quietly asking me to stop?
This is where yoga becomes more than simply following instructions. It becomes a conversation. A conversation between the body, the breath and our awareness.
A conversation between the student and the teacher that lives both in ourselves…