Look at your bookshelf. How many of those books have you read all the way through? Which ones made your heart and mind sing when you read them because they ‘spoke’ to you? How many of them do you actually remember the details of? Which ones have you taken concepts from and actually use in your daily life? Information and knowledge doesn’t create lasting change.

Information is readily available in the modern world. There’s so much information it’s hard to digest it all or discern what information is helpful and what is not. Though this is not the focus of this blog post, I want to briefly mention pramana, which means knowledge is Sanskrit, and is an important part of Raja Yoga (Yoga for the Mind).  

TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE ACCORDING TO YOGA

There are 5 types of pramana that are mentioned in Patanjali Yoga Sutras:

1. Right knowledge, which comes from direct experience, inference, and revelation from knowledgeable sources. Many times we need more than one of these to verify something is in fact true.
2. Misconception, which is taking information and making a wrong inference or assumption.
3. Imagination, which is taking ideas, thoughts, stories that haven’t happened as true.
4. Sleep, which knowledge is in the form of dreams and thoughts that are taking this as true.
5. Memory, which are thoughts from the past which may or may not be reliable.

Why I bring up pramana is that modern society places a lot of value on information and knowledge. We tend to gather lots of it and we interface with an excess amount every day due to the internet. We spend so much time gathering more data and information that there’s not much time left to actually use it. The mind gets addicted to information.

REDUCE THE DATA

From the point of view of Raja Yoga, the goal of Yoga is “complete cessation of all thought waves.” A practical practice working toward this is to start to reduce thought waves and oscillations because they lead to misconception and drama, i.e. more anxiety, agitation, anger, desires, etc. Consuming less data and using the data we have for a purpose can help to calm the mind and body.

I’m going to guess that out of all those books you have on your shelf, you’ve only retained and used a small fraction of their information and knowledge. 

In order to retain information and use it to change our thought patterns and behaviors, we have to keep using it, practicing it. More than just a day, week, or month.

AFTER LEARNING COMES…

The important ‘next step’ to learning is integration.

Integration is key because it helps us move from ‘ideas’ and how we’d ‘like’ to be, to actually living it. Many people talk about what they’d like to be doing or how they’d like to be living, yet take no action.

Living in fantasy is nothing compared to actual living experience! (Don’t get me started on virtual reality). Yet, reality is that we spend most of our time living in fantasy. 

What is the narrative you find yourself saying over and over again that you haven’t committed to taking consistent action to change? My heart goes out to those who, after a year, two, or more that I meet again and their personal narrative hasn’t changed. They are still stuck in that dialogue of misery. If you resonate with this, know you do have a choice to do it differently.

I know, I used to live this way until I realized it was up to me to make the changes, to change my story and live the more content and peaceful life I longed for. It’s not easy to change…in fact I’m still in that process. But, the narrative has changed because of my commitment and consistency to practice and integration.

INTEGRATION

Integration, i.e. practice, is non-negotiable in the change process and is the missing key. Dust off those tools and techniques you have found helpful in the past, but have stopped using. 

What is one practice that has been helpful that you stopped doing? Commit to restarting it and using it every day for the next year…yes, year. How long have you been doing the behavior you want to change??? Yep, decades. Expecting it to change completely in “21 days” or “90 days” is part of the issue. Seriously, if it were that easy, why aren’t we a world full of calm, peaceful humans? Maybe you can START to form a habit in 1-3 months, but if you don’t keep doing it, then it won’t integrate into your very being.

Expect the change process to be challenging at times and have ups and downs. That’s completely normal. Keep doing it anyway.

You got this!

Namaste.