Awareness Is Not an Image

No journey towards the self is more or less valid.

Some journeys look so beautiful on the outside but how do we measure the inner beauty of the journey towards the self?

It cannot be measured or compared. Don't be disheartened if you see someone who appears to be living an outwardly beautiful life and it makes you feel unworthy.

Just because your outer life is not full of dance or colour does not mean that your inner life is not. The inner world is as real as the outer world. Your inner world is boundless, limitless.

When you die all the photos, clothes and outer beauty will fade to nothing. But your inner beauty will remain. The love that you felt and shared will remain.

You can live your whole life in a grey concrete housing estate and have shopped in charity shops all your days but have given so much love and joy to others that your inner being is a multitude of beautiful bright flowers.

You may have traveled to most of the countries in the world and wore the best of clothes but your inner being may be a desolate grey place if you never took the time to find out who you really are.

Don't measure the success of your life on how beautiful it looks to others. Measure it on how content you feel, on how much joy and peace you actually experience. How much joy you bring to others or how many times you got totally lost in the present moment and forgot about your body.

One doesn't have to travel the world or look fabulous to know what life is nor does this constitute a 'successful' life. Being comfortable getting your picture taken does not mean you love yourself.

We are now obsessed with documenting everything on social media. Even our spiritual practice. Pratyhara is one of the 8 limbs of Yoga. It means turning the senses inwards. Our focus is on the outside most of the time therefore we miss the richness of our inner being and can get stuck in satisfying our senses instead of being content to just be. Carrying out spiritual practice such as yoga with the thought of how good it looks for the cameras is actually counter productive to the very spiritual practice you are trying to promote.

Of course if you are taking pictures for educational purposes of the asana then that is different. But this constant need to document every spiritual practice we do on social media is only taking us away from the real point of it all.

You will never be able to capture the progress of the inner journey. This will be felt in your presence and noticed by your absence.

Give your being time to blossom in the way it's meant to. All ways of blossoming are the correct ways because that's the way they are.

There are many beautiful examples of blossoming in nature but as the famous saying goes, the flower does not think about competing with the flower next to it, it just blossoms. That's the only thing it knows how to do and has always known since it was a seed.

We are all on the journey of blossoming and becoming in our own unique way. So in this world of focus on outer beauty and talent try not to get bogged down by comparison. Bloom in your own way and in your own time for that is what you were made to do.