Update – October 2024
Since closing the studio and retiring from teaching, Ruby and I have enthusiastically continued our home yoga practice. Our yoga journey continues to give us deeper insights that benefit our overall well-being. Here is the story of my yoga journey
My 60 Year Yoga Path thru Silicon Valley
In Pursuit of Intelligent Cooperation
My Yoga Path has been dominated by a concept that has both intrigued and intuitively resonated with me for 60 years: Intelligent Cooperation
Guiding Beacon
In the early 1960’s in the metaphysical section of my college library I had stumbled upon the loosely defined concept of Intelligent Cooperation. Although my understanding was limited, it gradually and intuitively became a guiding beacon for the way I wanted to live my life. I went on to practice it with my fellow man and the natural world as best I could while trying to refine my understanding of the concept. My attempt to practice with my fellow man seemed totally chaotic. I am sure the rural isolation of my youth, and undiagnosed dyslexia hampered my progress. In fact my mother talked the school authorities into letting me attend first grade at 4.5 yrs., and walk a half mile to a one room school with no running water, because she thought I was under socialized. On the other hand my country boy roots jumped at the concept of Intelligent Cooperation with the natural world. I grew up surrounded by its lessons as told by its streams, dark woods, meadows, mountains, valleys, weather, and wildlife. Decades of loss of focus, and floundering down blind alleys were part of the process. Nonetheless, even in this “floundering stage” my actions reflected the concept enough to be noticed by others, and in one case not only saved my job, but lead to a promotion. My full understanding of Intelligent Cooperation came years later in a hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-my-neck moment on my yoga mat.
Roadmap
The metaphysical section of my college library also included several books about yoga. They seemed almost bizarre. How could physical exercise lead to such an alternate reality? I started doing yoga in the 1970’s from a paperback. At the time yoga was an empty landscape in the U.S. – no yoga TV shows, no yoga studios, no yoga conferences. I learned the poses, but did not experience any of the yoga magic I was looking for. Over the years as yoga became more mainstream, I discovered two magnificent yogis who greatly accelerated my yoga journey:
- Patanjali, a polymath (like Leonardo da Vinci) and an approximate contemporary of Jesus who documented the essence of yoga nearly 2,000 years ago.
- BKS Iyengar, a modern day guru and poetic author who brought the practice and philosophy of yoga to the western world.
I continued to practice and study the wisdom of these men and others. BKS Iyengar’s Light on Life (read it at least four times) helped me become a “watcher” both in and out of the yoga classes. As I watched my self progress through the poses of the yoga class I suddenly realized that my awareness was being manipulated. I began to see more clearly that there was a lot more going on besides highly efficient exercise on my yoga mat.
In my Silicon Valley professional life, I had a skill at modeling complex processes. I applied this skill to my yoga practice, and began to see that yoga was not only manipulating my awareness, but doing it in a repeatable way. There was a process going on. This was exciting! I started to map this process and eventually called it the Yoga Awareness Map. It became my roadmap to a more fulfilling life.
Epiphany
Yoga was separating my awareness from the dominating, smothering nature of my ego-mind. Yoga was not only training my body, but also my mind, and that carried over to my personal life. I became more skilled at watching my own reactions to the world, and began categorizing them. I especially noted my reaction to events that got a reaction from my ego-mind. I found that the calculating ego-mind wants all the attention, all the time, and will not give up its power without a fight. But yoga, pose-by-pose, slowly but surely separates your awareness from the death grip of your ego-mind. Under the leadership of your freed awareness, your body, mind, and spiritual dimensions start to learn to cooperate intelligently. They become more highly motivated as they learn that the whole is shockingly greater than the sum of its parts.
I found these insights helped me reconfigure my “self” by making my awareness “the captain of the ship”, while repositioning my “ego-mind” as a valuable crew member. The full concept of yoga was reinventing my self, and I liked the way the world responded to the new me. Then one day on my yoga mat came the eureka-moment that literally made the hair-stand-up-on- the-back-of-my-neck. After years of searching, feeble attempts, and even doubt, as I started to live my Yoga Awareness Map my world changed. In the middle of a class, yoga revealed the Simplest Truth of Intelligent Cooperation in one of the most thrilling moments of my life. Here it is:
In order to practice external Intelligent Cooperation with everyone and everything, one must use your awakened awareness to first practice internal cooperation among all your dimensions (body, mind, and spirit). The more successful you are at internal cooperation, the more effective and more fulfilling your external interactions will be. I realized that internal Intelligent Cooperation among all your dimensions is the pre-requisite for the practice of external Intelligent Cooperation. Now you are free to discover who you really are.
And yet there was much more. Incredibly I had applied my Silicon Valley skill set in the pursuit of Intelligent Cooperation and arrived at the exact same place that BKS Iyengar, poetically described as the Goal of Yoga.
“Its goal is nothing less than to attain the integrity of oneness – Oneness with ourselves and as a consequence oneness with all that lies beyond ourselves. We become a harmonious microcosm in the universal macrocosm. Oneness, what I often call integration is the foundation for wholeness, inner peace, and ultimate freedom.”
Also from BKS Iyengar:“Yoga releases the creative potential of life. It does this by establishing a structure for self-realization, by showing how we can progress along the journey, and by opening a sacred vision of the Ultimate Simplest Truth. The light that yoga sheds on life is something special. It is transformative. It does not just change the way we see things; it transforms the person who sees. It brings knowledge and elevates it to wisdom.”
Intelligent Cooperation at our Inevitable End
Once again the wisdom of Iyengar guides us at the time of our inevitable end: “…letting go at the moment of death is important for whatever may follow. By letting go, we also release the latent imprints of this life and give ourselves a clean start in whatever is to come. The integrated practice of asana (yoga) brings the wisdom that diminishes the ambition of self- preservation….In this way, at the moment of death, we keep our presence of mind… Gandhi, for example, as he lay dying after being shot by a fanatic, kept the presence of mind to call continually the name of God: Rama, Rama, Rama. That is a clean end and a fresh beginning.”
I have tried to prepare for “whatever may follow” by repeating “I AM” (see Appendix - Exodus 3:14), coordinated with the breath, at both the beginning and the end of my own yoga practice, as well as in my spontaneous yoga moments of the day. It goes like this, and is more of a “feeling-thing” than a “thinking-thing”:
“I” (Inhale): As you push down on the soles of your feet and straighten your spine in Mountain Pose, feel the essence of who you have become from a lifetime in the eternal now.
Pause (Hold your breath): Feel your timeless awareness, stripped of mind, ego, and memory, and shaped only by your DNA lineage to the beginning of the beginning. Start the exhale when you feel that connection with the unknown.
“AM” (Exhale): Bend your knees and bow your head in humility as you exhale, and be the unique bridge between the beginning of the beginning and your exotic life in the eternal now.
With enough practice, it is my goal to have the presence of mind, like Gandhi, to go to this “I AM” place with each remaining inhale and exhale as death approaches. .. And, with each exhale to offer the result of a stumbling, lifetime pursuit of Intelligent Cooperation to I AM, the FATHER of Jesus for “whatever may follow”.
An Invitation
Today I believe that the practice of Intelligent Cooperation is more urgent than ever, as we have become more destructively divided and polarized. On the other hand communication advances have given us the tools to practice not only local but also global Intelligent Cooperation. I leave you with this intriguing image (See Appendix – John the Baptist) that for me expresses this multi-dimensional complexity of Intelligent Cooperation. It has had a prime location in my garden office for at least 20 years. I think of it as an invitation from Saint John the Baptist and Leonardo da Vinci to explore your spiritual dimension and the oneness of Intelligent Cooperation…And, perhaps to re-arrange your self.
Appendix – John the Baptist/Leonardo (Wikipedia)
Saint John the Baptist by Leonardo da Vinci was likely to have been completed between 1513 and 1516, and is believed to be his personal and final painting that he had with him at the time of his death.
The work depicts the figure of John the Baptist in isolation with the figure appearing to emerge from the shadowy background. The saint is dressed in furs, has long curly hair and is smiling in an enigmatic manner reminiscent of Leonardo's famous Mona Lisa. He holds a barely visible reed cross in his left hand, while his right hand points up toward heaven. Interpretations:
- Frank Zöllner (German art historian, and a leading authority on the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci): “Leonardo’s use of sfumato "conveys the religious content of the picture", with the "gentle shadows [imbuing] the subject's skin tones with a very soft, delicate appearance, almost androgynous in its effect".
- Lord Kenneth Clark (English Art Historian most famous for the Civilization TV series): Claimed that for Leonardo, Saint John represented "the eternal question mark, the enigma of creation", and noted the sense of "uneasiness" that the painting imbues.
- Paul Barolsky (Professor Emeritus of Art History, author): "Describing Saint John emerging from the darkness in almost shockingly immediate relation to the beholder, Leonardo magnifies the very ambiguity between spirit and flesh. The grace of Leonardo's figure, which has a disturbingly erotic charge, nonetheless conveys a spiritual meaning to which Saint John refers when he speaks of the fullness of grace from God."
- Emma (My 12 year old Granddaughter): Without explanation I once asked her what she thought of the painting. After a reflective moment she said, “It looks spooky”.
Appendix – Exodus 3:14
And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
Appendix – Doug and Ruby Lyons
A high-tech country boy who grew up close to nature, and the first of my lineage to attend college. My wife, Ruby, and I taught yoga for 15 years, 11 years at our own studio ( NuLife Yoga) and still have a vigorous home yoga practice at 72 and 79 years of age respectively. We are both parents and grandparents.
