Seeing clearly.

 You don't see life as IT is, you see life as YOU are."                                                                 
​ Anais Nin
 
Imagine that each morning when you wake up, you reach for your glasses. Each pair is different. One pair is the "I am a victim" pair. You might have an "I am stupid", or an "I am scared" pair. Maybe you have an "I am fat, abandoned, wronged, outraged, or better than him/her" pair. Each pair is created by the stories that you tell yourself regarding some past or future event. In other words, the meaning that you give to the events in life that make them something other than just an event that occurred in your life. So your mind "colors" the events and you see life as whatever "color" you created. The more you hold onto or create a story in your head about something that happened, the more often you will reach for the corresponding pair of glasses.
 
It's through this lens that we interpret the situations that occur in our lives. So if I am wearing my "I am stupid" glasses and my husband says to me, "You missed the turn", chances are I will interpret his neutral comment as "OMG you missed the turn you dummy! You can't even read a map! Geez, you are so stupid!".  This is because I am interpreting his neutral comment through a lens or filter of my "I am stupid" glasses. So in that moment I am not seeing life as it is, but seeing life as I am. 
 
Whatever mood, feeling, or story that we are holding onto in our heads becomes the lens through which we see, hear, interpret, and react to whatever is happening in our lives. At the risk of sounding political, it is exactly what has happened this election season. Whether we are wearing "I am for Trump" glasses or "I am for Hilary" glasses, we are seeing everything that occurs through a colored and unclear lens, depending on who we see (or saw) fit to become President. The media doesn't help because the news they report is most often reported through the lens that they are looking through as well.

In the the eight limbed path of yoga, the final limb is called samadhi. 
sama means "clear, neutral or colorless".
dhi means vision.
 
The ultimate state that one hopes to reach through the practice of yoga is samadhi. If we reach this state of samadhi or clear seeing, it's as if we have taken our off glasses and we can see clearly each experience as it is happening in the moment, instead of through the lens of whatever state we happen to be in at the time. As hard as it is to be neutral with the constant barrage of stories, opinions, and actions by people in and out of politics, it is important to take a step back, take a deep breath, and try to be more clear minded. 

That being said...
​Turn off your tv.
Log out of Facebook.
Delete your twitter account.
And practice yoga instead.

Yoga is ultimately about getting to a place where you can see life as it is instead of as YOU are....
Getting so completely clear and present that you are not looking through a lens of old stuff but having a fresh and clear perspective on life and what's happening in the moment. Doesn't that sound amazing?