In our world, where every piece of information is readily available at a moment’s notice, what do we still KNOW? How do we seek and gain knowledge?
Our calendars are at our fingertips, a whole world of knowledge that others have discovered can be looked up, searched for by a few tidy keywords. On any given day, I have no idea what the date is. I have to pull up my phone to see what it tells me. Want to know what the weather is? Most of us will look on an app rather than OUTSIDE to find out what is happening out there. I am not pointing fingers- I do it, too. What is even the purpose of knowledge, when it seems that everything that could ever possibly be known is available for us to look up the answer to?
That answer lies deeper. We can’t Google search that and we can’t ask Siri. Knowledge is something that you know and feel with every fiber of your being. It can not be found on a screen. It is inside you. Do you remember being a little kid in school, and learning something for the very first time by rote memory? But then, maybe, something “clicked” and you not only knew it, but you understood it. Remember that feeling? That “a-ha moment”? That is knowledge.
Why on earth am I writing about this? Because our inclination to just have information and forget knowledge can take over. Because sometimes we feel lost and alone and disconnected from ourselves and the world. We have all the information we could possibly want, but information is not knowledge. I have found my source of knowledge in yoga. Not just the yoga I do on the mat, but the yoga that I do out in the world.
On the mat, I found my breath for the very first time. But in my life, I learned how that breath works. I found the power it contains, and the connections it creates for my whole being. On my mat, I have experienced moments of complete balance. But in my life I have learned to live that balance. I keep finding these moments that turn into more. They turn into knowledge.
On and Off the Yoga Mat 