Take it From a Yoga Guru!

I wanted to watch a little cable On Demand last night, and this being January—the time of year when we’re all thinking more than ever about achieving body and mind health—I chose to watch the documentary Enlighten Up! In it, filmmaker Kate Churchill takes on a guinea pig in Nick Rosen, a journalist who is skeptical about yoga and curious to learn more. Their quest takes them to India, where they meet one elder Indian guru in particular who I think was called “the guru of the blissful refuge.”

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He looks wise, doesn’t he? Well, he was. The guru sat on a little velvet couch and answered Nick’s questions about why we do yoga. My favorite answer from him was this:

“It’s not important what you are doing. It’s important why you are doing.“

When Nick asked “What do you mean?” the guru used an example I loved. Well, go figure, it is about food, after all:

“You can prepare food for your, just consuming,” he said. “You can prepare food for somebody you love. And you can prepare food for your Ishta, Bhagwan. The Lord. So the action will be the same. Physically. But inside it will be different. And if you are forced to do some cooking for somebody you don’t like, you will do it! You will cook. But you won’t enjoy it.” This, he said, wasn’t just true of cooking or yoga. It is true of “anything my dear, any anything absolutely under the sun. Everything depends on you, hangs on you.”

That message is so important to your dating optimism and something I write about in Meeting Your Half-Orange: What’s important is not that you want to date, but why you want to date. And why do you?

Here, I’ll help you. Why are you dating? To meet someone. And why do you want to meet someone? To be happy. Well, if your goal is to be happy, then stop making yourself miserable and nuts thinking that dating is the only way to get there! Stop forcing yourself to go on a certain number of dates per day or week or making yourself write to people online you don’t feel like meeting, and stop beating yourself up for still being single. If you’re seeking a relationship so you can be happy, well then what the heck are you waiting for? Give yourself the gift of being happy now.

“Happiness not outside,” the guru also said. “It is within us.” The guru’s right. So find the happiness within you—which is why you’re dating in the first place—and start enjoying your life for what it is today. That is where your happiness lies and how your half-orange will come.

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Big love and namaste,