Yoga holds the answer.
My husband asked for a virtual reality (VR) headset for Christmas. This year, he wriggled himself off the Naughty List, earning himself a beautifully wrapped gift from Santa.
“Holy shit!” I hear him yell from downstairs.
He is in awe at how real his first VR experience feels. To whet my appetite, he says, “Imagine yourself walking through a butterfly garden right now.”
I have imagined myself among the Oyamel fir trees in Michoacán, Mexico, where monarch butterflies settle in the winter. Beholding a cascade of millions of butterflies is a sacred once-in-a-lifetime event, and I’d love to experience it. Here is a video of what monarch heaven looks like.
Feeling like I’m someplace else without leaving my house sounds like fun, but I already do that, and so do you.
Every night you cycle between wakefulness, dreaming, and deep sleep.
While you’re in a dream, everything feels real.
You’re fully engaged with whatever unbelievable thing is happening there. Life inside a dream is usually weird by awake standards, yet you adapt to this world while there. Upon waking up, you sometimes feel a pullback to the place you just left and want to stay in the dream.
By breakfast, though, that world has disappeared.
Being in deep sleep is different than dreaming.
Brain waves slow, and it’s tough to awaken someone in this sleep phase. There are no dreams here, and you are completely relaxed. You can’t move because your muscles are completely paralyzed.
When in a deep, dreamless sleep, everything else ceases to exist. It’s similar to being in savasana pose in yoga. The difference is that you’re aware and awake in savasana while in a profoundly restful state.
The English translation of savasana is corpse pose, and those ancient sages sure had a way with words. Deep sleep may very well be what it feels like to be dead.
So what is real?
When I’m awake, I think that’s reality. When I’m dreaming, I believe that’s reality. When in a deep sleep, I don’t think at all.
Ponder these examples and decide for yourself which is real.
Awake
- I imagine walking among the monarchs in the Michoacán forest.
- I fly to Mexico and walk among the monarchs in the Michoacán forest.
- I come home and remember walking with the monarchs in the forest.
Virtual Reality
I’m wearing the VR headset in my living room and walking through the Michoacán forest with the monarchs.
Dreaming
I am asleep and dream of walking through the Michoacán forest with the monarchs.
Deep Sleep
There’s no forest, no butterflies, no me.
There’s only nothingness.
How does realness relate to consciousness?
It’s an esoteric topic, but the concept of realness helps to navigate life’s messy parts. I’m talking about gnarly things like growing old, getting sick, and dying.
Before studying Indian philosophy, I never thought about the different states of consciousness: waking (conscious), dreaming (unconscious), or deep sleep (subconscious).
Yogic philosophy asks us to consider an additional level of consciousness known as samadhi, which is the state beyond waking, dreaming, and deep sleep.
Samadhi is the profound and complete union with the universe. It can also be thought of as bliss, liberation, and enlightenment.
Indian philosophers don’t ask us to believe in any of these states but to experience them first-hand. I love that about yoga because it never asks us to take anything by faith alone but to try it out for ourselves; in this way, it’s much more like a science.
Blindly believing in stuff is overrated.
In science, we test our theories and follow proscribed steps.
Following the eight limbs of yoga is one path to samadhi. If you have a yoga practice, you have knowledge of a few of the limbs already, like Asana (physical poses), Dharana (meditation), and Pranayama (breathing practices). You will achieve the final limb, samadhi, by devoting yourself to steadfast practice.
One of my favorite stories about realness helps with this concept. Every time I read it, the story deepens my understanding of what’s real and a different way to consider samadhi. It’s a western children’s story called “The Velveteen Rabbit” by Margery Williams. (Printed with permission from the Public Domain.)
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real, you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
Being real has nothing to do with what you look like. People with wrinkles, flab, and who are loose in the joints, can relate to the plight of a raggedy stuffed bunny.
We are also not what happens to us (age, sickness, and death.) We’re defined by something bigger: how we embodied and became love.
Love isn’t an emotion or even a verb. It’s a state of being and the highest form of consciousness.
Keep up your yoga practice! One day, you’ll be real, too.