Five O'Clock Angel

For some weird reason I find the 4 o’clock hour deeply offensive. As awful as waking up in the 5 o’clock hour is, there’s something absolutely tragic about waking up in the 4 o’clock hour.

And yet, due to an early pick-up for a business trip, there I was, facing the east side of my mat on the south side of five o'clock.

I have never considered myself to be a man of faith and yet the evidence over the last 1,500 or so days seems to indicate otherwise.

I have grown to have faith in action. I have become a man of karma.

Yoga is described as skill in action. I have a long way to go in the ‘skill’ arena (which could be read as non-attachment to the fruits of labor, but we’ll save that topic for an essay on the Bhagavad Gita) but at least I seem to have absorbed the ‘action’ part.

Perhaps this is Pattabhi Jois’s greatest gift to us? Not his Ashtanga vinyasa sequence, not his mysore culture, but his dogged insistence on action.

A while ago I wrote about “99% practice and 1% theory” as a defense of yogic philosophy and book learning. And while I still adore the reading and the thinking and the philosophical debates about yoga, my appreciation for action continues to grow exponentially.

In life there are things that we think about doing. There are things that we talk about doing. But those things do not really exist. They only exist when we actually do them.

It’s like when you keep telling yourself that you’re going to get in touch with an old friend but you don’t. Until you actually pick up the phone (or write one of those new fangled electronic letters) it doesn’t really exist. Intentions become reality through actions alone.

The positive side of non-action is that you create excellent opportunities for self-study (svadhyaya). Why haven’t I followed through on that intention? Do I really want to reconnect with that person or am I just making myself feel guilty? What’s really going on here?

The challenge for us hatha yogis is to apply the faith in action that we readily demonstrate on the mat each and every morning into all aspect of our lives.

There are plenty of items that are still sitting on my personal to-do list and have been forever. But over the last 4+ years I find myself steadily crossing more and more things off that list. And now, as a man of karma, the things that I don’t cross off that list cause me to wonder whether I really want them after all.

Faith in action is a wonderful thing. It’s another gift revealed by this magnificent practice.

And that faith in action starts in a dim room, at an offensive hour on a worn black mat.


“Five O'Clock Angel”/Peter Wolf/Sleepless