I just landed in the States and it’s great to be back. I’m hosting my live in-person and Zoom Yoga Nidra training in Salt Lake City, March 9–13, a live in-person yoga class in Salt Lake City March 14th. Then, I’ll be heading to NYC for a Restore and Yoga Nidra workshop at Pure Yoga, March 19th, and a video project at Kula Yoga as well. It’s going to be a great visit and I’d really love to see you if you are anywhere near either Salt Lake City or NYC. You can see the details for all the events below.
Today, I want to explore an idea I came up with called Stereoscopic Consciousness and I’d love to hear your thoughts about this from you.
A few weeks ago, I shared a love story about Shiva and Shakti, two deities in the yoga pantheon that represent pure consciousness and form, respectively. They are fascinating symbols that can help us understand our own life and existence with beauty, perspective, and appreciation.
In my previous story called Love Notes and Chocolates, I shared how in the beginning, Shiva and Shakti existed as the only things in the Universe, compacted in the blissful ignorance of their seemingly perfect but vacuous world, one that only knew each other. But as their love for each other continually expanded, they invariably outgrew it like a caterpillar whose instincts are to evolve into her winged destiny. However, along their relationship’s journey toward flight, Shiva and Shakti experienced the pain and apparent separation of one another.
At first, they thought, “Man, if only we could have kept things the way they were, we wouldn’t be missing each other so much.” However, eventually through essential life lessons, they learned to perceive their situation with the correct perspective, one that changed their view from seeing their new state as a massive downgrade to was in truth the ultimate upgrade. Indeed they saw that the entire Universe was born as an evolution of their relationship and pulsed with the power of their love.
Shiva and Shakti evolved from a simple, singular, and flat relationship, to one that at first appeared fraught with divisiveness, separation, and pain, but which eventually revealed itself to be universal bliss and perfection, an expansion completely unfathomable to either of their imaginations.
This perfect and unimaginable world they evolved into is the world we live in now. It’s our reality.
Myths and religious stories like this are an enjoyable and insightful mode of understanding our own purpose for being. They help us understand how we too may change our perspective from seeing our life and world as one of separateness and strife and instead gain the vision to see our lives with vidya, or true sight, the clarity that all is One beautiful wholeness, beating with the steady heartbeat of love.
But how do we gain this perspective?
The other day, I took my son Elio to the magnificent Musée Océanographique de Monaco, the Monaco aquarium. We raced, 6-year-old-style, from exhibit to exhibit, marveling at sharks, cuttlefish, moray eels, and jellyfish. I even shared a moment with a nautilus; we looked into each other's eyes and both mused at what it means to be a creature in this wildly beautiful world.
I walked (kinda ran) from creature to creature, wide-eyed and in awe of this world’s Shakti dance of diversity, life, and beauty. Before we left, Elio told me that seeing the beauty of these oceanic creatures, “changed his life,” (all 6 years of it).
In addition to amazing sea creatures on display, there was also an exhibit showing all sorts of old gadgets, including an old-school “view-finder.” Remember those red goggle-looking things that looked something like a love child between a pair of binoculars and a Poloroid camera, with a circular disc you’d insert into the top and press a button to advance pics of the “7 Wonders of The World,” or some such thing, and with each click you’d see a new photo which looked strangely 3-D? Well, the gadget on display at the museum was the great-grandpa of those little red gadgets.
Anyhoo, Elio and I took turns staring into a big, brass double-eyepiece and turned a knob, rotating sepia photographs of salty old codgers on a boat all looking like characters of themselves, corncob pipe, scowling stoic faces, and all. When you look into the eyepiece, you see a normal sort of photo but what makes it novel, even today in the age of high-def resolution and virtual reality, (this was the original VR, mind you), is that when you look at what you know is a photograph in 2-D, it somehow magically takes on a 3-D appearance. It almost makes you wonder how they got a crew of miniature sailors on the deck of a ship to fit into that little eyepiece.
This gadget uses your brain’s ability to create stereoscopic vision to make a 2-D pic appear 3-D. This happens because both eyes each register separate images of an object to your brain, but from slightly different vantage points. Your brain blends those two images together and translates the two images into one singular image and as it does, the slight differences in each picture makes the image have depth in your perception of the object. Very cool. Yet, as cool as this phenomenon is, it’s really just the process that everyone with 2 eyes sees every day.
I like to use this principle of stereoscopic vision to explain what I call Stereoscopic Consciousness. Stereoscopic Consciousness is where in a meditation like Yoga Nidra, you focus on a singular object. An object can be anything from a thing, an emotion, a thought, or something physical—anything really. After focusing on this object for a while, you switch your attention to focus on a different object for a bit. Eventually you revert your focus back to the original object, then toggle your attention back and forth between the two.
Eventually, you loosen your tight grip of focus on either one or the other and perform the seemingly impossible task of holding both objects in your awareness at the same time. The same way your brain can merge two visual images into one and create visual depth, rather perceiving it flat like a photograph, your consciousness can blend two objects and also perceive them as one thing, or rather from the perspective of Oneness. Just like your visual faculties, this experience of being aware simultaneously of two objects also produces the perception of depth, but rather than visual depth, it’s a depth of consciousness.
This exercise of perceiving two objects simultaneously brings to the foreground the part of you that IS your inherent consciousness of Source or Oneness. This is the part of you that doesn't experience the world in a binary, the world of this and that, have and have not, good or bad. The perspective is a Universal perspective of Oneness.
So, remember how earlier I was talking about how Shiva and Shakti experienced an apparent separation which served them to eventually expand into a greater consciousness and therefore give birth to the trinity, a depth capacious enough to birth the entire Universe? Well this experience of Stereoscopic Consciousness is one of the methods of experiencing what I call one’s Both And Nature. Your Both And Nature is the blending of one thing with another not to create a third thing but to create a third dimension and in that magic of the trinity, create ALL things. It’s a quantum upgrade to our concept of Self and the Universe.
Yoga Nidra is a simple, relaxing, and enjoyable way of learning to achieve our Both And Awareness so that just like Shiva and Shakti, we too can wake up the magical truth that this entire Universe, including and especially YOU, exist as a part of a great Oneness. Experiencing your own Oneness in this way helps to remind you of your inherent wholeness, purity, and the indefatigable love that is at the center of your nature.
As you remember your own wholeness, your entire life takes on a wonderfully new perspective.
You can also use this Both And Nature to find beautiful resolution in any apparent separation, conflict, or duality. Indeed, experiencing an apparent problem from the perspective of Both And, will give you a Universal perspective over an issue and help you to compassionately respond to it from your innate source of love.
What kind of dissonance, problems, or conflict are you experiencing in your life right now? Is there a Both And perspective you might be able to take that could give you a quantum resolution far greater than “this or that?”
This is a simple yet profound technique I’ll be sharing in my Yoga Nidra teacher training that starts THIS WEDNESDAY, March 9th. You can join me for either the 2-day immersion or the 5-day teacher training.
If you’d be interested in accessing your own Both And Nature to truly live an extraordinary life, as well as helping facilitate this same magic, I invite you to consider joining me either in-person in Salt Lake City, Utah, or via Zoom from the comfort of your own house.
I’d love to hear from you about your thoughts and experiences around this idea of Both And Nature.
MARCH 14TH 6–7:30 PM AT INBODY YOGA ACADEMY 1579 S. 1100 E. SLC, UT 84105
Join me for an in-person yoga class in SLC! I’ll be hosting this by-donation yoga class at InBody Yoga academy at 1597 South 1100 East, Salt Lake City, 84105.
We’ll start with a smart all-levels flow, evolve to some resting poses, and end with a lovely, relaxing Yoga Nidra.
No reservation necessary. Pay what you want at the time of the class. Just come!!