still learning

I don't talk a lot about teaching yoga or yoga philosophy.  Mainly because I don't know wtf I'm talking about half the time because I have 75% of the beginning of the idea and I don't quite understand the end. Or I have a hard time transitioning from the base to the final result of the thought.

But I am starting to understand how our senses can be distractions.  And how they can mislead us at times even.  You think your eyes and your hands and your ears ARE reality.  And I'm saying they can obfuscate truth.

Take for instance your eyes.  Without getting too much into the science part of it (see also: "mainly because I don't know wtf I'm talking about half the time ...), your brain is presenting something different than what your eyes actually see.
I've read that we "learn" to see just like we learn to walk. Our brains form images based on pattern recognition.  Pattern recognition is why car drivers run over bicyclists or motorcyclists.  We just aren't used to seeing them on the road so when they are on the road . . . we just dont see them.
Also, your eyes can only see about 2 degrees of your view clearly.  The eyes are constantly scanning to send the brain a sharper idea of what's going on.  You get a clear picture of everything from the brain flipping, rotating and putting everything in a nice little package for you.
Just the definition of optical illusions should tell you the eyes can only do so much with reality.  [There's even a theory out there saying our brains are actually "perceiving the future" since there's a 1/10th lag in the eyes seeing and the brain making it into an actual image.]
Even if I'm wrong about the eyes, most people would agree that a large part of what we see is actually our brain's interpretation of eye data.

This is why I hardly write about these things.  I just get all wordy and complicated and it's not very eloquent.

My senses convey my reality but not the reality.  Images ... our visual reality ... is constructed within.

The life lesson for me is that I try not to assume I know everything.  And so I think it's nice to close the eyes sometimes.

Back to yoga ...
At the end of every yoga class, I ask everyone to close their eyes.  From doing this small action, their breath softens and their mind slows down.
I had an aha! moment (See also: Oprah) during yoga when I closed my eyes.  I have always been told I was a spiritual being in church and by mom.  But it was while my eyes were closed where I actually felt the strongest affirmation of a spiritual being stirring inside me.

The eyes remind us of a lot of truths.  But I think they distract us from a few as well.