The Anusara Sadhana: Thinning the Veils of Our Personhood - Expansion Into Wholeness

Thinning the Veils of Our Personhood

Expansion Into Wholeness

Written by Julia Pearring

Our personhood is our individual identity. Our lives are framed by our growth as an individual. Through our life experiences, we get to know who we are, we develop skill sets, we walk our own path, we realize our goals and desires. This is the context of a ‘life well lived’, an ideal that all of these developments of our personhood make us feel content and clear within our own skin. Our personhood is what makes you, you and makes me, me.

As nondual practitioners, we know that Yoga doesn’t deny this becoming. It’s mapped through the metaphysics and understood through the practices that to don the veils and act out our limited existence is a choice we freely and willingly accept. We playfully take on a limited existence and individual identity. We assume the shape of our individuated consciousness as fully as we can, we explore what it means to be ‘me’ in one role after another, one circumstance after another. Just as we regularly practice an asana to deepen into and reach a fulfillment of its shape. It’s an incredible way for consciousness to get to know consciousness, to take an individual viewpoint, to take shape and experience life from behind a set of eyes.

And yet, taking on limitation is just that! It is said that the root of all suffering is born from the limited understanding we have of who we truly are. A formed viewpoint also comes with the very real and regularly binding sense of small self. 

And so, there is an emphasis in the yoga practices to thin the veils of our sense of personhood. In fact, while many of the yoga practices can be mimicked or done superficially, the practices aren’t truly Yoga unless they have this intention and effect—to free us from being so tightly bound up in ourselves.

What does it mean to thin the veils of our personhood?

• To thin the veils is to See beyond the stories we tell about who we are and what is and what isn’t. Our limited identity is basically

• a window that we look through by which, with few exceptions, we see only a portion of what really IS.

• a script that we have amassed from others and our own experiences that we recite to ourselves on repeat. (Reference: Malas and Upayahs)

• To thin the veils is to dismantle the defenses, to dissolve and absolve ourselves of all the propping up that must be done to maintain the stories we tell, and our overall sense of self, over time. 

To uphold the personhood, to the degree that we think we need to uphold the personhood, to address the clinging that happens, and the defenses that are provoked, the struggle and the suffering that comes from those efforts requires a lot of energy. Ultimately, a denial of what we know in the depth of our hearts. At some point, the context and the story of our personhood isn’t worth it. At some point we come to recognize that there’s a loss involved; to bind ourselves to only our own viewpoint is a loss of wholeness.

To thin the veils brings about relief from the cyclical storytelling (the hamster wheel of the mind) that is driven by a part of us that wants to be right. This isn’t a characteristic that plagues just a few of us— it’s a reality of the constructed identity– the individual sense of self wants and needs to be validated and secured. But our individual sense of self often goes so far as wanting to be assured it is what it can’t actually be—which is indestructible or infallible.

Our personhood does need to be heard, seen, and validated. It’s no small thing to come into being, to take on a form and a personhood!! There is a moving and stirring story within each of us that holds the depth of love and strife that comes from being veiled and assuming a contracted, individuated consciousness. But so often there are parts of our story that become so tightly held, that we are gripped by them. Where there’s no longer room for the larger reality, that which is indestructible and infallible, or for our shared experience. 

Expansion to Include Wholeness

There is an invitation through the practices to make room for who we are that is beyond the individual being, the individual experience. From this beyondness, there is also room for the story of another and another and another. In fact, there’s room for the story of the ‘other’. There is an inclusion of true wholeness.

These are the moments of unbridled expansion– when we open ourselves to each other, particularly to a voice or a story that brings up all those defenses, where we want to immediately say ‘NO, that’s not how it is!’ When we can truly open ourselves to the ‘other’ in an authentic, loving, safe way– with those parameters in place– there’s relief, there’s expansion!

The relief is not having to hold the whole truth from one viewpoint alone. It's an active part of our practices to thin the sense of our personhood so that there’s room for the ‘other’– until it goes so far as there being a need for the ‘other’.

In some moments it’s simple, in others it’s a lifelong practice

Often, to Open to Grace and to let go into the collective consciousness is simple and obvious, requiring very little effort or action. Imagine the inner transformation of being in practice together or being in nature’s presence. As often, if not more often, it’s a sticky, slow grinding down, it requires a thinning of the veils through consistent practice over a lifetime, imagine how stuck we get in our family system, cultural and social expectations and more.

A quick turn inwards to assess our inner dialogue will easily return a list of reasons why something else must happen first, or someone else needs to make the first move– before true listening and acceptance is possible. 

If we think too hard about it, it can seem that so much must come into place before we can even begin! How much trust is required?? How much willingness do we need to muster to attempt to open ourselves in such a way?? To thin the belief systems that have been our life’s orientation and guide, to let go of the stories that we have built through our trials and tribulations, to question what has secured our sense of self is a huge feat!

AND, it’s also as simple as recognizing our greater truth! The truth of our Wholeness and Beyondness is also right here for us to experience at any time, and so in Anusara Yoga, Opening to Grace, is the first thing that we do!

One thing we know through the traditions that feed the Anusara Yoga methodology, we have to experience our Wholeness and Beyondness. It’s the catalyst, it’s the realization of Grace! 

One thing I know through this methodology, is that we have a system that feeds this knowledge of Self, and we can enter through our body, we can enter through our mind and we can enter through our hearts. One way that I have peeled it out and made use of the systems we have in place, is to combine scripture studies, think Pratyabhijnahrdayam, Shiva Sutras and the like…, with body sciences, understanding how we are currently, right now, functionally contracted consciousness in form, with somatic practices, deepen listening to how we move and what movement feels like before we add on efforts and goals and shapes. 

SO, if you’ve read this far, I invite you to join me in an upcoming online course hosted by Anusara School of Hatha Yoga titled Body Reveals: Body Science, Somatic Practice and Applied Philosophy.

Register by September 30th for the Early Bird Pricing!

Join Julia for a quick introduction on the theme of Thinning the Veils of Our Personhood as she then guides us into a short meditation on the pouring of our individual story into the large stream, the river of our own breath.

Watch Now

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