Yoga is a Cure for Blindness

Yoga, and meditation in particular, is a cure for blindness, one of my teachers likes to say. In meditation, we consciously empty the mind space of old stories and make way for a new magical space of innocence, of infinite possibility. A space that is both Empty and Full at the same time. In that new space is clarity of vision.

The distance between railway tracks is always, exactly 143.5 centimeters. Why this crazy measurement? Turns out, this goes back to ancient history. The first railways were built with the same tools for building horse drawn carriages and the carriages needed to be the width of the old roads that the carriages travelled on. The Romans built the first roads and decided to make their roads that width to accommodate war chariots and the chariots were pulled by 2 horses. The horses used at the time, when side by side, measured 143.5 centimeters or 4 feet 8 1/2 inches. We built railways that way because it had always been done that way. This even affected the size of fuel tanks on the space shuttle. Engineers thought the fuel tanks should be wider, but they needed to be transported by railway!

Most of the ideas that we have about life are not really our own. We believe what we believe, more often than not, because of what others have told us to believe, or what others already believe or because that is the way it has always been done. For the adept to be able to receive new wisdom, the cup needs to have some wiggle room. We need to empty out old ideas and habitual responses that no longer serve us in order to make way for a new reality. "We need to forget who we were in order to become who we are."

If we were to change the width of railroad tracks now, the task would be enormous because of the magnitude of the structure that has been built around this measurement. In life as well, the effort to change a belief is as large as the infrastructure that we have constructed around it.

"As we empty our minds of old stories, a new space opens up, a mysterious feeling of joy slips in, our intuitions grow sharper, we become braver, take more risks, do things which might be right or wrong, we can't be sure, but we do them anyway."

Paulo Coelho, The Zahir