Balancing Solitude and Community with Bhanu Vishwanath | YogaScussion Preview

[00:00:00] Speaker A: We must have community activities with like minded people, people who are interested in the same thing. There's no use being in a community where, you know, people are having other interests rather than not your own good enough for your own growth in some ways. Having said that, community is important. Sometimes solitude is important too. When you go into that meditative state, when you need to have some time for yourself, reflection and then seeing what you need to work on within yourself and how to make your own energy subtler there. You need your, your own solitude there. You don't want people around you, you know, where you need your space. [00:01:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it's both. I'm having this, this loop back to something we talked about earlier in one of my, in one of my sessions with my therapist. I, she was asking me how I was doing. This was years ago. I'm doing a lot better. But it was a hard time. She was asking me how I was doing and I just said to her, you know, when I'm around people, everything is worse when it's just me, I'm okay. I'm okay when it's just me. And this made me think about what we were talking about earlier, about karma and the accumulation of karma. And it's like, it is, you need both. Like we can't, we can't like, like being in the world. We're going to need community and we are going to have these experiences with our families and our friends of karmic residue, I guess. But also we do need that alone time to kind of get right with ourselves again. [00:01:51] Speaker A: To. [00:01:53] Speaker B: To kind of bleed off some of that experience and kind of let it, let it kind of. I don't know the words for it, but it's like pull it out and shake it off. Right? And so it is kind of like this interesting balance or maybe a circle where, or an oval where like sometimes you're going to be heavy in community and then all of a sudden you're on the edge of the oval or the top or the bottom of the oval where you're like, I need some time alone to let this sift and filter. Yeah, I struggle between that balance of like wanting to isolate and draw inside and just be in that experience and then also be a part of a community as well. [00:02:40] Speaker A: That now more and more, you know, I like solitude. I, you know, I was very active in certain communities and sometimes, you know, in this community, their own. If you have a mixed kind of people, their own ego shows up sometimes, you know, so that could be a kind of a distraction for you. And if you really cannot. But it also kind of gives you what we call titiksha. In Sanskrit, titiksha means a kind of patience, kind of call appreciation for what others are coming out with. And it also keeps your ego in check to some extent. And these become important, the inner community. Because if you are isolated all the time and not interacting with people, it cannot give you a realistic picture of yourself. Because you get into a world of your own. You are not interact only when you interact with different kind of people. You know, you know where you stand, you know. Are you still able to keep your calm when you are around people who are not exactly matching with your kind of mental state? Are you still able to keep your calm? Are you still able to be patient? That is your real test. Not always easy, isn't it? Only when you're surrounded by people. Now when you're all by yourself, you can say, oh, I'm very patient, I'm very calm. But then what is the test? You have to be in the real field to be tested, is it not so? For that it is very important to have people around you of different types. And you know, because the things will not go your way all the time. It's not going to go all the, all the time your way, you know, and so what you need to really concentrate on yourself. Am I in this situation keeping myself calm? Am I still able to keep my peace? Am I able to keep still loving people as they are? That is my test. Am I becoming judgmental? Am I becoming impatient? Am I not, you know, am I getting angry, irritated? Then I'm not there. I've not done my homework. And to do your homework, you need your space.