Self-Knowledge: The Practice of Clear Seeing: Don’t Let Perfectionism Turn into Procrastination!

In the mantra below, from an ancient yogic scripture, the Guru Gita, knowledge of the self is needed to clear our eyes of the veils of ignorance so that we can see ourselves more clearly. I love this teaching because it’s all about self-knowledge, which is knowledge of the universe, knowing how life works, how we work, how the body, mind, and heart work.

Knowledge of the self includes knowledge of the ego.

The ego is shrouded in the veils of our conditioning and patterning, almost always associated with our childhood wounds. The Tantra teaches us that the ego plays an important role. Instead of posing a problem or getting in our way, the ego is seen as the gift of embodiment. It’s our unique individual self and instead of hiding from, suppressing, or controlling it, in Tantra, we want to be ourselves fully and let it rip. The ego is filled with the desires of our heart, our likes and dislikes, all of which make us who we are – distinct expressions of the supremely limitless universe embodied. 

So, self-knowledge is about knowing our ego and how it works. What are the ego’s tricks? Its games? Its limiting self-concepts? These are sometimes really hard to see because we’re too close to it. This is one of the reasons we need to meditate, to quiet our thoughts in order to be able to detect the underlying subtle egoic thoughts.

I recently became aware of a trick of my ego related to perfectionism. As most of you know, I am a recovering perfectionist. I bow to this personality trait because it continues to illumine insight and knowledge about myself, which in turn gives me clearer vision. Knowing how perfectionism works within me has thinned the veil a little. 

I’m in a big transition process of moving in with my beloved life partner, Hallie. Actually, she’s moving in with me here in the Berkshires. You can imagine the process of two adults merging, like two vast universes of life-experience, choosing to merge their stuff! It’s been an exciting and joyous process of deciding together what goes and what stays. 

One of the big changes for me, is moving my video studio from upstairs to the basement. To prepare for this move, we’ve had to clear out the basement which was (and still is, but less so) filled with old desks, office furniture, and music equipment I no longer use or need. There was one desk in particular that I bought from IKEA after I moved out of Kripalu in 1996. I loved this desk, and I invested a lot of time, blood, sweat, and tears, figuring out how to put it together. IKEA instructions are cryptic at best! 

I used this desk for over a decade, but it’s been sitting in the basement, unoccupied for at least 15 years! I believe my perfectionism led to procrastination. I kept putting off getting rid of the desk, I think mostly because I couldn’t figure out what to do with all of the stuff on top of it. It had become a catch-all storage space for a large collection of miscellaneous stuff that had nowhere else to go. Also, I wanted to sell it rather than just give it away. For all of these reasons, I was very slow to make any decisions related to this desk.

I was stuck in the detail and my attachment to the desk.

Then Hallie put her house in Beverly, MA on the market and suddenly the timeline of moving the studio sped up. Hallie has a tremendous amount of agency and can make things happen quickly and before I could blink, she had the desk cleared off and posted on Facebook Marketplace for free. Within a few hours we had a taker but unfortunately, they couldn’t fit it into their car. Did I mention that Hallie also moved the desk outside by herself? If that had been me, it would have taken days if not weeks, to dismantle it to get it through the door, then reassemble it. I had no idea that the desk could fit out the door as is!

The next day we decided to move it out to the side of the road and hang a “free” sign on it. At the end of the day, returning from the grocery store, as we pulled into the driveway, we were surprised to see a sweet man with a trunk full of tools unscrewing the desk and fitting it into his car. 

We stopped to thank the man for taking it off our hands. He was beaming with joy and told us that he was taking the desk for his 13-year-old daughter. He said, “This is the perfect desk for my daughter who’s starting school tomorrow. It’s the perfect size, shape, and color. She’s going to love it.”  

Upon hearing his excitement, Hallie burst into tears, which made me cry too. Just to feel the joy that this desk could now give to someone else, really made us feel good. The universe is unique in this way. Just at the perfect time, a father drives by with the tools needed to dismantle this desk, thinking of his love for his daughter. I imagined seeing the joy on her face when he brought it home and wondered if he might reassemble it with a ribbon and surprise his daughter! Who knows….

Sometimes perfectionism leads to procrastination.

I believe we need to accept our procrastination because sometimes it’s what we need to get ourselves centered before we do something important. On the other hand, sometimes procrastination is trying to tell us something. Maybe what we intended yesterday isn’t really what we want today? Instead of judging my procrastination, I now choose to listen to it and flow with it in order to really hear what’s underneath it and what I might be needing in my heart.

AJÑĀNATIMIRĀNDHASYA

JÑĀNĀÑJANA ŚHALĀKAYĀ

CHAKSHUR UNMĪLITAM YENA

TASMAI ŚRĪ GURAVE NAMAH(A)

Meaning:

Like a physician who treats someone with blindness, the universe provides the light of knowledge that allows the seeker to see the supreme self. This mantra signifies the role of sadhana to remove the blindness of ignorance caused by the misalignment of the ego, through the use of “medicine” called knowledge. I offer gratitude to the universe who has opened my eyes, that were blinded by the cataract of ignorance, with the collyrium (eyewash) of knowledge.

Timira means a disease of the eyes – a metaphor for ignorance and darkness. The disease implied is a cataract, the condition in which the lens of the eye becomes progressively clouded resulting in dimmed vision and ultimately blindness. Darkness is a metaphor for all forms of deception. 

May we use the collyrium (eyewash) of sadhana to see ourselves, others, and life more clearly. May we wash our vision clean to be able to see what is and see our way through any patterns of limitation, negative narratives, and old fears that hold us back from living our dream.

I look forward to seeing you on the mat.

Namaste,

Todd

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