Shrödinger’s cat

I want to ask a question. I’ve been sitting on it for a while now, but it remains unasked. Unvoiced. Or in this modern age, unsent. How else in lockdown do we communicate other than via email? Although such is the seriousness of the question for me as the suppliant that I almost think to put literal pen to literal paper.

I fear the answer. Is that a good reason to delay the asking? should I be braver, face the future, trust that I will negotiate the outcomes with something approaching grace? One of my teachers teaches that yoga is about not looking away, developing an unflinching gaze that takes in everything without discrimination or selection. Have I cultivated that siddhi yet? What practice should I do? Is there a YouTube video instruction that would offer a quick fix?

How does yoga really help with dilemmas in the real world, outside the philosophy study group? I wonder about karma yoga. Not in the ‘clean the studio for a free class’ sense of the word! Deeper than that, the idea that all my actions have a consequence even if I can’t begin to know it. If I ask the question, or if I phrase it better or worse in its impact on the recipient, what will the outcome be? For them and for me? Is it better not to ask, although I am in agonies of not-knowing? My impatience sits awkwardly here. For all my yoga years learning to apply my body gracefully, my thoughts and gestures remain clumsy.

For as long as I don’t ask, I can entertain equal possibilities — the cat is alive or dead. Although I myself feel only half alive, in hiatus. It’s like I’m holding my breath. And no good yogi wants to do that!