Aligning with Directive

When EVE and WALL.e first really meet in Pixar's new movie, her command to him is, "Directive". The Robot version of "What do you do?" WALL.e, which stands for "Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth Class", shows her his trash gathering compacting and stacking skills. Her answer is, "Classified."

But not long after that, we witness the robot version of kundalini rising when WALL.e presents EVE with a live plant. She beeps, blips, lights up and grabs the plant, puts it in belly, buttons down the hatches and goes into hibernation mode. Like a pregnant mother, there is no stopping her now.

EVE, which stands for "Extra Terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator", is wired to deliver the plant to the Captain of the ship Axiom where all the humans have been living since they left planet earth 700 years ago. The delivery of the plant will signify that it is safe to return back to Earth and re inhabit the planet. But she comes to question this directive as she falls in love with WALL.e and witnesses the failure and corruption of the system in which she was coded.

Recent brain studies have shown that our sense of freewill is an illusion. We are already on our way towards something when we have the feeling that we have thought of it on our own. The practices of yoga are designed to make us more aware of this momentum and help us create a pause. In that pause, we are asked to notice the programming and choose the action as oppose to just being on autopilot. And yet the Yoga philosophy also supports the idea that each of us has a particular directive. A directive that sits in the center of the energetic heart, the Anahata, meaning "unbeaten, unbroken." The moral codes, stretching, chanting, sitting, breathing, and concentrating practices are designed to help us get more clear and tuned to that force. The invitation is to play.

Last year's trailer for WALL.e was "After 700 years of doing what he was built for, he will finally discover what he was meant for." In the course of 700 years of cleaning up the Earth's surface, WALL.e began to study human activity through its left over objects and adopt it. His curiosity leads him to create a collection. And he has a "record" button. The "record" button starts to change his internal landscape of reference. As he changes his "reference" from his original programming, his wiring changes and he feels his aloneness and desire to connect.

This past weekend, we asked Patricia Sullivan to share how she knows when she is in "right alignment" or in robot speak "following her directive". She said something to the effect of, "I don't feel a grip in my belly...and while it may feel like I have a lot of work to do it feels supported and clear."

Sometimes we can think we are following our directive. We are doing all the things that are supposed to make us happy. We have a spouse, a house, a dog or maybe a few kids. We have a job and 2 cars, and we summer in Maine. Or we are single and traveling the world like we always planned. Or something else. But we know that "something is missing". This yearning, this longing for something else is the pull towards our "directive" or "path" or "calling." It seems that our job is to catch and follow this feeling, no matter how crazy it seems. But we are never allowed to really know what that ultimate "Directive" is, as it is the living of our life that is the answer to the questions of "Who am I and Why am I here."