Take Off Your Cool

A couple of weeks ago in yoga class, I heard a song that immediately grabbed me. One line stuck out in particular, "Baby, take off your cool. I want to get to know you." By the end of class, I had forgotten the lyrics, but knew it had something to do with taking your cool off. I loved the idea of this. A few days later in my Meditations on the Mat book, there was a line from the movie Almost Famous about the one valuable thing in this world being the truth that we share when we "take off our cool." I heard the song again last week in class and managed to keep enough of the chorus in my memory that I googled "kick off your cool" "get rid of your cool" and "take off your cool" and eventually found it. It's a great song if you haven't heard it, Outkast sings it. I've listened to it over and over again. It's not very long and so I just keep playing it over. I can't get enough of it.
I've been studying about truth the last few days and how it relates to yoga. The first of the 8 Limbs of Yoga teaches us about right relationships with others, the yamas they are called, guidelines for how to BE our best self with others. The second of the 5 yamas is asteya - translated as truthfulness or honesty. And sometimes being honest means taking off our cool. I'm inspired by this idea. This blog is a place I feel safe taking off my cool, I can do it in a way that seems harmless. I can disclose almost as if I am witnessing myself from an outsider's perspective. I guess that is a good thing, I'm able to separate this human-ness from the essence of who I am. I am not the silly thoughts that spin through my head, round and round again. I am not this body of mine (which by the way, for today, I am not at odds with, okay maybe a little, but less than I was 2 weeks ago). I am not the words that come out of my mouth when I wish they wouldn't. The truth is I AM, we all are. And despite our tendencies, to try to be cool, really the coolest is when you take off your cool and the beauty of the being shines through. Is that enough cool for one post? I think so.