You Already Know This

This came at a perfect time for me. 

Just what I needed to hear today!

Thanks so much for this; it’s exactly what I’ve been thinking about this week.

If you’ve ever felt this—reading something that seems to speak directly to you—you’re not alone. I receive messages like these almost every week. Students often tell me my posts feel uncannily timed, as if I'm writing directly to them about their specific struggles.

Yesterday, a student shared how a recent post echoed advice she’d been giving a friend - that freedom exists in the present moment, not in replaying the past or lingering in regrets. “Reading your words,” she told, me, “was like hearing my own wisdom reflected back to me."

That’s what fascinates me most. She wasn't learning something new. She was remembering something she already knew.

This is recognition—what Kashmir Shaivism calls pratyabhijñā: the sudden inner spark of glimpsing one’s true nature. It isn’t about acquiring wisdom from outside ourselves; it’s about remembering what has always been present.

If you’ve ever paused in a familiar pose and felt it open from the inside, or noticed your breath soften while waiting at a red light, you know this experience. Nothing has changed on the surface, yet something quietly aligns. Effort drops away. There’s a sense of being right where you are meant to be, that everything is okay just as it is—including you.

Rather than giving us something we lack, yoga points us back to what’s already here. Beneath our individual stories lies a shared ground of experience, a universal consciousness we’re all a part of.  When insight arises, it doesn’t feel like information delivered from outside; it feels remembered, as if something familiar has returned.

The wisdom doesn't come from me to you. It arises from a shared field of awareness and reminding you of truths you already carry.

We all want to feel loved, connected, and fulfilled. We all struggle with fear, attachment, and the illusion of control. The details differ—your relationship, my career, her family—but the inner terrain is remarkably universal.

This is why yogic teachings endure. They speak directly to our shared human condition, offering practical ways to meet challenges that haven’t changed since humans first began seeking meaning.

When a teaching lands at the perfect time, you’re not receiving new information. You’re touching your own deepest knowing. That subtle inner yes is wisdom recognizing itself beneath the noise of daily life.

The practices of yoga support this remembering: clearing what obscures it, softening what constricts it, and returning us to the awareness in which we're already whole and connected.

So when something sparks an inner yes, or a nugget of wisdom arrives at just the right moment, notice how your body responds, how your breath shifts, how effort releases.

And know this: you were already carrying that truth. The message was simply holding up the mirror.