Golf for Enlightenment by Deepak Chopra M.D

Author:Deepak Chopra, M.D. [Chopra, Deepak]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5088-8
Publisher: Harmony/Rodale
Published: 2003-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

Playing the Game

The fourth lesson is about intuition. Intuition tells you exactly what is right when nothing else can. Although most people consider intuition less reliable than logic and therefore do not call upon its power, golf is one sport in which intuition plays a major role. It is the key to a mysterious factor called “touch.”

On a 12-foot putt, the range that makes or breaks many tournaments, the player who has lost his touch will consistently miss the hole by a few inches or maybe less than that, whereas the player who has touch sinks the ball time after time. Practice isn’t what makes the difference, for a golf professional following the same routine as always might find his touch one week and lose it the next. Where, then, does touch come from?

Spiritual teachers locate touch not in the hands or even the head. They assign it to the subtle body, which in Sanskrit is called sukshtna sharira. Your subtle body is the self you inhabit on the outer fringe of the physical realm. You take it into dreams and fantasies. Its specialty is insight; its energy is inspiration. If I ask you to close your eyes and visualize yourself walking through every room in your house, it’s your subtle body that does it. Some people are deeply acquainted with their subtle bodies and therefore use them with incredible skill.

One example of this is blind golfers, of whom there are more than just a few. They can master a very straight swing, because blind golfers are not distracted by the visual cues that make a player push or pull his drive. The top players among the blind routinely break ninety, their shots being lined up by their caddies. When one of these caddies was asked if he saw any particular advantage that blind golfers might have, he replied that they benefit from not seeing the hazards on the course—in fact, if there was water in play, he sometimes didn’t inform the player, just to relieve him of the jittery nerves that dunk so many balls.

If you can align with your subtle senses, you will have found the secret of touch.

Your subtle senses are closer to the source of intelligence. Have you ever been looking for a lost object, such as car keys or your wallet, when all of a sudden you know with certainty where it is? I can remember walking out of my house one spring as the snow was melting. Spontaneously my head swiveled left. My eyes fell automatically on a patch of lawn just emerging from its winter blanket, and I saw a tiny, barely perceptible object no one would think to look for. I picked it up and instantly recognized it as a tortoise-shell button that had fallen off my favorite coat. It had lain under the snow for three months waiting for my subtle body to spot it.

One of the best ways to get aligned with your subtle body is through visualization. Many professionals pause to see their shots in advance of making them.

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