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As we mature into a deeper spiritual perspective we take responsibility for our own internal states. It is daunting to be faced with a mind that is unruly and the practices of concentration and energetic clarity developed through a balanced asana practice are of huge importance. There are practical techniques to help us on this path, which can be incorporated into our lives. Meditation using either visual (yantra, mandala,), auditory (mantra, music) or kinaesthetic (breath, body sensation) support helps to focus the mind, in order to allow space and stillness for transformation. There are excellent practices for the development of watchfulness, such as Swami Satyananda’s antar mouna, a form of meditative exercise, or the practice of tratak (gazing). Mantra practice as in japa, or repetition, unconcious awareness as in ajapa japa, and vipassana, silent insight meditation, are all practices that can be extended into everyday life. To break out of the concept of the separation between spiritual and secular life, life itself must be seen as the practice.
Yogic practice is a tool to help us to expand our experience of life, to make it altogether more powerful and wonderful than we could have ever have dreamed possible. Dealing with change seems to be one of the biggest difficulties of the human condition. The ability to respond to change consciously and easily, rather than struggling against, it is rare. Yet to be with the flow of life and it’s challenges, to be truly in the moment not only allows us to accept and deal with change. It is this ease that yoga in it’s various forms leads us towards. It is because of desire that we are here, desire also drives much of what we do. In yoga practice we desire fitness, health, well-being or even enlightenment. How do we experience life in the present? Yoga offers us the tools to step out of the conditioned self and it’s limited perspective. But this is not an inevitable outcome of yogic practice, as these tools misapplied can achieve the opposite by feeding egoic structures or creating a deep attachment to the techniques themselves. Being aware of our attachments - whether this be to physical things or thought patterns - throughout the day, using yogic practices as foundations to develop this awareness, is abhyasa (constant practice) in a contemporary sense. Is this really possible in our society? Many of us have no choice, perhaps the hardest sadhana (spiritual meditation practice) is achieving this whilst remaining with work, family, partner, duties and responsibilities. If our life truly is to be our spiritual practice then we face it with awareness and acceptance.
A modest commitment to begin to watch, hear, feel, and be with attachment is a way of exploring egoic states. Watch through a day, forgetfulness is fine, just return to this awareness as you can. Gradually we develop awareness of internal relations and geography and how this connects across our imagined boundaries to the external ‘reality’. Ahimsa or loving kindness comes in here, we need to work towards being gentle and treating the inner world with acceptance and love. We have to love our own existence before we can truly love others, ahimsa is therefore in the first place an internal event. Learning to understand our inner geography and love may require us to make many mistakes, just as babies fall many times in learning to walk, we also fall and sometimes we cry. It takes time for inner awareness to develop. With a greater degree of choiceless awareness and a discrimination of action we have the possibility to exhaust the chatter of speech and feeling of the conditioned mind. This is the beginning of the inner stillness that Patanjali referred to as the cessation of the modifications of the mind. Yogic exercises are merely tools to help us on this journey. But even these have risks attached if they are not performed with the right intention. Tools such as asana (yogic poses), are a powerful way of integrating mind and body but feelings of achievement as your practice develops can strengthen the ego.
Mantras can be used as anaesthetics to block awareness, to reduce the pain of existence. If we use any discipline to keep our emotional existence unknown, unexplored or repressed then we are misapplying those disciplines. This is merely using the discipline to stay in control, and to resist change.For a practitioner who has not resolved their ego-shadow splits, meditation can lead to a deeper divorce from their shadow. It is by accepting and allowing changes that occur in our lives, and understanding that we can’t always control change, that we are best able to deal with it. Otherwise our energy can become expensive and internally destructive. Facing, accepting, perhaps understanding our personal and collective shadows and demons is perhaps the most enlightened way of dealing with this. Once this has been achieved we can apply the necessary tools to deal with them. To love our being requires awareness followed by acceptance. Awareness is partly an ability to see, hear and feel the workings of our mind-body. Kindness for these inner workings as they really are, not as we would like them to be is crucial. The more we can see the shadow play of the mind for what it is, the less we are inclined to call it I. We still have to live in the world and continue in our relationships and our occupations. To allow for spiritual transformation, yet not retreat from relationships and our interaction with humanity requires very high levels of awareness as we understand and balance our internal and external worlds. |