Yoga Is

“Yoga is, in essence, nothing but the method and the process by which you grow to the unattainable and realize permanently the Eternal by and through what seems to be fugitive.  In other words, there is a way of inducing the incredible, the elusive Unattainable – the Divine Light and Love and Truth – to accept out hospitality, to come and stay as our guests.  Yoga shows you the way,  You love a woman, a friend, an idol – but though the first taste of love sends you into raptures, you find these petering out, leaving you only an aftermath of drabness, of disillusionment.  Why does this happen again and again?  Because the person you love is not divinized.   You grasp at fire but hug smoke and ashes.  Your friend betrays selfishness, your beloved possessiveness, your idol feet of clay.  Why?  Because in them the Divine is assorted with the human.  It is to reach to and realize permanently the essence of divinity in love and affection and like that we are here.  You must claim the fire but reject the ashes, win the light but stave off the heat, welcome affection but cast away selfishness, invite joy but shut out pain and boredom.  To sum up, to extract pure gold purged of the dross that clings to it obstinately must be your one aspiration, your one sadhana.”

– Dilip Kumar Roy’s reconstruction of a conversation with the Mother.  Excerpted from Sri Aurobindo Came to Me.

Gradual Evolution

Sixth Principle of Personal Transformation > Having All of Life Be In God

Becoming fully receptive to life’s sacredness is often a gradual process, one in which the experience of God’s Presence within life becomes more and more apparent as it manifests through the flow of ordinary events. As fears and attachments loosen, we let go of conditioned attitudes and roles we have felt compelled to play, and become freer to respond to all of life with our true selves. This freedom to be ourselves is defined by our participation in each moment and by the quality of heart and mind we bring to it. Within each moment’s experience, we become free to learn and grow, to change with each encounter, to operate freely and fluidly as the continually evolving sacred beings that we are.

 

I always thought that enlightenment would come in a flash, a sudden lightning strike of transformation and I would be forever free.  When I first encountered yoga and buddhism years ago, I literally believed that this was the case.  Over the years this belief has taken many forms, but it’s been hard to let go of.

I never anticipate all of the work that spiritual aspiration would involve.  I figured that if my surrender was complete enough, I would just leap out of a smaller self identity and into an experience of cosmic wholeness from which it would be impossible to return.  When it didn’t happen, I blamed myself, assuming that my surrender must not have been authentic, or that I must just be too afraid of leaving behind my karmic baggage.  I still get caught up in this thought process, and if I’m not careful it can lead to self-judgment, guilt, and a feeling for failure.

But here I am immersed in the gradual process, the progressive healing of ancient karmic wounds.  “In the Integral Yoga, there is no difference between the sadhana and the outward life; it is in each and every moment of the daily life that the truth must be found and practiced,” says the Mother of Auroville.

So I try to open myself to the circumstances of my life, to the “flow of ordinary events”.  And I try to release self-judgment, trusting that what is unfolding within me and around me is unique and important and perfect.  I’ve come to believe strongly that no good ever comes from pressuring someone else to change their mind or believe something or want something.  But somehow it’s harder to grasp that this applies to myself too.  Pressure to surrender will never succeed in bringing me into alignment with my highest truth.  It’s only through releasing control and struggle that my path can unfold.

Julie Redstone once said to me that the Light does not respond to force with counterforce.  The strength of the Light is in its purity.  I remember being dumbstruck by the simplicity of it, and by the realization that I had always thought and acted as if fighting against my lower nature and the hostile forces was the only way to freedom.  It turns out that embattlement just perpetuates the battle, giving life to an illusion.