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There are three basic paths of yoga. One is bhakti, devotion. The other, karma, good work in the world with a sense of selfless service with doing things without attachment to the results of actions. And the third path is jnana yoga, the yoga of knowledge. It works with the mind.
Today lets discuss the relationship we have to ideas like selflessness, self-sacrifice or selfless service. Ideas like self-sacrifice or selflessness have become associated for many people with letting yourself be stepped on or over run by others, of being a kind of dish rag, moping up others messes and not taking care of yourself. Being selfless for many has become a way of saying you’re the kind of person who doesn’t take care of yourself.
The concept of forgiveness is spoken of in many spiritual traditions. In Biblical terms, it is said that we should turn the other cheek, have gentle behavior and practice nonviolence. To be able to do this, you must be able to forgive the one who has affronted you or who has harmed you.
Life tends to present us with both great struggles and great joy, difficulty, and happiness. In this mix, happiness is often fleeting. If you are fortunate enough to have good circumstances, you might find happiness in your life for a time, but if your feelings of happiness are generated only from outer circumstances that can and will eventually change. It will not be lasting.
The teachings of the Tao come from the ancient teachings of dharma. When a being follows the Tao, they are in alignment with their inherent nature and they follow the laws that govern that inherent nature. These laws, the principles and operating forces of the universe, are the fabric of existence. Without them, the natural world would lose its integrity.
Every day is a new opportunity, a new beginning, an opportunity to live the life you truly want to live. Spirituality uplifts the human spirit. It is governed by love, lovingkindness, compassion, and awareness. When the mind and body and spirit are aligned, there is a flow from that infinite one into the mind and the body, and out through the voice, through the eyes into the world. When that is there, there is a diminishment of separation. There is a love that flows from the heart into the mind and out into the world. It permeates the body.
Dharma needs to be followed both by individuals and by the collective society as a whole. When an individual is out of alignment with dharma, their life becomes disjointed and they cease to have a harmony with the world around them. They become self-centered and self-absorbed. When a society, a nation, state, social or religious group, is out of alignment with dharma, the society begins to fragment and lose its balance.
As we begin this year, we face some significant issues in the world and in the United States. There is a polarization of people, dire predictions about the soon to come impact of global warming, about immigration, the migration of people from areas in the world impacted by violence and/or global warming, and a variety of other very significant issues. There are those who want to bring change and compassionately try to ease the situation and those who want to keep going with fossil fuels usage and profit based decisions that have worked for them in the past.
Every living being loves their life. Everyone wants to be happy. The deer in the field wants to be happy. The wolf, the coyote wants to be happy. The plants, the trees want to be happy. And human beings want to be happy, want to feel that life is sweet. And it is a burden that even the wise carry to have an attachment to life and fear of death. Because it is the physical form that fears death, for the form will pass, will die. Earth returns to earth. From dust to dust. Forms return to the physical world from which they came and become the elements of new forms.
The world today faces a crisis. That crisis is a spiritual crisis. A crisis of the soul, of the heart, expressed in the physical world in the variety of collective circumstances that face the planet today. There is one point about all of these circumstances—the pandemic, the racial problems of discrimination and injustice in various forms around the world, the meaning of conservatism and reaction to the world situation wanting to return to the past and past glories—all of these struggles face humanity, not one country or one continent.
What do people want, really want? They want to be happy. Everyone loves their life. They want to find happiness, find expression, find love, find joy. This desire for happiness is universal. The desire to live and the fear of death are shared by all human beings and most living beings. This very survival instinct is inherent in your physical body, and it drives certain actions. The desire for happiness is also inherent, the striving to find joy in life, to find meaning in life; and many people seek happiness in different objects, in different types of experiences.
The final practice of Yama the yogic avoidance's, is Aparigraha, that is, to avoid accumulating beyond your needs. It literally means to not (a) grab, hoard, hold on to things or take more than you need (parigraha). It encourages a life of simplicity and generosity on all levels, having what is truly necessary and no more.
When you move on the path of dharma, you move in harmony with your own nature and with the essential nature of all beings. Can you feel those moments when your thoughts, words, and deeds are in harmony with life? When you sense such harmony, such alignment, then you are truly following dharma.
As we begin this year, we face some significant issues in the world and in the United States. There is a polarization of people, dire predictions about the soon to come impact of global warming, about immigration, the migration of people from areas in the world impacted by violence and/or global warming, and a variety of other very significant issues. There are those who want to bring change and compassionately try to ease the situation and those who want to keep going with fossil fuels usage and profit based decisions that have worked for them in the past.
In order to truly follow dharma, four qualities need to be cultivated. They are Vistara, or the expansiveness of vision; Rasa, flow, to be saturated with blissful awareness and movement towards your ete al essence; Seva, service, and Tatsthiti, divine union, wholeness.
When you live in appreciation of life and reverence for life, you become alive, vibrant in gratitude and joy then you move toward love and compassion. For the Divine is the source of compassion. When you develop compassion, you put real love into practice. Seeing the pain and suffering of others, your heart goes out with compassion to help them. You are not thinking of what you can get out of the situation or even how it will impact you. Your conce is what is needed to help or heal and how you can make that happen.
Dear friends, We have two more aspects of Yama and Niyama to cover, Svadhyaya (self-reflection) and Ishvara Pranidhana ( surrender to God).
For hundreds of thousands of years, humans have lived on this planet. They have each struggled to exist, to survive, to have a good life - to live. And in this time throughout history, people have encountered various obstacles, difficulties, and struggles in life. These struggles are a natural part of human existence, a natural part of living in this world. There is no time in human history when there hasn't been some sort of difficulty, large or small, personal, or collective.
The situation in the world today is one of shift and change. The more dynamic the change, the more resistance to change occurs. Change that brings transformation is not easy. That which has existed, the status quo, wants to continue to exist. This is true in personal life and in collective life.
Today’s article is about the second of the yogic principles to follow in Niyama, Santosha, that is inner peace or equanimity of mind. Inner peace is a powerful state of being but requires the development of certain mental attitudes. If you keep your attention absorbed in the ups and downs of life, always worrying about something missing or striving to attain desired situations, your life will be filled with the turmoil and disruption of the need to acquire and the fear of loss.
Asteya is the yogic practice of avoiding taking what does not belong to you and is not freely offered to you. It includes greedy desires expressed in our thoughts, words, and our deeds. There are many reasons we may covet what we do not have and be jealous, feeling someone else has more than we do. Maybe they have success, money, popularity, health, power, a good job, a partner we wish we had, or even spiritual experiences we want to have.
Today is a new day, a new beginning. Each day of your life brings you closer to your destiny. Whether you are young or old is irrelevant. What is relevant is what you do each day. Each day is a new beginning, a new opportunity to be what you truly want to be. The individual self, the ego self has many desires, and wants many things. But the ete al being wants only one thing, that all beings, all creation, return to their source, return to an infinite being. There is no separation between you and Parama Purusha, between you and that infinite consciousness.
Many different feelings and emotions come in human life, many different types of experiences. And some of them are very painful, very difficult. And difficult experiences can be unique to you, or you can be part of a collective Karma, where those experiences involve a whole group of people.
Love is a many-faceted topic. There is love between people, love for nature, love for animals and plants and love for the Divine. What is important in all of these different experiences of love is that you love purely. To know infinite love, you need not live up to anyone’s expectations but only take the time to turn your mind and heart toward the Divine and think of the qualities and characteristics of that divine Beloved.
There are three primary yogas - jnana yoga, bhakti yoga, and karma yoga. Jnana yoga is the yoga of knowledge, the yoga of right understanding. It utilizes the mind to bring a clear understanding of the nature of reality and focuses on undoing erroneous beliefs about the nature of self and others and clarifying deep wisdom in the mind. Bhakti yoga is different, in that bhakti-yoga focuses on the heart. There are twelve traditional avenues of bhakti-yoga.
Loving yourself is essential because it is by loving your own self that you become able to love others. When you learn to view your own faults and failings with understanding and compassion, you become able to accept and love others, even when you know their imperfections. When you see divinity in your own being you become able to see the divine in others. The attitudes and approaches you develop toward others begin with the feelings you have about your own self.
"Gratitude is not only in what you dorn but how you approach what you do." There are some whose lives are filled with great blessings but still feel that they have nothing. And there are those who are truly poor, yet given even the slightest crumb will feel they are most fortunate. One may be as wealthy as a prince or princess and still feel impoverished or as poor as the poorest beggar and feel wealthy.
All beings have suffered. Sometimes in life, things go your way; sometimes, they go the opposite—be it physical, mental, or spiritual, be it loss of loved ones, loss of health, or loss of well-being in one form or another. These periods where something difficult happens can be very challenging, but the suffering comes not only from the experience itself but from the resistance to the experience, from the resistance to the flow of the cosmos.
As we begin this year, we face some significant issues in the world and in the United States. There is a polarization of people, dire predictions about the soon to come impact of global warming, about immigration, the migration of people from areas in the world impacted by violence and/or global warming, and a variety of other very significant issues. There are those who want to bring change and compassionately try to ease the situation and those who want to keep going with fossil fuels usage and profit based decisions that have worked for them in the past.
There are many different situations and circumstances that may confront a person during their life, and of those, there will be trials and tribulations, challenges and difficulties, as well as joys, opportunities. You have an opportunity on how you view life and your circumstances. You can view it as a glass half empty or a glass half full. In the midst of circumstances of life, if you have learned to appreciate what is, you find joy and beauty even in the darkest of circumstances, and you find light and love even in a void situation. For the infinite divinity is always with you.
For most people, when the group goes one way, they go that way; they believe what the group believes. When the group goes another way, they go that way. Why? Because they have surrendered to the group psychology, as their instincts around power and submission tell them to do for their survival. Human beings are not so strong; have compassion for them. Just as the wolf has an instinctual response within its society or the deer with its herd, or the horses, or the birds, so human beings are equally bound in their reactions.
There are two great impediments to spiritual life. The first is attachment to the body and the sensory experience, because when there is attachment to the physical form and the sensory experience there is engagement with the body-mind structure and the belief that you are this small person who abides in the body. That belief becomes dominant in the mind, and so attachment to the enjoyment of sensory experience and embodiment becomes a hindrance when they overtake the mind and leave consciousness attached to embodiment.
Each day is a new beginning, a new dawn, a new opportunity to become that which you truly want to be. When you rise each day it is a fresh start. Think, the night before, what you want in life, what you want to be, how you want to be in the world. You have every opportunity every day to create that manifestation of your being which you want in this world.
Ahimsa, the principle of non-injury or non-violence. It literally means to not harm and is the first and most basic of five actions to avoid outlined in the Yama’s.
I am very excited to be able to offer the teachings of Yama and Niyam to everyone. If you have an interest in yogic philosophy and how you might incorporate these teachings in your life to help you with the challenges that arise on your spiritual journey, then I strongly suggest you read my new book, Living Love the Yoga of Yama & Niyma ~ Timeless Teachings for Transformation and Awakening. You can buy this book on my website, Amazon, Kindle and Smashwords. Niyamar
The Sanskrit Brahmacharya blends two words, Brahma meaning God and Charya meaning to follow. This practice involves seeing everything in this universe as the manifestation of the Brahma, the Primal Source of Being. Some scholars limit this transmutation of desires in Brahmacharya to controlling sexual desires and the practice of celibacy. Although the idea of celibacy and restraint is often associated with Bramacharya, it is not actually the deepest interpretation.
This week we will explore Satya, the practice of truthfulness and the second tenant of the Yamas. This is the practice of not deceiving oneself or others. Being truthful with others and with ones self is extremely important on the spiritual path, as the goal of yoga is to know the ultimate truth.
The yogic concept of Saocha is about cleanliness, or purity, of both the body and the mind. This practice brings a kind of clarity and subtly of being. To practice it is to clean away all the dirt that may clutter the mind so that perception of the Infinite is possible. The mind has many layers. The outer-most layer of the mind is the physical body that resides in this physical world. Therefore there is a need to purify the body as well as the conscious mind and the subconscious mind.