3/6/23 It is what it is
Morgans Tarot
Yoga Sutra 2.2
Samadhi bhavanarthah klesa tanu karanarthas ca
Practicing these essentials, we overcome the obstacles and attain samadhi.
According to Dennis Hills translation “ Yoga sadhana is also known as the Path of Discrimination. (Viveka). It’s thorough this power are mistaken identity is burned away.” This is what the second book in the Yoga Sutra is all about. It is the practices of Sadhana that samadhi can be obtained. Its. Starts with Niyamas (observations) of self discipline, study and mantra japa, and devotion to the self.
I have been having great difficulty acting like an earthling but for the past 10 years the Yoga Sutra has been my user guide for life. Now that we are in Book 2 you can see why I call this blog Daily Devotion. I started this practice after my mothers death to strengthen my spiritual center when I was in deep grief. I could count on the sutras to show me the way. I started again. This is a constant in the meditation practice. I started with Niyamas.
The Yoga Sutra describes five different niyamas, including saucha (cleanliness), santosha (contentment), tapas (self-discipline), svadhyaya (self-reflection), and ishvarapranidhana (surrender to a higher power). Studying the sutras daily and sharing them. I go to CFM daily at 7am and meditate sitting and a walking mediation. I recite my personal mantra japa while I step, “Devotion”. My last 10 years Grace was my word now a new chapter in my life and Devotion has become a touch stone. Do you have a practice something that keeps you balanced and focused ? Some people run or do others sports, some find their place of stillness in music or in art. It is important that we have something in our lives that brings us to this place of stillness and what positive psychology calls a state of flow. What it means to be in a flow state. Popularized by positive psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jeanne Nakamura, flow state describes a feeling where, under the right conditions, you become fully immersed in whatever you are doing. https://medium.com/personal-growth-lab/how-to-reach-flow-state-using-10-flow-state-triggers-473aa28dc3e5
If you’d like to learn more about how you can get into a state of flow in your favorite activity. It is a mind training. We can all get there.
This is not magic or Hocus Pocus. This is science and how the human body brain, body and mind act and interact. Why is the mind so ready to judge and condemn a practice that it knows nothing about or may help the body achieve a greater state of awareness and competency? The mind is a tyrannical a master and the body a faithful servant. If we allow ourselves to surrender to the whisper of the one and true self the one that knows that the mind is not running things smoothly we can achieve the things the mind has been grasping at that was ever eluding it. Want to change the world? Change yourself and the world around you changes in response to your efforts. Besides I suck at herding cats. I might as well sit here and move my exterior world with my interior energy it seems more efficient.
