When you stop identifying with your thoughts, fluctuations of mind, then there is Yoga, identity with Self, which is Samadhi, happiness, bliss and ecstasy. --Translation by Sharon Gannon
Because we misperceive reality, we suffer. What we think about, who we are, how we believe the world works, is completely wrong. We are not separate entities but interdependent. The world isn’t out there, but we create it in here.
This is good news, but also scary. It makes you 100% responsible for everything. But its good news because it is fundamentally empowering; now you have the power to change. You can never change others or anything ‘out there,’ but knowing it comes from ‘in here’ means you can change it. It is in your hands.
How? Through cultivating wisdom. Through meditation. We train our minds by meditating to tame our thoughts that reflect our conceptual duality. The very nature of thought is to define and divide. This isn’t bad, but it must be brought under control. We work to transcend thought by not identifying with it. Once we begin to understand reality more, we begin to see more connections and feel the sacredness of all life.
The fundamental misunderstanding is the identification of spirit with matter; thinking that the eternal individual soul is the temporary manifestation of the gunas with which we have come to identify and which forms the basis for actions (karma) which bind us to samsara: we think we are these bodies, and what happens to these bodies happens to us. The state of the jivanmukta arises when we are realize that we not our bodies, we are not our minds - we are Spirit.
"You are either wise---or otherwise." –Sri Brahmananda Sarasvati
"Mind your own business……which is knowing who you are. That YOU ARE."
–Sri Brahmananda Sarasvati
PRACTICES
1. “Who am I?” Meditation
2. Meditation
3. Inversions
