Monthly Archives: September 2024

BLISS

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STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN    IX563315_443500359054215_156211962_n

ANANDAMAYA KOSHA (Bliss Body)

The Self in the Sheath of Bliss (in Sanskrit, the Anandamaya Kosha), surrounds the absolute self. Absolute truth, a point, is never changing. It and the bliss are forever and always protected on all sides. The Self is the truth, and truth is never changing. Everything else is always in a state of flux, always changing.

The self realizes all else is illusion. The Self can be compared to a movie screen. While the film is playing, all sorts of action is going on, but when the movie is finished, the screen is exactly like it was before, untouched by what appeared to be taking place.

Bliss just is. It is not of the mind, but the peace, love and joy that is this level of reality.

courtesy The Flower of Sacred Geometry

courtesy The Flower of Sacred Geometry

Even this can be released to be pure self, in Sanskrit, ‘Atman’. The Anandamaya Kosha is still a sheath covering the Atman. It’s as if the true self is a light and the kosha a lampshade covering it. Even though the Anandamaya Kosha is the subtlest of koshas, it still suppresses the full magnitude of the light. One is reminded of the Biblical admonishment to take your light from beneath the bushel basket.

CAUSAL BEING

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We cannot perceive those beings spiritually advanced beyond us; Causal Being? But knowing nature’s tendency to repeat herself, can we draw broad assumptions? This human ‘father face’ we assign to the Higher Powers is but spiritual shorthand. Mere children spiritually, we use comfortable symbols to express what we intuit. What we consider God, these entities advanced compared to us, are they evolving too? What higher forms constitute their gods? Given what we can see in our small universe, wouldn’t that seem to be the case? One octave flows into another and that into yet another, energy evolving in perpetuity. Creation — ever changing, ever growing, in a joyful dance to the Absolute.

Imagine a being comprised of 2,000 independent souls —weight loss through yoga, jewel in the lotus

 

Weight Loss Through Yoga, Jewel in the Lotus        page158

 

 

YOGA

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Where did it come from, this yoga that is going to answer all my questions, tune me to the universe, transform me, body mind, and soul? The historical answer is still a mystery. However, one explanation based on archaeological discoveries is widely accepted. In the 1920’s, ruins of a civilization were discovered along a no longer existent river system in the region that is now Northern India and Pakistan. Three thousand years before the birth of Christ, this civilization had complex urban centers with running water and underground sewage systems. Their language, Sanskrit, is the root of all the Indo-European languages.308173_10150393745341425_1953625538_n

Among the ruins were found many statues depicting what we now associate as being yoga postures. Postures are a part of the yoga tradition that asks the practitioner to look within. This yoga tradition believes the universe is mirrored in each of us. Nature has a working set of solutions that is used on ever greater or lesser scales for everything, as our recent appreciation of fractals demonstrates. To understand something on a scale within our perceptual range allows us to imagine solutions to questions above or below that range. The yoga postures, asanas in Sanskrit, are only a part of yoga. Yoga as practiced in the West has placed most of its emphasis on the practice of asanas. Most Westerners think of yoga as a system of physical exercise, but it is much more.601778_10200954416279567_1767731119_n

Yoga asks us to look within, to relax into ourselves, to know ourselves. With complete understanding of the self comes complete understanding. This ‘looking within’ is as old as the human ability to wonder. In that sense, our origin is the beginning of our embrace of yoga.73991_236167679859728_1140496273_n

One broad definition of yoga is the art and science of living. Yoga practice allows understanding to unfold. Other people may help by suggesting techniques for self-exploration, or how and where to look, but all the insights come from your observations. All the answers are your answers. You diligently explore your own direct experience. No faith required.

Weight Loss Through Yoga, Jewel in the Lotus        Pages 8 —9.