Sutra 2.15 - Etch-A-Sketching

2.15 All is misery to the wise because of the pains of change, anxiety, and purificatory acts.

One thing in life we can always count on is change.  If we expect things to stay the same, Sutra 2.

15 states that we will experience the pains of misery.  In Yoga, the term Ishtah Kala roughly translates to "soul trapped in time".  The nature of time, space and matter is change.  At it's very basic level, our consciousness does not change, but we only see the change because we are conditioned to be part of the change.

One of my favorite toys when I was a kid was the Etch-A-Sketch.  Looking back on it, it really wasn't the greatest thing.  I mean, how far could you get making a picture without being able to draw diagonal lines.  If you could even get the line to become diagonal, you would have had some sort of super skill working both those drawing knobs.  So in school, I would make a drawing, and it would inevitably get erased by the other children.  Gone was my masterpiece in mere seconds. 

As we go through life, there is a natural tendency to try to maintain what we have.  I think the more we get, the more time we have to spend maintaining it.  I don't know how many times I have went to the gym to try to lose weigh,  enhance cardio or gain muscle mass.  Even when I have established a meditation routine, I would try to cram in as many techniques as I could. 

I could only run for so long before my knees would hurt.  When I got to a weight I could not lift past, I tried using supplements, but in the end, my elbows became inflamed.   I got very good at doing various yoga techniques, but I wasn't until I concentrated on one, that I got the most out of it.  A technique will outlast it's usefulness after a while.

You can only go so far in life before you top out at something.  Sutra 2.15 gives us a work from the wise.  Know that you can count on something not staying the same.  When you top out, try to move on or teach what you know.

Sutras 2.12 to 2.14 - The Roots of Karma

2.12 The impressions of works have their roots in afflictions and arise as experience in the present and the future births.

2.13 When the root exists, its fruition is birth, life and experience.

2.14 They have pleasure or pain as their fruit, according as their cause be virtue or vice.

Have you ever tried to get rid of a stubborn weed?  One of the reasons why I have forsworn home ownership with a large yard is the difficulty of maintaining a weed free lawn.  Some weeds, like the dandelion flowers were, next to impossible to eliminate.  I don't like to use harsh chemical on my lawn because of what they do to the ground in the long run, so when I mowed my lawn, I would treat the weeds as part of the lawn itself.  What is amazing is how something that was originally a patch of grass became a mix of different weeds in the course of two years. 

If the effort was not put into removing the weeds by the roost, they regrew even stronger.    The roots would grow bigger, just waiting until the next season to  grow back with a vengeance. 

Karma stored in our nervous system took root when the seed of impression was planted.  If you took a chart of the human nervous system and flipped it upside-down, it would look like a tree.  The brain would be the roots and the trunk of the spine extends up the back, breaking off into several branches reaching every part of the body.  Rooted in the brain, our reactions to virtue or vice unfold as we experience our lives.  Going through the process of deep meditation gives us access to the roots of our problems, so we can pull them up and stop them from regrowing.

Sutras 2.10 - 2.11 - Cure for the Common Habit

2.10 These patterns when subtle may be removed by developing their contraries.

2.11 Their active afflictions are to be destroyed by meditation.

When something isn't working, do that opposite.  That sums up the advice given to deal with the afflictions mentioned in the previous sutras.  Sutra 2.11 states that active afflictions can be "destroyed" through meditation.  I like the term mitigated instead. 

First, there must be an understanding between what is active and what is passive.  Active afflictions work in the present.  They remain dormant until triggered by an external event, or they may be an ongoing part of our daily lives.  When we meditate, these qualities will come to the surface.  We may not recognize them at first, but with further reflection, we will know them.  Part of the meditative process is developing self awareness.  It's like putting a mirror up to your mind, and being able to see the mind through the eyes of it's own reflection.  Why are we able notice these qualities in others before we see them in ourselves?  Having outside perspective makes all the difference. 

Inactive patterns are inherent in all of us and are part of the human condition.  Our tendency is to carry out whatever whim may be in our mind at the present moment.  When the mind becomes still, the Yogi notices these afflictions as they arise, and cuts them off before they become active.  To put this in perspective, lets use the example of trying to change a habit.  Habits exists so that we do not have to actively put conscious effort into everything we do.  When we try to change a habit, first we must have the will to do so.  After some time and effort, the scales of the habit change from old behavior to the desired new one.  However, even though we may have changed our behavior at a surface level, there will be remnants in the subconscious mind for some time.

I quit smoking about ten years ago.  If any of you have done this, you will know it's a very difficult.  Many who begin this endeavor start with a large amount of enthusiasm, but the closer we get to the point where the habit of not smoking takes over the habit to smoke, the harder it gets.  Once we get past this point however, it get's easier as time goes on.  It's like pushing a boulder uphill. We get tired near the top of the hill, but when we get that rock over the top, it will naturally pick up momentum as it rolls down the side of the hill.  Even though we may have pushed the rock over the hill, if we do not remain aware, we may inadvertently run down the hill and start pushing the boulder back up the other way. 

Some Yogic Advice for the Insomniac

Insomnia is something that I am very familiar with.  At some points in my life, it has become so debilitating, that I have gotten into car accidents, suffered from poor work performance and even issues in personal relationships.  Insomnia is an insidious beast that works its way into our lives and wraps its tentacles around every aspect we hold dear.  Insomnia was the major reason why I got into Yoga in the first place.  I sleep better now than I did in the past, but I still have some issues.

So why can't people sleep?  It's a complicated relationship we have with ourselves and how we expect things to occur.  Ironically, my biggest issue with sleeping was the fear of not sleeping.  Staying up and watching the clock, counting the hours that I may be able to get and how if I got just enough, I would be able to function the next day.  The effects of insomnia would work their way into the next day, affecting my alertness, thus causing more mistakes and upping the anxiety the next night,  It's like a morbid hamster wheal.  In came modern medicine with a slew of addictive sleeping aids, which only work for about a week.  These sleep aid generally suppress REM sleep and do not allow the brain to heal from the stresses of the day.

So, really, what to do?  First, we have to accept that the modern work world has made it very difficult to balance work and life.  In IT, many of us are expected to be at the beckon of our cells phones in case there are issues with computer systems.  We sacrifice our personal lives so that the line between work and home become greyer and most are not even compensated with overtime.  People are increasingly bringing work home from the office, which does not help our situations.  If we are to start getting rest as insomniacs, we have to set our boundaries and live with the consequences. 

I'm not going to go over all the sleep environment stuff.  I figure you have already changed your mattress, lighting, timing of sleep and other factors.  I want to focus specifically on the root causes of insomnia which are the racing mind and fear of not sleeping.  Stopping a racing mind takes practice.  If you are going to be awake, you might as well meditate.  You do not have to be sitting to meditate.  As you lie in bed, you can work on becoming a passive observer of your thoughts.  Detaching yourself from your thoughts is the second major step a Yogi takes on the path toward enlightenment, second only to the intent to do Yoga.  The fear of not sleeping can be relieved by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.  There are self help books that guide you through programs, mainly focused on challenging negative thoughts and internal dialogue.  The next helpful thing is Yoga Nidra.  This practice is very in depth, and can be used alone as a Yoga Routine.  The nice thing about it is that it's practiced while laying down.  If you are going to be there for hours anyway, you might as well make the best of your time.  Swamij.com is THE best resource on the net for in depth Yoga practice. 

This article

is long, but it explains Yoga Nidra in more detail then you would ever need.  Take time to read it and absorb it.

I hope some of the information I have given you helps a little.  It's not the easy way out.  You may have to sacrifice a higher standard of living in order to live a more peaceful life resulting in more restful sleep.  Really, though, how good is life if you are not in a state of mind to enjoy it?

Sutra 2.9 - Desire

2.9 Flowing by its own energy, established even in the wise and in the foolish, is the unending desire for life.

Desire is the driver of Karma.  By it's motivations, we carry out the actions that effect our lives, both present and future.  Sutra 2.9 states that desire is a self perpetuating trap, set out by us, with no one immune to it's effects.  The cycle of desire works by fooling us into thinking it can be fulfilled by external materiality.  In truth it traps in the cycles of Karma.

Karma is a misunderstood concept.  Most think that it's something as simple as cause and effect.  Karma, in relation to the Vedas, is the complete construct of our existence.  It plays out in the form of our subconscious motivation's effects on the world.  Think of karma as the framework in which our lives unfold.  For instance, a tunnel is one path through the mountain, but it can take many possible directions.  Give your willpower a pickax, and start digging through the mountain of possibilities of life.  You do not know what kind of rock you will run into as you dig.  You may run into a diamond, or your tunnel will collapse in on you.  Your desire takes in certain directions, but no matter what direction you do in, there will always be more dirt, more rock, or a gaggle or Morlocks. 

Over time, you arms will tire from all that digging.  When we remove desire from the equations, we realize that all we ever needed was at the top of the mountain.  Through the process of Yoga, we can work to mitigate our desires and climb to the top of the mountain and enjoy the view.

On a practical level, the process of Yoga turns our attention inward instead of outward.   To understand the root cause of desire, we must examine ourselves through meditation.  Once we know what desires cause us pain, we work to detach ourselves from them.  When we know what desires give us fulfillment, we work toward them.  Santosha, or contentment, is a quality yogis try to cultivate, and is one of the virtues discussed later in book two.  When we get to that point, I will show you how to put down your pick ax and fasten you climbing shoes.

Sutra 2.8 - Aversion. Run Away!!

2.8 Aversion is the magnetic pattern which clusters in misery and pushes one from such experience.

This Samskara is self explanatory, and in my opinion, the easiest to identify.  Aversion is simply avoiding things that we need to confront, but refuse to, so life keeps putting them in our path until we deal with them.  This is also a difficult Samskara to deal with because it often buried in the same pile of emotions as attachment. 

Aversion and attachment are different sides of the same coin as far as Yoga is concerned.  Think of aversion as sort of a reverse attachment.  Anything that we give our attention to and causes us to take an action is attachment.  In my case, I do not like bees that much.  Yellow jackets seem to have an affinity for stinging me.  While I was living in Wisconsin, I worked for the Milwaukee County Parks system.  People would rent out picnic areas and I was in charge of emptying the trash cans at the end of the day.  Yellow Jackets were always there, feasting on the leftover soda.  I never got stung emptying a trash can, but the fear of the bees followed me.  Fast forward to my first home.  I had a fairly good sized yard that ground squirrels would dig holes in.  After the ground squirrels left, yellow jackets would make their home inside these holes.  Here comes innocent me, mowing the lawn, and all it took was running over the hole to get stung a few times.

I thought I was out of the woods when I moved to northern Arizona,  I sat on my front porch thinking "there is no lawn to mow!  HaHa!"  Well, a nest of yellow jackets decided to make their home under the porch, and I got sung with a whole bunch of irony.

I still don't like bees all that much, but I was able to work through some of my irrational fear.  Aversion can be a good thing, if it is rational.  I'm sure you avoid sticking your head in the oven on full blast, that is common sense.  Do you actively avoid using your oven though?  You learn how to use it correctly.  In my case, I developed a health respect for the bees.  I also will not buy a house with a lawn ever again.

Perfection - Ron Swanson Style

"Things are they way they ought be, otherwise they would be different" was something Goswami Kriyananda said.  It speaks to how we are all in search of some kind of perfection.  I have an interesting concept for you.  What if things are already perfect?  All the world, it's problems, and our expectations are just projections we place on life.  The body builder looks for perfection through diet and exercise.  The engineer looks for perfection by trying to achieve one hundred percent efficiency.  Western life, in general, is one linear path with goals placed as milestones along the way.

In Kriya Yoga, we work with the concept of duality.  The world is very real, but it molds itself to how we perceive it.  The duality disappears when the divider of our perceptions is removed, allowing our inner world to reflect the outer world.  In Zen Buddhism, this concept is like asking if the map matches the landscape.  The map is in our head, but is it easier to change the landscape to match our map, or the other way around? 

I've been watching Parks and Recreation on Hulu now for about a month.  Ron Swanson is my favorite character.  Here we have man that we could call "perfect" at the beginning of the series because he already is in touch with who he is.   As the series progresses he does not change that much until he faces some existential crisis.  For instance, when he runs into his ex-wives, both named Tammy, his personality completely changes.  So, Ron may appear perfect on the outside, but really it's external factors that dictate who he is. 

We go through our lives thinking that there is some sort of perfection that we can reach.  It gives us purpose, but is it obtainable?  What would we do with ourselves if we reached perfection?  Society does a good job of molding us to it's version of perfection through work, family and law.  If this were the path to perfection, then why has it not been achieved?  Well, it's already perfect.

The Pittfalls of Yoga

I would be a liar if I told you that the path of Yoga was perfect and without it's pitfalls.  These obstacle exists solely to keep us pressing on to the final goal.  Yoga itself is a means to an end, but it's easy to get caught in some of the quagmires listed below.  The list is in chorological order in which I have experienced them.

The first pitfall is the initial novelty of meditation wearing off.  The first time I sat down to do Kriya Yoga, I got a taste of what it was like to do self introspection.  In a sense, the feelings that I had that first time were a tease.  It's like having a juicy steak slathered in butter dangled in front of your face, but then having it ripped away.  This is a test of dedication.  Medication is very "two steps forward and two steps back" process. I have come to the conclusion that there are no real setbacks, just different sides of the whole we need to see.  The key here is to not get caught replicating the same results.

The second pitfall is the inevitable amount of repressed subconscious crap that comes to the surface.  Take a few minutes and read

this article

.  Take note that the prisoners taken on meditation retreats where calm, but still exhibited signs of psychosis and mania.  When I read this, I slapped my palm against my forehead and thought:  Gee, you take prisoners on a retreat and make them self aware,  what the hell do you think was going to happen?  I predict there will be a story about how cooperate meditation retreats result in a loss of employment and productivity.  This will of course be blamed on the meditation and not the fact that the employees realized their jobs suck.  Whatever baggage you have will come to the surface and you may not even know what the hell it is.  The key is to address it, no matter how painful it is.  You will have to address it at some point when circumstances trigger the same emotions to come to the surface.

The third major pitfall is the bliss experienced after meditating for a while.  Yoga activates certain centers in the central nervous system that are responsible for intense pleasure.  It's better than any drug you could possible think of, you can access it whenever you want, and you never run out.  This is mistaken for enlightenment, but it is not.  I remember this would happen to me when I was working help desk at one of my jobs.  Here everything was melting down around me, but all I could do was sit there in blissful paralysis.  It's hard not to get stuck here, but if you keep working in the world, you will adjust and be able to carry out your daily routine.  Cravings for materialism will diminish and this is natural.  We live in a material world, so stay a material girl if you feel fulfilled.

The final pitfall is isolation.  It's inevitable that we will want to be alone when we turn inward.  Some schools of Yoga teach that extreme isolation and meditating hours a day, is the way it should be.  We see pictures of Buddhist and Yogic monks sequestered in the Himalayas, envious of their solitude.  As we become more isolated, the less we are able to do good in the world.  We need to stay in the world to teach, help others and live out our lives.  Working and raising families are no less of a divine path than sitting in a cave on a mountain top.

I'm not trying to scare you away from doing Yoga, but I have to be honest.  That is another symptom: It will become very hard to lie. 

Taking Control of Your Personal Narrative

If we were to write a story about ourselves, what would it look like?  I like to refer to this story is our personal narrative.  It's a script that we follow based on the story of our lives as we perceive it through our memories.  Recently, I stumbled accrosse an interesting You Tube channel called

Spartan Life Coach

 run by a man name Rich Gannon.  I like his videos because they combine cognitive behavioral techniques with Buddhist philosophy.  He also has a take no BS approach to his coaching.  He mentioned the subject of changing our personal narrative.  For instance, if you were to write your life story over again, what would it look like?

From a Yogic perspective, we do something similar.  Instead of writing a new story, we erase the pages all together so that the book of our life is blank.  Have you ever seen the show "Once Upon a Time"?  This last season, there was a character called The Author that was responsible for writing down the narratives of each character in the TV series.  If you have not seen it, it's basically about Disney characters coming to life in the real world, with flashbacks to their lives in the fairytale world.  Kind of like Lost, but with wizards.  The villains of the show hijacked The Author so that he could write them their own personal happy endings.  In the end, the characters destroy The Author's quill so that the future could never be writing again.  I guess it's some sort of free will analogy.

When I was attending Kriya Yoga Seminary School, Goswami Kriyananda mentioned an interesting technique.  He suggested the we write down all the painful memories we had in our lives and go through them one by one in meditation.  During the meditation session, you visualize a different outcome to these painful memories, so that the cumulative effect changes the person who you are now. 

It makes sense.  We live in the present, but the past is a collection of memories and the future is nothing more than expectation.  Others like to hijack our personal narratives in the form of judgments against us.  Some of use have control of our own personal narrative, so the opinions of others will not effect out self concept.   Most of us do not.  Society grabs a hold of the magic quill of our perception and begins to write the narrative for us.  Deep down we may know that this narrative is wrong, which causes us to live in fear, doubt and states of anxiety. 

Think about who you are.  Are you happy?  Do you base you decisions on the past?  If not, it's time to take control of your narrative.  The story you write in the present will determine who you become in the future.  I think we all deserve our happy ending.

Why Dudes Don't Do Yoga

The start of Yogic tradition cannot be dated because the ancient Vedic traditions were passed down from teacher to student in the oral tradition.  I was not until around 250 AD that the Yoga Sutras were written by the author, or authors Pentanjali.  Gurus could be either men or women, but men made up the bulk of teachers.  I could go further into the social structure of Vedic culture, but I won't for brevities sake. 

Flash forward to the 20th century.  Gurus from India came to America to spread the word of Yoga.  You had Paramhansa Yogananda, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Swami Vivekananda to name a few.  When Yoga was embraced by the counter culture movement, it was stripped of it's traditional aspects like spiritual discipline and shunning of intoxicants.  What was the original eight limbs of yoga, became one mainstream branch of Yoga, called Hatha Yoga.  Now, when I mention Yoga to people, they think of it as a bunch of stretches and poses.  I don't know how this happened, but somewhere between 1970 and now, Yoga became entwined with feminism.  Maybe it's just the ideological alignment with the counter culture and it's roots back to liberalism. 

So what is a dude to do?  If you want to build body mass, Hatha Yoga is not the way to go.  From the outside looking in, a Yoga class looks nothing more like a ballet class.  This is why I try to focus on the Yoga Sutras.  Hatha Yoga is introduced around 1500 AD as a method to prepare the body for long bouts of meditation.  It's not a means to an end in itself. 

If you are a man, consider this:  Yoga works to help us overcome emotionality based decision making, and replace it with rationality.  How often do we see people making decisions based off emotionality?  We are so conditioned to be in tuned with our feelings, that we mistake them for a reliable compass for decision making.  Are you following your true instinct, or your emotional instinct?  If you do not do the work to become self aware, you will never know. 

If there are other reasons why, please comment below.  I would like to know so that I can make traditional Yoga more palatable to men.

Sutra 2.7 - Attachment.

2.7 Attachment is that magnetic pattern which clusters in pleasure and pulls one towards such experience.

What does it mean when you are attached to something?  What is detachment?  In Sutra 2.7, we see that this Sutra equate attachment to a magnetic force, not something that your are stuck to like glue.  I like this analogy because it shows there are differing levels of attachment.  The closer a piece of metal gets to a magnet, the stronger the attachment.

Our attachments have roots in biology.  The pleasure centers of our brain release dopamine to reward us with pleasurable sensations.  Things like drugs and exciting experiences build up cravings in our biology, giving us the desire for repitition.   See my blog post

Happieness and the Persuit of Novelty

. 

When we start doing meditation, two things happen: we begin to feel a sense of mindful stability and all the things we were repressing begin to surface.  Out attachments surface as thoughts in our head of things we would rather be doing, music we like, or thinking about what just happened on the last episode of The Walking Dead.  It's very hard to get these thoughts out of your head.  Once the seed of a thought is planted, it germinates into a plant, that grows into other thoughts.  Before you know it, you went from thinking about some TV show to "what's for dinner?".  When you first start meditating, it's not that the mind is noisier, you are now aware of what is going on at the surface.

So how do we detach ourselves?  We work on letting the thoughts go through the mind like a river.  You sit at the bank of the river and let the thoughts flow by without putting any effort into stopping them.  See, thoughts are like the waves in the ocean, they rise and fall.  If you try to get rid of a thought, you will just be throwing more rocks into the pond. 

A detached life is not an apathetic life.  We confuse excitement for happiness.  True happiness is something that does not stop after the experience has ended.  It roles on from moment to moment.  We call this ananda in Yoga and it loosely translates to "bliss".  We can hang on to this bliss in our daily lives, and feel fulfilled.   This is not enlightenment though.  We still have to work in the world to fulfill our karma.  Unfortunately, many people get hung up on this bliss and withdraw from the world altogether.  These are the people that run off and join a beat farm and change their name to Stardust Happyfeet. 

As 311 Said "Keep my feet on the ground, keep my head in the clouds"

Sutra 2.6 - PC Load Letter

2.6 Egoism is the identification of the power that knows with the instruments of knowing.

Umm...  Say what?  Yeah, more Yoga double speak.  Don't worry, Office Space to the rescue!

This cult classic basically got popular over time, to the point it was quoted ad nauseum.  I was cool before it was cool because I saw it in the theater!  I walked out of there kinda meh, because it was just as I got out of college and before I entered the work force.  Five years later, while working at a realtors office, the people became a self parody by making stupid computer jokes based on the movie.  If you have not seen it, do it.

So Peter does his whole hypnosis thing and wakes up and his I-don't-give-a-fuckery ensues.  Day after day he has being going to the same job as a coder, working on the formerly apocalyptic Y2K bug fix.  His ego, or sense of who he think he should be based on his experiences, gets fundamentally altered to what he wants to be.  So the ego is a construct of the memories and experiences it identifies with.  In Peter's case, that's working a job he thinks he needs to survive, but never really wants.  After his hypnosis, his ego identifies with his true desires to do nothing.

The power that knows is the bridge between the instruments of knowing, which are the five senses.  Yoga differentiates between the senses and the mind.  The senses operate on a subconscious level, and as we meditate, we bring those operations into our awareness.  This gives us more control over how we react to situations, or, make us stop leading a double life. 

I give you full permission to destroy the printer in your office.  If it's like the one in Office Space, it probably should be replaced.

A proposition for mental health care reform.

Our mental health care system is a mess here in the United States.  First we have the shame of having to deal with mental illness in an unforgiving society and secondly, access to mental health care has become unreachable.  Most psychiatrists have become glorified pill pushers, more then eager to put a label on patients.  If you are lucky, you may find a drug that will help you with your depression, bipolar or anxiety, only to have it not work.  Time to move on to the next drug and ride the shitty-go-round of detox.

I think it is time for us in the spiritual community, especially us in the meditative and holistic areas, to give back.  The problem is that our practices tend to fall into the fuzziness of mysticism and spirituality and are dismissed a new age hoopajoo by the established psychiatric community.

Do not get me wrong, there are a lot of therapists out there that do a great job of teaching cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, but access to these people are limited to those who can afford them or those who happen to find them.

I have developed a program to deal with PTSD.  Like I have said in many of my posts, it is possible to induce a delta brain wave state of consciousness, then use various techniques to remove subconscious blockages.  This in turn rewires our neurobiology.  Over time, we can teach people to use different techniques, internalize them, and eventually cure their condition.  Yes, I said cure. 

I am going to volunteer at a local veterans center to try this program on some of our returning veterans.  If you have noticed the sorry state of the VA, you will see what a giant clusterfuck the whole thing is.  Hopefully, overtime, the Yoga community can come off it's spiritual high horse and do some good.

Sutra 2.4 and 2.5 - Ignorace is Bliss

2.4 Ignorance is the breeding place for all the others whether they are dormant or attenuated, partially overcome or fully operative.
2.5 Ignorance is taking the non-eternal for the eternal, the impure for the pure, evil for good and non-self as self.

Paramahansa Yogananda once said that ignorance is the greatest sin.  The simple fact that we do not know something, or do not bother to get to the correct answer ourselves, leads to much of the suffering we experience. 

An example I can think of is narrative.  We all have some sort of personal narrative that we run through in our daily lives.  It is the narrative of our own being as lived through our cumulative experiences.  With every passing day, we add to our own narrative, but most of us tend to keep adding pages to the same old story. 

Sutra 2.5 states: we mistake the non-eternal for eternal.  How much of an impact does a traumatic event have on us throughout the rest of our life?  Anyone with post traumatic stress disorder can tell you that they re-live them as though they happened the same day.  Soldiers returning from battle are so hard wired with adrenaline, there is no realistic way they can ever reintegrate back into civilian live.  Or is there?  We can actually go into our subconscious and break down hidden barriers within ourselves to dramatically change at the surface level.

These differing levels operate as active or inactive.  In Yoga, we try to live our lives in the present and overcome these obstacles as they are placed in our path.  As we become more aware, the obstacles seem to get bigger, but we are just noticing them more.  My first car was an old 1986 Ford Escort station wagon with power nothing and an AM radio.  Since the car did not have power steering, I just got used to it.  When I got into a car with power steering, I almost tore the steering wheel off, not being used to using less force.  Years later, when my fuel pump blew out, I lost power steering that I had taken it for granted.  So it goes with digging through the mind.

Impurity in Yoga refers to any matter "tainted" by the association with our individual thought.  See, at it's basic level, all matter is the same.  Thought, energy and materiality function according to the consciousness we project on to them.  Mystically speaking, this is refereed to is "The Vale".  It's the vale of ignorance metaphorically pulled over our minds that blurs our inner sight.

In my post about "What Would Mumrah Say About the Nature of Evil"  I go into greater detail about the relativity of evil.  If we are able to get past our own biases, we can see the greater universal definition of good and evil.  Later down the path, the Yogi is even asked to transcend the attachment to both of these dueling forces.  I know that statement goes against the grain of what we are taught as children: Be good in all circumstances.  Too bad the world at face value does not give us the opportunity to do that without great cost.

Don't sweat this too much.  Everyone is ignorant at some level or another.  Ignorance is bliss, so enjoy it while you have it.

Yoga for Athiests and Agnostics

Religion Vs. Atheism.  This is one of those hot potato subjects that I don't understand why we even have a debate about it.  Maybe it has to do with control and the culture war we are going through.  I guess there are some who like to have control and push their worldview on to others.  In a perfect world (queue sparkle music) I think we would get to the point where we could at least leave each other alone to live our own lives as we saw fit, but were still able to have civil discussions.  I partially blame the infusion of emotion into debate, rather than relying on logic and common sense. 

So can one do Yoga and not believe in God.  My answer is, of course you can.  Anecdotally, I know of many people that do some sort of meditative practice and adhere to no religion what so ever.  We can even break Yoga's moral rules down into basic ethics, which the basics can be found in multiple religions.  It comes down to weather you are willing to look for similarity or difference in things.  I personally am wired to find similarities, which is why I look for scientific explanations to what may be involved with the Yogic process. 

The problem I have seen, all to often, is that people in the mystical fields tend to try to fit their practices into some sort of pseudo-scientific template in order to get validation from a skeptical community.  Some skeptics, on the other hand, will never bother to explore something with an open mind. 

The issue is that Yoga and spirituality in general is a personal experience and at best, you will get anecdotal evidence that will never stand up to traditional scientific scrutiny.  Spectral imagining equipment has gotten better pictures of brain activity in certain states of consciousness, so there is something going on at the biological level.  Traditional Yoga is woven into the Vedic tradition, which inevitably involves Hindu deities.  The question you have to ask yourself is: Can you see past that in order to work with it at it's fundamental level.  I try my best to keep my posts as secular as possible, but in some instances, I have to use God because it fits into my own understanding of what I perceive, however, I try to keep an open mind to the fact that it might be all invalidated. 

So, if you are reading my blog and are a natural skeptic, thank you for being there.  Spiritualists need to be kept in check because I have seen all to often the pliable state a spiritual seeker can be in.  People who are sincerely seeking answers to life's greatest mysteries are prayed upon by huskers all the time.  Too bad.  There is so much out there that is good.

Sutra 2.3 - Get a Clue

2.3 The five afflictions are ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion, and the desire to cling to life.

Time to start digging in and getting our hands dirty.  Sutra 2.3 states the five kinds of afflictions that all thought can be categorized into in one form or another.  As I stated in the last book, thought categorization is the second step that leads to deeper meditation right after being able to sit down and do it.  There is a set order to meditation, which we will get into later.  For now, I will go over how this thought categorization works when it comes to the five afflictions.

When we speak of thought as matter with concioness impressions attached, we are looking for the thoughts that cause us to take physical action first.  These are the thoughts that work their way into the material world.  Without any action, the thoughts linger in the consciousness and have little noticeable impact on our daily lives.  Let's use the movie Clueless as an example.

Ignorance is Yoga is simply the fact of not knowing.  We do Yoga in the first place to seek knowledge.  Cher is ignorant to anything outside her small constructed world.  How often do we seek to find things that fit our own personal narrative?  Have your heard the phrase "ignorance of the law is no excuse?"  Well, excuses aside, most go through life, living day to day out of oblivious habit.

Cher tries to set up two of her teachers, only to have it backfire on her.  The egoism associated with thinking that she could have done this in the first place shows that, like her, we have a strong sence of I.  If you look at my post about the map of the Yogic mind, the ahamkara is the identification of the limited self vs. the Bhudhi, which is untarnished intellect.

Cher has a huge closet of crap, uh, I mean cloths.  How easy would it be for her to give that stuff up?  Attachment is the main cause of suffering in the Buddhist tradition.  We work in meditation to face our attachments to objects.  How do you know if you are attached to something?  If you can think of something, probably the first thing that comes to mind is some sort of attachment.  Detachement is a larger subject which is covered in later sutras.

You would think that aversion would be the opposite of attachment, but they are one in the same.  When we go our of our way to avoid things, it shows that we still have some sort of attraction to them by means of giving the object of avoidance attention.  So Cher couldn't accept the results of her drivers test or whatever.  She tries to avoid the inevitable result.

The desire to cling to life.  This sounds kind of morbid, but when we put it into the context of reincarnation, the soul has no death or birth.  Advanced yoga practitioners, who have reached the state of Samadhi know that death is just another transition, like going to sleep.  What would happen of we did no know if we will wake up in the morning? Sweet dreams.

The Power of Shame

Shame is a powerful thing.  It's serves as a tool to manipulate us into action against our own intrinsic values by cutting us off from human connection.  That connection is something that is innate,   however, from a spiritual standpoint, can be one of the most damaging things we experience.

How powerful is shame?  Look at how many of us are forced to lead double lives out of fear of losing personal connection.  First, we need to have connections to others.  The more open an honest our connections are, the happier we are.  If we live in shame of who we are, what our truth is, we begin to lie.  These lies begin to weave a dark web of deception around our true nature, and we forget ourselves in the process.

It's saddens me that spiritual traditions have been used as a tool of shame and control for thousands of years.  Jesus was an example of a person who lived without shame and even whent out of his way to live with society's outcasts.  We have many who are cast out of our society in the name of Christ, ironically, becoming the modern day lepers.

Where does shame start?  With the parents.  I do not have any children at this point and I do portend that I know how to raise yours, so lets look at this from our perspective.  What in your life have you done or not done because of the values your parents have instilled in you?  In Yoga, often the major samksaras we deal with relate to our parents.  For instance, my father was a big believer in the school or hard knocks.  He was abandoned by his mother and father at an early age, raised in a Catholic orphanage by abusive nuns, then did a tour of duty in Vietnam.  You could only imagined how that made him feel about life.  He was intent on setting the bar so high for me, that I could not meet his expectations.  Instead of trying harder to reach them, I gave up, rebelled, and did whatever I could to get attention by going in the opposite direction.

As we grow into early adulthood, the influence of others on who we are begins to take shape through peer groups.  In middle school and high school, we form relationships with groups of friends that can lead us down a certain direction in life.  For instance, in my case, I ended up with a group of friends that lead me down the wrong path.  They gave me the attention and validation my father never gave me.  I did a lot of things I was not proud of and when worse came to worse, many of them bolted when real friends were needed.  When I was given the opportunity to do the right thing, the thing that I knew in my soul to be right but the shame of the peer group would often win out.

How often do we see businesses shut down for having an opposing belief?  In those cases, shame is used as a weapon to coerce people to take a stand or lose their livelihood.  Technology has made it easy for us to shame others like a swarm of bees going in for the kill, shrouded behind the cloak of electronic anonymity.  

Fear, novelty and shame are used by organization and businesses to coerce money out of us.  How many of you have seen that SPCA commercial using Sarah Mclaclan's "Eyes of the Angle" song with the shaking puppies to shame you into donating?  Yoga is just as guilty.  Look at the models used to sell everything from Yoga matts to Yoga pants.   Yoga is more about fashion then actual practice. 

Don't be ashamed of yourself.  Work on your inner self to remove layers of sham imposed on you through years of conditioning.  When the real you begins to emerge, shame will naturally fall away because you will intuitively know you are doing the right thing.  A life without shame is a life of freedom, a life we are all meant to live.

Sutra 2.2 - TBA

2.2 This discipline is practised for the purpose of acquiring fixity of mind on the Lord, free from all impurities and agitations, or on One's Own Reality, and for attenuating the afflictions.

Through the process of Yoga, thin mind will become pure.  I don't mean pure in a Snow White G-rated no more Rambo Movie type way, but free from attachment to all the reactions built up in the mind over time. 

I find it interesting that this Sutra translation has decided to capitalize the phrase "Ones Own Reality".  Generally, when translating the Yoga Sutras, capitalization is meant to represent the larger whole, or the esoteric meaning of the souls journey to that larger whole. 

What is your reality?  Yoga states that your reality is not the same as other's reality.  Of course there are some things that we all can relate to, but on a subtler level, these perceptions are stored in our subconscious mind as impressions that we may not understand ourselves until we dig them out.  I think I may have used this example in my commentary in book one, but it's worth repeating.  Yoga is like a shovel that we use to dig beneath the surface of the consciousness.  You might hit a power line and get zapped, or maybe a gas line blows up in your face.  The Sutras are the diggers hotline you should have called.  It's the fire department that runs to the rescue when you blow up the neighborhood.  It is the pair of rubber gloves that protect you from the electric shock.

The Lord is generic in Yoga.  It's not what you would consider the typical embodiment of the Judeo-Christian God.  Yogic teachers in the Indian traditions will tell a practitioner to use a particular deity from the pantheon of Hindu gods.  Buddhists are going for absolute annihilation of the soul.  Sounds like a good time huh?  The Absolute is as abstract is it can get.  Once it is put into words, it loses it's meaning because at that point, the Absolute abstractions has been boxed in.  It's boxed in by religion, narrow-mindedness, prejudice and even your own up brining. 

Book tow will give us specifics on how we can clear away the muck and understand.

Sutra 2.1 - The Basics of Spiritual Dicipline and Intro to Book 2

2.1 Austerity, the study of sacred texts, and the dedication of action to God constitute the discipline of Mystic Union.

Time to move on to Book 2 of the Yoga Sutras.  Book One focuses more on the philosophical side of Yoga, while Book Two focuses more on spiritual practices and disciplines.  Just like in Book One, there are not any specific breathing, poses, or meditation techniques given.  It's just another basic guideline for practice. 

Sutra 2.1 opens the book with a broad brush stroke, giving us the basic types of discipline one can use to reach enlightenment.  Some schools preach using one, parts of others or all of them.  I think any practitioner should use the vast array of techniques and methods to see which ones works best.  When you find one that does the trick, pound on it like a jackhammer.  The tricky thing about Yoga is that it's not a linear path.  Many times it will seem like you have taken two steps forward, only to realize that you lost what you had.  Sometimes things will happen out of nowhere and you can spend years trying to get the same experience only to find it was not as great as the first time.

Austerity, in Yoga has different levels.  Mental austerity is the process of changing unneeded though patterns.  Physical austerity is trying to get the most out of using the least.  I have yet to see a Yogi on Hoarders.  Verbal austerity means being conscious of our words and the impact they have on the world around us.  So we learn to do more with less. 

Study of sacred text does not limit itself to the Vedas.  I think of it as indulging yourself in anything that expands your self awareness.  If you are an engineer, have you bothered to read the Twilight series?  We love to mock it, but it is still something you have yet to experience for yourself.  It's the sacred text of sparkly vampires. 

Dedication of actions to God is another meaning of detachment.  Working in the world in the light of truth without regard to outcome and selfless action are examples, if not the same thing. 

Sutras 1.51 and 1.52 - Book One and Done!

1.50. The habitual pattern of thought stands in the way of other impressions.

1.51. With the suppression of even that through the suspension of all modifications of the mind, contemplation without seed is attained.

Here we are, the final two Sutras of Book One.  These two sutras sum up the rest in a very simple way, one which I have spoken about in many of my posts:  you are not the sum of all your thoughts.  In Sutra 1.50, the key work is habitual.  Our bodes do thing out of habit, and that is a good thing.  If we had to consciously make a decisions about every move we made, life would be impossible.  Habit gives us the efficiency to live a life beyond a physical existence.

Yoga gives us a powerful tool to change these patterns using our own will.  In my opinion, Karma will end up changing these patterns one way or another through circumstance or cognitive dissonance.  Through the study of this first book, we have learned that the ultimate goal of our existence it to connect with pure consciousness, or that little part of it that lies in all of us. 

Sutra 1.51 states that once we are able to suppress all these thought patterns, we reach that level of purity.  Once we can hold that level indefinably, we are free.  I do not like the translation in the sutra, specifically the word suppression.  It gives the connotation that we are trying to push down something.  That is not the case.  We are trying to let go of something: every habitual thought we have in our mind.  Going back to my post on "Losing Your Marbles" we become the jar in the analogy: clear of all attachments and able to see things clearly. 

So, now on to Book 2.  I'm going to approach that a little differently then these posts.  I will be using some of my favorite books and website as direct references to suggested practices that accompany each Sutra, if applicable.