attachment and aversion

When was your best meditation?  Have you ever had an amazing spiritual experience, or even just deep relaxation after a yoga practice?

What I have noticed is that for me, my best and most interesting experiences come when I am very relaxed and "open".

This relates to ones regular practice in a number of ways.  In terms of the cultivation of asana, master Patanjali recommends that we become "steady and comfortable".

How amazing is this, that our yoga practice doesn't have to be a struggle?!  Of course, we could go too far in the other direction - all the way into thinking that there's no path whatsoever and just get lazy.  I don't think that this is what master Patanjali means, because in his classic text, there are many pairs of things to cultivate to keep us in balance - for instance Tapas (intense effort and austerity) should be balanced with Santosha (contentment with exactly where you are), Abhyasa (dedicated commitment to practice) should be tempered with Vairagya (relaxed, dispasionate non-attachment).

In this way, we can work toward a balance in our yoga practice - of working hard, but still being able to have fun with it.  Of relaxing, but not becoming a total sloth.

I think though, perhaps, that there is an even deeper level available here than even just "living in a balanced way".  The ancient texts speak of amazing realizations that can come upon one who follows the path of Yoga.  The only problem is that for many, it seems that the harder they try to reach these vast attainments, the further away they get.

In the classical yoga, it is said that in the center of your body is a spiritual spine, called the Sushumna Nadi.  When energy flows in this channel is when we have these sort of high states of awareness.  Many methods were known to the ancient yogis to facilitate energy to enter this central spine - they knew that you could induce altered states through sex, breathing exercises, sensory deprivation, fasting, and even drugs.  There's just one problem with these methods (as many modern practitioners can attest): They wear off.  The path of yoga was designed around the idea that perhaps there is a way to bring the prana into this spiritual column, and get it to stay there - producing a lasting feeling of meaning, beauty, and love that doesn't wear off.

If you've had one of these interesting spiritual states, you may have recognized that it's hard to locate your "self" during the period that it endures.  What makes these states so blissful - while you're in them, is that for a moment you stop being so "self-conscious".

What is so wrong with the "self"?  Nothing really - the only problem is that when I think "me", the energy of my body and mind contract, and I experience a small someone who is cut of from the grandness that is available.  The ancient yogis described this as a kind of choking off of that central channel.

The "grasping to a self" that we're talking about comes in two main forms - called Raga and Dvesha, or attachment and aversion.  Now, the goal of yoga is not to sort of "numb out", so attachment and aversion must mean something other than just "not caring very much either way".

In my own experience, these currents are basically just the energies of trying hard to make things different than they are.

What are we doing when we are trying to make things different than they are?   We are contracting ourselves.  We are either shrinking away from something, or trying to go and get something, but in either case, we are moving away from the place where the magic can happen - which is right here and now.

When one can truly relax into what's going on here and now - a strange thing happens - one doesn't become lazy, like "there's nothing at all to do because everything is fine so I'll just watch TV", instead, one often becomes filled with a sense of lightness, love, and luminosity.

Simply because one has softened the habitual need for things to be some other way, one has come into contact with the power to actually change things.  This is the power of centeredness, the power of being simultaneously empty, yet full of potential.

Inspired by my recent vacation, my intention for my own yoga practice has become simply this:  To stop trying so hard to slow down or speed up.  To stop trying entirely.  To rest into my yoga - even into the intensity of it, and move always from the center.