YOGA AND CHANGE

‘The spiritual lifestyle is designed to constantly confront the practitioner with his or her psycho-mental tendencies (repeating patterns) thus producing a peculiar emotional tension, which gradually undermines the habit structure and in due course provokes a crisis by which the existing disequilibrium (tensions, rumblings) are sought to be reduced. Theoretically, the crisis can induce either a nervous or psychotic breakdown (chaos) or a spiritual conversion (higher level of order). Here conversion is not the ordinary event of accepting a new belief system, but one’s deep commitment to the spiritual (yogic) process of transformation. In practise, breakdown occurs only rarely because of the gradualness of the spiritual process, which is largely self-regulated by the innate wisdom of the body, and also to some degree by the timely interventions of the adept (or teacher?). Yet, evidently, the spiritual process is not without its risks and dangers. It is intrinsically a crisis* provoking process that aims at the ultimate dismantling of the practitioner’s egocentric universe.’

*Crisis here means; turning point or decision time.

The above extract is from Holy Madness. By Georg Feuernstein.

I was washed up on the shores of yoga…!

I’d tried many things to find peace and contentment, most of which relied on paying someone and becoming more or less dependent on them, I didn’t like that…And although Yoga required a financial cost and a certain reliance on a teacher, it was not an indefinite ongoing process. It was something I was learning and something I could do myself.

Many of us come to Yoga because we think need something, we think something is missing perhaps. Imagine (if you can) someone that is very happy and content, who has everything they need. They come to a yoga class; they want to find out what it’s all about. If they stay long enough maybe they’ll stumble upon unresolved issues, things that were being ignored or avoided. Would they stay and do the work, or would they go away and say Yoga doesn’t work? Maybe there are people that are so blessed and fortunate they have no need to work on themselves at all? ☺

Does Yogic process work for somebody that doesn’t understand the principles underlying it? I believe it’s helpful to understand the principles. When you understand the underpinning elements of something you can make better decisions in the process. You tailor the practice to resolve and examine exposed behaviours that are keeping you stuck and unhappy.

Make up your own mind.

Terry