We are all just looking for peace.
That place where the mind stills and we feel content with who we are and all we have.
What I find in meditation can be satisfied for hours, maybe minutes maybe seconds by submitting to our wants.
To the calling of the mind to buy this, to buy that, to get this, to get that. To go here, to go there. To do this, to do that.
The mind is always calling us with it’s desires and we give in, not thinking we will be happy (though that’s what we are taught to think by marketers) but to have peace. To get to that place where all wants are satisfied and we feel complete.
That’s why people without partners know that they want to get married. It’s the end goal to not having to look and want and continually not know who they will end up with.
The mind has been uncontrolled for too long. It’s been afforded a long leash from who we really are and its getting out of hand. We buy things we can’t afford, compare holidays on social media and are never out of the tentacles of very smart marketers who know how to steal what little peace we do have and insite more wants, more needs.
We relate to each other, our family, friends, our children – from a constantly distracted place. We can’t stand to sit with our minds for even the length of a set of traffic lights. We need to be distracted because our mind is crazy, our mind is loud. Our mind says things that we cannot believe we would even think.
We try to avoid our mind through social media and with our emails and smartphones but that drives more content in, it stirs the pot until it bubbles over into anxiety, depression and overwhelm.
Society is becoming unwell. People are becoming mentally ill. Our bodies are manifesting what our mind is creating – stress and dis-ease.
The three first sutras in The Yoga Sutra explain why yoga is becoming so popular and why it is so desperately needed.
(Paraphrased from The Wisdom of Yoga, by Stephen Cope)
Now, the teachings of yoga
Now refers to the moment we’re finally willing to lift the lid and look inside. When we have had enough pain and insanity and suffering. We are ready to sit down in a room and negotiate. Now, the teachings of yoga will have some meaning.
Yoga is to still the patterning of consciousness
There’s a promise in this sutra. Wild mind can be tamed. Stilled. And this stillness sounds good. It sounds like rest. It sounds like happiness. Like an afternoon in a hammock.
Then pure awareness can abide in its very nature.
Then the witness abides in its very nature. Just seeing. Just knowing.
*the witness, or pure awareness, is the one who is calling your mind crazy in your own mind, who sees this insanity and knows it has to stop. Your true self is the witness.
Everything you have is inside of you. Everything you need is inside of you.
Meet you on the mat.
Namaste.
