Yoga Workshop, Espern, Hamar, December 2009 - Part Two

Yoga

Yoga is a science* developed to bring us to a point of self realisation. We move through different layers of awareness and sensitivity while watching the changes of  thought, impression, sensation arise and drop, only to leave us with what is. And there, we will see what is at the end of this journey to the Self.

The Difference Between Acceptance and ‘Doing Nothing’. 

Acceptance, as I talk about it, is not about accepting and doing nothing.  Acceptance in a spiritual sense, is engaged as a tool to help us remove judgement, not to remove appropriate  action. 

During the classes we are going to use the word ‘acceptance’. We are going to practice ‘acceptance’. This does not mean ‘do nothing’ and ‘I don’t care about children starving or injustices in the world’. That’s not what it means.

It means, that we can take in information, that we can hold it, that we can see the world for what it is, who we are, the dark, the light, we can hold it – and sit with it. With love, with compassion, with a deep acceptance that all of what is comes from ourselves, from our own distrust, from our own hates and jealousies, from our own fears and concerns, from being human.

Once we can bring the terror of our lives, of others lives in close to the heart centre – for it is only here that we can really try to understand anything – then we have a chance of acting from a place that is called ‘no action’.

That means we’ll be making decisions that are not based on the personal knee jerk reaction of the emotions or previous behaviour patterns. We won’t be doing anything for selfish gain. We will be able to see clearly, and there will be only one course of action to take. That is action in no-action.

Understandable as the emotions are, if we follow them as our one and only guide, we end up being a victim.

Triggers/knee jerk reactions

I see a girl in a short skirt and I say ‘tart’, then I label a human being and can not see the reality.

I see an expensive car and think, ‘oh, the man driving that car must be important.’

I don’t see an old man walking on the street, because he’s not important.

I hear a story of someone getting their bag stolen, and think ‘this all started with the foreigners started moving to the neighbourhood’.

What are your triggers? 

What are the thoughts you have running around your head in circles? 

What do you repeat to yourself as gospel truth day after day after day? 

What do you repeat when you see certain TV commercials, when someone pulls out in front of you in a car, when you pick up the phone to your mother, when you start cleaning up after dinner, when you go to the bathroom and shut the door? 

What's your first thought in the morning when you wake up?

What are the thoughts going on in your head, and are they exactly the same as yesterday?

Know thyself.

Begin with awareness. Awareness of yourself. Observation.

Then we move into acceptance. No judgement. Just a deep allowing of yourself, now that you’ve seen yourself and the way your mind works.

Yoga as we study it in the west, starts with the body and moves into the mind and emotions. And as I said earlier, many of you have been studying asanas for several years now. Its time to deepen our awareness.  


We start to recognise our lack of balance.  We start to identify where we have been picking up our information, and we begin to realise that perhaps, there are other points of view, other than our own. 


Part One of the Workshop
Part Three of the Workshop 


* The Science of Self Realisation