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Self Realization Through Yoga
Yoga has a number of exalted spiritual aims; Self-realization and spiritual illumination and enlightenment. All of these aims lead to knowledge, bliss and courage in facing life.
According to many of the great philosophies of the world the ultimate attainment in life is to ‘Know oneself. To oneself be true’.
Knowledge of who we are as an individual human being, and as universal being, the Self of highest consciousness, is the ultimate aim of yoga.
Self-realization gives us knowledge of where we have come from and where we are going. With true self-knowledge comes liberation from bondage to our own mental creations. We move into a truly powerful relationship with our Self all of life. The great sages say that it takes several lifetimes to reach this most exalted goal, connection to the ‘highest’, eternal, unchanging, blissful essence of us.
Enlightenment is the gradual attainment of knowledge and wisdom.
Enlightenment is the unfoldment of understanding that arises with time and experience. This process is aided by yogic practices. We develop a more illuminated approach to life; one that is well-informed and free from superstition and prejudice.
Enlightenment and Self-realization arise out of a search for knowledge. Behind this aim is the desire to be free from the pain of ignorance; to remove our inner darkness and to free ourselves from suffering at all levels, physical, mental-emotional and spiritual.
Great sages, seers, saints, yogis, gurus, teachers and other courageous explorers have experimented in methods of removing darkness and ignorance and increasing the life-force, light and love within us. They created various techniques, methods and paths that support us using self-effort to finding greater happiness and fulfilment in life.
The key to Self-realization is awareness. An example of enlightenment occurs when our awareness expands to the point that we can feel other beings as we feel ourself. In this way, our sense of who we are changes. We no longer feel that we are just a limited ego. We recognise our mortality and the fact that there is much more beyond this limited existence. We begin to see this little life as part of something greater. This is an enlightened realization.
Yoga provides us with a rich variety of techniques to clean out impurities in the body-mind, old patterns of thinking, emotion and behaviour.
Working on ourselves at this level allows us to discover the luminous intelligence that lies within us all. When we find and cultivate this aspect of ourselves, we create our own health, happiness and peace. We can then, in turn, convey to others.
Yoga gives us experiential knowledge, direct experience of ourselves, and life. It fosters our own awareness so that we can have our own experience and discover things for ourselves. In this way yoga removes ignorance and allows us to develop powerfully intuitive and creative lives. This process is one of moving towards a more enlightened blissful state that ultimately leads to Self-realization.
Yoga The Path to Universal Being
Yoga is the process of remembering our true nature as universal beings. Yoga teaches us to develop ourselves as both individual beings and as part of something greater, as universal beings. This process requires time, training and practice to attain the fruits of self-development and universal connection.
The result of yoga is the discovery of a deeper and more fulfilling connection with ourselves and with all of life. To feel disconnected from our selves, or from life, is our biggest source of pain. To consciously reconnect to our selves is ultimately the greatest joy, and leads to fulfilment, purpose and meaning in life. It gives us the capacity to use this life to unfold our highest potential and to truly support other beings.
The Yogic Path
The yogic journey begins with the individual personality seeking to understand and cultivate itself, to understand its place in life, and to understand where it has come from and where it is going to.
The individual personality is composed of a conscious body-mind. Embodied consciousness has limited self-awareness; that is, we can only feel a small part of ourselves. The majority of us is unconscious. It is the aim of yoga to illumine these unconscious parts, to make them conscious.
Yoga supports the gradual unfoldment of our unconscious parts, revealing these parts in a process of self-discovery that is ultimately joyful and fulfilling. This process unfolds in stages which are part of our natural growth and development. The addition of yoga to our lives supports and optimizes our growth and development.
The Three Stages of Growth
Initially we learn how to have a healthy body and a strong calm mind, and how to relate to the world with greater skill and awareness. This first stage of yogic exploration is aimed at developing a balanced, healthy and integrated individual personality.
The second stage of yogic study develops our relationship and connection with the higher and more universal aspects of ourself. This process can only really come about in an embodied and experiential sense when we have completed some preliminary work on the little body-mind. Prior to this, the universal self is just an intellectual concept rather than a lived presence.
The third stage of yogic study leads us to the final goal of yoga, in which we merge with the absolute, unlimited part of ourselves and realise that we are both the fish and the ocean. This is the ultimate attainment in yoga and only comes after we have done a great deal of work on ourselves. However, it is important to remember that this goal exists.
About the Author(s):
In 2004, Dr Swami Shankardev and Jayne Stevenson decided to pool their talents to create Big Shakti. They co-create various seminars and workshops, which Swami Shankardev presents throughout Australia, USA, Europe and India.
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