We practice hatha yoga, that is the yoga of putting our body in specific postures called asanas, for the most part as an end in itself. Make your body fit this specific asanas perfectly, and you will get some benefits, this belief says. So we struggle and strain, give up other passtimes, and if our belief is strong enough to overcome the pull of our habits, we arrive at a limber and peaceful body that is full of energy and free of tension. Nothing wrong with that.
But that is not the ultimate goal of yoga. As we train out mind to become aware of our asanas by being the silent witness to out body, we prepare out awareness to venture into a new frontier, the unknown country of our own mind.
When we are in relationhip with the world—and we are always in some relationship with the world—what is our mental posture? In the midst of an argument with our spouse, can we be silently aware of our mental posture, which is not only shaping our mind but the whole relationship? This silent awareness rises suddenly like an insight and grasps the totality of a situation by seeing all the fragments, me and the other, as a whole. One can’t will this awareness. One can only surrender to it by letting go of our mental posture. A mental posture is a tension in the mental body that can be released through silent awareness.
Mental postures are no singular objects like a physical posture, but emcompass both the subject and the object. A mental posture is both our “me” and the “other.” Our mind creates the world into its own shape or posture. The world appears to be many when there is only One.
So to be aware of this “world posture” we are being aware that we are creating and holding this posture. We are the world we are living in because we are creating the world we are living in—yet we remain unconscious of our own kingdom.
Becoming silently aware of this world posture is also being free from this world. In the momet of being aware, we create a hole in space where something entirelly new can happen. We can actually experience the creation of a new world where the past is not repeating itself in reruns of our old postures.
With the total silent awareness of our world posture, we open the door to the unknown. What world that is born out of this silent awareness will be a new possibility, one that we have not experienced before. But whatever it is, one thing is certain. The action that rises through the hole of still awareness is correct for that situation. And it will restore peace and love to your world.
How? Simply because peace and love is the true state of existence. This is the posture of God. He is perfectly seated in love, and when we become silently aware of our mental posture that divides our world into “me” and “them”, that posture just drops aware and we become God’s asanas.
Posted under General Observations
This post was written by ed on October 15, 2006
