Spiritual yoga practice, part 5: the yoga sutras (asmita)

June 7, 4:48 PMTampa Spiritual Wellness ExaminerJesamine Mello

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The Ego can be quite a touchy subject. It can sometimes take itself very seriously. Just using the word "ego" with people can cause them to throw up walls of denial. But what is Ego? It is merely our awareness of something unique about our personal incarnation. It is through our personal incarnation that we experience Eternity. Through the freedom of our Awareness, we can experience both Duality and Eternity and either bondage or liberation.

Egoism is un-Consciously seeing through the chinks of Duality. It can be a result of complete ignorance of our Eternal nature or a momentary forgetting of It. When only Duality is perceived, we are trapped in the caverns, unconsciously engaged in melodramas we create. Bound by our chinks, we are deceived into believing that the universe is not as it should be: believing things like our childhoods weren't what they should have been; our relationships aren't what they should be; or that the world is not what it should be. Hence, we unconsciously resist Life and become trapped in a dualistic measure, bound by the perceived fortunes and misfortunes of the limited Ego. Egoism causes us to suffer crisis ---a confrontation with what is --- manifested in our lives as the likes of confusion, depression, anxiety, and rage.

The Universe is unfolding exactly as it "should be." The Universe Is. We are not here to fix it. We have only to Consciously align ourselves with it "as it is." To believe anything else is to be trapped in Blake's caverns of the mind. If we are to transcend dualistic thinking and see the world as infinite, we have to stop believing and unconsciously engaging in ego-responses such as "this is right" and "this is wrong." Instead, we must look at what is happening in terms of how a particular life experience transforms us. If we can see that everything that happens is part of our Path, we can accept it and surrender to it.

Surrender, however, is not about permanent dissolution of our self as an individual. All that we are surrendering are limited perceptions and egoistic determinations. Surrender is about expanding and deepening our self-concept through our Conscious participation in Life as it unfolds. Infinite Vision frees us from the limited ego and its expectations and empowers us to transform ourselves through every experience. Facing life Consciously under any circumstance: that is Freedom. To be Liberated, we have to be willing to give up everything - our past, our present, and our future - to our Process.

If we cannot psychologically surrender everything, then we are trapped. Whatever we refuse to surrender will keep us bound to it.