Patanjali Yoga Sutra: Dispassion
Yoga Sutra 1.12:
“That stilling of the movements of the mind is through practice and dispassion.”
The Yoga journey can be seen as two wings of a bird. The first wing is practice, effort and dedication called abhyasa.
The second is dispassion, non-attachment, letting go, called vairagya.
Abhyāsa has two main facets. The first is daily practice, sadhana, whose root “sad” means effort. Sadhana is the consistent energy we invest in our daily practice with the understanding a practice or group of practices are maintained with enthusiasm and discipline until we experience their full benefit.
The second facet of abhyasa is conscious witnessing in daily living where we make a consistent effort to observe the movements of the mind while neither expressing, repressing or identifying with them, thereby gradually reducing their influence and their ability to generate limitation and suffering.
While practice is a foundation of the spiritual journey, it must be balanced with dispassion, vairāgyam. To gain material success at the level of the personality, effort and repetition are usually sufficient. At the level of the conditioned personality, that which we seek is outside of us in our surroundings, and the more effort we invest, the more likely we are to succeed. In the spiritual realm, however, that which we seek is our own true Being, already present and waiting to be recognized clearly. What stands between us and this recognition is attachment to all the things in our surroundings that we believe will make us happy and complete. Vairāgyam is seeing and releasing the mistaken belief that relationships, material possessions, personal power and self-image can provide the happiness and peace we seek.
Therefore, practice and dispassion are the two wings of the bird of Yoga that allow us to fly toward freedom.
Joseph Le Page
Forgiveness Meditation
How do we release the pain of the past?
Releasing the pain of the past occurs through forgiveness, remembering that forgiveness has a special meaning within Yoga. We envision forgiveness in 5 steps:
First, we recognize that all beings seek happiness and avoid suffering. People don’t hurt others intentionally, but as a form of defense to avoid suffering.
Second, we recognize that the negative actions of others are reflections of their level of consciousness and has nothing to do with us personally. Anyone who came across that person at that time will receive the same treatment as a reflection of their level of awareness.
Third, we recognize that we place ourselves in contact with difficult people or situations person as part of our own process of Self-understanding. We give ourselves the lessons we need to reveal limiting beliefs \calling for release. An example of a limiting belief is: “I can only experience love if someone else loves me”. We repeat these until we finally see the limiting pattern that needs to be released.
Fourth, with this understanding of how pain and misunderstanding occur, we recognize that, at times, others have felt hurt by us. For our part, it was not our intention to hurt anyone, but to be happy and avoid suffering by protecting ourselves. Our words and actions reflected our consciousness at that time, which was the result of conditioning which we received unconsciously. Now, as our level of consciousness expands, we wouldn’t speak or act in the same way. Embracing our own process of transformation, we offer forgiveness to ourselves.
Finally, we recognize that there were situations in the past when we feel hurt by others, and we may still feel the pain of those situations. Through our own process of Self-growth, we see that others were not trying to hurt us, but only to be happy and avoid suffering by protecting themselves. Their attitudes, words and deeds reflected their own limiting beliefs, which they may now be releasing. We also see that we placed ourselves in those situations to see and release our own limiting beliefs.
With this understanding, we offer forgiveness to others and thereby release the pain of the past. For a deeper understanding of the process of forgiveness, let’s experience a guided meditation by Joseph Le Page.
What is perfect health from the Yoga Perspective?
From the Yoga perspective, perfect health is the integration of the five bodies, the five facets of our being called the five koshas.
These facets are your physical being, your energetic being, comprised of breath and subtle energy, your psyche-motional being, your body of wisdom and clarity, and your spiritual being, comprised of all your innate positive qualities.
We experience this integration of these five bodies with the following gesture and affirmation:
Place your hands in Hakini mudra and repeat three times aloud or silently:
“I experience complete health and healing through integrating all the dimensions of my being.”
Meditation for the perfect Health
We experience this integration through meditating on these five levels with the support of Hakini mudra.
Learn more: Mudras for Healing and Transformation
