More than 50 million Americans suffer with chronic pain, and chronic pain doesn't just hurt in the physical sense. it can also be responsible for loss of sleep, weight gain, anger, depression, despair and irritability. Yet I find people who chose not to get help for themselves because they think this is their trial in life, and they must ride it out to the end. What if, part of the test is to try to find a way to fix whatever is wrong? Patanjali states that yoga has two distinct purposes or goals. In Chapter II, verse 2 of the Yoga Sutra, he states that yoga's "purpose or goal is to cultivate the experience of equanimity and to unravel the causes of negativity." Patanjali tells us, in effect, that yoga will help us figure out and eradicate the reasons why we suffer, even as it leads us to feel the deepest of human experiences.
We all live in the midst of forces that we do not perceive because we suffer from “Paradigm blindness”; what I mean is we do not perceive things that exist outside our currently accepted set of beliefs and experience. Let me tell you what I mean. Gary and I lived in Germany for a year and a half when we were in the army. When it came time to return to the states we could not travel together, some crazy army thing, so I flew to South Dakota with my good friend Lila, because I had three kids and I did not want to travel by myself, and then my parents were going to pick me up from there a few days later. When we landed in South Dakota we were exhausted and all three children were asleep, Lila, carried the baby, I carried our 20 month old and the pilot carried our 4 year old off the plane. We began looking for Lila’s parents when a woman came up to me wanting to take my 20 month old from my arms, I could not figure out what she was doing, who did she think she was!! It took me several, it seemed like forever, seconds to see that it was my mother.
I did not expect my mother for many more days, I could not perceive the thing that existed outside my currently accepted set of beliefs. I believe this is also why Mary did not recognise Jesus when she went to the tomb, He was dead, she could not perceive the thing that existed outside her currently accepted set of beliefs.. The scriptures teach that we are designed to go through a paradigm shift, a perception change, just as I did with my mother. We can expand our mental and spiritual context, we can get outside the confining mental structure that human language, thinking, and experience have created, and receive new knowledge and new experiences and greater consciousness. It is okay for us to figure out and eradicate the reasons why we suffer, and, it is okay for us to accept a different set of beliefs and experiences to help make ourselves whole again.
Resistance is an inner contraction, a hardening of the shell.... You are closed. Whatever action you take in a state of inner resistance (which we could also call negativity) will create more outer resistance, and the universe will not be on your side, life will not be helpful. If the shutters are closed, the sunlight cannot come in. When you yield internally, when you surrender, a new dimension of consciousness opens up. If action is possible or necessary, your action will be in alignment with that whole and supported by creative intelligence....You experience a state of inner openness. Circumstances and people then become helpful, cooperative. Coincidences happen. If no action is possible, you rest in the peace and inner stillness that come with surender. You rest in God.
Nancy Adams Certified Thai Yoga Therapist
and Ayurveda Consultant
These are my own thoughts. I sometimes take writings from others to support my own ideas.
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