7 – 1
The final in a series of fourteen practices, this moonth’s routine is all about activating sushumna nadi – from the tips of the toes to the crown of the head. Reclining hero and tiptoe fish help overcome fear of opening up your aura to the world...
A few days ago, I was listening to a Youtube video about Saint Anandamayi Ma’s teachings. It recounted how she taught the power of our own life’s challenges in teaching us how to be enlightened. ‘Without life we cannot be enlightened’, she said. When we practice yoga and meditation we are trying to carve a space outside of our normal daily lives to reflect back on it, to see how we act in and react to the situations life presents to us. If we often find ourselves craving peace, or a break from the humdrum of daily life, meditation offers us an alternative state of being, a place to grow our awareness.
Finding myself at a loose end, earlier today, I decided to spend some time in meditation. Breath awareness revealed to me some the energetic knots within my aura, literally tying me in knots. I pursue peace, calling on the unknown infinite source within me to take me into the light, to untie the knots that bind me. I become aware of some of the things in my auric space that I may seek to change. After sitting in silence for a further time, I realise I am bound by something that has been troubling me for some time. Still that ballast does not move. The same characters / forces/ archetypes manipulating my energy field do not relent. I learn to distance myself from them. I am reminded of the old prayer ‘Give me serenity to acept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to tell the difference’.
There is a great sadness inside of me. There is anger, rage even, and fear. I remember Anandamayi Ma and her teaching and I wonder why I have been given this lesson in life. Santam Kaur’s song Heart of the Universe echoes in my mind, ‘there is a space that exists, between us, and around us’. She is singing about the magic of the aura. The aura is a mysterious thing; it surrounds the body in layers; it is made up of semi-invisible ethereal substances that science has yet to comprehend; it contains the chakras; it is transtemporal, it transcends linear time.
Reverse warrior, inhale the upper arm reaches back stretching front of body open, exhale windmill the arms forward into extended side angle, opposite arm reaches up and over stretching the side of the body open; the body ebbs and flows through space and time
Yoga offers a space to learn about the aura. When we study the seventh and first chakras together, what connects them but the sushumna, the central current that flows from the base of the spine, the root, up to the crown. This energy system connects the the Human Energy Field to the Universal Energy Field. The human body then is a place where the infinite becomes finite. The paramatman becomes the atman. With every breath we are reborn. The individual’s field contracts and expands pulsating on a human level just moments away from the field of oneness.
We can use yoga to cleanse the auric space around us. The chakras that filter energy through the layers of ethereal fields carry messages about what this incarnation is dealing with at the present time. By repeating the same yoga moves everyday and by working on all seven chakras, it is possible to build up a picture, or energetic map of the things that are bringing peace on the one hand, and dischord, or pain on the other.
Our mind cannot transcent three dimensional reality. The closest to infinity we can get is oscillating between that space of zero and one, existence and nothingness, the beginnng of time, the edge of the universe. The human mind struggles to comprehend the things that are beyond three dimensional reality. Although we act out of unconscious places, and we see ourselves and other people react to the invisible unseen things that float in that space between us, we do not know exactly how it works.
In downward facing corpse, the breath slows, deepening with every inhale. From a whisper it builds to a wave crashing on the shore. The shoulders rounded, the head bowed down, the full back of the body open, the ‘will centres’ (1) of chakras, one to seven, surrender. The front of body is held, the ‘feeling centres’ hidden away, cushioned by the bolster… the mind sinks into nothingness
‘We are more than this body and mind, although we have a body and mind, we are something greater’, as the great sages and gurus say. We are both human and universal consciousness. Integrating the two parts is something that a yogi strives to do. How do I unite with the light, with my fellow humans, with my family? It is a huge question and one that has puzzled philosophers for a very long time. Some people like to work with life’s challenge as part of a tradition, they are called ‘people of the book’. Others keep their thoughts to themselves, their spirit is something private never to be talked about. Personally, I enjoy the traditions of old. The ancient wisdom that is written down, offering clues as a way to proceed.
The light is a facinating subject. Recently I have been especially concerned with its contrast: darkness. I am struck by the self referentiality of meditation, the self reflexivity of consciousness, there is a frame of reference where I step outside myself to see myelf. I know me be being you. By feeling in the darkness, I find myself in light. The infinity of one mirror reflecting another mirror means that, so often, perfect peace evades us, although it holds us, mesmerised, for moments at a time. I clean the mirror of my consciousness, of my human darkness, by seeing through it, by spending time watching me. Through knowing the darkness, by acknowledging pain, illness, separation and suffering I find the light. Pure light is beyond words.
Darkness is an unavoidable part of life. Each moment has the potential for renewal in light, but we must be content to balance the light with darkness. Our auras are ever changing manifestations of light / ether / energy, sometimes vibrating like starlight, other times casting shadows, all a mystery of our existence. We are each a universe within the universe. Infinity reaches towards infinity. Our flesh and bones are made of earth, water courses through our veins, air fills our lungs, and yet somehow we know we are more. Underneath all that we can see theuniversal energy field of oneness. A space where we are not divided by what embodies us, but where we are all one.
(1) Brennan, B. (1987) Hands of Light. USA and Canada, Bantam Books
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