Waking up

I love the idea of the healing energy of yoga.  At the beginning of practice, you may be invited to make a dedication to someone or some people who could benefit from the healing powers of your practice. Every time we practice yoga, we are releasing a very special, healing energy that can literally be felt by others depending on its strength.  We are constantly giving off energy that can be felt by others. Sometimes its a negative energy- get a group of people in the room who don't get along well and you can feel the tension without the need for words.  Walk into a room of people who are feeling happy, excited, or moved by something, and you can feel the higher intensity vibrations, giving off a positive energy.  Its because of those vibrations that I know that there is something much more to us than what we see on the exterior (the body) and what we often listen to and follow (the ego.)

Its the ego that gives us our problems.  A Course in Miracles, which I'm studying right now, says that problems don't exist - worry, sadness, evil, pain, suffering, illness, are all things that we've created in our minds.  These things are illusions because they only exist in a world that is itself an illusion. What we perceive as reality is really a dream in which we are in a deep, deep, sleep, blind to what is underneath.  Truth, love, joy, eternal happiness.

This is overwhelming sometimes.  Other times, its very comforting.  As I've been reading and discussing all of this with others, I can't help but keep coming back to the movie The Matrix. I have to laugh at myself because it seems so odd that that would be a movie that resonates with me on a spiritual level, but I'm going to run with it.  What is REAL?  And how can we say there is no pain, suffering, sickness, and evil in the world when we can "see" it and "feel" it and "experience" it?

Because we choose to suffer. Our definition of good and bad comes from the ego. In truth, there is no good or bad. There just IS.  When asked why bad things happen - disastrous, unfair, unjust, just plain evil - what comes to me is this: most of us are in such a deep state of sleep that only something of significant proportions is going to wake us up.  Its often not until after a disaster of sorts that people seek out spiritual guidance.  And what about the people who are already waking up or who already See?  Perhaps those situations aren't for them, but for someone close to them who needs, not only to wake up, but to be brought into connection with someone already on that path who will serve as a teacher.  I don't know. I'm not there yet. But I am determined to see...

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could spare them from all suffering? No, it wouldn't. They would not evolve as human beings and would remain shallow, identified with the external form of things. Suffering drives you deeper. The paradox is that suffering is caused by identification with form and erodes identification with form. A lot of it is caused by the ego, although eventually suffering destroys the ego--but not until you suffer consciously.



Humanity is destined to go beyond suffering, but not in the way the ego thinks. One of the ego's many erroneous assumptions, one of its many deluded thoughts is "I should not have to suffer." Sometimes the thought gets transferred to someone close to you: "My child should not have to suffer." That thought itself lies at the root of suffering. Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego. The man on the cross is an archetypal image. He is every man and every woman. As long as you resist suffering, it is a slow process because the resistance creates more ego to burn up. When you accept suffering, however, there is an acceleration of that process which is brought about by the fact that you suffer consciously. You can accept suffering for yourself, or you can accept it for someone else, such as your child or parent. In the midst of conscious suffering there is already the transmutation. The fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness."

Eckhart Tolle