What is Yoga?

What is Yoga?

I've been asking myself this question directly and indirectly since I began practicing the ancient arts of yoga, three years ago. Consciously and unconsciously, the layers of my awareness work the variables in the equation and tinker with the balancing system in my life to expand me into new levels of understanding. As comprehension dawns, its like I have arrived to a new place I've never been before, yet the familiarity of the territory provides a sense of recognition and re-membering. Re-membering what? That I've been here before? That this is something that has always been? That will always be? The more I practice, the more I realize that there was never anything missing, and that all these revelations come as a result of me letting go of something else that I once thought was real... Letting go of false illusions of self, identities and beliefs around which I have created my entire life. In a way it has been a self-destructive process - like I've packed up all my old belongings on a gasoline soaked wooden sailboat and flung a lit match onboard to watch as the whole thing became a glorious fireball. It has been scary, it has been challenging, but it has provided purpose. It has somehow felt right, amidst a large scattering of un-right feelings and thoughts. In fact even today, there is still an endless stream of these off-track thoughts and feelings - I think they are always arising in each of us. Off-track in a sense that if we pay close attention to them, they are really not things we want to think about or necessarily feel. Who wants to experience the pain of judging or criticizing another? This is not something we put effort towards understanding - our own tendencies to create suffering for ourselves in our own mind. Yoga allows for the effort to fall away and the realization to simply arise, so that there is no more resistance. Yoga and the related practices allow an individual to come to terms with the contents of their own mind, and understand how it is this strange but obvious immaterial 'thing' called mind that affects every aspect of our lives.

So, what is yoga? Yoga means union. Which means what? Union with what? Classically, it is union with everything, for everything is interconnected - everything is absolute awareness in different stages of consciousness development. In quantum physics we explain this as energy, arising in different material forms. All that exists in the physical, manifest Universe is in a wave like, probabilistic state, expressed into material form at the state of observation. All matter is both in a wave and particle state of existence simultaneously until a picture is taken. The underlying nature of this reality is the energy that is purely a wave. Energy = awareness, and as the energy transforms to become a solid, observable object in order to interact with other solid objects, it develops something akin to consciousness. This consciousness is the intelligent force that drives the matter to behave in certain ways. A hydrogen atom has the consciousness of a hydrogen atom, meaning that it contains within it an organizing force, an intelligence, to direct its wave-like nature into its definite particle reality once it is needed by the Universe to take part in Creation. All things are related in this manner, for all things that manifest are required by the rest of manifestation to continue their development towards total refinement of consciousness; to the point that consciousness becomes absolutely reflective of awareness itself.

Let's circle back. Yoga just means union. Union with what? Union with whatever the observer choose to unite with. Inevitably, as the understanding of this relationship grows - that we can unite with whatever we choose to unite with - the yogi wants to unite with the highest possible thing. Which is what?! Well - whatever we think is the highest! See, what I love here is that there is no limit, no boundary, and no definition. There cannot be. For what if a practitioner feels that they have a better idea about what to unite with, or what is the 'highest'? Well, go for it. Krishnamurti said "the truth is a pathless land". Yoga allow us to determine our own truth, tread our own path, and create our own reality. And creating our own reality in a very, very real sense, for it depends on the state of the observer and what we choose to observe, for the observation to take place. Patanjali said "same object, different consciousness, separate path". What he means is that life is always going to be life - its is the same external object. Depending on the person alive's consciousness, a separate path will unfold. What path do you choose to walk? Could you change it if you didn't like something about it? Of course you can - you are the Creator. It's spiritual. It's natural. It's science. It's religion. And while being all of these things, it is none of these things. It is yoga. Union with the best possible thing you can imagine.