mYogi

Over the years this has been one of my favorite topics for contemplation. What is love? Is it interest, attraction, goodwill, responsibility, joy, harmony, desire, compulsion, compassion, the will of God? What are the stages of love? Does love mature or is it always fresh and new? Or both? What is conditional and what is unconditional love? Giving love and receiving love? Are there giving and receiving in non-duality? The love that creates karma and the love that doesn’t create karma? And then, love at the subtler stages. Why do sages equate pure being, pure consciousness, or God with love? What is Love Supreme?

@dwai On the positive side, a strong physical workout often removes tensions from the body. Also, after a certain period, there is a natural tendency of the body and mind to rest, relax, and recuperate. On the negative side, depending on the intensity of exercise, the sympathetic nervous system is activated and the hormones like adrenalin and cortisol are released, not only endorphins. These hormones take some time to leave the body depending on the intensity of the workout, 10-30 minutes usually. So it would be best perhaps to wait 30 minutes after the workout to do that type of meditation and allow the system to cool off. It’s good that you noticed the level of agitation during the workout. Another thing to do would be to reduce the level of intensity of the exercise so that cortisol is not released, which would allow an easier transition towards relaxation if it doesn’t compromise the workout. Of course, we should remember Hakuin’s words: “Meditation in the midst of activity is a thousand times superior to meditation in stillness.”

@Apech Stopping the thoughts is a negative way to put it. It would be much better to put it positively, like achieving higher states of mind, subtler states of mind, and states beyond the mind. It matters if we are thinking during our practice or not, as average thinking is the lower frequency of mind compared to more abstract levels. This is especially true for mental chatter, as it drains energy, waists time, keeps us in habituation, repetition, memories. Abstract thinking is getting closer to the root. There are levels in abstract thinking like there are levels of the subtleness of emotions. Beautiful forest-beautiful scenery-beauty, these are different levels of abstraction. Sages say that we can directly experience beauty. It’s refreshing to have no thoughts, there’s a sense of clarity, purity, lightness, transcendence, freedom, an emanation of Grace. What can we do? As a matter of fact, a lot of things! Purification on all levels, diet, body, energy, emotions, thinking, spirituality. As an example, purifying rational function would imply learning to think with less selfishness, ego, prejudice, emotions in general. And of course, climbing the ladder of subtleness, always aiming at the higher levels. These also include going back to what is often thought of as lower levels, the Taoists were very well aware of that. Buddha attained enlightenment with the sensory function, which is often considered as a lower function, but it is not, it is most of the time the pillar of meditation. In Yoga Sutras we have a famous line: Yoga is arresting of the turbulencies of the mind. But then after that one, the one less famous but even more important: Then the seer dwells in his own nature.

Hi everyone, I’m a yogi, and I’m interested in discussing various topics like yoga, energy, Chi Hong, breathing, posture, philosophy etc.

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One of the functions of satsang or vigil or meditation or deep prayer would be exactly that-raw presence.

That’s It. It’s absolute simplicity because it is beyond the universe, beyond the world of objects. The space without objects would be an analogy. It’s not the ordinary simplicity which is in the universe of objects. Are you guys familiar with the idea of turning the consciousness back on itself? Here the witness, mindfulness, presence, or the awareness of the objects of consciousness (including mind and body), are only a door towards the pure awareness, or consciousness without an object. One can go there by different techniques, like asking a question “Who am I?” or “To whom do these thoughts appear?”, and then trying not to answer with words but to feel the “subject”, which is emptiness and fullness, void, infinity, stillness, silence, transcendence, beyond, absolute, infinite completeness, unconditional love, etc. So, the three stages are: -identification with the person or body and mind -identification with the witness -identification with the pure consciousness (known by identity, no subject and object) There are levels of depth in this movement from the witness towards the pure awareness or pure being (satchidananda). We may also call them levels of subtleness, or levels of discerning the pure subjectivity.

Lullaby of Queen Madalasa Madalasa says to her crying infant son: You are pure, enlightened, and spotless. Leave the illusion of the world and wake up from this deep slumber of delusion. My child, you are ever pure! You do not have a name. A name is only an imaginary superimposition on you. This body made of five elements is not you nor do you belong to it. This being so, what can be a reason for your crying ? The essence of the universe does not cry in reality. All is a maya of words, oh Prince! Please understand this. The various qualities you seem to have are are just your imaginations, they belong to the elements that make the senses (and have nothing to do with you). You are in the body which is like a jacket that gets worn out day by day. Do not have the wrong notion that you are the body. This body is like a jacket that you are tied to, for the frutification of the good and bad karmas. The deluded look at objects of enjoyments as giving happiness by removing the unhappiness. The wise clearly see that the same object which gives happiness now will become a source of unhappiness.

Thanks for the welcome Daniel. @Cleansox Well, I’m interested in all of them, since they are all interrelated. However, I’m mostly interested in the transcendent aspect. I reduced over the years reading, thinking, talking, activities of the mind. Now I meditate, contemplate, I watch nature, chop wood-carry water as they say. Now, the reason why I came to the Internet forum, which I consider a not very sattvic medium, is that I want to help a friend who is a noob in Qigong or gentle Tai Chi. So, I tried to help him with Hatha yoga, but he is very stubborn, doesn’t want to do it as he is afraid of heart energy going up. When I try to help someone, I usually ask a lot of questions, about diet, daily routine, I inspect the posture, breathing, energy in the nose and sinuses, I try to determine a psychological type, yin and yang energies, and a ask a lot of other questions. I noticed immediately that my friend has a mostly tamasic (inert, lethargic) temperament, with a chest sinking a bit, which goes together often. Now, for a yogi that’s a no brainer, I give them backbends, chest openers, pranayama with large expansion of the chest, Kapalabhati pranayama etc. On the level of the mind, I suggest some values, affirmations, attitudes that I think they miss, which are yang in nature. I also introduce some meditation right at the beginning as a taste of what’s to come later and a kind of an incentive. I tried to explain to my friend that both yin and yang have their positive and negative aspects, that not all yang is bad, but he is still reluctant to try my suggestions. So, now I’m trying to help him in Qigong way, but I don’t now how, and I’ve just started my Taoist-TCM studies, so I’m a noob too. The thing is that I find Qigong an excellent tool to treat people with destructive yang, but not people with bad yin. How do I straighten his posture if he doesn’t want to stretch up or back, which a logical thing to do? How do I heal his chest energy which we call prana vayu(wind) in yoga without my yogic toolkit? I tried a standing Tai Chi pose, and I find it excellent for meditation. I understood it immediately, almost all the elements are yin. I was able to enter a mini-samadhi in the pauses after exhalation almost the first time I did it. I breathed Ujjayi with full chest expansion and large volume, as I did it during my asana practice, will try with abdominal breathing some other time, but abdominal breathing is very familiar to me as a yogi. The only thing that I didn’t get is if I should engage the muscles of the legs and gluteus a bit.

Thanks guys, I’m at the moment interested in comparing Yoga and Chi Gong, or Tai Chi, I see a lot of similarities, but also some differences. I’ve been practicing Yoga for couple of decades, together with the study of different philosophies and related areas.