The truth of who we are
“Truth is found in inner stillness, in those moment when you are perfectly silent, in pure perception.”
It’s easy to think yoga is about improving your strength and increasing your flexibility. That is a tiny part of yoga, some say 5%. The rest is about how much control you have over your mind. How comfortable you are with sitting in silence. Where your mind goes when you give it some space.
Yoga is the union between our small ‘self’ and our wider, wiser ‘Self’. Our wider Self knows that thoughts like, “you’re so stupid”, “she doesn’t like me, no one really likes me”, “I don’t need you anyway”, are temporary un-true stories we tell ourselves, based on our past emotional reactions.
Meditation is the last limb of yoga and the purpose of yoga. In meditation we can notice how the mind works and what it tells us. From that place of knowledge and we can give unhelpful thoughts a little hug and tell ourselves something wiser. Thoughts tell the body how to behave. How the body behaves causes our actions. Our actions determine how we are in the world.
There are three stages in meditation: Dharana (concentration, on your breath, a candle, something else); dhyana (the experience of meditation, from a focused and clear mind); and samadhi (the experience of a focused and clear mind, sometimes talked about as bliss, or union with self and Self). You may move into unlocking mystical or cosmic realms, or other experiences, but for most of us, samadhi is resting in wakeful awareness, even if for a few seconds).
I’ve been hearing a lot from bite-sized social media experts who say that meditation is not just 30 minutes a day when, it’s 24 hours a day, and you can be mindful every second. Yes, this is true. But if you haven’t experienced the stillness and silence of actual sitting down meditation, then you have no base line in which to feel real truth beyond a cluttered and unskillful mind. If you haven’t experienced samadhi (the final stage of meditation), even for a second, then your meditation is just your mind giving you it’s preferred experience of meditation: One that confirms untruths and limiting beliefs. Your mind is not always right.
Physical shapes, breathing, japa (mantra) setting intentions - these are all preparations for the experience of meditation. Truth is found in meditation, on the mat, when you are in pure perception. That is yoga.