Most of our suffering is caused by the labels we place on it. This is good. That is bad. I am winning. I am failing. I belong. I am alone. The mind turns life into a courtroom, then forces you to pick a side. In the teaching below, Gurudev names this pattern clearly and shows the way out. Move from the reactive perceiver into the witnessing Presence that is already whole.
People generate their own reality according to their personality. The personality is another name for the reactive perceiver. It is made in the image and likeness of reality. We also call it the ‘self-image.’ The self-image is building its own personal reality through the medium of the mind along its journey through time.
It is a bit like a video game world directed by the reactive perceiver. The characters are clearly defined to play the roles of friends and enemies, ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys,’ good and evil. This also means there is a ‘my side’ and ‘your side.’ Such division originates in the reactive self-image who directs the entire external game of life.
These divisions of good and evil come from within the reactive perceiver. They are reenacted when the inner game gets superimposed upon outer characters. Thus, the illusions that are built into the reactively processed and perceived experiences of your love life, family life, work life, and social life become built into the psychosomatic constitution of the self-image.
The director who writes the script of the drama for these ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ is coded into the reactively processed energy that is held secretly in the cave of the unconscious, beyond the access of the conscious mind.
The unconscious carries the data that was fed to it by the reactive perceiver, a self-generated entity that has no real existence. It is the one that has separated itself from the true Self. Living in the division of good and evil, it is continuously seeking good and fearing evil. This search is staged in outer life, separating it from the inner life of the true Self. The true Self represents the bliss and fulfillment of the Oneness of love.
Most people on a spiritual journey are attempting to reach the heart center; it is their target for reaching the loving Presence within. In my own awakening experience of 1970, I discovered that the subconscious body that manifests through the first three chakras is the fundamental, primary seat of heart center. If you ignore it, you will never reach the spiritual heart.
Often, this heart center is called the gut brain. Most people live their lives with their mind in perpetual conflict with their body in all aspects of and interactions in their life, even while they are on a spiritual journey. In the practice of I AM Yoga, the subconscious body is the foundation to be built. You must build this before you build the dome of your temple to enter the sanctuary of the spiritual heart.
The practice of I AM Yoga encompasses the entire journey of the unfolding of this mysterious dimension. It is reflected biologically—as well as mentally and devotionally— all along the way to the ultimate ecstasy of union, which we call samadhi. During my awakening experience of 1970, and ever since then, my spiritual journey has been a palpable and bodily-based one whereas at an earlier time, I had only abstract, mysterious references to the experience of God, soul, spirit, and love.
Before my awakening experience, I related to my spiritual journey as a conceptual belief in the highest peak of ecstasy, of Oneness with God. This was an imagined, belief-oriented, speculative journey with a definite end in mind. During my awakening experience, however, I found that I directly entered a Presence. It was guiding the dancelike movements and postures of my body, and I experienced the ecstasy of Oneness here and now.
Before this experience my spiritual journey was through the medium of the mind in the dimension of time. I did not know then that I could enter the experience of Oneness anytime that I let go of doing and becoming. Only non-doing being lands me in the present moment.
Many who practice yoga and meditation do so in the way I used to: with an end in mind. It can be adopted as a goal-oriented practice where you reach the target only after an arduous journey through body-mind conflict. Eventually, though, practitioners arrive at what lies beyond body-mind conflict and experience the ecstasy of Oneness.
When you journey through time, your mind is motivated by a future goal and the end result. Your body is not functioning in the present. So, every step of the way, you experience body-mind conflict. In this approach to spiritual practice, you are using the body as a means to an end.
In contrast, my ecstatic experience of Oneness happened in the timeless Presence of here and now. And I could feel the ecstasy manifest through the body and mind that ordinarily moves through the dimension of time.
When you live here and now, you live in spontaneous response to biological hungers rather than a greed for more pleasure. That means when you live in the moment, you are living in body-mind harmony. Every step of the way you can practice the Presence as you live in harmonious co-creation with your body.
During my awakening experience, I discovered the doer and achiever, the ego mind, had taken a backseat. The non-doing witnessing Presence that I AM was directly guiding the movements of the body. Before, my practice of asanas was carried out by the reactive perceiver, the self-image. My mind would engage in fight or flight reaction on the edge. Yet, during this I experienced complete withdrawal from the edgy ego mind.
During my awakening, spontaneous yoga postures, also called pranakriyas, were carried out by the non-doing power of Presence that I AM. These spontaneous postures were not performed by the timebound ego mind but by the witnessing Presence from beyond the ego mind.
I discovered that this I AM Presence is the God within me manifesting through the sympathetic nervous system. In the subconscious autonomic nervous system, the lifegiving impulses arise from the innate intelligence that manifests through the sympathetic system. The parasympathetic nervous system facilitates lifegiving functions that animate the physical body.
Out of this direct experience, I designed the practice of I AM Yoga Meditation in Motion. This means that the practice of I AM Yoga is not performed by the doing and achieving self-image. Instead, it is guided by the non-doing power of witnessing Presence that directly carries out healing movements through subconscious parasympathetic prana.
Here is a simple practice to carry out from this. When a strong feeling shows up, do not rush to make it disappear. Do not make it a problem to solve. See if you can hold it the way the sky holds weather. That is the paradox. When you stop dividing experience into acceptable and unacceptable, you touch the peace that was underneath the struggle. The opposites can still move through you, but they do not have to run your life.