Human beings are born with the unique ability to materialize their thoughts into forms. The mind is an evolutionary human gift that emerged from the subconscious. The subconscious animal body functions through instincts and is present in the physical body as the autonomic nervous system. The mind gives us the facility to become an individual creator, but it has no access to the in-born creator that is the divine potential within us.
The mind has many creative powers in the dimension of time yet it lives in separation from the time transcendent source of oneness/omnipresence within. Humans are born with the mind as a vessel for the ego to create anything in the world of time and space. Most humans live in the hypnotic trance of the collective unconscious which only knows how to create and make things happen externally in time and space. The ego mind achieves many amazing changes in the external world and it does so by using the life force/prana, the female aspect of male consciousness.
The human body carries out all its life giving functions through the male sympathetic and female parasympathetic nervous systems. In yogic systems this represents the direct expression of Shiva male consciousness and Shakti female energy. The body functions through the interaction of cosmic consciousness and cosmic energy, logical left brain and intuitive right brain –sun breath, moon breath. Pingala and ida nadi connect to the sun-moon breath which activates the autonomic nervous system. Human beings have evolved with an ego mind actively engaging the male sympathetic nervous system. As a result, the body that is the field of divine interplay of consciousness and energy has become a field of conflict creating, stress producing interaction of body-mind.
Yoga allows us to see a divine potential in the body. Subconscious polarity pervades the entire body of the universe as well as the human body. In all of creation only human beings are born with animal body, human mind, and divine potential. The subconscious body is considered to be mechanical rather than an ultimate, natural creation. The human body is created by the same cosmic male and female forces as the entire natural world. Just as the cosmic body and all that happens in it are maintained by the universal laws, so too the human body.
In the practice of I AM Yoga™ we recognize that the body is the manifestation of the divine interplay of consciousness and energy. Therefore, the creator that remains invisible becomes visible through its creation that is the body. In the practice of Patanjali’s yoga the body is treated as a temple. The practice of I AM Yoga™ is designed to use yamas and niyamas, postures and pranayama, pratyahara and dharana, as powerful mediums for the purification the body and the mind. In the practice of I AM Yoga™ the basic impurity is the stress that appears at the level of the body-mind in conflict creating interactions in love life, family life, and work life. In the practice of I AM Yoga™ self-destructive habit patterns and compulsive behaviors accommodate the stress built in the form of habits, behavior, personality, and attitude that we identify with is what holds us back from the source of oneness that god is, that love is within. This means that I AM Yoga™ cannot be based on believing in God – which is a speculative conceptual idea but experiencing the oneness within.
Patanjali’s Eight-Limbed Yoga encourages, “Yoga as witnessing the modifications of mind” which explains that the divine potential that we are is the being within us that is present here and now. Human beings have evolved to function at a collective unconscious level where the majority are confined to explore human potential through the ego mind. We are human beings – the being is our divine potential. Meditation is the access to the being that we are.
Yoga explores divine potential. Human beings seek human potential. I AM Yoga™ creates a shift from doing and becoming to being non-doing presence. Human beings can explore the secrets of natural world of creation but it cannot reconnect with its creator at the core of man’s divine potential that lives as being within us.
In order to reach to the divine potential, or the superconscious state of being oneness, we must connect to its creation that becomes visible through the wisdom of the body. In the practice of I AM Yoga™ we connect first to the wisdom of the body which is the manifestation of co-creative interplay of male and female consciousness. Thus the practice of Yoga requires us to enter into the twilight zone where doing and being come into co-creative interaction. The entire practice of I AM Yoga™ is designed with specific techniques, tools, and the teachings of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras that allows anyone to practice yoga and enter into the alpha brain wave states where inner conflicts are progressively reduced and allows one to enter in progressively deeper states of doing and being in the present moment. Doing and being come together in a paradoxical oneness; how to be doing and being simultaneously.
Kripalu yoga and now Amrit Yoga I called “Meditation in Motion.” This directly corresponds with what Patanjali says on how to practice yoga and enter into integrated zone of being, but also gives a precise technique to enter that paradoxical zone where doing and non-doing happen simultaneously. Dynamic actions in postures combines with witnessing the modifications of the mind are in co-creation with deep stillness-Meditation in motion.
When your actions are action-less, creation and manifestation happen directly by consciousness rather than through the medium of ego mind. When the mind is dominating and performing the postures, all mental and emotional agitations and conflicts are immediately translated into body-mind conflict simultaneously.
In I AM Yoga™ the practice is to move from conflict-creating ego mind that dominates the nervous system and replace it for witnessing presence. That allows a release from conflicts created on mental and emotional levels that are carried in the body. Most seekers practice yamas and niyamas, asana, mudra, kriyas or any other aspects of Yoga guided by the ego-mind. Practice with the ego-mind is so wide spread that most do not know that when their attention is drifting, divided, and fragmented, the energy that follows the attention is also fragmented and divided.
Yoga a unifying experience turns into a conflict creating experience. Prana Shakti working under the influence of ego mind carries out actions in whatever manner the ego-mind is functioning. In the practice of yoga, it becomes an ego posture. Ego posture reacts to what is present simultaneously creating the same separation and conflict inside as outside. Yoga as a workout creates a completely opposite experience of what Yoga is intended: to provide a shift from the conflict creating duality of ego mind to co-creative harmonious interaction between consciousness and energy on a subconscious level.
The one and only force you work with that keeps you from yoga is your ego-mind. Why? Because ego mind lives in the dimension of time. The practice of yoga is about moving beyond the karmic impressions and memories of the ego mind’s journey in the dimension of time. The practice of yoga is not about the search for God, instead is it learning how to enter the unifying experience of oneness that is god.
In the practice of yoga, you do not need to believe in God, nor do you need to know, understand or have faith in God to initiate your journey toward the Oneness that is God. The experience of Oneness is to be vigilantly alert and aware when reactions arise from the past and create separation from who or what is present. That is why Patanjali says “Yoga is witnessing the modification of Mind.”
The enlightened saint of India, Maher Baba once said that Man minus Mind is equal to God. A Yogic lifestyle is aimed toward the unfolding experience of being by withdrawing from any doing from the ego mind. In the practice of yoga, actions in the present moment are not aimed at results in the future. You are withdrawing from the fears, concerns, and impatience that emerge in the form of reactive interaction with what is present from moment to moment. You are consciously engaged in doing with an intention for integration combined with deliberate willful action. This the entry to the posture of consciousness. You are actively integrated. In the second half of the posture of consciousness you are in action-less absorption in oneness. The first half is where doing and non-doing come into harmonious interaction. This is the experience of the underlying unity of polarity. The second half is the non-active unity of polarity.
Any reactive thinking that arises from the conditioned impressions of the past have no capacity to see what is as is. Its interactions with reality are a continuous attempt to recreate pleasurable experiences and avoid trauma and painful experiences of the past. The ego mind is restricted by the invisible boundaries of karmically created patterns that live in the form memories in the mind. Those memory walls are strongly held and rigid, like the Great Wall of China, yet they do not actually exist, they are an illusion. Those protective walls are created by the karma body of self-concepts driven by the self-image of the ego mind.
These walls are invisible to the reactive perceiver, the ego mind because they are its own creation. In the practice of Yoga, we recognize that you cannot solve the problem by the same ego mind that created it. That is why Patanjali would say that the purpose of yoga practice/the yoga practice does not begin with yama, niyamas, asana, or pranayama – it begins with witnessing the modifications of mind where yama, niyamas, asana and pranayama become the medium for connecting to consciousness through witnessing presence. The door is the witnessing power of presence watching reactive thought forms.
People do not recognize that the practice of yamas, niyamas, asanas and pranayams are used as a medium of the ego-mind. The practice is then driven by a reactive perceiver, the ego-mind that judges its personal practice though success and failure, for and against me. These thoughts arise from the self-image and self-concepts that you identify with. Those are impressions, experiences, and memories of the karmic past. You cannot fight with the shadow in the past, it has no reality.
The ego-mind has no power to remove the darkness because it represents the darkness. You cannot do anything to the darkness in a room, you cannot remove the darkness. You cannot fight or kill it. You cannot fight or run away from it – you simply know the truth that you are not the darkness of your reactive thoughts and perception. In Ashtanga yoga withdrawing [pratyahara] from the reactive perceptions disengages the ego mind from the body and is replaced by the witnessing power of presence, the light of consciousness. Meditation is the mature form of pratyahara and dharana that precedes it.
In the practice of postures, the ego as the performer was being edgy on the edge and used fight or flight reaction on the edge. This introduces conflict with the darkness that cannot be fought with, nor can it be eliminated. To interrupt the ego mind and replace it with co-creative interaction between the seer and the seen we use conscious breathing to enter pratyahara. When you withdraw from mental and emotional fragmentation your mind becomes focused and concentration [dharana] naturally happens. Concentration is like a beam of consciousness that gathers all fragmented energy. Witnessing presence allows you to continually observe the cathartic process of the past thru the body-mind.
When a Yogi withdraws from the ego mind, he does so by igniting the fire of consciousness with the fuel of prana to burns the seeds of karma to ashes in the body. This is why yoga is not simply a jump from doing to the oneness of being, but a process of learning to burn the karmic seeds stored in the body’s feeling center. Integration experienced as yoga is carried out on at the level of polarity. Polarity is the ground in which integration is carried out. The whole process of self-discovery happens as karmic seeds of the self-image and self-concepts are burned. Thus the unity of yoga must pass through polarity in action.
Every time the ego-mind is engaged by fear or attachment, it converts subconscious energy of fear and attachment into unconscious energetic blockages in the body. These energetic blocks are lodged in many levels in the body –organs, cells, nerves, muscles and joints that are all connected to the nerve ganglias –in yoga called chakra system. Thus all the conflicts/agitations created through thoughts/feelings/emotions and interactions with your external and internal experiences are stored in different bodies through which the consciousness manifests.
Yogis describe the human experience through expressing, manifesting, and experiencing life through different bodies – Annamayakosha, Prananayakosha, Mannamayakosha, Vijanamayakosha, and Anandamayakosha. These karmic impressions are personally distorted experiences of reality. These distortions created at the level of the mind are ingested and materialized in the physical body. The mind that stores them is deeply interconnected with the body. That mind becomes the victim of its own creation.
Mentally you cannot influence consciousness, either positively or negatively. The mind must use energy to reconnect with its source that is represented by the bliss body of consciousness that we are. The mind that is engaged by past impressions manifest in the form of addictions to pleasure, and fear of painful experiences of the past are created by using the energy of the mind to materialize mental manifestation into material creation. This interaction happens between mind, the subconscious energy field, and the physical body, but it does not touch the superconscious soul being that we are. No matter how many bad karmas or sins you have performed you can still return to source of loving presence that is God within you.
