Greetings Sadhakas,
This week in class we will be exploring Samyama (integration or synthesis).
What I needed most
was to love and to be loved. I rushed headlong into love, eager to be caught.
Happily I wrapped those painful bonds around me; and sure enough, I would be
lashed with the red-hot pokers of jealousy, by suspicions and fear, by bursts
of anger and quarrels.
– Saint Augustine
Even in the most
intimate of personal relationships, most of us still live inside our own
private mental worlds. Our attention is often preoccupied - sometimes more in
the past and future than in the present - so that we have very little attention
to give to those we want to love. Despite our best intentions to draw closer,
all kinds of distracting thoughts - likes and dislikes, attachments and
aversions, private moods, dreams and desires - come in any time they like,
keeping other people at a distance. We yearn for closeness and find, more
often, disappointment.
Here Augustine
echoes the experiences that almost all of us go through, starting often in our
adolescence. The journey into deeper consciousness is one we must take up if
ever we are to find the love, the closeness, and the fulfillment we all so
earnestly desire.
Words to Live By:
Inspiration for Every Day – Eknath Easwaran
The homework is to consider what Yoga
practices encourage us to " journey into deeper consciousness". Review the eight limbs of Yoga paying close
attention to what is referred to as Samyama. Samyama is the practice of Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi usually in
relation to objects or ideas and connected with some kind of result. This result is usually some kind of Siddhis
(accomplishment or supernatural power) or Vibuhti (blessings or power) and
implies integration or synthesis. Sutra III:4
Rushing Water Yoga, 417 NE
Birch St. , Camas , WA 98607 ,
360.834.5994
Blessings,
paul cheek
Rushing Water Yoga
360.834.5994
www.rushingwateryoga.com