Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

meditation, chanting, prayer, or even asana practice, can have beneficial
or
detrimental results. If we ask, “Is a knife good or bad?” The answer is yes—it is both. It always depends on the use and intent. There are certainly rules and principles about using a knife safely and correctly, but the real essence of using powerful tools is an indefinable sense of awareness and sensitivity in action in each moment. Although practices enable us to get better at what we practice, they can also lead to habitual, unexaminedbehavior or self-righteousness. Getting better at anything is also double-edged. Improved abilities can be used for good or for harm—there is no guarantee of always being one or the other. What is important, then, to one sincerely seeking spiritual growth is to keep attention on the feedback and results, both short-term and long-term, of all of practices. Once again, questioning and inquiry are a light to guide us along an ever-changing path.
    We are better off, and more likely to use practices wisely, when we see that our mechanical techniques are not certain to lead us to greater awareness. If we look around, it is not hard to find people who have meditated for years and who have become more closed and more insensitive. Some who practice yoga and asana grow and blossom, while others harden and seem to regress. Realizing these differing possibilities is part of the light of awareness that increases the positive potential of the practices we choose to use. Developing our ability to question, to listen, and to be sensitive to the feedback and the effects of our practices is key. The vast unconscious, the unknown, the mystery of life, is not at our beck and call. We are not going to invite the infinite and control our destiny with tiny mantras, mechanical contrivances, or simple techniques of repetition. Repetitive practice and behavior quickly becomes automated and unconscious. Real meditation is more of a “happening,” similar to sleep, or even love, rather than just something we do. There is no formula for falling asleep. Although you can prepare and relax, the more effort you apply, the less likely sleep will come. Similarly, while it may be important to prepare for love by being more caring, more sensitive, and less aggressive and self-centered, love comes when it will. Love is bigger than we are. A great teacher once said, “Every effort at meditation is the abject denial of it.” We cannot
program
ourselves to love or to meditate. Meditation is more about deprogramming than programming. Meditation is not dull, mechanical, repetitive behavior chasing the magical, mystical, and spontaneous. Moving toward insight, wisdom, and clarity does not resultfrom following systems, but from awakening. This awakened perception can act in all facets of life.
    The majority of formal meditation practices involve self-control, mind control, or the perfecting of techniques and systems. Some define meditation as the perfection of concentration. Concentration, however, is only one power of mind and consciousness, and it comes naturally in direct proportion to our interest. We have excellent powers of concentration when we are very interested—just observe the motionless, rapt attention people exhibit for hours during good movies. Studying and understanding the nature of interest can be more useful than cultivating concentration techniques. Many people find the meditation practices that have been prescribed for them to be boring, and perhaps rightly so. If we were truly interested, we would find them engaging and absorbing.
    Out of habit we look to systems and techniques for solution to problems. When faced with a problem or difficulty, we say, “What should I do?” Many areas of life, especially the technological and physical, involve learning and mastering techniques. But psychologically and spiritually we need space and freedom. When we live according to doctrines and dogmas, however sophisticated, we often sacrifice creativity and aliveness and become mechanical and automated. Real meditation must be a powerful solvent that penetrates the deeper layers of conditioning and programming to free the mind and consciousness to see farther and deeper than ever before. Meditation does not come from the repetition of the belief of another person or system. Awareness and personal understanding are necessary to neutralize and go beyond conditioning. To free the mind and consciousness, we must become aware of our