Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

the shoulder. Life can tap any of us on the shoulder at any moment, and then we can see things in a whole new way.
    Science too has shown that time is warped and space is curved. Philosophers have argued that even if people report back from near-death or altered states about having personally experienced reincarnation or other lifetimes, their experience could in fact actually all have occurred in the final moments, the final powering down, of the brain itself. So, even to one who believes in or has experienced reincarnation or the eternity of time in a single moment, a deep, objective inquiry reveals that death remains and veils the great mystery. In death is the force of change and transformation that can come as a gentle wind or a tempest. That is why the mystery of death is given a central role in the spiritual process of moving into deeper awareness and understanding. Desire to understand what lies behind the doorway of death has given birth to religious belief and philosophy.
    The doctrine of karma and reincarnation is an attempt to explain this mystery. Reincarnation is central in many Eastern philosophical traditions. We need not overly burden ourselves trying to determine whether this belief is true. If the doctrine of reincarnation is true, then what we do with our present life is of crucial importance. How we live now willdetermine our future incarnations and potential freedom. However, if this life is our only life, then in the same way, how we live now is again vitally important. If this is our only life, it is our only opportunity. In both viewpoints we are left with the importance of the present moment.
    When death remains the mystery uncovered by hope and belief, then joy and presence in the moment take on their rightful significance. Mystery gives life depth and meaning. If we knew everything about our future, life might become boring and lose meaning. In a similar way that explaining a joke or revealing the end of a story or movie can take the life out of them, removing the mystery and uncertainty from life would make living barren. Mystery is immense and cannot be removed. No matter how much we uncover, the mystery still remains. We can only remove our awareness of the immensity of mystery by covering it, and deadening it, with beliefs and certainties. What we want is certainty, but what we have is relativity. There is great beauty in the mystery of life. Part of life is mystery, and remains mysterious, beyond teaching, thought, or explanation.

Navigating Life
    All navigation systems use at least two points of reference. We cannot navigate and find our location, our way, and our destination with only one point of reference. To perceive location and depth, we use two vantage points, such as our two ears and our two eyes. This principle can be applied to navigating through life. For example, there are
heart-centered
people who say that we should listen only to our hearts, and always follow the heart. There are
mind-centered
people who say we should primarily rely on intellect, mind, thought, and brain power to find our way and solve our problems. Why not see that both heart and mind, male and female, control and surrender, and the many other polarities of life are necessary vantage points for reference and navigation? To steer ourselves through the constantly changing experienceof life, we need to use the polarity of opposites. We do not live in a black-and-white reality. Black and white may be at the ends of a spectrum of navigation, but the matrix of life and living takes place between in shades of gray and in the multiplicity of nuance of color, shape, and form. The heart is balanced by the head, the head by the heart. Personal intuition is balanced by external knowledge and feedback. Both the One and the Many, our interconnectedness and our individuality, create and reflect each other. Giving different perspectives, these many vantage points guide us and bring our paths into view.
    With your own light, enhanced by the light of teachers, friends, and others, you can navigate your life, your meditation, your spirituality. However dim and flickering, your light will grow and begin to illumine that way that is uniquely yours, that only you can discover for yourself. Your own journey can be a constantly enthralling, endlessly fascinating, description-defying movement in the enchantment and mystery of living.
Become a light unto yourself
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    Are you ready for total inner freedom? Can you live free from