Lesson 93 - Q&A – Changing times

From: Yogani
Date: Fri Jan 23, 2004 1:23pm

New Members: It is recommended you read from the beginning of the web
archive, as previous lessons are prerequisite to this one. The first
lesson is, "Why This Discussion?"

Q: I feel like meditation is going good, and I just took up spinal
pranayama which is proving to be challenging to get through the
clunky startup as you call it. With all the other things you
introduced, I feel like I am going underwater. So many wonderful
practices, and me so inadequate to do them. I doubt my worthiness for
all this, yet I have so much desire to pursue the path to the end. I
wish I had started this twenty years ago. I am going crazy with
impatience, yet I know if I push too hard it could make problems.
What should I do?

A: You are doing just right taking it one step at a time. While your
emotions may be raging for the divine, you are clear on what must be
done in what order, and what you can undertake now and what you can
undertake later. And you will. It is coming together just right. Just
take it one day at a time. You will know what to do next.

You suffer from a most blessed disease – intense bhakti. We should
all have this disease. If we all did, the world would be transformed
in one generation. I know it may not stem your impatience to hear
that, but that is how it is with bhakti, you know. When we become
acutely aware of our separation from the divine, we crave yoga like
mad. We become mad for God. It is a blessed condition to be in. It
will get much better as your experiences of union advance, and they
will as you continue with daily practices.

Bhakti will continue to increase in all of us as time rolls on. There
are powerful forces at work that are putting the spiritual winds at
our back. All we have to do is put out the sails in the form of
practices, and the spiritual winds constantly fanning our nervous
system will do the rest.

Let's step back for a minute and take a look at the big picture that
we are all part of. We are living in very interesting times. Back in
the 1960s, Bob Dylan sang, "The times, they are a-changing." It was
certainly true then, and it is even more true now.

Depending on which astrological approach you consider, the earth has
been, or will soon be, entering a "new age" of enlightenment. In
Sanskrit, these ages are called "yugas." The new one may have started
over a hundred years ago. Or it may be starting now. It has been a
popular topic since those early Dylan days. But an emergence was
occurring in the world of yoga long before then. The start of a new
age is not an instantaneous event. It starts with a long gradual
build-up, and it keeps accelerating as momentum grows. Quite a lot
has happened already, and we are whisking along at an ever-increasing
pace.

Around the turn of the last century, Vivekananda, a leading disciple
of Ramakrishna, came to the West and planted the first seeds of yoga
that found some fertile soil and sprouted. Twenty years later,
Paramahansa Yogananda came and found even more receptivity than
Vivekananda did. By the time Maharishi Mahesh Yogi came along in the
1960s, a whole generation of disaffected baby boomers was ready to
jump into yoga in a big way, with a little help from the Beatles, of
course. Since those days, hundreds of yogis have come to the west
from India, and thousands of "next generation" western yogis and
yoginis have stepped up to the teaching podium. Actually, in the past
couple of decades, things have gotten a bit muddled, a bit confused.
So many different approaches to yoga have come up that it is hard to
know which brand of yoga is the real one, if there is even such a
thing as "the real yoga." Will the real yoga please stand up? There
are many volunteers for this exalted position, of course. Some have
even gone to court to stake their claim on your nervous system. There
have always been those who would like to be in charge of your gateway
to heaven. Well, never mind that.

So, in a century we have gone from having no yoga to having so many
different kinds that we are looking at a proverbial yoga "Tower of
Babel."

That's okay. It is a good thing. Obviously, it can't stay splintered
in a thousand pieces like that forever. Sooner or later it will be
distilled down to something (or several somethings) that the average
ready-to-become-enlightened person can grab hold of. In the next few
decades the name of the game is going to be, "consolidation," "integration," "optimization," "simplification."

Pick any of those, and you will have the idea. It will be the
scientific method that will produce this distillation of the
knowledge of yoga, so the widespread application of it will become
practical.

When personal computers first came out, you needed to know an archaic
language like, "BASIC" or "DOS" to get anything done. Computing was
an esoteric world for geeks. Then the mouse and graphical user
interface came along, and suddenly the doors to easy computing were
flung open for everyone. It was a revolution.

This has been the story with many applications of knowledge over the
centuries. It starts out with a few "geeks' who establish a beach
head in applying a type of knowledge. Then, later on, some
researchers figure out how to make it easy for everyone to apply the
knowledge. It nearly always boils down to simplifying the user
interface, the main controls, so anyone can apply the knowledge with
good results. Useful technology is "user friendly." Remember the
Wright Brothers? Remember Henry Ford? Remember Thomas Edison? They all simplified the interface between users and the application of
powerful knowledge.

This is what is going to happen with yoga. It must happen. Millions
of people are feeling the spiritual winds rising inside them in this
new age, and the sails of practice must be pulled up. It is time for
the full range of yoga knowledge to be made user friendly.

Nothing is new in yoga. All of the components of practice have been
around for thousands of years. Natural principles don't change. The
human nervous system has always had the same natural abilities. There
have been enlightened times in the past when yoga has flourished. In
darker times, the vision was less clear about the possibilities in
us. There was heavy doubt, superstition, and fear. But a few have
always been playing around with applications of yogic knowledge.
Doing it in secret in the darker times, because they'd get strung up
if they got too public with their endeavors. They have been
the "geeks" of yoga, you know. The pioneers who created the esoteric
traditions. We owe much to the great old-time yogis. They have given
us the seeds of knowledge necessary to proceed full speed ahead into
the new age. Now it is up to this generation, and the coming ones, to
develop and utilize simplified interfaces with the human nervous
system utilizing yogic knowledge, so many will be able to take up
yoga practices and have good success.

The new age is not just about the spiritual winds coming up behind us
from the cosmos. The enlightenment game is not a spectator sport. We
have to get in the game if we want to have the benefits. We have to
put up the sails of practices to take the ride. As we do, this earth
will continue to become a better place. As we bring the reality of
pure bliss consciousness and divine ecstasy into the earth plane
through our practices, everything will change. There will be light
and love rising everywhere in abundance. It will not be an
ideological occurrence. It will be a real energy transformation,
palpable to all who live on the earth. With nervous systems
everywhere becoming powerful radiators of pure bliss consciousness
and divine ecstasy, no one will be left in the dark. Lingering doubts
will be swept away. The winds of bhakti will carry us ever forward.
All we have to do is keep up the sails of our daily practices. Our
nervous system will take care of the rest.

The guru is in you.

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