Yoga & Self-love, Love & Enlightenment

Not everyone who practice yoga has enlightenment in mind. Yet I am certain that most persons who do yoga frequently do so because they feel “lighter” after a class. I was first drawn to yoga because it suggests potential (!) enlightenment to serious practitioners. But also consider that enlightenment is a lightness of heart. How is that attained in such a “heavy world”?

Love. Love of all things. The “higher”path of yoga is to unite body and mind with spirit. Enlightenment is letting go… to be present in the moment, and transcend the ignorance, or illusion, of ordinary reality, by virtue of the light of consciousness. Yoga specifically instructs body-mind-spirit integration as a requirement-gateway to one-ness with the Godhead, the Supreme Being. Love of every aspect of everything. Love. Compassion – passion – for self and others.

Only you can love yourself in this way. Others may help and support you to find your self love, but no one thing can “save you” or “fix you, or your life”. No religion, nor yoga, for that matter, automatically has a functional spiritual connection just because it mentions spirituality in its scriptures and at its practice. Uncovering true self in surrender to God-consciousness, is an of doing, activation. To make an inner connection to the eternal divine is capable of producing an “inner peace that passeth all understanding of the word”.  A kind of healing happens inside ourselves, when the sum of the parts are connected and made whole, connected to the One God that is All. Realising a spiritually disconnected ego self is cut off from universal love-consciousness is one way to understand enlightenment.

Any healing path leads towards some form of such one-ness. A high and lofty ideal, involving deeper layers of being, in the world. Real life integration and connection of such awareness and consciousness is bound to bring challenges and perhaps outright pain to our fixed ideas. Consciousness is an activation, a willful surrender of self-will.

When the ego dies, when there is only self that remains, there is nothing more, or less, than one-ness with the Godhead, the Consciousness of all that is. Many scriptures tells us that the love of God has no bounds, that it is unconditional love. And that we have to love the whole, in ourselves, and around us. The journey to know love and God has to be within, and love of the self, unconditional. Love begins with self-love. Healing is an inner journey.

The yoga way

I made a bumper sticker for Valentine’s day this year to say that, to find true, unconditional love of yourself there has to be an inner connection to the Divine within. An inner awakening process to becoming conscious, and wake up to a more beautiful reality. To free yourself from the mental and physical chains that bind. This is the greater meaning of yoga, to help us activate our Light Body, to love ourselves. Enlightenment may be more simple than we think – we simply have to do it. Then, even if temporarily, the gravity of the situation disappears illusions of the world drop away, the body-mind is transformed by spirit. Only light remains.

Peace and Godspeed blessings!
Johann, Cape Town Yoga,
14 April, 2015.

ॐ

EnjoY the expansive and inspiring frequencies of three of my music albums for deep meditation, restorative yoga and creativity:

●  Yoga Meditation Music

●  Consciousness Music 3 hour+ Youtube Playlist