Yoga | Planting the Seeds of Awakening
The body is one the most powerful tools to unlock the hidden layers of the mind. Honest, authentic practice can so powerful shift energy that it can change how you show up in the world and who you know yourself to be. To stretch is expand your potential, raise your vibration, and realize the deepest inner truth. Yoga is about waking up, or it could be said, awakening the seed of consciousness within. This where tapas, the fire of purification is needed, to light the spark and keep the flames burning and illuminate the path. To practice yoga is a seeker’s quest for truth-bearing wisdom and a timeless transcendent sense of self.
There is a process of spiritual evolution happening within you right now. Whether you realize it or not, just the fact that you’re reading this means that you have stepped onto what many spiritual seekers call “the path”.
Your choice may or may not be fully conscious, but rest assured that the process of awakening has begun within you. But, the path is not a linear progression where you tick off boxes of success with each day. Instead, the steps that spiritual growth traces are more circular, winding, twisting, meandering. Inner learning takes time and patience for the lessons to steep deeply into the folds of your soul There is no fast track for the unraveling of years or potentially lifetimes of old patterning.
Yoga, meditation and other forms of spiritual awakening are a support for your journey. But the journey is essentially and always yours and yours alone. What happens in the realm of your spirit is often hard to share. The evolution of consciousness is not always reflected in the performance of asanas. Instead, the mirror of life is the best looking glass to gaze in when you want to see how your spiritual world is going. Ask yourself this—is there more happiness, more love, and more peace in my life right now than when I started walking on this path years ago? If the answer is yes, then, no matter how many twists and turns the road has taken you down, you’re on the right path.
What to do if the answer is no? Well, don’t worry. Your awakening is like a seed that once planted will always bear fruit. Once you have been initiated, you’re bound to continue, no matter how long it takes. The fruits of awakening are happiness, love and peace. There are parts of the path that are riddled with doubt, division, even anger, hatred, anxiety, depression pop up here and there. Those are not bad signs, but actually good signs. You see, when you are brave enough and strong enough to walk through the valleys and shadows along the path, exactly at that moment, the valleys and shadows show up—not a moment before.
If you find yourself caught in the twists and turns of the winding path of awakening, don’t stop. Or, a more humorous way of saying it is from a funny quote I once read, “If you find yourself in hell, keep going.”
Written by : Kino Macgregor