Yoga comes from a war.
One of the first written accounts of yoga comes from the Bhagavad Gita, a section of the Indian epic the Mahabharata, which chronicles the Kurukshetra War between the Pandavas and Kauravas, royal families related by blood.
In the Gita, the archer Arjuna sees his brethren lined up to face off on the battlefield. He despairs at the idea of fighting his own kinsmen, of having to kill or be killed.
Arjuna cries out to his guide and charioteer Lord Krishna, who reveals his many splendid and horrific faces as he guides, comforts, and motivates Arjuna to fulfill his responsibilities without expectation to the outcome.
"The duty of a soldier is to fight, and fight well," Krishna tells Arjuna, encouraging him to perform his role with total devotion and total detachment.
Krishna, the godhead incarnate, persuades Arjuna to take up his weapon and SLAY, advising the use of dhyana, bhakti, karma, and jnana yoga to make peace with it.
How's that for a mindfuck, eh?
I'm not really one for dogma or religion, but I do enjoy sucking the marrow out of life, and the Gita is a juicy tale to consider with lots of layers to chew on.
I prefer esoteric teachings, and some of the deeper lessons I get from the Gita relate to duality.
Yoga AND war? I thought it was one or the other...
To me, yoga is not only a series of poses you do for an hour after work on Mondays - yoga is LIFE. So the question becomes, how is LIFE war? And more importantly, how do we make peace with it?
Most of us exist within a paradigm of duality: good vs. bad, right vs. wrong, light vs. dark, ned vs. dan - but the true BEingness of existence is something beyond what most of our limited human supercomputer brains have been programmed to see.
When we operate from duality, we automatically judge the things we don't like. We label them as "bad". We say we're justified and "right", and the opposition is "wrong" and deserving of punishment because they counter our beliefs. Then we take it upon ourselves to energetically or physically shun & abuse our challenger.
When we operate from duality, everything becomes an act of warfare. Every judgment that we cast is an attack and a defense.
The program of duality is a Trojan horse operating 24/7 in our subconscious. It's amazingly efficient and alarmingly far-reaching, tainting almost every aspect of our whole lives. It hijacks our experience and tricks us into thinking that judgment is not only normal, but an acceptable way for human beings to conduct themselves.
There is little to no consideration for the fact that judging another person affects your physical health. Judgment (and guilt and shame and doubt and fear) create chemical reactions in your own body that causes heart disease & inflammation, fucks up metabolism, and weakens the immune system. It's a biological feedback loop!
Awareness is key. You have to recognize that corrupted files are running in the background at all times before you can do anything about it. Then you have to search yourself to remove them from your supercomputer, and then you have to download and install new software. Yoga is one protocol!
Yoga = CONSCIOUSNESS offers a path to liberation & freedom from our exhausting, subconscious judgment of this vs. that, even in the face of conflict ESPECIALLY in the face of actual conflict.
It's easy to be peaceful and zen and shit when everything's going well, isn't it? The real test of character comes when SHTF, when someone or something we don't like or want is happening right in our face - that's when we sometimes lose our cool and let judgments fly like arrows!
The fact is that there will always be something you don't like happening in life. Your mind, body, and soul ARE under constant attack from forces seen and unseen - hello, viruses & GMOs & indoctrination & HAARP & taxation & assholes & on & on & on.
You do whatever you want about it - you can get pissed, judge it, fear it, resist it. You can try to control it if you want, or you can withdraw and cower from life...but in doing so, you will have already lost the battle.
OR you can meet the conflict head on with a focused mind, peace in your heart, poise in your body, and honor in your soul to vanquish all enemies.
Be one in self-harmony, in Yoga, and arise, great warrior, arise. ~ the Bhagavad Gita
š Sara!
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