The hardest part of moksha or liberation (the main goal of yoga) is conquering the ego-self. And that is only possible with our most difficult life experiences like losing a job, not getting what we had in mind, too high expectations, earning less money than expected, failing an exam or any other type of ‘failure’ in life. Without those experiences, it is not possible to overcome our ego. Those experiences help us, so they should not be seen as ‘failure’ but as a necessary part of the whole learning process.
What are we doing exactly when we conquer our ego selves? Yoga is described in the ancient Vedic texts as an art to merge with The Divine which is of pure love. Only particles of the same vibration can merge. So we have to become love, to be able to merge with it. That is logical. Becoming unconditional love is possible with the road of Jnana, Karma and Bhakti Yoga. Being in this process only, gives an ultimate feeling of bliss and happiness.
Eventually, at the end of the road of moksha, we have to realize that we are God. We are no different from Divinity: we are wondrous divine creatures. But if we are still thinking that we are John, Juan, Jason, Jill, Dennis or Sam, we can never melt into divine love, because we don’t realize that we are actually part of this greater higher energy or ‘God’. When it is not in the mind, it can never become a reality.
God lives in our hearts. Our soul body is part of Him, like a human body has cells, we are His cells. Somewhere down the road we forgot this and we made up a story in our minds that we are just only human beings of flesh and blood (with a name, with a house, a car, a job, a title, bank accounts and a lot of material stuff). This is not true. We are not what we have or what we have reached in our lives. We are body, mind and soul. All of us. Weather we have a Chinese, American, European or African body. We are all similar in our core being. We are all love. We are all God. And we are all connected. The mind is where everything goes wrong. In our minds we make up these things that aren’t true. This is how we have forgotten our true nature of love. And this is where yoga can help.
With yoga we clean our inner energy and our minds by replacing old thinking patterns for new more loving ones with consciousness of oneness and unity. With yoga we learn to have control over thoughts and senses. Once we have control over thoughts and senses, we are able to become aware of old patterns and we can replace them. That is the start to consciousness and true wisdom. We connect with our soul: atma. Our soul enters our physical body when we are born. This is what gives us ‘life’. It is the life-giving energy of love. While being in our temporary physical bodies, which are not eternal like our souls, our mind starts to think that we are our ego-self. The mind is just a bundle of thoughts. If we are not thinking, the mind is absent. That is the goal of every yoga practice. This state of mindlessness, in between thoughts is called samadhi.
Overcoming our ego is even a step further than ‘changing our thoughts’. Though this is already a very difficult job to do: many of us don’t reach that point of inner stillness in this life. The ego we can only conquer if it is very high ‘out there’. The ego has to rise to be able to chop it off. When somebody has low self esteem, which many of us women have these days, we can never chop off the ego-self-head. It is not out there, like a turtle who enters his head. The only way to get out there is to have some (too high) expectations which you think you are able to reach: you stick your neck out. Once you don’t reach the expected and you feel disappointed the head of ego is still out there and can be chopped off. That is only possible when there is enough self reliance, self esteem, self worthiness and self reflection to be able to recognize, understand and assimilate the ego-killing-process. It’s a conscious process of the unconsciousness.
Overcoming ego is the hardest part of liberation: we have to be able to self reflect on a very deep level. That is Jnana Yoga: true wisdom of our own being. We have to be strong enough to look inside our minds and ask ourselves: Was this my ego talking? Or was this God’s way of acting? When something bad happens, we can cry or get angry, but a real yoga student is always in balance: good and bad experiences do not affect us. All experiences are meant for grinding the diamond of our soul. They are needed in the proces to merge with love.
If you have reached the point to stay calm in every situation (positive or negative) and when you are able to self reflect without shame or pain, you became very strong. Self reflection and daring yourself being vulnerable is an absolute strength: Why am I having this experience? What can I learn from it? What had God in mind for me to have this experience in life? Is my hurt ego a way to come closer to God? Was I having too high expectations of my own abilities?
Most of the unrealized expectations is that we want to gain material things. Some spiritual practices teach us to always have succes in mind to be able to live in abundance, mainly of money and welfare. Once success is in the mind, it will become an experience. This is true but not the main goal of our lives or what God had in mind for us. This kind of materialism or wanting to fulfill material wishes (which is a desire) will never give us complete happiness.
Living in the material world keeps us in our ego self thinking of the lowest dimensions. I have this. I have reached that. This is mine. It is all ego. Material keeps us in maya, the material world. However the goal in our lives moksha, is nothing material, it is divine. It is the connection with our energetic world of higher non-material dimensions, which is only to be found with the complete absence of any desire. A desire is a thought that is clouding the mind. The mind has to become empty.
We leave the third material dimension to travel in our minds of the fourth dimension into the fifth, sixth, seventh and eventually tenth dimension. We have to let go of the material first, like a plane loses its excess cargo to take off. We can only connect with those non-material dimensions during meditation. There is no other path. Awareness always starts with inner stillness: in between thoughts, with an empty mind, because emptiness is the place where the Higher Energy is to be found.
Once the ego-self-head is chopped off, a world of love and bliss opens. When you realize you are not the doer but God is, he will give you all the happiness you could possibly feel. We become pure bliss. God is who we are. God is who is acting through us. God’s particles are the same as love and happiness, prema and ananda. We can find those only inside of ourselves, never with material, experiences or other persons. It is who we are. We have to become our true selves and connect with our inner love to become happy. That’s it.
Everything happens for a reason. There is always a lesson in it. And it is up to you to discover this message of the Higher Energy. The only goal for God is that you merge back into his body by conquering your mind and the thought you are you and not Him. You are love, you are bliss. When you realize this in your mind, it becomes a new reality.
This is why we chant in our minds the mantra ‘so ham‘. So while inhaling, ham while exhaling. So ham means ‘I am God’. Or better to say ‘I am’. Because when you use two words I and God, you still think of a duality and separation. With ‘I am’, you know that you and God are the same being. Chanting so ham in the mind (not out loud) has the same vibrational energy as God’s breathing. You are not breathing, God is, you do not exist. It is all an imagination of the mind. There is no separation, we are one love. Surrender to God and he will be able to act through you. Then ego is gone.
YOGA LIFESTYLE 