April 2025 Week 2

“In this life we are all just walking up the mountain and we can sing as we climb or we can complain about our sore feet. Whichever we choose, we still gotta do the hike. I decided a long time ago singing made a lot more sense.” To be honest, I cannot reference this quote beyond assuring you that I did not say this. However, I just love it and how it lines up with our intention this month - “I am as peaceful as i want to be today. Nothing that happens has to interfere with this.” I feel like each month somehow, someway we come back to the same underlying message that peace, ease, contentment is our birthright and it is up to us to choose it and live in it. Now because it is our birthright and because we talk each month about how to find our peace does not mean that it is easy to find it and stay in it. It takes constant work for us common spiritual folks lol.
Sutra 1.19 is continuing to talk about arresting the crazy mind chitta (chatter, SHITTA!).
Sutra 1.19 states: “The experience of the higher level of samadhi is innate to (extraordinary yogis technically known as) Videha and Prakritilaya. I am going to try to dummy this down for me and you to understand - there are 2 types of yogis - Bhava Pratyaya and Upaya Pratyaya.
Bhava Pratyaya - Videha and Prakritilaya - are innately equipped with all the tools, means, powers, and privileges required to reach the highest state of samadhi. (Samadhi is a state of intense concentration achieved through meditation. In Hindu yoga this is regarded as the final stage, at which union with the divine is reached.). Upaya Pratyaya yogis reach the highest samadhi only if they have a plan for doing so and a strategy for implementing that plan. We are all Upaya Pratyaya yogis and we need a plan and a strategy to arrest our crazy minds, because even though we may never reach this highest form of meditation, our attempts at meditation and practice will not be fruitful if our mind is a jumbled mess. So yes, lets say we have a plan and a strategy to practice 10 minutes of meditation each morning and to practice yoga 3 times a week. If we remember back at previous Sutras we learned that the way to heal the mind is through practice and non attachment. So our plan is our practice, great however if our mind is attached to outside events, people, scenarios etc - our practices of yoga and meditation are not going to help us. This is quite confusing and also quite clear.
Here is another book (Demystifying Patanjali) written on this Yoga Sutra: There are 2 sorts of yogis:those who have attained their goal, and those who are working toward attainment. In truth, only a person who has achieved the goal deserves to be called a yogi, since yoga means oneness, or union (with God). Even so, one may legitimately also be called a yogi who is only practicing to achieve that goal. This is us! We are practicing, studying, learning and trying and maybe we are not obtaining complete spiritual samadhi, but we are benefiting from our dedication to our individual practices. Lets try this week to be as unaffected as we possibly can be by our outer world and work overtime to protect our inner peace. How can you do this? What works for you? Good luck