Yoga for Awareness

A good path takes you inwards by delicate measures. That is the direction to go. And the turning point is called pratyahara in yoga. Going back and forth in this way in sensible yoga helps getting in harmony with your deeper sides and sane integrity.

And otherwise, let imagined stories inspire helpful strides and honour within large life patterns to the degree they are constructive. Neat fables may help some, for example. Here are some: [More].

Evolve awareness

Self-mastery depends upon the acquiring of four states of consciousness:

First, [pratyahara] Prohjihara, or the state of withdrawing the attention from sensory disturbances; Second, [dhyana] Dhyan, or the state of focusing the withdrawn attention on Spirit; Third, [steady focus] Dharana (conception) or the state of holding the attention of Spirit; Fourth, [elevated absorption] Samadhi (identity of meditator and object of meditation) or that state of realizing Oneness with Spirit. - Swami Yogananda ["The Bhagavad Gita Stanzas 4, 5 and 6, of Chapter I". East-West, March, 1933 Vol. 5-5]

COMMENT. Pratyahara is the most common transliteration of switching the awareness inwards for the sake of meditation (contemplation). A similar thing happens when we fall asleep.

Meditation ladder. See Yoga Sutras

A Dream

ONE DAY a man set out on a journey. At a certain place he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream. In it he saw a stairway [or ladder] resting on the earth. The top of the ladder was reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.

There above it or there beside him stood YHWH, and he said: "I am YHWH, I will give you that your descendants will be like the dust [tiny things?]. I will not leave you till I have done what I have promised you."

When the man awoke was afraid and said, "How awesome; this is the gate of heaven." [Genesis 28:10-19, retold]. Compare Jack and the beanstalk.

Kriya yoga

Yogananda at times quoted the bible passage, "I die daily," [1 Corinthians 15;31], and said kriya yoga or something similar was the method for it. He also taught, "We ought not to fear to practice conscious death." [Scp 78]

By that he meant "do kriya." Yogananda also says: "Do not waste time in negative thinking." [Scf 3]. Some persons could think that striving to die is the ultimate no to living, but "Always look to the bright side of death," as the Monty Pythons sing after Eric Idle, the maker of the song. Now to be butchered is to be outsmarted. "Write down your ideas and include one or two funny stories. . . finish with a quotation," says Yogananda, [Spa 68-69]

For my part I prefer to think kriya is for making life good, if that can be. Fit skills go into it too.

Tommyrot Wrestling

ONCE when a man was alone in the wilderness or nearby, a man popped up and wrestled with him till daybreak. The other saw that he could not win, and then he touched the socket of the man's hip so that his hip was wrenched.

The other said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."

But the man with a wrenched hip replied, "Not unless you bless me."

Then the other said, "Your name will be Israel, [he struggles with God] because you have struggled with God and men and have overcome."

The man found: "I saw God, and yet my life was spared." He was limping because of his hip. [Genesis 32:24-32, retold]

COMMENT. Tommyrot tales serve ulterior ends. In this case it probably serves to build up notions of being the select people. ""Animals like this don't exist," said the maid about the crocodile at the menagerie (Swedish). Feel free to add: "Almighty God that weak and unskilled doesn't exist either."

Reduce Garbage

Believe as you may, but faith is fairly often mental garbage. There are many conflicting faiths and beliefs around concerning a whole lot of issues: that means that all those faiths or dogmas cannot all be right - maybe none of them. Q.e.d.

To help yourself in a GIGO (Garbage in, garbage out) setting, your savoury knowledge could make a difference. Public opinion can operate dogmatic and overbossy conformism too.

To get sectarian-bitten or smitten is to be blunted or dwarfed between the ears. One could flounder without education, skills, resistance. At any rate, we should not do much on top of hearsay, and what is the difference between it and the content of many a bible passage?

Some recurrent tricks in life are summed up in the International Folktale Catalogue [Ti]. Learning about common tricks may save us troubles in real life. What we may do is to actualise themes and important topics, next articulate figuratively, attempting to bulwark the degenerate fare for folks at large.

If your over-riding setting is so little agreeable that you find the hare has got it better in his free-wheeling life-style, do not just sit there and flounder. To get solvent is much better, much more precious. Ask how, ask wisely.

Tip: Tell good stories

1. Turn to imagery in the art of education.
2. Turn to decent understatements if you feel for it. Besides, good things and nice scenery have to be guarded.
3. Artistically formed, terse wisdom may hope to survive better, not unlike the analects of Confucius, for example. And very many handling skills are formed on top of scientifically unverified wisdom, and so is tact and culture in gross outline.

Various fables excel in the use of "understatements". One of the fable features is called distance-making. When animals portray gross, typical conditions of mankind, it is due to a method of distance-making. Blossoming cartoonists use it too. And wisdom so portrayed can survive if it brings few or no problems to those who hand it over to next generations. It tends to be like that.

Buddha says:

I have taught the truth which is excellent in the beginning, excellent in the middle, and excellent in the end; it is glorious in its spirit and glorious in its letter. But simple as it is, the people cannot understand it. I must speak to them in their own language. I must adapt my thoughts to their thoughts. They are like to children, and love to hear tales. Therefore, I will tell them stories to explain the glory of the Dharma. If they cannot grasp the truth in the abstract arguments by which I have reached it, they may nevertheless come to understand it, if it is illustrated in parables." [Link]

Deep inside a human is his id, or the Child, in Eric Berne's terminology. It says we are in part children too. The id-system sees to that, also in grown-ups. It means that we can be taught on deep levels like children, if what is told has "wavelengths" that our TA Child may respond to and like.

I think we may assert with Eric Berne that the Child level of mind is seldom reached through abstract presentation, but can be reached through imagery, allegorical mastery and emblems that fit. Things that suit a child of five, may reap heartfelt thanks, even. Primal moral seems to be linked to that archaic level of the inner Child, (Dr. Berne's term), so the roots of good moral may dry up or die if they are not catered for in fit manner - imagery and devices found in fairy tales, fables, good proverbs and good parables. [Hom]

Fables, allegories and cartoons of quite mature calibre, ride high on some distancing. Solid parables can hit the target fairly well.

Brisk-looking and adequately attuned poetry (Aristotle's concept poesis in new and old ways) is also likely to enter a Child mind.

But a candid, terse gentleman and his gentleman humour may fall short in some settings.