"Fear comes from bewilderment. Where does basic bewilderment come from? It comes from being unable to harmonize or synchronize your mind and body. When you don’t feel grounded or properly seated in your world, you cannot relate to your experience or to the rest of the world."
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
There are many approaches to what is traditionally know as "yoga", the yoking, harmonizing, or bringing together of our attention and awareness; our selves with Ultimate Reality, the Dao, with God. It is not just a physical fitness practice that is effective at toning the body. And as far as that goes, it's more than simple meditation. Further, it's not even limited to the culture and practices typically associated with the word and concept. It is broader and much more universal than that. It captures a primordial concept that is as old as life itself.
In Gongfu circles it is often know as unification. In the end, it doesn't really matter what we call it, the concept is the same and each of us know intuitively. In some meditative traditions it is postulated that we don't need any practice, physical, contemplative, etc... to realize this unification, because it is our inherent nature. To that, I don't disagree. However, that is often easier said than done and only addresses a part of our being, the mental/spiritual part. For me, the idea that the body and the "world" are all illusion is a non-starter. Rather, I conceive of the body/world as being misunderstood, not unreal. Something worthy of investigation and nurture.
But the above is basically philosophical soccer that could go on for eternity. Better that we deal with what we know and understand. As noted in the above quote by Trungpa, Rinpoche, we do indeed deal with fear (and all the various forms of that emotion), and it can be debilitating. There are real ways to deal with this and it includes our whole being. We can overcome all sorts of negativity by being embodied and present. The beginning of liberation is intention. All else follows.
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
There are many approaches to what is traditionally know as "yoga", the yoking, harmonizing, or bringing together of our attention and awareness; our selves with Ultimate Reality, the Dao, with God. It is not just a physical fitness practice that is effective at toning the body. And as far as that goes, it's more than simple meditation. Further, it's not even limited to the culture and practices typically associated with the word and concept. It is broader and much more universal than that. It captures a primordial concept that is as old as life itself.
In Gongfu circles it is often know as unification. In the end, it doesn't really matter what we call it, the concept is the same and each of us know intuitively. In some meditative traditions it is postulated that we don't need any practice, physical, contemplative, etc... to realize this unification, because it is our inherent nature. To that, I don't disagree. However, that is often easier said than done and only addresses a part of our being, the mental/spiritual part. For me, the idea that the body and the "world" are all illusion is a non-starter. Rather, I conceive of the body/world as being misunderstood, not unreal. Something worthy of investigation and nurture.
But the above is basically philosophical soccer that could go on for eternity. Better that we deal with what we know and understand. As noted in the above quote by Trungpa, Rinpoche, we do indeed deal with fear (and all the various forms of that emotion), and it can be debilitating. There are real ways to deal with this and it includes our whole being. We can overcome all sorts of negativity by being embodied and present. The beginning of liberation is intention. All else follows.
RSS Feed
