Yoga as it is

One who is aware of the moment to moment mind and controls it in the deepest state, who tirelessly helps oneself and benefits other lives is a Yogi. Yogi may reincarnate in any plane of existence. Yogi may pursue any livelihood and go through ups and downs of life like any other human. Yogi may eventually adopt any religion or belief system, or may come across and follow any discipline that offers mastery over the mind, and partial experience s of truth. But when one hears the name of 'Yoga', one cannot resist. Yogi feels a deep pull from within. A pull beyond dogma or belief, beyond reasoning, sensual pleasure or profit seeking, beyond merely an intellectual understanding, socio-political dispute, ethical repression or blind devotion and far beyond stiff self-centred expressions. Like a lighthouse beyond the physical, psychological and esoteric realms, Yoga exists and Yogi is called forth towards it for survival. In every new life one may feel resistance because of one's own accumulated mental patterns. These patterns, arising from the parental, social, educational or religious perspectives, are a means by which one passes through the early stages of new lives to meet pain. Yogi will overcome these patterns gradually and continue the journey from where it last ended in the previous life. 

Yoga is beyond anything that can be described, it cannot be achieved by one who is looking to master it and it cannot be learned by one who knows. It can only be experienced by the one who is empty of self, who becomes full with everything and stays empty. The driving force of creation which results in manifestation (becoming) is the impetus to ‘know’ while the nature of all phenomena is empty. Only one who is in love with truth finds the path to Yoga. There is no distinction between experiencing day to day life and Yoga. There is no distinction between the whole of existence and Yogic experience. Poison of Samsara is the poison of duality manifested as a cancer of modernity in our age. Yoga is refuge. It can take the suffering away and remedy this pain.

Yazdan Raees