Our Resistance to Change

… the only change that we need make is deciding to spend time with our Self every day. Yoga calls this meditation. This is a change that is not hard!

We just need to do it once a day!

(Blog post Nov. 27, 2019)

In my last blog I wrote the above statement.

One of my readers questioned the cavalier nature of my comment, saying, “It’s not easy to meditate every day. Why do you say that it is easy to meditate?”

I agree. It is hard for us to change our patterns. Even though people spend lots of money on self-help books, they often run away from doing many of the books’ suggestions, unless it’s a suggestion that necessitates much activity. Even though people spend lots of time with their friends or counselors exploring their world of confusion or frustration, they easily forget to turn off the radio or television when they start to reflect on those conversations.

Why do we greatly dislike just sitting quietly becoming mindful of what goes on in our minds or in our body? Even though we really want to know ourselves, we don’t become more knowledgeable about ourselves because we stay on the surface.

Often when we break through the surface and an old painful memory pops up, we turn outward and get involved in diversions or distractions, like sports or alcohol or sleeping. Why does this happen?

Yoga says that such encounters with the deepest parts of ourselves challenge our self-identity, are not very pleasurable or spark a moment of being out of control. We give into our fears of who we think we are. Yoga says that we have a wrong self-identity. In other word, “we have a trivial sense of Self.” We are not those fears, those insecurities, those painful experiences, those moments of inadequacy and lack of control.

Yoga says that we forget that we are Divine, Infinite and Perfect! We forget that we are Pure DIPs!

It doesn’t really help anyone, when I say that “to meditate is not hard!” because people generally go inside and experience the “false self,” the imagined, hurt or uncomfortable person that has learned to hate themselves. However, it is much easier, according to yoga, to experience the unity of mind and breath, if even just for a minute or so. Often the old patterns of the roaming mind disturb that unity but all one needs to do is go back to the feel of the breath in the nostrils, or the feel of the expansion and contraction of the belly as we breathe, or the subtle sweetness of the breath as it passes the corners of the eyes. It becomes quite quieting when we attend to thee breath wherever we feel it.

When we go back to the breath and start linking the mind and the breath together we begin to find the True Self. We begin to experience a unity that teaches us how truly good and wonderful we are. We begin to fall in love with that experience.

What is happening? We are falling in love with the True Self, the unity of mind and breath. We begin to connect with the DIP that we are.

Try it! I think you will like it!

For Christians, Happy Advent! During this preparation season, connecting the mind and the breath will bring you to a wonderful experience of God becoming a child within you!

Namaste’