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Practices Supportive of Integral Yoga
FEBRUARY 19, 2023
Among the thousands of practices that can be found in the many volumes of Mother and Sri Aurobindo, nearly all can be found among the world’s spiritual/contemplative traditions. There is only one, to the best of my awareness, that They have repeatedly told us is the core of the Integral Yoga – to concentrate deep within, and open to the Mother’s Force, seeing more and more clearly over the years, the various distortions of the mind, life and body, and opening them very consciously and repeatedly, with sincerity, humility and vigilance, to Her Light, Love and Power.
I’ve found that every one of the thousands of practices They have written about, as well as every one of the limitless practices found in yogic, mystic, contemplative traditions around the world, can be supportive of this core IY practice.
Here’s one of the simplest practices, seen in the light of IY.
1. Sit quietly.
2. Without strain or tension, with the most minimal effort, your attention open to the full range of immediate experience, allowing passing thoughts and emotions to come and go without paying them any attention, notice how the breath flows freely, naturally, spontaneously.
3.Make no effort to control the breath or control the attention. just ALLOW the breath to be present as a kind of gentle anchor to help keep the attention from being drawn into the “story” of “me.”
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Try this practice without any judgment of it being “IY” or not.
Notice the following:
1. Can you really allow everything to just be? No struggle with thoughts, no attempts to control attention?
2. As you ease into this simple, open, allowing, do you notice at all how the focused awareness of the breath comes more and more easily?
3. Do you notice, as the ease increases, as the gentle, spontaneous focus becomes stronger, any sense of Grace, of Presence? (without “trying”, without “pulling” anything – simply being with the breath, being with experience, open to whatever arises without attempts to control or manipulate experience?
We can explore this same simple practice for a month. You may find, if you do this every day, and explore with longer and longer periods – 20 minutes, 40 minutes, 1 hour or more…… – that your sense of the core IY practice of stepping back into the Silence and opening to the Force, seeing what needs to be transformed from the innermost place of Silence and Peace – your sense of this may shift considerably.
let us know how it goes!
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