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Ben, Vijendra, Sacred mountain |
It’s coming towards the end of January, 2001 – and the end of my one month Yoga teacher’s training course in Kerala, India.
![]() |
Ben, Vijendra, Sacred mountain |
It’s coming towards the end of January, 2001 – and the end of my one month Yoga teacher’s training course in Kerala, India.
The only thing that is constant in this life is change.
Nothing stays the same. Nothing lasts. Nothing is guaranteed.
The world – by which I mean the body; mind; emotions; senses; desires; atmosphere; season; environment; climate; people; economy; society; the family; the earth; the WHOLE WORLD – is constantly changing.
That change is very simply the nature of the world we live in. The universe is expanding, and we have learnt to think of ourselves as a static point within a changing world, but what is that static point really?
We are also changing all the time. Every cell in the body, right now, as you sit reading this, is either regenerating or decaying. No single cell, no single part of your body, will be the same now as it was when you began reading this sentence!
It’s almost as if we are riding on a wave of change. Can you feel it?
There IS a point of stillness – a static point within all the movement – but it’s not what most people think it is. It’s not the human being that we think we are, that we associate ourselves with, that’s constant. It’s the awareness behind the human experience that remains unchanged, and untouched by the world.
This human life is a wave that we ride for a short while. The more we allow ourselves to be aware of that, the easier our lives become. Because whether we like it or not, the wave rises and falls. Whether we like it or not, the world around us changes, unpredictably, relentlessly, inevitably. How we accept that change; how we surrender to it; and how we learn to love it as part of the nature of this life, depends entirely on what we cling to.
We are each of us riding the wave of our life, in an ocean of unpredictable, inevitable change.
Most of us cling to the belief that we are the body; or that we are the mind; that we are our work; or that we are our personality. If so, at some point that little ‘life-raft’ that we cling to will disintegrate, and we will be left alone with the realization that the wave is all there is. Then, we either surrender and go with the flow, or, we start looking desperately for something else to cling to!
Usually, our suffering is the result of our clinging – and life brings us the perfect lessons that we need to stop clinging. I don’t know why, but it seems that life itself is a lesson in detachment. Sometimes it can seem very harsh, but that’s usually because there’s simply something we don’t want to let go of !
In the Bhagavad Gita, it is written: “Yoga is skill in action”. I believe that surfing elegantly over the wave of life, without attachment, without clinging, is skill in action; the ultimate yoga.
I’d love to know what you think…
With love,
Ben
It is so easy to fall into the trap of looking at the world and finding fault.
When we look, we find what we are looking for, every time. Because we are CREATORS. We create our reality in the form that we choose. We are all-powerful.
If you want to experience peace in the world around you, there must first be peace in your heart.
If you would like to have more money, first find abundance in your Self.
If you would like to know more joy, first seek that place inside yourself where joy comes from.
The world around us is perfect. Don’t you see it!
Through a telescope: All the galaxies expanding and contracting in the eternal rhythm of life (universe)… the planets dancing around each other in their perfect orbits.
Through a microscope: All the internal systems expanding and contracting in the eternal rhythm of life (breath)… the electrons and neurons and atoms and molecules dancing around each other in their perfect orbits…
I am not a scientist, so please forgive me for any factual errors! But the fact remains that when we look up, we see the macrocosm. When we look down, we see microcosm. There is a perfect symmetry to the world around us, a perfect order. This is the truth behind the ancient Hermetic law: “As above, so below; as below, so above. As within, so without; As without, so within“.
When we see chaos, it is because we have created chaos. When we experience suffering, it is because we have attached ourselves to suffering. When we find we are without, then it is time to look WITHIN!
Then it is time to learn from our mistakes, to ask ourselves “what am I trying to teach myself” and to re-learn to see the world as a child does.
A child sees through eyes that are untainted by expectation. It sees things as they are.
Let’s see things as they are. Without fear. Without expectation. Without judgement. Without shame.
Don’t look. Have the courage to see.
It means that we must open ourselves completely.
It means that we must not hold on to what we think we know.
It means letting go of all that is comfortable.
But the trade off is this:
We step out of our little bubbles, our little comfort zones; and into a whole new world of beauty and joy.
We realize that we are infinitely connected to ALL THAT IS, in unimaginable ways – unimaginable because we cannot experience that reality with our imagination, with our thoughts, or with our ideas. Only through BEING, can we come to know that bliss.
I was once teaching a seminar, and I told the group that everything is perfect. One student asked me:
“what about war? what about rape? what about all the suffering in the world?”
It’s a good question, and not one that is easy to answer!
But the answer is this:
All human suffering is caused by our belief in duality. When we believe that there is suffering, there is. When we believe that the world is a hard place, it is. When we look for problems, we will certainly find them. And that is what we have been doing for a very, very long time.
Now, in this age, on this day, at this moment, we can change all that.
At any moment, any one of us, no matter what our circumstances, can change. We can always look inside ourselves and choose a different way. We can always look inside ourselves and let go of the pain, the suffering, the depression, the anger, the lack.
We can always see beauty, joy, and love, WITHIN. Because that is where it comes from. And if we all do that, then war, rape, suffering, will disappear. We create them with our negativity.
We are perfect as we are. God, whether you see him as a being, or an energy, or nature itself, doesn’t make mistakes.