RE: Yoga Meditation and Not Knowing that is what You're Doing

[Guest guest]

 

sraddha54 [sraddha54]

 

Dear Harsha and Friends,

 

When I was a child of nine I was forced to spend hours, days, months,

and years on my back due to undergoing rhuematiod arthritis. I spent

my days alone as my parents both had to work and all my siblings had

to go to school. Unwittingly, I began inner contemplation of myself,

pranayama, and getting away from the senses in order to rise above

the tremendous pain. Gradually I began noticing that the sense of

time was lost to me, and I could remove myself from the bodily pain.

I had times when I felt contracted to a pinpoint of smallness

indescribable and also expansion so vast it also is indescribable. I

started having beautiful visions of holy figures, and the cosmos

alive with vastness of lights and movement. I had also visions of

falling to the earth in bliss/ecstacy at the beauty and love. At

times I thought I could 'hear' the sound of all creation. I tell

these things only as an example of what I think was a child being

able to practice meditation without ever having heard of it and

without any direction from any person (well, not one that I knew!) I

also think that the wondrous side-effects of this in the form of

expanding consciousness and accompanying visions help me also to

believe that I had tapped into That. What do you think of this? Could

this indeed be why at such an early age and by the circumstances in

my life these things occurred?

 

In Love and Friendship,

Mazie

 

Dear Mazie,

 

Yes. It seems your conditions and circumstances led you automatically to

practice inner contemplation. In classical yoga, there are several steps and

Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses) comes before Dhyana (Meditation and

visionary states) and then Samadhi. I can easily imagine how laying in bed

the whole day at a young and tender age could lead to that.

 

It seems Divine Providence has a unique way for all of us to open up to our

own Awakeness. Suffering is the fertilizer for the seed of inner aspiration

which blooms into the thousand flowers of heavens and merges with Being.

 

Love to all

Harsha