Stories of a Yogi (series, part 1)

I've been interested in this concept of self-realization for more than just a few years now. I remember one time years back, perhaps 2015 or so, I was reading Paramahansa Yogananda's book, Autiobiography of a Yogi, and I shelved it because I unable to keep reading. It was so esoteric and spiritual that I just couldn't get through it. In reflection, it appears that there were these 'layers of density' that were necessary to shed before I could actually see the wisdom in the pages of that book. It is interesting, because we never realize the "thing" until after it happens and we look back and we go "oh, that was that."

Here I am, it's almost 2020, and I've been fully immersed in this thing called Yoga for years. Since May 2015, when I traded the corporate job I had as a mortgage banker for a seemingly empty quest to reach enlightenment, I've been working really hard to "self-realize". I am happy to share some of the personal and authentic stories about my experiences over the years, which range from totally woo-woo and esoteric to fully human and mundane, in order to provide others with some solace in their journey forward. I share because I understand that we are all in this together, and that my words may indeed help someone, but I also share in the interest of documentation and science. I believe that there is a thing such as self-realization, and that there are mystical states of existence known as enlightenment, liberation, moksha, and nirvana. So I guess that is what this blog/journal entry is all about. May be that this will become part of a series, who knows. If all goes according to divine plan, maybe the words henceforth will serve much in the same way that Autobiography of a Yogi served me, once upon a time. First rejected, but eventually enlivening my spirit, piquing my curiosity, encouraging me to probe deeper into the mystery. We can hope, right? At the very least, I hope that it will entertain someone in the audience, because it has been a really wild ride. These are just the stories of a yogi.

I'll start by saying this. God exists, but it is not by any sort of conceptual framework that we can understand God. We cannot prove nor can we disprove the existence of this thing called God , which in our logically oriented minds makes it an impossibility. This is a really poor way of looking at things, first of all, and should be examined. Sure, that is an opinion, that I have, but hopefully it is an opinion that serves a higher perspective. I hope that is all we ever do - seek a higher perspective. And from a higher perspective, to look at a concept and immediately deem its truth or falsehood around the mind's rational judgment makes little sense. Here is why. We will have to explain the working of the mind for a moment, so bear with me.

The mind, you see, is an amazing mechanism that we have access to through our body. We used to think it existed in the brain, however, this is false. We know now that this nebulous thing called "mind" is.... well, actually quite nebulous. Meaning it exists much like a cloud. And depending on our state of being, which is to say what our mental focus and points of awareness are, the mind will operate accordingly. When we focus on a task, the mind organizes the body to produce the desired mechanical effects to get the job done. The mind is like an organizing system in this way. A great scientist in our modern day, Dr. Joe Dispenza, says that "the mind is the brain in action." Just think about that for a moment, and in your process of thinking, understanding that your mind is firing certain neural pathways in the brain and body to compare this piece of data with every other relevant or related piece of data that will provide us with some sort of comprehension or realization, that can then help us move forward progressively with life. The mind serves us in this way - trying to categorize and cognate the infinite experiences of life into bite-sized chunks of information that are immediately useful to us and our survival. If anyone applies logic to try to understand the actual evolution of our human brain and mind, they might begin to see the futility of such a pursuit. I believe that it is instead prudent to reduce and simplify the process.

Think of it this way. As an infant, our brain is making thousands, perhaps millions of new neural connections every moment. Huge amounts of nerves are firing through the brain and down the spine into the body to gather information about the environment. The baby is constantly producing quick adjustments to learn how to navigate its incredibly complex and cosmic piece of machinery known as the human being. It is a quantum computer - gathering data, assimilating it into some useful input, then producing an output to obtain some desirable affect. Now, what is this so-called desirable affect? Introduce a new concept and layer it in here - all of life seeks evolution. Nothing that is living is seeking its own destruction. Operating purely on the impulse of life itself, nature is unfolding itself beautifully and perfectly through the baby. This is happening before any cognitive understanding emerges, yes? Far before any rational intelligence turns online. Our science is telling us that baby is not even aware of its own self until about the age of two, when the meta-cognitive operations that produce this thing called 'ego' begin their work. This is fascinating stuff, and has everything to do with the spiritual quest!

When we see how our brains and minds form, and we start to then dive deeper into this, the understanding emerges that we are continuously refining ourselves much in the same way as the baby did at the beginning of life. Only now, we have highly embedded neural circuitry that is no operating on a largely subconscious or unconscious level. Not only is the heart-beating all on its own without us having to think about it, but remember those extremely difficult motor patterns such as walking or talking that took you forever to learn? We can now do these things without second thought. What a trip! What does that mean for us? We have a greater degree of mental bandwith that we can now allocate towards other tasks! Hoorah! What might those tasks be? Let's take some incredible examples from people like Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, or Albert Einstein. All humans who maximized their mental capacities to do what? Create! The precise thing we are here to do. And why is that? Because creation just wants to create. It is the evolutionary process. Art, music, literature, new inventions that improve the quality of life for other humans... These things are processes designed to in some way contribute to the evolution of humanity, no? Look at nature - innovation is the name of the game. If the species does not adapt, it is sacrificed to the fire of the great all expansive spirit that is Nature Herself, to create room for the species that does. I hope this is all making sense or landing somewhere. We are getting somewhere here!

Now we are adults, and within us is this evolutionary impulse driving us to ... do some thing. Only, what is that thing? Why do we feel it? Circling back to the concept of G-O-D. My sense is that it is this nebulous idea that calls us onward. All of the religious paths in the world are trying to explain this in their own way. They are trying to enlighten us to the fact that, embedded within our very flesh, is the force of life itself, expanding through us to become aware of its own essence nature. It is the emergence of self-awareness, parallel to the humbling, empowering and inspiring realization, that we ARE THAT. We are that Awareness, known by many names; the Awareness that is infinite, omniscient, and omnipotent for the pure sake of being aware. What is so silly about this, is that it is the most obvious fact, and the hardest grasp. Perhaps because it is not graspable, it is not really even cognitively available for entertainment. The fact that we are Awareness, and that this Awareness can be associated to (perhaps even synonymous with) the concept of God, is one of the things that I really hope to get across in this entry. If we start to examine religious texts under the lens of this paradigm, things may begin to stick out to us in a different way. "I and the Father are One." The actual process of internally producing the thought of "I" is accompanied by underlying brilliance of life itself, emerging through the "I-maker", to become self-aware. To become a player in the Universal game. To become a 'self' in a sea of others. Just the thought alone of "I" is surrounded by mysticism and magic if one chooses to see. Where does the "I" emerge? Why do we have this ability, to produce an "I"? For what purpose? How?!

Removing self-importance is one of the pre-requisites for the arousal of mystical states. To experience oneself, not as separate from the Universe, but very much as part of the Universe, no, not only "part of"- but rather as the Universe Itself, experiencing Itself, through your eyes. This is the self-realization I was questing for. This was the enlightenment I knew was possible. Don't ask me how I knew, but I knew. And I would venture to guess that you know too.

May all sincere seekers awaken to the truth of their own being. OM.

#storiesofayogi