Saturday 6/27/09 Yoga Nidra #4

10:00 Personal Welcoming time and space

10:20 Settle into Kula circle for

Opening - Grounding - Chanting - Satsanga


We begin with a Vedic Chant

Yoga Nidra is comprised of two paths:
The Progressive Path and the Direct Path

The first phase of Yoga Nidra emphasizes the
Progressive Path of Purification:

During this segment, ‘Yoga’ can be defined as a clearing away the obstacles that prevent us from feeling physically and psychologically relaxed, safe, and receptively open and available.

‘Yoga Nidra’ is a profound purification process.

Nidra or ‘sleep’ is the state in which we are unconscious to True Nature, we are identified with and swayed by thoughts, emotions, beliefs and misperceptions.

Yoga Nidra represents a paradox, a play on words, ‘sleep’ and ‘awake’. 

Nidra means ‘the sleep of the yogi’ and implies that:
The ‘normal person’ is asleep to True Nature through all states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, and deep sleep.
While the yogi is one who is awake to True Nature across all states, even when their mind is asleep.

Yoga Nidra is the ancient yogic practice used to awaken us from ‘sleep’ of conditioned patterns, so that we may live in and as our True Nature of unconditional Being.

Suggested Inquiry today:
Few people ever question the validity of the notions they have about sleep and waking. 

Could it be that waking state thoughts and objects are also fabrications and projections of the mind, as empty of substance as dream images?

Today we have the opportunity to explore and discover the truth of this fact, first hand.

Write down thoughts/questions about your experience:

The Law of Opposites

Every experience arises paired with its complimentary opposite.
 
Today we’re going to highlight the five basic elements of the cosmos:

During this progressive phase of Yoga Nidra we learn to welcome and experience all pairs of opposites that makeup the content of our consciousness, starting with the gross physical body and proceeding to the subtler bodies of energy, feelings, emotions, cognition, desire and ego-I.

The fundamental principle of the Law of Opposites, recognizes life as a hologram where each part contains the whole. 

When we live fixed in one-half of a pair of complementarities, we live with an inner sense of lack, in search of resolution. 

Experiencing opposites evokes the ground of wholeness in which they exist and invites a resolution that exists beyond what the thinking mind is able to formulate.

What was your experience today?