We often hear people saying “I am feeling low”, “I feel some kind of negativity”, “this place is negative”, “I heard someone”, “I saw something” so on and so forth. All these thoughts, words, feelings and emotions point towards a negative presence or a negative entity.
William J. Baldwin in his book, Healing Lost Souls: Releasing Unwanted Spirits from Your Energy Body, said, “Spirit possession or control by non-physical entity goes against our most basic human and spiritual rights. It is a possibility both terrifying and preposterous.”
Psychic intervention, spirit intrusions, negative vibrations, disruptions etc., these things impact our lives physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. These entities are spirit beings without a physical body, but are stuck in the middle world (Earth). They are looking for material gratification, which is impossible without a material body and therefore penetrate into people’s aura, which resonate with their frequency.
From my experience, once in a personal session with a therapist, I was exposed to the presence of 17 entities in my aura field, who were feeding like parasites on my vital force, positive thoughts, giving me tail bone ache and promoting negativity in my life.
I was even confronted with the fact that a few close relatives had sent these entities to harm me and distract me from my life path. I was short of breath for many years, causing me discomfort while sleeping and inability to focus on any specific task at all.
The therapist carefully guided me to visit these entities and ask them their purpose, who sent them, and whether they were willing to go back to the light or not. Some did not even know they were dead, but gradually in a few sessions she cast all of them away. But much to my surprise, new entities kept attaching themselves to my aura field.
On finding out, we came to know that I had openings in my chakras or portals that act like vacuums, sucking other people’s negative emotions and energy, this acted like a passage for the entities to come and stay.
We closed the portal, and since then I am not experiencing any invasions, but still I visit the therapist time to time for regular cleansing, as the possibility of them entering cannot be nullified.
Can we have negative entities in our aura?
Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Almost all of us have some sort of negative entity existing in our auras. The number or size may vary, but at a time, one can hold many souls in their space, weakening the original soul inhabitant. The modern lifestyle leads to stress, anger, depression, and a lack of time for spiritual work.
So, unless we spare sufficient time, energy, and thought on our spiritual upliftment, we are bound to be invaded by these spirit intrusions from time to time or forever. For those who feel completely at peace with themselves & are on the right track, even they can have negative entities in their space, but they might be dormant or less active than those of others.
How do we draw these negative entities?
“These entities can become enmeshed in the aura, the energy field around the body.. The emotional or physical trauma endured by a person can render the energy centers vulnerable. They are open like doors to allow entry and attachment by entity,” said Dr. William J. Baldwin.
There are multiple ways they can enter a person’s aura and stay there for years or for a whole lifetime.
Sent by others:
Black magic and sorcery exist in every culture and proofs of the same exist widely. Sometimes, people who are unhappy/jealous with others can send these negative entities to bring misery to the victim. They will try to invade your space, time and again and stay with you, until it is cleansed.
Sexual contact:
The significance of sexual intimacy has been emphasized upon. The energy debris of other people’s aura can be left in the aura of another person with ease as the root chakras are connected, allowing a free flow of energy from one person to another. The entities have a free way into the body as the aura is open, making them susceptible to such invasions.
Drugs & alcohol:
Our consciousness has a lot to do with our ability to protect ourselves. Under the influence of drugs or alcohol, we lower our guards and our aura is exposed to the chances of being invaded.
It is also said that both drugs and alcohol create holes in our aura. Holes in our aura can be created during surgeries, unconsciousness or trauma. When our aura is not whole, its ability to fight the negativity drastically reduces.
Major loss:
Soul loss has been spoken of earlier as well, where a person suffers from major loss in their life and a part of their soul in entrapped in the specific situation. With such a prolonged period of suffering, long bouts of anger and extended periods of stress, all of this can create holes in the aura leading to easy invasion.
Low vibration:
Negativity is strongly drawn towards other negative things, places, and people. If you are subjecting yourself to constant sprees of tension, worry, stress, anger, insecurities or jealousy, chances are you already have negative entities in your personal space.
How do these entities affect us?
These entities affect us deeply and in ways we cannot even imagine. They are bound to create negative impressions, thought, behavior patterns etc.
They will create physical pain or disease in the area they are stuck, causing improper functioning of the body. The illness caused by them might not have substantial medical proofs but the problem would seem to persist as it lies on the energy level.
Creating obstacles in the path of success, one may find themselves going in circles with their career path, unable to find a breakthrough.
Prolonged phases of depressions, loneliness, mixed with fear and anxiety, are yet another way they affect one’s life.
Lack of energy, low self-image, low BP or low morale, as they feed on the prana or the life force, depleting the resources necessary for personal growth and energy.
Stronger entities would like to seclude the victim and create unhappy moments like separation from loved ones, lack of interest in family life or withdrawal from the society.
Ways to clean your aura of these entities
The good news is that these negative entities can be cleaned. The solo way to truly discard them from one’s aura is to approach a healer, a shaman or an energy worker. A guided session is important because you as a victim would be unable to tackle the negativity out of your system.
A charged person, who is on a much higher plane in terms of positivity & power, can mostly check within minutes of talking to you, if you have spiritual intrusions.
A psychic detox is usually conducted for more than one session where the healer peels of layers after layers of a specific trauma or misery to weed out entities related to each other.
Under the guided regression therapies, the therapist would take you to the deepest recesses of your subconscious mind and detect how many negative entities you have in your space and would step by step cast them out.
The process would be simple and healing in nature but does not guarantee detoxification forever. Just like after a detoxification, we might go back to eating junk and fill our system with toxic food similarly, due to our lifestyle choices, new entities are bound to find their way into your aura.
The only lasting solution is to be connected to a shaman and keep revisiting after a few months for a quick detoxification. But here are some ways of avoiding or lowering the chances of having these negative entities enter your aura.
How to avoid these entities
Be aware of other people’s energy and as and when you feel negativity around people and places, steer clear of it. Even for social obligations avoid handshakes and hugs with people whose energy do not seem right. Negativity can come in any form.
Keep a check on your own aura and try to understand if the thoughts that come to you are your or someone else’s. Ask yourself, does this thought belong to me or someone else. If you constantly feel someone else’s presence, visit a therapist or healer for cleaning work.
Try and work your way through soul retrieval. Many past life regression therapist can perform soul retrieval therapies.
Smudging can be used to clean your aura and your house. Using incense sticks, camphor lighting and salt water cleaning of the floor for maintaining a clean atmosphere.
Grounding technique of connecting with mother earth is an effective way to stay positive and be connected.
Imagine a white shaft light pouring from your crown chakra and bathing your entire body in positivity, peace and power.
Fear is baseless and only crops from unknown things, situations and places. Clearing our energy field on a regular basis of everything that doesn’t belong to us is important, so that we can be lighter and feel clearer about ourselves.
“In the beginning you will fall into the gaps in between thoughts – after practicing for years, you become the gap.” ~ J. Kleykamp
There is a creative state, or ingenious space, that can be achieved during meditation where our inner genius is free to emerge between the gaps of our thoughts; where creative ideas, or even ideas that have yet to be imagined, have the potential to be born.
It’s a place where “flow states” are conceived; where we become a microcosm giving into a greater creative macrocosm.
When we fall into these cosmic gaps, the entire universe is at our fingertips, at the tips of our pens and paintbrushes, and the floundering baby genius within us begins to thrash and splash about in preparation for its original dance –its unique contribution to the human leitmotif.
Discovering the gap between genius and non-genius
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.” ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
“Genius” is one of those power words that gets tossed around willy-nilly. But what separates a genius from the rest of us? What is the critical ingredient seen in every single genius from Shakespeare to Einstein? It’s not just IQ, or EQ, for some had it and some did not.
It’s not even what multiple intelligence category one falls into. It is focused passionate creativity. That’s the common denominator.
Indeed, you don’t have to be a genius to be creative, but you must be creative to be a genius. When it comes down to it, we’re all creative. But are we focused enough with our creativity, is the question.
Are we passionate enough with our art? Like Tony Robbins said, “Passion is the genesis of genius.” And it is precisely this focus and passion that seems to elude the majority of us.
A genius can hit a target no one else can see. Why is this? Because not only have they discovered the sacred gap between thoughts, they’ve bridged that gap. More importantly, they built the bridge.
They went through the difficult motions of daily practice and back-breaking trial and error. In the end, genius is nothing more than quantifiable error. A genius is a creative person whose mistakes are more difficult to imitate than their creativity.
This is because it is through mistakes where inner genius is discovered. Mistakes are the building blocks to a breakthrough. The breakthrough, whatever it is, could not have occurred had a foundation of mistakes not been used as stepping stones toward greatness.
Like Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Indeed. Art, creativity, genius, does not prevail despite failure, but through it.
So what does this tell us? It tells us that the genius part is neither here nor there. Or rather, the genius part is “over there” somewhere. But so what? Genius isn’t born, it’s built. What matters is right here, right now.
The Gap between being a non-genius and a genius is built in the moment. So what are we going to build? We need to focus on being the gap, on building our own unique ingenious bridge, instead of worrying about not-being or potentially-being a genius.
Geniuses since time immemorial have been tapping into, and building within, this sacred gap for ages through the indirect meditation of their craft. Such geniuses as Shakespeare, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Van Gogh, Hemmingway, and even Freud have mined the seemingly unconnected chasms between the known and the unknown. And they came up with gold.
Some of them were born with more natural talent than others, but they all had focused creativity in common, and they became geniuses through raw, determined passion.
Luckily for us, we have direct meditation (mindfulness meditation and Kundalini mediation) to help us achieve similar states of focused creative passion. And with enough mindful practice and creative application, the sky, the heavens, the cosmos, the infinite reaches of time and space, are the limit.
Discovering the gap between the known and the unknown
“Creative genius doesn’t just ‘happen’ because one person is born with more IQ points than another. If you are interested in something, you will focus on it, and if you focus attention on anything, it is likely that you will become interested in it.
Many of the things we find interesting are not so by nature, but because we took the trouble of paying attention to them… Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person’s skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically rewarding.” ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
At first meditation does not come easy. Initially it’s difficult to make time for it in our busy schedules, and it can be doubly-difficult to find a sacred place/space away from the clanking machinery and honking horns of civilization.
Effective meditation requires an effort that initially we are reluctant to make. But once the meditative state provides feedback to our ability to remain present through focused breathing, it becomes intrinsically rewarding. Eventually such rewards spill over into everyday action, and our art, and we become a “walking meditation.”
Like James Levin said, “Follow effective action with quiet reflection; from the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”
And so on and so forth. Meditation is the most powerful tool we have in our arsenal. It is the ultimate leveraging mechanism between the known and the unknown. It is a pole vault that our non-genius self can use to launch itself into our genius self.
If, as Thoreau advised, “Following your genius closely enough will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour” then our genius seems to be guiding us into daily focused meditation. Our inner genius wants to come alive just as much as we want it to come alive.
We just have to get out of our own way. Getting out of our own way is the first step toward discovering the gap between the known and the unknown. The numinous beginning, which contains everything, is ours for the taking once we let go and begin to follow our genius closely enough.
Meditation allows for the incessant noise of the mind to shut down. It provides a place where we can tap into a wisdom more vast than human wisdom. It helps us reach that ingenious space, the gap between thoughts, where our most creative self, our genius self, can come up with something never conceived before.
It helps us achieve a state of No-mind, where the vast infinity of all things becomes manifest and we are free to sail into everything with the trump card of “nothingness” in our back pocket.
Arguably the first revelation of any genius is the understanding that the more we know the more we realize how much we don’t know.
And that’s okay. Like Paul Mic cryptically stated, “We understand nothing! If you understand this, you understand everything.” Indeed, part of getting out of our own way, and providing space for our genius to emerge, is letting go of our need to know.
Focused meditation is the perennial gap-detector. It’s a space where we have not yet dismissed an outcome as probable, and so everything is possible. The cosmic sails are billowing full. Passion is paramount in the wind. True North is everywhere.
Flow is pure oxygen. Our compass is an infinity symbol spinning infinitely. Here, Shakespeare’s genius is our genius. Mozart’s music is our music. Bach is in the ether. Whitman is unhidden in the leaves and grass.
It’s all inherently blooming within the gap between genius and non-genius, between one “giant’s shoulders” and another, between the known and the unknown; an infinite dancing abyss waiting for our inner genius to join in and contribute its own unique soul-signature to the overall bouncing, twirling gamboling equation.
Like Oscar Levant said, “There is a fine line between genius and insanity, I have erased that line.”
“I teach you the Overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?… Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman –a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
“What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.” That’s repeated for affect. The human condition is not, nor has it ever been, a fixed state. It is perpetually evolving, even when it seems to be at rest, even when it seems to be stagnant. We are not the be-all-end-all of human evolution. There will always be a next step, a next level. And it is up to us, to a certain extent, if that next level will be healthy and robust or unhealthy and weak.
The Übermensch, or overman, is Nietzsche’s multicultural vision of human excellence, his meta-ontological elite. On an individual level, the overman is the healthy and robust adaptation of a person who consistently practices the art of self-overcoming.
Such an individual has learned how to translate their multi-fractured self into a multifunctional force of nature. Self-actualized, fully individuated, and doggedly able to adapt and overcome the path toward enlightenment, these masters are prepared to take on all comers.
“What is the ape to man?” Asked Nietzsche. “A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment.” As it stands, we have become this laughingstock and painful embarrassment. And we will continue to be, unless we as individuals can learn how to self-overcome, get out of our own way, and turn the tables on our own fear and apathy.
Unless we can figure out how to become the best possible version of ourselves, which is what the path of the overman is all about. Similar to the path toward enlightenment, the path of the overman is about the journey not the destination.
There are ever more signs of the overman emerging, but here are seven steps we can take to at least attempt to become an overman and avoid becoming a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment.
1) Make your own values
“The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
In a world of quasi-ethics based on profit, pseudo-morals based on advantage, and counterfeit love based on possession, it behooves us to make our own values. Like Nietzsche said, “No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” Break away from the humdrum tribe and find that which is indestructible within you. Become a force unto yourself. Shift all paradigms. Demolish all sacred cows.
Question everything, especially yourself and your current values. As Jose Ortega y Gasset said, “The man who discovers a new scientific truth has previously had to smash to atoms almost everything he had learned, and arrives at the new truth with hands bloodstained from the slaughter of a thousand platitudes.” Slaughter those platitudes, and then make your own. Just remember to remain flexible enough to handle someone slaughtering yours. Or, better yet, slaughter them yourself: the epitome of self-overcoming.
2) Be selfish in strategic ways
“Anybody who’s ever mattered, anybody who’s ever been happy, anybody who’s ever given any gift into the world has been a divinely selfish soul, living for his own best interest. No exceptions.” ~ Richard Bach
In the crashing plane that is our human species, the overman is the one putting the oxygen mask on him/herself first, realizing that most people are as “awake” as children, and are simply incapable of putting the oxygen mask on themselves. People need help, and in order for you to be there to help them you must put the oxygen mask on yourself first.
This is not conceit, this is courage. It takes courage to be a beacon of light in the pitch dark, and perhaps even more courage to be a beacon of dark in the blinding light.
3) Understand that suffering is a necessary component of good things
“You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Life is pain. And that’s okay, because pain is a sharpening stone. Pain is the greatest teacher next to Mother Nature and the mighty cosmos. Your pain is real because you are real. Your sorrow, misery, grief, existential angst and spiritual trepidation are all dreadfully real because you yourself are extraordinarily real. Were it not so, you would not feel any of it. But it is so, and therefore you also feel love, happiness, hunger, joy, equanimity, providence, and even enlightenment.
Becoming an overman is understanding this, rolling with it, surfing the double-edged wave of it, and finally transcending it by not taking it all so dreadfully seriously and discovering instead that a good sense of humor transubstantiates the world. Like Alan Watts said, “Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
4) Understand that you will be hard to understand
“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.” ~ Plato
Don’t be afraid of being misunderstood. You will be. Think outside of the box anyway, and then flatten it. Crush mental paradigms anyway, and then build others to crush. Stretch comfort zones until they snap anyway, and then regroup, heal, and realize that your comfort zone is not a boundary that contains you, but a horizon that compels you.
Like Plato also said, “Courage is knowing what not to fear.” The fear of being misunderstood is precisely a thing which you should not fear. Understand it instead. Roll with it. Dance with it. Use it as kindling and build fires with it. Then roast marsh mellows with the gods in high-laughter at the silly fears of men.
5) Be gentle toward the weak out of consciousness of your own great strength
“With great power comes great responsibility.” ~ Stan Lee
Shake all secure foundations, but put a foundation beneath all that is insecure. Help the helpless, but be able to distinguish what people need from what people want in order to determine what help you can give. Flatten the arena of pseudo-power so that prestigious-power is free to rise to the top and expiate itself. Always be conscious of your own power, but don’t limit your power because of your conscience.
Like Henry David Thoreau said, ‘Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.” Guide the powerless to their own power, despite the powers that be. To act as a guide is to give people something to do, to help fit them into their destiny, to help prevent their stumbling mindlessly about in an empty, meaningless existence.
6) Don’t be too humble; delight in your own abilities
“If your abilities are only mediocre, modesty is mere honesty; but if you possess great talents, it is hypocrisy.” ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The Overman is the “genius” that Jesus spoke of in the Gospel of Thomas: “If you bring forth the genius within you, it will free you. If you do not bring forth the genius within you, it will destroy you.” This is a tricky one.
Many people will confuse you for being conceited or egotistical, not realizing that the ego grows along with the burgeoning soul. The bigger the soul, the bigger the ego. But the crucial difference is that the overman who has been initiated into soul has learned how to use the ego as a tool for the soul as opposed to being a tool to the ego. For the overman ego-work is soul-work. The overman is not conceited, but convinced.
7) Become devoted to the Earth
“The Übermensch is the meaning of the earth… I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes… Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing.” ~ Nietzsche
Invest in the practical applications of culture to raise the mentality of society in regards to the overall biosphere. This is perhaps the most difficult attribute to acquire on the path of the overman, but one cannot claim to be on the path without it. Becoming devoted to the earth means becoming a force of nature first, a person second.
It means moderating our lifestyles, despite the immoderate lifestyles that surround us. It means not being superfluous. It means not being an extremist according to actual reality but becoming an extremist according to the hyper-reality of the state. Like Nietzsche said, “Only where the state ends, there begins the human being who is not superfluous.”
A man striving to become an overman will always be considered an extremist, but that is only because the rest of culture is living extreme lifestyles in contrast. An overman, devoted to the earth, is actually the opposite of extreme: “living simply” as Gandhi said “so that others may simply live.” Being devoted to the earth is helping others realize that they are earth. And how everything is connected in a beautiful interdependent dance of earthly livingry striving onward despite cosmic entropy.
It is the responsibility of the man-striving-to-be-overman within all of us to help transform guilt and apathy into virtue and empathy, to help transform victimization into heroism, to help transform weaponry into livingry, to help transform fear-based lifestyles into courage-based lifestyles, and to help self-overcome so that our culture may culturally-overcome itself and once again become “faithful to the earth.” Like Nietzsche profoundly said, “The great epochs in our lives are at the points when we gain the courage to rebaptize our badness into the best in us.”
“It is the job of the spine to keep the brain alert. The moment the spine collapses, the brain collapses.” ~ B.K.S. Iyenger
A building without a strong foundation is bound to collapse. Similarly, a body without a healthy spine is headed for a downfall as it leads to illness, inflexibility and stress. The spine is responsible for the energy anatomy of the body, form and functions. Without the spinal cord it is impossible for us to function even for a second.
The head, the torso and the legs are all functioning in coordination with the brain, due to a healthy spine. The nerve endings in the vertebrae are connected to different body parts and any damage to the spine can affect the respective body part, resulting in paralysis or other problems.
In our previous article we spoke about the spiritual significance of spine, focusing on how we can with the help of meditation keep our spine supple, active and flexible. In order to speed up the process of spiritual awakening along with an active and healthy life, we can also incorporate specific yoga poses for a healthy spine.
These poses will stretch the spinal muscles like Iliopsoas muscles, Paraspinals, Piriformis, Gluteal group etc. along with strengthening the vertebrae & rectifying our posture.
Have a look at five yoga asanas for a healthy spine and hold it for five to seven breaths each.
Upward Salute and Side stretch or Urdhva Hastasana and Triyak Tadasana
How to: Stand straight with feet together, and joining both the heels and the knees. The body should be in a line with no abnormal arch in the lower back. Inhale and lift your hands up with palms facing each other and fingers interlocked in Namaste mudra.
The body is erect and the eyes are fixed in front or the face is lifted up with the gaze upwards. Stay here for a few breaths and gently bent to the right side without distorting the posture. Stay on the right side for a few breaths, come back to the center & go towards the left side. Again, hold for a few breaths, come back to the center and repeat the process five times.
Why to: A complete body stretch, the pose opens up the spine, alleviates back pain, increases the circulation of blood in the whole body and relieves mild anxiety. One can practice this pose anytime they feel a cramped back due to excessive sitting.
Salabhasana or Locust Pose
How to: Lie on your belly with your arms along the sides of your torso, palms facing up, forehead resting on the floor. Squeeze the buttocks and as you inhale, lift up the head, neck, chest, arms & legs together, while the abdomen is resting on the floor, stabilizing and bearing all the weight.
Raise your arms parallel to the floor with the fingers interlocked for an extra stretch in the shoulders. Keep the head in neutral position and lift the body as high as possible. Stay here for five to seven breaths and come back, rest and repeat two more times.
Why to: A preparatory pose for advance back bends, this pose is known to strengthen and stretch the spine. Elongating the latissimus dorsi, erector spinae muscles, this pose stretches the hip flexors, abdominals and chest muscles as well.
Bhujangasana or Cobra pose
How to: Lie on your stomach with your toes flat on the floor, place the elbows near the chest and palms facing down. Keep your legs close together, with your feet and heels lightly touching each other. As you inhale, slowly straighten your arms and lift your chest and abdomen from the floor.
Feel the stability in your pelvis, thighs and top of your feet. The tailbone is pulled downwards while the gaze is either in front or upwards. Deepen your stretch by keeping your shoulders relaxed and creating an arc in your back. Don’t overstrain yourself. Stay here for few breaths. As you exhale gently come down on the floor, and repeat two more times.
Why to: A great chest opener, this pose adds strength to the back and increases flexibility in your spine. It strengthens your buttocks, abdominal muscles and shoulders.
Ustrasana or Camel Pose
How to: Kneel down on the mat with the knees hip width apart. Place the hands on the lower back, lift up the spine and tuck the tailbone in with elbows bent and fingers pointing downwards. Inhale and lean the upper torso backwards and push the hips forward.
Press the shoulder blades down, lean slightly on the right side and place the right hand on the right heel and then place the left hand on the left heel. Ensure that the lower back is not compressed, the weight will be centered on the knees and the head is dropped back and gaze upwards. Stay here for a few breaths, slowly come back, rest and repeat two more times.
Why to: This is a therapeutic pose as it relieves backache. It opens up the chest, improves breathing, relieves stress and stimulates digestion. Camel Pose stretches the spine and strengthens it as well.
Downward dog & Dolphin pose or Adho Mukha Svanasana
How to: Come onto the floor on your hands and knees. Keep your hands shoulder-width apart, and feet are hip width apart and parallel to each other. Place your palms on the floor. Walk your feet backwards to form an inverted V. The heel will be pressed down at all times, and the tailbone is tucked in and pulled back and ensure that there is no extra arch in the back. The gaze is either downwards or on the navel centre.
Stay here for a few breaths and then gently place the entire forearm on the floor. The sitting bones are pointing towards the ceiling, while the heels are pressed on the floor, if possible, otherwise lifted in the air to allow correct posture formation. Stay here for a few breaths, come back and relax in child’s pose. Repeat two more times.
Why to: Downward dog is included in almost all yoga routines as it strengthens the arms, spine, back and legs. Both the poses are semi-inverted poses and increases the flow of blood in the torso and head. This improves balance, relieves stress, and stretches the entire body.
Few advanced poses that can be incorporated by advance level practitioners are – Natarajasana or Lord of the Dance pose, Tuladandasana or Warrior 3 pose, Prasarita Padottanasana C or Wide Legged Forward Bend Variation C, Chaturanga Dandasana or Four Limbed Staff Pose, and Urdhva Mukha Asana or Upward Facing Dog Pose.
Some of the common causes for spine inflexibility and ill health are poor posture, immobility in the muscles surrounding the spine, improper biomechanics, sedentary lifestyles, etc. So try to help & support your spine in whatever way possible, because you are as old as your spine.
“You are only a disciple because your eyes are closed. The day you open them you will see there is nothing you can learn from me or anyone. What then is a Master for? To make you see the uselessness of having one.” ~ Anthony de Mello
We are all teachers, just as we are all students; life is what we teach, and life is what we learn. The wise understand this. Genuine students are open to understanding this. Both are needed for the cycle of mastery to remain a sacred cycle, rather than a degradation into base linearity.
The problem is awareness, or the lack thereof. Most of us are not aware that we are both teachers and students. The majority of us move through life in tiny comfort zones, paranoid and fearful about having our precious beliefs and/or worldviews questioned. We are content to remain the loyal subject of a tiny god.
Like Carl Sagan powerfully said, “How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant.” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.”” Oh the delicious tragicomedy of it all.
But how can we expect to learn anything if we are not first willing to be vulnerable? How can we truly understand anything if we aren’t willing to get down to the nitty-gritty and really question things?
How can we learn something if we’re not willing to allow the defensive ramparts that surround our comfort zone to come crashing down so that it can be rebuilt further on, broader, less defensive, and even more robust than before?
And how can we expect our tiny god – the one that barely governs a tiny portion of our brains within a tiny portion of our culture within a tinier portion of our planet within an even tinier portion of our galaxy within an infinitely tinier portion of our universe– to ever become the Big God that is able to subsume infinity, if we’re never really willing to let that god be infinite?
There may not be an answer. But at least we have questions to play with. Or maybe it’s as simple as taking into consideration these words by Alan Watts: “Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
Life is what we learn
“He who cannot bear doubt does not bear himself. Such a one is doubtful; he does not grow and hence he does not live. Doubt is the sign of the strongest and the weakest. The strong have doubt, but doubt has the weak.” ~ Carl Jung
Doubt is a thorny concept. We’re typically torn between wanting to seem confident to others, and wanting to be open minded enough to learn from them. Perhaps the best way to navigate through the brambles of doubt is to simply remember to use doubt as a tool toward leveraging knowledge, instead of becoming a tool to doubt, which merely compounds ignorance.
Another strategy is to keep in consideration two things: these words by Bill Nye, “everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t,” and these words from Carl Sagan, “Somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known.” These two concepts alone can make us better students.
Or consider Richard Ogle’s explanation of reach & reciprocity; where one begins with the core knowledge in a field, then ventures out and learns something new, “then they come back and reintegrate the new morsel with what is already known.
Then they venture out again, back and forth, again and again. Too much reciprocity and you wind up in an insular rut. Too much reach and your efforts are scattershot and fruitless (Ogle).”
What’s needed, it seems, is a healthy balance of expansion and integration. The breakthrough, of course, is the realization that learning is not linear, but exceptionally cyclical. We stretch, we learn; we retract, we integrate. We stretch further, we learn more; we retract, we integrate further.
And the cycle continues. With enough reach and reciprocity the cycle becomes a cycle of mastery. If life is truly what we learn, then it behooves us to seek and find mentors that can teach us about life. Our mentors become the giants whose shoulders we stand upon.
And since everyone has something to teach, anyone can be a mentor, and thus anyone can be the giant whose shoulder we stand upon. If we master what they have to teach, we’ll be able to see further and farther than they did.
If we don’t master what they have to teach, we can at least assimilate their knowledge and move one smartly.
Like Robert Greene succinctly put it, “Choose the mentor who best fits your needs and connects to your Life’s Task. Once you have internalized their knowledge, you must move on and never remain in their shadow. Your goal is always to surpass your mentors in mastery and brilliance.”
Life is what we teach
“I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.” ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh
True mastery is not mastering others; it’s mastering our former self. We all know this to be true, to a certain extent, but we also struggle with the cultural conditioning that competition trumps cooperation.
It doesn’t. Or at least it shouldn’t. Cooperation must be primary and competition secondary for any healthy evolution to occur. Whether that evolution is learning, teaching, or living.
The basis of nature is cooperation and democracy. It’s in our DNA. It can be seen in every organism from ants to primates. Indeed, even in The Descent of Man, Darwin mentioned “survival of the fittest” exactly twice, and he mentioned the word “love” 95 times.
Let that sink in for a second. Competition has always been secondary to cooperation; otherwise we wouldn’t have survived as a species. The problem is that we’ve had the cart (competition) in front of the horse (cooperation) for roughly 2,000 years. And we see, first-hand, the unhealthy state we’re in because of it.
There’s nothing wrong with competition, mind you. It’s still primary over everything else other than cooperation. But when we focus too much on competition we lose sight of the importance of self-mastery.
And there is this dangerous tendency to try and master others instead. But it’s always better if we focus on mastering ourselves rather than others. As I wrote at the beginning of this article, it’s all a matter of awareness.
Like Leonardo da Vinci said, “The average human looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting… and talks without thinking.”
A wise human realizes the difference between looking and seeing, listening and hearing, touching and feeling, eating and tasting, and talking and thinking. A wise human also realizes the difference between mastering others and mastering the self.
Self-mastery is the ability to self-overcome, to consistently and persistently ward off the master complex. The master complex is the false notion that we’ve somehow learned all we need to learn about a certain subject or even about life. It’s the idea that our expertise will suffice, and that nobody else can teach us anything.
Like Kathryn Schulz said, “Ignorance isn’t necessarily a vacuum waiting to be filled; just as often, it is a wall, actively maintained.”
Sadly, it spells the end of our journey of knowledge. Beginner-mind begets expert-mind begets master-complex which must be destroyed by beginner-mind in order to renew the cycle and in order to recycle the mastery. Recycling the mastery is the best way to self-overcome and to master our former self. And it keeps knowledge cyclical as opposed to linear.
At the end of the day, there is no such thing as a true master. We’re all ignorant about something. Socrates realized that no one was wiser than he because no one understood their ignorance as well as he did. As Shakespeare imparted, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
Indeed, we are all ignorant, but the smart thing is to become wise to it. The closest we can get to being a true master is understanding that there will always be something we don’t know, and some things we can never know, and then laugh about it. In the end, cultivating a good sense of humor is probably the closest we’ll ever get to “true mastery.”
Like Alan Watts said, “When you attain Satori, nothing is left for you in that moment than to have a good laugh.”
