#85. Let Go Of Breath, Let Go Of Time | Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali

If you observe your breath, you will notice that you have been trying to control the breath all along. Consciously or unconsciously you are trying to ride it, which creates a tremendous sense of stress. Breath flows with time. In a way, you are trying to control time by not letting go of the past, or pulling the future into the present.

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Transcript

Namaste and a very warm welcome to all of you in this daily live meditation session with me,

Dhyansa.

We are meditating on Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

If you let your mind be free,

Where will it go?

Ask yourself,

Do a thought experiment,

Meditate over it.

Over this one question,

If you let your mind be free,

Where will it go?

Will it go in the past?

Will it explore all the memories that it carries?

Or it will go in the future?

In your imagination,

In your desires,

In your wishes,

In your view of how things should be,

How life will unfold for you,

Your own version of that.

Where will your mind go?

If you let your mind be free,

Where will your mind go?

In the past?

In all the good times that you had?

In all the bad times that you had?

Or in the future?

In your imagination,

In your desire?

You can observe this in meditation as well.

While you are sitting in silence,

While you are sitting just simply in silence,

In awareness,

You see thoughts arise.

You see ideas arise.

You see images arise.

Where do these images,

Thoughts,

Ideas belong?

For you,

Do they belong in the past?

Do they belong in the future?

Ask yourself this question.

Make this judgment whether all what is arising in your mind is pushing you mostly in the past or is mostly in the future.

It may be that sometimes it pushes you in the past and sometimes in the future,

But mostly,

Generally,

Where are you living in your mind?

Are you living in the past or sometimes in the present or sometimes in the future?

Answer this question very honestly to yourself.

Because it is important to know,

To come to terms with this where are we living.

In relation to time,

Where are we living?

In the past,

In the present or in the future?

There is no right or wrong answer,

But to be truthful to that is the door to growth,

Is the door to transformation.

Few days back,

I spoke about time when Patanjali made us meditate over time and we went through a deeper explanation of our relation to time.

We said that there is this movement,

There is this sense of change,

This sense of change that the day changes to the night,

The summer changes to the winter.

This movement,

This change that is happening that we can observe,

That we can perceive in the world,

We have learned to capture that change in what we call as time.

So there is some chronology that is happening in this existence and we capture that chronology in time.

We know that after summer,

There will be at one point of time in winter,

In winter there will be at one point of time in summer because we have captured this sense of change in time.

So this capturing,

This sense of change in time has its own place in life.

I am not talking about that.

I am talking about your relationship to that.

Are you trying to not let go of the past?

Are you holding on to the past that you don't want it to go?

All what you had done before,

The memories of the good times and the bad times,

You don't want them to go away or are you more in the future where you are just looking forward to what your desires will bring,

How the life will unfold and you are constantly looking at this with your own imagination,

With your own perspective.

So it is important to know what is your relationship to time because time itself,

This change that is happening in the summer,

In the winter,

The day,

In the night,

This is not creating any problem.

This is the flow of existence.

But the biggest problem that we have created for ourselves,

The biggest reason for stress that we all have is we have stressed ourselves in this relationship to time.

The flow of time is there,

The cycle of time is there and we somehow want to control it.

We somehow want it to not move either forward or backwards.

We want to take control over time and this is causing so much stress.

This psychological time,

This psychological component of trying to beat time,

Trying to stop time is something that is so deep in us is creating stress.

In this session,

I would like you to reflect on that,

To let go of this flow of time.

Let it be how it flows.

When there is day,

There is day.

When there is night,

There is night.

When there is summer,

There is summer.

When there is winter,

There is winter.

If you let that just be and not try to change your relationship to that,

Not try to force your version on that,

Half of the problem is solved,

Half of your stress,

Your miseries,

Your entire psychology,

It releases all the stress that it carries deep down from your subconscious to your conscious mind.

So this is how we begin meditating on time by first of all releasing the grip over time.

Let the flow of existence,

Wherever it is going,

It's going into the summer,

It's going into the winter,

It's going into the day,

It's going into the night.

Let it be.

At best,

Flow with it.

This relationship has to be changing,

Has to be improving.

And then we go deeper into what does this mean?

How do we manage this sense of past,

Sense of future?

What is it?

Let us hear what Patanjali has to say,

What Patanjali has to guide us on this topic.

Patanjali says,

The past and future exist in the real form of objects which manifest due to differences in condition of their characteristics.

Here what Patanjali is saying is very fascinating.

It is worth paying attention to what Patanjali is saying about time,

About in fact not about time at all.

He is talking about past,

Present and future in a way that is independent of time.

So he is taking a leap,

He is asking you to look at time in a completely new way.

So far what we had discussed,

The stress that we can release by improving the relationship that we have with time is one thing,

Where you let go of time,

Where you let go of this change that is happening.

But now here Patanjali is bringing something even more profound.

He is saying,

The past and future exist in the real form of objects which manifest due to differences in the conditions of their characteristics.

So here what he is saying,

In fact this past,

Present and future,

This has nothing to do with time.

These are three states of your mind.

These are three states of your experiences.

These are three states of your consciousness.

For a moment,

Reflect on it,

Contemplate on it,

What Patanjali is bringing here,

It is very significant.

He is saying this past,

Present,

Future is independent of time.

This time that is going on in its chronology,

This change that we call as time is something else but this past,

Present and future.

This is the state of our mind.

These all three exist at the same time.

It is not that the past is gone and the future has not yet happened.

All three exist in you at the same time.

These are three different states of your mind.

If you are living in memories,

You are always living in the past.

You are never living in the moment.

You are never in the present moment.

You exist in the past.

If you are living in your imaginations,

In your desires,

You are living in future.

Only if you have a balance.

Only when you are in harmony,

Then you are in present.

Not in present moment but in present mind.

You can very simply understand this as past mind,

Future mind,

Present mind.

If that simplifies the understanding.

So judge whether you are living in the past mind,

In the future mind or in the present mind.

And where do you want to live?

So this you must ask because while asking these two questions,

You yourself will become the guide to where you want to be.

You want to be in harmony,

In balance,

In the present or you want to cling to the past or you want to be in the delusions of the future.

There is another important thing which Patanjali says which is related to this topic.

He says te vyakta sukshma guna atmana.

Whether manifested or subtle,

These,

The past,

Present and future belong to the nature of gunas.

Here another short concept,

In yoga the whole nature of existence is divided into three.

Into three gunas,

Into three tendencies.

These three tendencies are tamas,

The inertia,

The clinging to what is and not wanting to leave,

Not wanting to move,

The laziness,

The inertia is the tamas.

Then on the other end is the rajas,

The action,

The imagination,

The future,

The wanting to be is the rajas.

And in between is sattva,

The balance,

The harmony.

So Patanjali here is saying that these three tendencies of existence,

The tamas,

The inertia,

The rajas,

The action and the sattva,

The balance,

The harmony.

These three are directly creating these three states of your mind,

The past mind which is your living in memories,

Your future mind living in imagination and desires and the present mind living in harmony in the moment.

And we not only human beings but everything in existence is a combination of these three gunas,

Of the tamas,

Of the rajas and of the sattva.

It depends in what proportion these three are there in us.

So in meditation,

In silence,

I would like you to observe in you.

Where are your tendencies going more?

Are they going towards the tamas,

Towards the inertia?

And you can see this,

You can feel this when you see you're clinging to the memories,

You're clinging to the past,

You're holding on to the good and bad memories that you have carried,

That you have collected all this time.

If you're clinging to the future,

If you're in your imaginations,

In your delusions,

In your desires of the future,

That means you're having more of rajas in you.

And if you're when you close your eyes,

If you sit,

You're immediately still,

You're silent,

You're aware,

You're in harmony,

Then you are in sattva.

So the whole effort of yoga is to bring this balance of tamas,

Rajas and sattva.

You need all the three as well.

It is not the case that you only need sattva.

You don't need tamas or you don't need rajas.

You need all three.

But once you see how these three exist in you,

You can put them in their right place.

When you need the tamas,

You bring in the tamas.

When you need the rajas,

You bring in the rajas.

And when you need the sattva,

The balance,

The harmony,

You call for that.

So you become the master of these three tendencies by bringing your awareness to how these three are organized in you and how do you balance them out,

How do you take control over them.

Let us bring this knowledge into our experience,

Into our meditation by once again focusing on our breath as a meditation.

And while we observe our breath,

The first thing that we will do is let go of all the control that we have on the breath.

If you pay attention,

If you're observant,

You will see,

You will feel that constantly you're trying to control the breath.

And through the control of the breath,

You're trying to control the past or trying to control the future.

The way to be in the present moment,

The way to just be in harmony is to have absolutely no control over breath.

Let go of the flow of breath as it is and you remain the observer.

The more you let go of the breath,

You will see that the breath becomes still.

It becomes so silent that you almost do not feel your breath anymore.

And comes a point where you start to feel that there is a pause.

That pause that arises between inhalation and exhalation,

That pause grows and that pause becomes a constant across this breathing.

What that means is that your breathing becomes very,

Very silent.

You are in a state of completely let go.

Let us bring this into our experience.

Let us move into silence,

Into awareness with that note.

Please close your eyes and take a posture that is comfortable for you.

Posture allowing your body to rest,

To be in balance,

Not leaning forwards or backwards.

A balance between forward and backwards.

A balance between right and left.

A balance between up and down.

Rested yet alert.

Give your body a few moments to settle in this balance.

And as your body settles,

Finds its balance,

Stillness,

Observe the flow of your breath.

The emphasis is to observe and to not control your breath.

To let it flow freely,

The inhalation,

The pause,

The exhalation,

Completely free.

And in that freedom of breath,

You simply observe.

Observe but not control.

Feel but let it be free.

Your breath flowing in and out,

Completely free while you observe the breath.

Slowly release the grip over your breath and become an observer.

And that's it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Freedom of breath.

You're only the observer,

Breath flowing on its own.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You're simply an observer.

Everything flowing on its own.

Breath flowing in and out.

You simply remain an observer.

You're simply an observer.

Breath flowing in and out.

You're simply an observer.

You're always on your breath,

Observing the silent flow of your breath.

If the breath flows,

It flows.

If it stops,

It stops.

You remain an observer.

You're always on your breath.

This observer is timeless.

This observer is free from the past,

From the future,

And also the present.

You're always on your breath.

You're always on your breath.

And very gently and slowly,

You may open your eyes.

You may open your eyes.

Reviews

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Excellent lesson and practice. Many thanks

Excellent