The true meaning of yoga.
Yoga is a Sanskrit word that means to yoke and yoke means union and joining.
This is a reference to our ever existing connection with the creative force.
Yoga as a practice is about making this personal connection a conscious feeling reality fact.
Allowing yourself to be guided by this inner feeling reality is the source of right action.
Yoga then is about cultivating the consciousness of your personal connection with the all and living your daily life with this awareness.
The interesting thing about the word yoga however is that union and joining do not mean the same thing.
Union means oneness,
Wholeness,
Not separated or divided,
Indivisible.
Joining means coming together,
Implying the formation of a union from a previous condition of separation.
The implication here is that people who at one time felt separated,
Abandoned and alone like strangers in a strange and hostile land now feel connected,
In harmony,
Safe and whole because of yoga.
Yoga changes the way you feel,
The way you look at things and the way you interpret what's going on.
Yoga therefore is a simple statement of a previously unrecognized but nevertheless already existing union between each of us and all of nature and the universe.
We are all a part of the oneness,
Creations of a common creator and parts of the same whole.
We were never not a part of the whole,
Never at odds with the universe and contrary to appearances there are no enemies.
Therefore we need not fear each other.
Yoga is also a process by which you become aware of this ever-existing union.
This is what is meant by joining.
The distinction is important because being joined and knowing you are joined is a different experiential reality from being joined and not knowing it.
Being a part of all that is but not knowing or feeling it is the same as not being joined.
You are already in union with the whole of creation and you have always been.
There is nothing you need to do in order to establish your personal connection.
It is already so but you may not have been aware of this.
Not being aware of this connection,
Ignorance is the root of fear.
Joining therefore can only be meaningful to a mind that perceives itself as separate.
Since you are already joined and have already joined and have always been an integral part of the whole and have never been separate except in your imagination,
Then really there is no such thing as joining.
No actual joining ever takes place.
There is no need.
There are no separate parts but insofar as you feel separate there is a tremendous need.
Joining then is nothing more or less than the clear recognition that you have never been a part.
You retain a sense of individuality,
Free will and separateness but now operate with the knowledge that you are connected to a larger thing like players on the same team or cells in a body and that you as an individual are an expression of that larger thing.
There is no you apart from it.
You are it in a specific expression.
Yoga therefore encourages a sense of joining with which results in an awareness of the already existing union.
When that happens you relax inside and start feeling good.
You feel different about who you are.
You feel better.
I use the discipline of yoga to encourage the experience of stillness.
The feeling of stillness is peace and the feeling of peace is joy.
