Become One Living
Welcome to the BecomeOne Living Podcast. While yoga maybe the entry way into a deeper understanding of self, we invite you to dive even deeper into your practice. Here we will explore the transformative power of yogic philosophy, anatomy, and mindfulness.
In each episode, we embark on a journey through the rich
tapestry of yoga, drawing from various traditions and perspectives. From the ancient
teachings of The Gita to the mystical insights of the Akashic records, we delve
into the timeless wisdom that has guided seekers for centuries.
We bridge the gap between science and spirituality, exploring
the fascinating intersection of neuroscience and anatomy with yoga. Discover
how understanding your body's inner workings can enhance your practice and
overall well-being.
We also explore cutting-edge techniques like Internal Family
Systems and Neurosculpting, offering practical tools for personal growth and
self-discovery. Our goal is to equip you with a holistic toolkit for navigating
the complexities of modern life.
We’ll share our endless hours of study and insights, providing
you with a deeper understanding of yoga's core principles and how they can be
applied in today's world. Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or just
beginning your practice, there's something here for everyone.
Delve into the world of challenging entrenched beliefs, welcoming fresh perspectives, and unraveling unnoticed habits through our podcast. Join us while we discuss a wide range of topics and how yogic principals can weave its way through all facets of life. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Join us on this enlightening quest for self-discovery, healing,
and personal transformation. The BecomeOne Living Podcast is your guide to
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Become One Living
Nostalgia, Attachment, and Continuing with the Sutras
When the soul does not radiate it's own glory it is a sign that the thinking faculty has manifested itself in place of the soul. - BKS Iyengar
Welcome back as we continue to navigate the teachings of the Sutras. Have you ever wondered how your mind's stories may be steering you away from your true self? Our discussion, drawing from Iyengar’s insights, offers a fresh perspective on the fivefold movements of consciousness—valid knowledge, pervasive knowledge, illusion, sleep, and memory—helping you identify and navigate the fluctuations that hinder your presence and self-awareness.
Embrace the complexities of consciousness as we explore the balance of being both an observer and participant in your own life. Journey with us through the intricate dance of nostalgia and memory, and how these elements shape your reality. We delve into the ancient wisdom of spiritual texts, offering practical techniques for harnessing the courage to embrace new experiences and cultivate a mindset of non-attachment. We implore you to not just listen to this episode but reflect on your own experiences and explore what rises.
We would love to hear from you! Email us at becomeoneliving@gmail.com or reach out to us on Instagram at BecomeOne Living.
Hello, welcome back to Become One Living, where today we're going to talk a little bit more of some philosophical stuff in yoga the sutras. We're returning to the sutras today. Jodi's going to lead the way. My name is Dan. This is Jodi. Welcome to Become One Living. So today we're going to talk about the sutras again. Right and just so the audience knows, the material that we've covered up to now really is just the surface. I mean, we're just trying to introduce the essential concepts, the essential notions of what there is. Because it just trying to introduce the essential concepts, the essential notions of what there is, because it just, you know, once you start digging, you can go deep and deep and deep and deep and deep, right, so what are we going to cover today?
Speaker 2:In past episodes we have discussed up to the Yoga Sutra 1.3. And I want to lead into 1.4, 1.5. Going back to what Dan said, in Yoga Sutra 1.2, there's a word called chit.
Speaker 1:Chit knowledge.
Speaker 2:Yoga, chitta virdi narodaha. Yoga is the ceasing of the fluctuations of the mind, and in chit alone there's three other aspects of chit. So when Dan just said, we're just touching the surface right now. This is just an introduction of the yoga sutras. If you haven't heard them and interpreted through me as close as I can be and how I've used them and experienced them.
Speaker 2:We will go back to the three different chits, like buddhi, manas Manas means mind, buddha, buddhi is intelligence, amakaraaha kara is ego. So, as I use one word, there's so many more levels to it, there's a depth to it, just like a depth in yoga right and it has to be this way.
Speaker 1:Just to reiterate that sanskrit is an energetic language, right? So the way you say something, the energetic form, if you add an A before something, all of these things can change a word and each word can have various and sundry meanings depending on the context of things.
Speaker 2:Yes, my philosophy teacher stated multiple times as new people came in to sit by him and listen, because it was never written down. It's an oral tradition that the word yoga has 150 meanings in Sanskrit, but in the West it's union. There isn't words sometimes in the Western culture that can describe.
Speaker 1:Accurately with the depth. Yes, how?
Speaker 2:it has this full life of its own. So again I'm going to, when you get a glimpse of what life is without a story, the truth of life like what's here, without your lens, your interpretation, you abide in a state of neutrality. You abide in a state of connectivity, of compassion, of calm, of clarity. When you yoga, okay, that's Sutra 1.3. 1.4 says and other times you're going to attach to an object, Right.
Speaker 1:So it honors the dance even between duality and non-duality. Yes, it honors the dance even between duality and non-duality.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I want to read you this from Iyengar's interpretation of the Yoga Sutras. It says when the soul does not radiate its own glory, it is a sign that the thinking faculty has manifested itself in place of the soul. Thinking faculty has manifested itself in place of the soul. So when you're not present and being self, when you're not neutral and self is living through you, it's a sign that your thinking, your intellect, your thinking faculties have manifested itself, pretending to be your soul.
Speaker 1:Wow, it's like hijacked.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and that's why there's levels that hijacking can occur. That's Yoga Sutra 1.5. It says that that object, or the fluctuation of consciousness, shows up in five different ways. Yeah, this is big. When someone says, hey, joe, jody, not many people call me Joe, but when they say Jody, I read the Yoga Sutras I'm like, oh, congratulations.
Speaker 1:It's not a read. These aren't books you read.
Speaker 2:These are a discussion and a study.
Speaker 1:Unpacking yeah, discovering yeah.
Speaker 2:So Sutra 1.3 says you abide in this state of calm self highest potential. And your highest potential is beyond your intellect and your limited thinking capacity, because most of us only believe what we see. So if we get into the intellect and now, we go to the hippocampus and we pull from memories and we bring them forward. Memories are one of the five states of fluctuations that we want to cease.
Speaker 1:Memories yeah.
Speaker 2:Because that can take you down a nostalgic road. Memories, yeah.
Speaker 1:Because that can take you down a nostalgic road.
Speaker 2:Yes, it can take you down a nostalgic road, but it can also, dan, if you're acting a certain way, I can go back and say I remember when my dad did that and I could bring that memory in and start to project onto you what daddy did to me, do you see?
Speaker 1:Right and then essentially, you're not being present.
Speaker 2:Yes, and now that soul, my soul, isn't radiating. A story is radiating Gosh, a projection.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Through a lens that was created a long time ago. Lenses get created in childhood and they can be created in womb. They could be generational, which that's not woo-woo-wee. That's proven now that trauma can get passed down through generation Remembering. As children we imitate. So if we imitate mom and dad, aunt and uncle, brothers, sisters, we become them. And yoga says sisters, we become them.
Speaker 2:And yoga says hey, stop those stories. Who are you really? Who are you under that story? When people say to me that's just who I am, is it really? Who are you? You're always a yeller. Someone I know has a loud voice, talks really loud, and I said do you think you could lower your voice a little? No, that's who I am, that's who you are. You're a loud talker. Yes, Congratulations. That was a family member, by the way, so I can say that it wasn't a student. But I and this person, the louder they would speak, they thought I heard them more. Meanwhile I shut down, so I'm going to go back because I get excited about this stuff, so Yoga Sutra 1.1 says now there's the system of yoga.
Speaker 2:Two says says now there's the system of yoga. Two says yoga is stopping the stories, these fluctuations. Three says when you do attain that, even briefly, you get a hit of bliss, of peace, of void, of neutrality, then you remember who you are. I'm not a yoga teacher. That's not just who I am, I'm not just a wife. I'm more than these things that I too limit myself to think I am and keep me from being other things too because of those limitations. And then we go into Sutra 1.4 that says and then sometimes, my friends, the fluctuations will happen and you will attach to an object, a food. I'm not giving that up, I'm not going to give that food up. Are you nuts? We attach or to a job or to a marriage. A marriage is a status. We attach to statuses and in neuroscience I got to sneak this in in neuroscience status, when we lose status, it's actually seen as a physical threat.
Speaker 1:Like painful.
Speaker 2:Yes, as if someone's going to take your life. So losing a job in which you're a VP and you hold that high in status, that could feel as if you're dying. It could feel like you're being attacked and chased with a knife or a gun, that someone is going to kill you. That's what the brain interprets when status gets impacted.
Speaker 1:Wow, it's almost like status is proprioceptive.
Speaker 2:Oh, say more.
Speaker 1:If you drive a car in the old days, before the screen could help you back up, what happens is your brain takes on the entity of what you're in. So when you're backing up you a yoga studio, if you're managing the room with 17 people in it, your brain takes on that space. So proprioceptively, essentially, you become that whole space.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, this guy. So if you're going to lose your arm or if somebody's threatening you, you feel that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's brilliant. Because in friendship sometimes I struggle not being a teacher, right? I've been teaching since I can remember I I used to teach my little cousins they're five years younger when they lived upstairs school when they were like three, and I would yell at them why can't you speak? They're three, you know why can't you speak? They're three, you know why can't you do your math. So I was a teacher forever, right. And in friendship, when I'm walking with someone or talking I have to I notice that I'm still in teacher mode sometimes.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:That's this idea that we become an object. My friends, do you understand that? It's not consciously that we wake up and say that, it's not consciously that we wake up and say I'm going to be this today. I love what you said. We take on that entity. We become this whole thing. Where you leave caretaking you can't leave your caretaking role at work because you're a body worker you come home and you let's say, remain that, and then you think you are that.
Speaker 1:Well, that's who I am, I'm a caretaker right oh my god, this is blowing my own mind, but but the interact, the interplay of, of the different sutras too, it's like it's it. It, like I said before, it honors that in comes the wave and you're all this stuff, and then the wave retreats, recedes and then there's a void. It's like getting used to the I just love the word the dance of all these things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll talk in another episode about the dance of consciousness. We'll talk about Leela and that play of consciousness. I want to introduce a word here not in any of these sutras, but for you to think about is donka, and donka means suffering. Stay with me here. It means suffering and it means unsteady. So what donka says is life is suffering that's in Buddhism and it's in the yoga sutras is suffering, that's in Buddhism and it's in the Yoga Sutras. But all it's saying and people get mad when they hear oh, life is suffering, why bother? No, what it's saying is life is unstable.
Speaker 1:It's always changing, right, and look at how that affects you, right. So flash back and forth between the neuroscience. If we can honor the fact that life is unsteady, if we can honor the fact that life is unsteady, then we can use a synonym and say it's unpredictable. And the brain doesn't like unpredictability, it prefers predictability.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, right.
Speaker 2:However, although, and then, so it views it dangerous yeah.
Speaker 1:You can see it as dangerous, but there are little. It's like working with the dough again. It's like there are times where you want to stretch yourself a little bit, because then you expand in your awareness and your consciousness and once you're aware of something, you can't be unaware of something.
Speaker 2:Once you know it, you can't unknow it, Right? That's what usually happens with my clients when we do yoga therapy and IFS. They go. I don't know. I'm suffering. I'm so upset because I know what I'm doing. Now I'm witnessing myself do this thing that I don't want to do, and I can't unsee it. What do I do?
Speaker 1:If you embark on this journey, you may have to leave your family behind. No comment, Judy.
Speaker 2:Domerstadt, leave your family behind, do, do, do. No comment. Judy Domerstadt Any family.
Speaker 1:No, any family.
Speaker 2:I did run for the hills, I did leave my family when I was very young, Anyway. So vritti svarupyam itaratra. That is, at other times the seer identifies with the fluctuation of consciousness and the mind wants to hook onto something. And you shared neuroscience I'm very proud of you, Dan that idea that neuroscience says we love predictability. So there's nothing wrong with you. As we're talking about this, I get people that say I can't calm my mind, I can't sit still, I can't focus. Perfect, You're human. There's nothing wrong with you. It is that you have to train a mind that was designed to be hypervigilant, it's designed to scan for danger. That's the prehistoric brain. So we live with this brainstem, prehistoric primal brain, longing to keep us alive, to predict what's going to happen. And then here comes yoga saying let it go, man.
Speaker 1:Go with the flow. Well, it's like, oh my God, this is incredible. So it's like hopping in a Porsche on an island, say, Jersey, Like there's an island off the coast of Ireland and it's called Jersey and there's a lot of wealth there. And there's these people with really fast cars, really fast cars, but there's nowhere to go. Really fast cars, really fast cars, but there's nowhere to go. You can't do like 300 miles an hour on a mile. It's like a little Island, right. But this, this ebb and flow, I'm of the belief that more and more and more that if somebody has a question, the answer is already there. A question doesn't arise without you having some sense of the answer. So, and then the Bhagavad Gita right, being the player and seeing the field being, you know you're part of the field and you're the knower of the field, right, it's like all of these things, the more you can wrap your head around that, that you are at once it and not it.
Speaker 2:Yes, you're both, it's always both. And to go back to what you were sharing, this idea that we're both right, that it's this pulsation of life. We have to get really good at being with both, with something happening and not liking it, or something we like. We like it a lot and it leaving. It's a process. It's this pulsation and the dance of life. Where. How do we practice this? I mean, I'm sorry, I'm, I can't even get my thoughts because he said so many amazing things. I'm like what do I say from here? Because he blows me away. It invites a deeper conversation and that's what's so overwhelming in the moment is I want to share so much, but I want to come back to something.
Speaker 2:You said that nostalgia is dangerous, because I'm going to Sutra 1.5. The movements of consciousness are fivefold and they can be painful or non-painful, they could be recognizable or unrecognizable, and that's what you just said. So, after you attach to an object, there's these five folds of consciousness and one is memories. And now, if you're stuck in a traumatic state okay, post-traumatic stress syndrome or trauma and you're stuck in that, the lens you see is trauma and therefore you're projecting that onto the world and people think that's airy-fairy. It's not. It's actually your perception is altering what's happened according to memories, according to an experience, and that's when people say if you change your perspective, you see differently. That's not airy-fairy Like. Life is a hologram, meaning you're projecting through a lens of your memories onto what's happening.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you color it, you flavor it, instead of it just being neutral in the present moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Hallmark cards music, Nostalgia is like a gazillion dollar business. Hallmark cards music Nostalgia is like a gazillion dollar business.
Speaker 2:To keep us where, stuck in, somewhere Attached, yes, to that past memory.
Speaker 1:Remember that time when, yes, and it's almost cultural, it's like a culture right. And so as far as, like you know, having a podcast where we're talking about the sutras, a spirit-led life, I mean, if I didn't have you, it's a very lonely journey in terms of practical day-to-day being, ascension, being earthly being. It's pretty lonely because it requires you to comes. Calm. Peace, quiet silence, aloneness become appealing.
Speaker 2:But yes, in the beginning you said this word in other episodes courageous. It's courageous at first to say I want more than my memories. I want to create new memories. That entails so much of yoga about being present. If you're in memory, you're not present, then you're not doing yoga. Also, there's five different states of consciousness, so in 1.16, it shares what they are and I'm not going to go in depth. I want to read them to you and we'll talk more about them.
Speaker 2:Yes, One is valid knowledge, meaning you studied it and it's validated. The second is pervasive knowledge.
Speaker 1:Someone it's becoming commonly known.
Speaker 2:Yes, the other is illusion Sleep meaning inertia, you're dull, you're not awake. Memory. And we added in, we said two words for some things like inference, when you, when it's cloudy out and you say, oh, I think it's going to rain right, because of this, you think this yeah so these five states, we will dive into them because each five have subcategories, right.
Speaker 2:So I just am kind of touching that we think the mind just thinks in one way. But the yoga sutras say there's multiple ways. And in IFS we say the same thing internal family systems. We say there's multiple parts that come up that block you from being in self energy. So this says your brain fluctuates, the virtis, the fluctuations. And there's five different memory, sleep, incorrect knowledge, right knowledge and inference. I know, stay with me. The rest of the sutras describe them in depth. That's what we'll go into, because it gets really heady, my friends. That's why I'm skipping the headiness, because I want to share something. How do you get through this? Let's give you one point before we wrap up. One point how?
Speaker 2:Practice and non-attachment, Abhyasa and Vyagraham. You keep practicing and practicing, and practicing. When you don't want to. I have a hashtag that's called no matter what, and I have another one that we use at home life or death. When I want to change a habit, I understand that I am primal, instinctual and I want to stay alive. I'm a dinosaur, guys. Okay, everyone listening, Jodi gets in dinosaur mode. She doesn't want to change. I think it's life or death. So when I want to wake up and meditate I say it's life or death. That means I'm doing it because I want to live. I want to know myself. I want to know the trickery, the stories, the lies, the rational rationalizations I make for doing something. So you have to keep practicing something in yoga Focus, and then you have to be not attached to the result of getting it or not getting it.
Speaker 1:There's some good stuff, do you have? Yeah, no, I don't have anything to add, really, because I know that we're going to continue this journey. It's just important, I think, for the audience to hear the concepts so that they can join in. You know, one bite at a time, take time to chew, slow down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I will go back and wrap up. And the way the brain learns is repetition over time. If you think she says the same thing over and over again, you got me.
Speaker 1:Congratulations. And then one day, one day you'll really get her. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so the repetition over time is me teaching you and sharing with you so that you become this. I know Yoga Sutra 1 says yoga is a gift. Are you ready for it? It's a system the stories, the attachments, the fluctuations. Three allows you to find self peace, equanimity, calmness, relaxation. Then the fourth says and sometimes you're going to attach back to that object because the mind loves to think.
Speaker 2:And then five says well, we attach or fluctuate in five different ways and they could be very painful or not painful, and even when it's not painful, it could cause pain, meaning we get attached to bliss and joy and sweetness and we don't want to let that go. And then in six, seven, eight and nine, we will dive in deeper and deeper and deeper to those five fluctuations of consciousness and leave you with this Keep practicing and let go of the results, just practice and practice until you wake up and you are different, you sit in self and meet self and you live more in this spaciousness of self and calm and connectedness and compassion. Cool, become one. Living at gmailcom. We love to hear from you.
