The most important purpose of yoga practice is to reduce ignorance so that understanding can gradually emerge.
However, how do you know if you really see or understand something? One of the criteria for judging is that when we see the truth or reach a higher understanding than we usually do, we will feel peaceful and calm deep inside, and there will be a sense of satisfaction that we will not lose anything.
Such satisfaction is not the same as the satisfaction of watching beautiful things, but also more intense and definite, because it is located in the depths of our inner world and is not affected by any emotion and judgment.
And the center of this satisfaction is pure consciousness.
Yoga is both movement and arrival.
Yoga that we practice and can make progress through practice is called “purification yoga”.
According to the Yoga Sutra, purification yoga is composed of three elements: practice, insight into oneself and delivery to God.
Practice does not mean atonement or penance, but an action to keep one’s body and mind healthy.
It is a process of internal purification to remove what one no longer needs.
Insight into ourselves is a gradual process, by which we can find out who we are, where we are, and what we are.
In fact, the asana practice starts from these problems.
We take the first step by observing our breath and body, and then repeat this step, hoping to increase our understanding of ourselves and our current situation over time.
In this way, you can also learn to judge what to do next.
If you agree with the view of the Yoga Sutra, you will find that no matter what kind of yoga practice, it is closely related to insight into yourself.
Finally, the literal meaning of delivering to God is actually “humbly delivering to God”.
However, in purification yoga, it is up to people to decide whether to accept God or not.
Therefore, in the context of purification yoga, the meaning of delivering to God is actually more related to “focusing on action”: paying attention to the quality of each action rather than the subsequent results.
This article is excerpted from the heart of Yoga [India] descachar..
