Our experience of day-to-day life is two-fold:
At the beginning of the day, and then again sometime toward evening, we pause for our 20 minutes and, closing our eyes, we settle into our least excited state, feeling our oneness with the field of unbounded possibility, the field of pure bliss. Even at those times when we do not fully transcend our thinking, still we are having a deeper connectedness to this place within. (We can test this ourselves by asking, 15 or 20 minutes later, do I feel better now than I did before meditating? Am I a bit more grounded? Do I feel a bit more whole? Do I feel more ready to face the day/the evening?)
Then we have those hours of the day we are active, when we are not meditating. What of those? Toward what end do we fill these times? To what extent should we be driven by our instincts, our responsibilities? To what extent should these hours be about finding happiness? Where do we look for guidance?
In our practice we wish to use our experiences of the day to correct our intellect, shift our point of view that we may, more and more, see ourselves as nature sees us, as the Divine sees us--in other words as pure, full and perfect expressions of nature itself. Toward this end it is helpful to see what others have done. It is not necessary for us to re-invent the wheel. We may turn to other teachers and writings that share aspects of our philosophy of life, all the better if they are students and/or masters of the Veda themselves. One such system is that taught by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
There is a Sanskrit term, sadhana, which is translated by Iyengar in The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali as 'a discipline undertaken in the pursuit of a goal,' and generally refers to a series of practices used by the student toward the goal of union with the Divine. Our meditation would be seen as one form or type of sadhana, as would a certain series of yoga postures, or breathing exercises, pranayama, both of which we are taught as we advance in our practice of meditation.
Sri Aurobindo has said, however, 'All life is yoga,' meaning that all aspects of one's life, not just these specific practices, can be used, and indeed are being used toward the end of achieving union, yoga, with the Divine.
The Mother, Sri Aurobindo's partner in teaching, in answer to a question about this same subject, states further,
'We do not distinguish between life and sadhana... In our yoga, there must be a continuous life activity, serving as a channel of sacrifice, self-consecration to God; things like meditation and prayer have their own timings. The sadhana goes on all the time. Sadhana does not consist only in meditation or asanas. Sadhana is in the culturing of one's consciousness, right from head to toe Godward, utilising each occasion to let the consciousness growing towards God express itself in our day-to-day movements, transforming the entire life into a rhythm of God.'
from Under the Mother's Banner by M.P. Pandit
All that we do, anything we do, may be used to bring us closer to an experience of nature, of the Divine, of God.
Today may I remember at least once at the beginning of the day, and again at the end, to dedicate all of my self and my actions toward the goal of wholeness.
The 6 Train, Lower Manhattan, New York NY
All material copyright JeffKoberMeditation
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