Between the Body and the Soul

The most important aspect of a human being is the part which lies between the outer skin and the innermost soul-the Shakti, which includes the mind, intellect, emotions, vital energy, the sense of "I", and the conscience.  These are different in every human being, and that makes us individually both mysterious and unique.
-B.K.S. Iyengar, from Yoga: The Path to Holistic Health, page 56

Hmmm!  I am still a little hung up on my entry yesterday.  I want to introduce a new 'idea' to my already overloaded mind...but need to be clear about my thought process from yesterday. We were talking about It...the home where joy exists.  I know, ultimately, It has very little to do with conceptually understanding this, of being able to analyze It with mind or to put It  into words that make sense.  This thing I refer to as It  is something that goes beyond the mind and must be felt and experienced.  Still I use the tool of mind and words to point us there...if I can, that is.

 

The Outer Skin

 

Yesterday I referred to Michael Singer's explanation about the three basic layers of our existence. Today, I am adding Iyengar's yogic interpretation to it.  On the most superficial level, we have the "little me' on the surface moving  around the planet doing all the things humans do.  The most superficial layer is where many of us are and where many of us stay until we die but it is a place that is foreign to us.  We are in it but not of it.  It is a place dependent on the five senses and the body for survival.  In its visibility, it is very physical, matter and body centered.

 

Most of us just want to leave it at that but as we awaken for whatever reason and in whatever way...we are drawn deeper,

 

The Inner Most Soul

 

At the deepest level, we have the "most innermost soul"...the true Self, the seat of awareness, ultimate consciousness, Spirit, One, pure intelligence,  and what is referred to as purusha in ancient Sanskrit. It is this deep level where joy and the creative life force exists, where it always existed and it is where we experience It and know It.  It is where what many of us call God can be found. Yet It is inexplicable, invisible, cannot be named, cannot be understood with thought.  It is pure infinite space where all things originate. In quantum physics It is called The field.

 

It is a place we want to be.  It is home. Some thing is constantly pulling us there. Yet it is beyond perceptual understanding in its matter less state. Singer refers to it as the sun in its example.

 

 

In Between

 

And in between these two layers is what Iyengar refers to as Shakti.  This is basically all the mind stuff that can be used to serve us if we learn how to use it correctly.  Or it can act as a cloud cover between the two layers preventing us from experiencing the joy of the Inner most soul if we use it incorrectly.

 

Many of us use it incorrectly and we allow negative energy to build up like a dark cloud cover between the physical part of us and the spiritual (the sun). Our sense of misery and 'suffering' comes from not experiencing Source energy. The thicker and greater the barrier between us and It, the less joy we experience and the more we suffer. Do we get that so far?

 

 

Everything is energy

 

 

We have to understand that everything is energy.  Energy flows and moves in us and around us all the time. Many will refer to Shakti as energy...the unseen force that moves us and the world.

 

Singer explains in Michael Singer: The Unlimited Energy of the Self  that this energy, like all things originates from the innermost part of us.  It has the power to pull us toward it.  When it goes up, we feel up and we are pulled toward the innermost soul.  The cloud cover is thinned out, we think less and feel more and we experience joy, freedom, a connection with who we are (even if we cannot conceptualize it or put it into words; even if we mistakenly believe it was something in the outer world that made us happy). We have opened up!  We are closer to our home, our Source. It feels wonderful.

 

We have a sense that the sun is out shining brilliantly down on us  even though the sun never went away.

 

 

But....

 



 If we fill this in between layer with useless thoughts, distractions, conditioned beliefs that bring us down...the energy gets blocked or dips down.  We begin to feel frustrated, angry, depressed, unfulfilled, trapped etc.  We suffer.  We may mistakenly believe that we are suffering because  things in the outer most layer are not working out for us but that is not it.  We suffer because we created another thick cloud cover between our Source of light and our experiencing It.

We need to thin the cloud cover

Energy is Consciousness

 Energy is consciousness and consciousness is energy. Where we place our attention, our awareness, our conscious focus...energy flows.  So if our conscious focus up there in the upper layer is all about how stuck we are, how little we have and how miserable and scary life is...guess what?  We are going to have a shift of energy downward...that shift of energy downward pulls us from our Seat of awareness, keeps us stuck in mental chatter as the  cloud cover between our little physical selves and It gets thicker and thicker. We get farther and farther away from Self, from peace, from joy. We suffer.

If, however, we make a deliberate choice to experience Self and work on lifting that energy by questioning our conditioned ways of perceiving...we will experience a break or a thinning of cloud cover.  We will get closer to Source and the joy of living that is there.

We need to up our energy and thin out the  cloud cover between the layers of our experience so we experience the light like we are meant to and so we can pass it on.

I will discuss in the next post, how we can do that.

All is well!

B.K.S. Iyengar (2014) Yoga: The Path to Holistic Health. New York: Penguin Random House

Michael Singer (Sept 2018) Michael Singer: The Unlimited Energy of the Self.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEOQoRhaX1s