Impressions: Ordinary Specks of Light

The moment you understand yourself as the true Self, you find such peace and bliss that impressions of the petty enjoyments you experienced before become ordinary specks of light in front of the brilliant sun.  You lose all interest in them permanently.
Satchidananda/translator of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali;2011

So forgiveness is all about coming to terms with who we truly are beyond these mixed up minds and these mixed up agendas.  When we put away, what Patanjali referred to as mental impressions or Samskaras (Sanskrit),  it is like  dark veil is lifted and we see clearly the  magnificent beingness in us and in the other.  We open up to the peace and the bliss that was there all along. 

 

Michael Singer in the untethered soul writes about these impressions and how they close us up, preventing us from experiencing the beautiful flow of energy through us.  Impressions include all the conditioned judgments we store in our minds about what is right and what is wrong in the world; what is good and what it is bad.  It includes all our stuffed emotions and experiences that we decided  we "should not" experience and it therefore includes all the "enemies" and "villains" out there that made us feel these things in the first place or trigger their re-emergence into our conscious awareness afterwards. 

 

It also includes our "petty enjoyments" , our desires, attachment to things we deem as "good" or necessary to make us happy. 

 

 Our impressions keep us looking outside in the external world because it is there we believe the joy we need to grasp and the pain we need to push away originate.  It is situations/things/people out there we must dismiss, push aside or resist; seek, cling to and protect. It is with these impressions that the idea of "evil", "enemy" and "sin" originate.  It is these things that create the veil between us and the true Self, the ultimate reality of who we are and what Life is meant to be for us. It is this that creates the "unforgiving mind" ( see entry from March 2)

 

Forgiveness is simply a putting down of this veil, a putting away the need to stuff and resist and a turning inward to a Truth that can never be found "out there" or in our crazy mixed up minds. It is an opening up!

 

What we deem as so important to our happiness  are simply "ordinary specks of light" as long as the veil is up.  Once the veil of ego, of impression, is down we will see we are all parts of a Brilliant Sun. How can there be darkness then?  How can there be separation or differences? How can there be a fear or a need for guilt and sin? How can there even be a need for forgiveness when there is nothing that needs forgiving? How can there be anything but pure unconditional Love?

 

 

Hmmm!  Something to at least wonder  about, don't you think?

 As you drift back into Spirit, you will see that those are the eyes that look out upon the world. That is the heart that shines down upon everything and everyone.  Through those eyes the most wretched of creatures looks beautiful. That's the part that no one understands.
(Singer, 2007, pg 180)

 

All is well! 

 Satchidnanada (2011) The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Integral yoga Publications: Yogaville.

Singer, Michael (2007) the untethered soul. New Harbinger/ Noetic: Oakland