Looking Up

 

Yoga does not transform the way we see things, it transforms the person who sees.

B.K.S. Iyengar

806 views in the last 24 according to the stats page, one according to Google analytics lol.  Or man these bots are like a bad case of cyber lice crawling all over my page...annoying, sucking blood so they can keep going, growing in numbers but relatively harmless as they lay their eggs. Are they harmless? As long as they maintain the  symbiotic relationship contract, they will be harmless....annoying as heck, but harmless.   I assume it will be a painstaking process to be rid of them. Need to get rid of all the nits in order to be free of lice but that is a long and tiring process. Do I have the energy for that right now?  The other alternatives include using a strong force against them that potentially harms other things besides them or  to shave the head by removing  my blog from this site...but those means are pretty drastic when it comes to things like lice. Lice? Man...what an analogy. I don't know why, but it came to my mind as soon as I saw the numbers on my stats page this morning.  I will have the one reader I do have scratching their head, for more reasons than one, as they read along.lol. 

Okay Singapore bots...(now infiltrating to countries around you, it seems), what do you want with this tiny obscure site that I barely publicize?

The Ups and Downs of Negativity

Anyway, watching my mind the last few days.  (When am I not watching it?) I observed the up and down motion of it.  When it was down (recovering from illness, dealing with some stuff I feel I have no control over, a lack of sleep etc) the external world seemed to reflect that negativity. I was still not feeling 100% physically. The pain started again and I had to deal with that and all the questionable story around it.   I automatically "assumed" things about people's reaction and approach to me...thinking they meant something they didn't....assuming they were viewing me negatively.  I viewed myself negatively, noticing my mistakes more than the things I was doing right, thinking I was not reaching out enough or helping those who needed me enough...that I wasn't enough. I was so sure others were mad at me for my mistakes that seemed so big. The world also seemed a little callous, chaotic, and "out to get me" with one little annoyance after another: sleeping in, missing the garbage collection when the bin was full to capacity and knowing we have to go another two weeks, a meditation practice where I just couldn't focus,  not being able to find what I needed to wear when I am in a hurry to get to work, the cat getting sick on my bed, noticing the yoga studio needing an extra amount of cleaning before class when I was so tired, people approaching me with their problems ++ but not heeding the advice they demanded I give them, people not responding to my hellos as I walked by.  Everything seemed negative!

Inside not Outside

My mind was super sharp at zooming in to the negative...to these apparent mistakes, to my faults and failings...to the world's. In this narrow focus all the rest was blurred out.  When I reflect on this "down" that lasted a little more than 48 hours, I see how it had little to do with what was going on "out there", about what life or other people were doing.  In fact, most, if not all, of what I was  perceiving was based on an "assumption" and not fact. It was based on an old belief that arose to the surface to obscure reality, an old habit I was looking through.  Why did it arise?  Hmm!  Maybe, the belief and negativity  didn't rise up? Maybe, my consciousness was pulled down to it. What I think of as rising up...may simply be a focusing down. Positivity is up...negativity is down. Positivity doesn't go down, negativity doesn't come up...but that which is observing and experiencing Life can look up or look down. 

Looking Up or Down?

So how do Samskaras fit into this idea of looking up or down?   I always imagined samskaras ( our stuffed and stored emotionally charged memories and mental habits) having this natural intention of rising up with the flow of Shakti beneath them to be released? Isn't that negativity rising up?  Hmm! 

Maybe when the attention is narrowed downward into the stored past painful experiences...consciously or unconsciously (as in suppression and repression...consciousness is always fully aware of the stuff we stored, even if we are not...) it becomes a force...the force of consciousness' attention or conscious awareness ...that creates a lid over the Shakti flow. That lid is there blocking light, holding Shakti flow down,  because attention is pulled downward. When consciousness moves its attention upward, it pulls the lid up, open, and away from Shakti flow, unblocking it.

Opening and Closing the Third Eye

 I imagine an eyelid drooping and closing somewhat when we look down and opening when we look up  Let's imagine the third eye (whether you are into chakras or not) opening and closing as we look up and  down.  When you look down, the lid drops and much of the light (positive energy)  is blurred out. Vision is narrowed and there is not a lot of photons getting to the eye. Things appear darker. When we look up from there, we are observing and experiencing light, we are experiencing the positive energy that has always been there. Light and positivity is up, darkness and negativity ( which is merely an absence of light) is down. The world outside has not changed...the direction of our gaze or our focus has.  According to many yogis, including Michael Singer, it is "will" which determines what direction to point our gaze...up or down.  Though habit mind is addicted to the downward pull, we can learn to break that habit and look upward in the way we were intended to. Most kriya yogis, like Yogananda, stress the importance of keeping the attention on the third eye chakra...that space between your two physical eyes and not dropping the internal gaze down to the lower chakras during kriya practice. This is done to allow the Shakti to resume its normal flow upward. Shakti...what we would call positive energy ( joy, bliss, peace, and love) is always flowing and on the move upward. The only reason we do not always experience it, is because we are using our will ( the power of focused attention) to stare downward....therefore dropping the lid over this flow, blocking it.

 So, when I was feeling down a day ago...I, as conscious awareness, was looking down, pulled into a little mental drama by habit mind ( which is a form of will). I was not seeing reality fully in my dropped lid perspective.  I wasn't seeing much in this darkened gaze but that which was dark. It was not the world or the people in it causing me problems.  It was the focus of my gaze downward.  I, as that which was observing and experiencing, always had the choice of using my will to draw my attention back up...away from old beliefs and tendencies toward negativity ( the lower chakra stuff). Hmm!

Suddenly, it seemed , after this realization, I was up again.  Feeling more energetic and peaceful and happy without anything out there changing.  Oh, at first mind was trying to tell me..."Oh you are just feeling better because circumstances have changed."...but I realized they hadn't.  My perceptions about what was going on out there changed.  I realized how most of my perceptions were incorrect assumptions.... how they were coloring my view of the world.  I could see so clearly that thing in me wanting to pull the gaze downward into taht perspective but I knew it was just habit. I decided to use my will to look up instead of down...and almost instantly the world became this amazingly pleasant place to be in. Not because it changed...but because I chose to keep  my attention up rather than down.Shakti flowed in the way it was meant to and I felt it.

Anyway, I am rambling as I ponder these new "aha" realizations.  I am probably not articulating clearly.  I will come back to this.  For now...let me leave you with a bit of insight.  Do your best to look upward! Life is a lot nicer up here. 

The highest spiritual habit by which the devotee can maintain a watchful awareness of the inner presence of God is to keep the consciousness always centered on the spiritual [third]eye. 

Yogananda 

All is well!