towards meditation and stillness

sutra 4.23 "Consciousness, reflected by the seer as well as by the seen, appears to be all-comprehending." So first of all I need to pass on an instruction, Iyengar tells us it makes sense to read sutra 4.22-25 as a group. So I did. I hope you will too, because they really are very sense-making as a group. The very first two sentences makes me stop and think. 1. "Consciousness, being in conjunction both with the seer and the seen, appears to an average individual to be all-pervading, omniscient and real." The state of all-pervasion is the best I ever felt, when everything makes sense and everything fits and my sight is completely clear - I feel so blessed like and enormous expansion. This just explains my great need to experience a "shared reality" with other people. When I feel like we're on different pages or I feel like I don't understand or they don't understand, I feel a longing for a shared reality. On the other hand, when I meet someone who I just have a level of intuitive understanding and someone I share a common experience of the world with, I easily feel a spiritual expansion, like my limits just dissolve and the "I" becomes unimportant and something bigger arises.. Hard to explain. I am landing at this place of "it all comes together" again :-) 2. "When one is cultured and purified, one realizes that consciousness has no existence of its own but is dependent on the seer." So we're on a journey to become more real. Instead of identifying with the ego or the consciousness we are on a journey to get to know something more real, more stable, more authentic. But as a loved one pointed out, it is not a journey that takes distance from or leaves ego and human desires and fear behind, it is a journey that is all-inclusive. In these days I find that I have very few words to pass on my experience or my knowledge, I am at a place where I thrive being a beginner and a novice. I am the most loved and contributing novice I've ever been :-) and I love being new and I feel loved being new.. Iyengar explains the relation between consciousness, nature and soul. It reminds me of an explanation a loved one told me about how ego, self and soul are related, just different use of concepts. See, I'm used to that the different teachers my greater power sends me, uses different words or concepts. The important thing for me, is the usability of what I understand, I seem to be done with trying to compare or try to find out who is right... In this field at least :-) I just see connections and contributions. I sense what is most close to my inner truth and most useful to bring light to the puzzle of my life. Anyway, Iyengar tells me that the consciousness is the bridge between the nature (our changing, limited and pluralized human existences) and soul (free from influence, the seer, changeless). The purification process is one that takes the consciousness from being disturbed/identified with (reflecting)all it sees and senses, to being identified with (reflect)the inner seer. Iyengar uses the picture of a stormy water, where the waves are identifying as single waves, but when the storm is gone, the pure nature of sea unfolds as one big being, without the nature of waves or motion ever was wrong or should be judged.. They just were, and now they are still in a new clear, pure form. This sutra means a lot to me. I hear my yoga-masters words so clearly in Patanjalis words. This is what I hear him tell me again and again. I feel a movement towards meditation and stillness. I feel a movement to live in and to express the truth of my heart. I am so in love, in love with it all. It is overwhelming. Namastè jenni

how to be more fully everything

Sutra 4.22 opening up here, together with you. "Through accomplishment of pure consciousness comes knowledge of the unchangeable seer who rests on his own intelligence and nowhere else." (Iyengar translation) Iyengar describes how consciousness has two facets, one is pure and divine -our sacred heart, the other is changeable and transient (love this word). I love that he tells us that when we rest in our heart, we will hear the inner voice and intuitively understand, this is my experience. I have always loved to walk by the water, to see the unending movement of the waves, Iyengar tells us this is when the two facets of consciousness comes together, the "probe" consciousness that gather informations of an external world, and the unchangeable consciousness that is a reflection of the inner seer. I think sometimes I can watch the dishes, and dirt grow, and gets done, grow again and gets done.. just like these waves that rise, crest and falls.. these are happy domestic moments where Jennis consciousness cooperates both with my inner seer and external domestic, profane life. In the same way I am sometimes set free from my relations and can look at them from a different perspective and get to see how they... breathe, rise - intensifies, crest and fall - moderate, just to rise again.. I feel very free when I get to see this movement anywhere in life. Desikachar relates this sutra to the sutra 3.55, this explains it to me; "Freedom is when the mind has complete identity with the perceiver." I can relate to this idea with some experience. When reading this I thought I am going to search for clarity this week, to be as close to my inner seer as ever possible. Well, my first action, became unexpectedly strange.. When I apply the wisdom of this sutra to my current relations and practice. I get to stay close to inner seer and reality, as clearly as ever possible. I am moved to tell my students about what I see in their practice and in their bodies, I catch myself touching different parts of the spine on different students, to tell them; "this is your challenge - get to know it". In life, I am moved to unfold transparency, so that people surrounding me know who I am. This sutra also tells me to be fully and honestly with all I interact with. To not hide, escape, avoid, but try to let my family and friends know me as I am - all of me. I take the journey from the head to the heart to get to know my own inner truth more fully. Only when doing this I can let them know me as I really am, only doing this, I can be theirs without games, fears and roles. When my inner seer can shine through me, this is the most I ever can give you. So I guess this sutra tells me how to be more fully everything, including yours. Namasté Jenni

the heart, from where my true being expands

Sutra 4.21 Iyengar translation "If consciousness were manifold in one's being, each cognizing the other, the intelligence too would be manifold, so the projections of mind would be many, each having its own memory." Iyengar uses his comment to describe how plurality would lead to madness and confusion. But then he describes how the experience we have of plurality arises from our scattered consciousness of pleasure seeking and pain avoidance. Our consciousness is one, like the trunk of a tree, and then it branches out. The branches of the tree we sometimes talk about as; vrittis and the klesas. The branches of the tree of consciousness is our head and the trunk of the tree is our spiritual heart. You need to go get the book :-) I can in no way make justice to this great, short writing about these philosophical ideas. Sometimes I've arrived at a place, in life, where I reached a bottom. I have no energy left to keep on trying to avoid or pursue a "branch" of my tree. For an example; I have tried to be in a relationship where I suddenly were just done. I could not keep on. I needed space and time to find myself and my quite inner seer. This relates especially to the last paragraph of Iyengar: "After experiencing a variety of pain and pleasure, the secondary consciousness changes it's modes, identifies its true nature, reconsiders and returns to rest on its source of mind. This return of consciousness from the seat of the head to the seat of the spiritual heart is purity of consciousness, divya citta. This is yoga." For me, I sometime experience that when I stop trying to fix things, they just get aligned in a way that makes everything a bit more easy and.. still. This sutra inspires me to work with this journey and with silence. Silence not only as "no sound" but also silence as stillness, no motion, no thought, no agenda. In every practice I, in some way, take the path from the head to the heart. It starts with bowing my head down after singing the invocation to Lord Patanjali. And it ends with the contact to the heart in the bow saluting the sacred heart, with gratitude in the end of class. I believe all love sent to me, any day! is to remind me of the seat of the heart, from where my true being expands. I have a clear personal vision for what my path from the head to the heart contains in these months. Do you know yours? Today I had planned a class with pranayama, and restorative yoga. But there were so many new students (most) so I changed my plan. Instead we did more active and introducing yoga-work. But, we still had this fine contact to silence - I enjoyed this a lot! Namasté Jenni Saunte

the seer and itself

Sutra 4.20 "Consciousness cannot comprehend both the seer and itself at the same time." (Iyengar translation) And Desikachar adds: "An object existing independently of an observer can be perceived." This is the short form, where a great deal of western philosophy is just put to rest. I read it like there is a reality also outside the small "I". The two states of perceiving and fabricating cannot exist simultaneously, for consciousness. I relate to this with some experience. Two different states, like fabricating and perceiving or restlessness and restfulness -cannot exist at the same time IF I am identifying with the mind/consciousness (depending on which translation I use) - but when I am identifying with the inner seer, I often can experience to have several different states going on at the same time. I can for example feel both happy in love, worried and overwhelmed, in complete trust and at peace with it all at the same time. Without any problem. How does this guide me as a teacher and in my daily practice... I guess it supports me in helping the students move deeper inside, to get to be more free and able to observe what really is (and is not - thank you). I think I am still working on stability, and this relates to this sutra, because stability helps me (us) to observe more clearly what is going on. There is also always a sense of center in stability, and this center resonates with the inner seer, for me. Namasté Jenni Saunte