A recent study from Southampton University suggests that yoga practice in the West primarily enhances the ego, rather than diminishing it. Is this true, or is Yoga’s real aim to take us beyond the egoic structure into the Universality of our real nature?
Rather than either/ or, both are true. Yoga works on both levels. So many of us today do not live in peace, but in pieces. Modern living tends to fracture our personality into different parts which is why we often feel pushed and pulled in different directions by life; leading to stress, anxiety and a host of psychosomatic health issues.
The great value of yoga is that it meets us where we are. Sincere yoga practice over time, whether postures, breathing, relaxation, or meditation, helps to gradually integrate, empower and harmonise the egoic self.
Some of us may be content to use yoga in this way to enhance our health and well-being on an egoic level. This is fine and obviously beneficial. Perhaps this is what the Southampton University study captured. There is now a whole yoga industry concerned with marketing yoga clothes, props, retreats and so on.
Other practitioners may seek to use yoga in their quest to become somebody important, somebody different, or somebody special. This is a natural play of the ego to some extent, yet can develop into a form of yogic narcissism. This distorts the true purpose of yoga. It was never formulated to simply become an ornament for the restless egoic self.
What yoga offers is something quite different. Firstly, we need to develop a healthy and mature sense of self. This in turn gives a stable foundation from which we can then reach beyond and explore the deeper, unknown, vistas of our being through sincere and skilful practice.
In doing so, we can come to realise that true fulfilment, joy and peace does not come through becoming a better version of ‘somebody’, but in realising we are ‘nobody’, content to simply be ourselves with no special-ness. Yoga can open our inner eyes to the knowing that the ‘I’ is simply a construct, or a vehicle, through which awareness flows moment to moment. We start to identify more as awareness rather than the transient content of thoughts/ emotions/ reactions and so on. Awareness is not personal, but universal; the ocean that supports, and at the same time transcends, the individual waves.
Nisargadatta Maharaj, one of the greatest Indian teachers of the 20th Century, put it very succinctly: “Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between these two, my life flows.”
How I teach covers both the practical side – i.e. enhancing well-being, clarifying direction in life, and resolving emotional issues, as well as the subtle esoteric side. Yoga firstly helps us to integrate and empower our embodied self. Only then can it help us to open the inner doors to who and what we truly are.
http://mandalayoga.net
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