“I can’t feel myself growing!” Says the 5 year old who only yesterday was complaining of aches in her little legs.
One of the many joys (and terrors) of parenthood is seeing rapid growth before your eyes.
For a youngster, the allure of adulthood must be supremely enticing; eat what you want, watch what you want, drive around, and obviously, boss kids around.
Ironic that just the other day I was trying to help my daughter enjoy the carefree reality of her childhood; the consequence for her to get what she wants, ie rapid growth, comes with a price tag of hidden burdens and responsibilities.
Many come to the spiritual path of yoga when there is an inner call to grow.
No, that’s a lie… most come when there is a suffering; be it body or mind.
Once the journey commences, a guide or a teacher will often point out the fact that the suffering we are whinging about, is really a call for growth.
This growth mindset I first overtly discovered in the context of the Army.
Many of us blokes (and gals) returning from stints overseas, were faced with a brutal period of readaptation to normal civilian life.
Gone were the helicopters, the guns, the firefights, the camaraderie.
Our units psych was a lovely woman named Carol, who, unlike many of the ‘Army psych’s’ actually gave a stuff about us blokes.
At that stage, I didn’t understand the PTSD phenomena; in the military context, I thought it was weakness. I remember a conversation with Carol where she tuned me in to the idea of Post Traumatic Growth, it had me nodding along. The premise is that if one integrated the challenging, so called traumatic experiences in a healthy way, that you could actually come out better than when you went in.
The SD – ‘stress disorder’ side of PTSD is, literally, by definition, a terrible affliction where one’s functioning is severely impacted after (post) the Trauma. The body and mind get ‘stuck’ in a fight or flight response. It is crippling.
But, as sad as it sound, life itself is traumatic.
The battlefield may bring trauma up close and personal, but the reality we all face is that every single person we know (including us) is going die. Everything we build, will not last (the gradual heat death of the manifest universe is written into the code of being, ie the sun doesn’t have an infinite supply of fuel.)
Gulp. A bit much for a Monday, no?
Where Yoga enters is both as a remedy to life’s ailments, and as a method to transcend the inevitability of suffering.
How so?
All paths of Yoga, be they meditation, philosophy, devotion or service, point us to a place beyond the corporeal (the stuff and flesh aspect of life.)
Yoga demands growth.
The various paths help us disentangle of our desires and wishes, we separate those that pull us into the world (and cause us to suffer) from those that guide us to being free. This subtle shift to the direction in which we move, though it may seem innocuous, holds the key to overcoming suffering.
Context. Zooming out.
As we re-frame our journey, including our trauma, so that we see all of our experience, both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as grist for the mill, when choose to see life as a curriculum for the Soul, something happens.
We grow.
Since devoting myself to this path, I have personally grown more capable, more forgiving, more compassionate and stronger in my faith. As we anchor ourselves in the eternal, infinite dimension of being, a wave that once caused us to sink, is felt as a ripple on the pond.
To a Yogi, this supreme self is Paramatma, the universal consciousness. Practice reveals it to be one and the same as our own in-dweller, our Soul (Jivatman.) As we centre ourselves in our true nature, the grip that ‘the world’ has on us softens, and poetically, we find ourselves living a better, more peaceful life.
It is very much a case of having to go beyond, to then come back and ‘be’ fully.
To help us make sense of the journey, we go looking to a guide for answers. One who is worth their salt simply holds a mirror to the aspirant, not to point out their flaws (that is our job) but to reflect the inherent divinity of the Soul shining forth.
A glimpse of this is enough to sustain a mature, ready Soul to go forth and be fruitful.
Some of us though, and I include myself in this camp, have some tidying up to do in the mind / body department. That work is unglamorous and boring. It involves pain.
The Mums reading this I am sure can attest to the fact that the most precious things in life (our kids,) come with the greatest of pains.
But what lies on the other side of the pain?
The very growth you are seeking.
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If your inner growth has stalled, fallen flat or is looking for some fertiliser to accelerate your growth, we invite you to consider joining us on retreat. We have found that what our students learn on a retreat at Kailash Ashram helps them to take conscious agency, gain clarity and set up routines that make living from their Soulful centre a reality.
If this message resonates, we would love to welcome you along to our Soul Retreat.
Jai Atmeshwar,
Victory to the Divine Soul
David
