Realizing Karma Yoga and Bhagawad Gita, Popular Yoga Pose for September

Realizing Karma Yoga and Bhagawad Gita, Popular Yoga Pose for September - Meditation Newsletter

Published: Tue, 09/06/16

Mastery of Meditation Newsletter: September 2016

Mastery of Meditation and Yoga

AnmolMehta.Com
Devoted To Helping You Achieve Your Highest Potential

Dear Friends,

Greetings and welcome to the September 2016 of the Mastery of Meditation and Yoga newsletter.

Quote of the Month:

To walk the path of freedom and to live a full and meaningful life, courage is a must. Here is an inspiring Osho quote to help you be fearless and bold.

Osho Quote on Courage
Osho

“The greatest fear in the world is of the opinions of others. And the moment you are unafraid of the crowd you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion. A great roar arises in your heart, the roar of freedom.” ~ Osho

This Edition Features :-

A Deep Dive Into Karma Yoga and the Gita.
Yoga Pose of the Month - Plank Pose.
Don't miss related articles on top right.

Much Love,
Anmol

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PPS: Our Mastery of Meditation and Yoga FB Fanpage has regular updates with inspiring quotes, stories, pictures and articles. Do stop by, check it out and Like us. I appreciate your love and support - Anmol.

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Understanding Real Karma Yoga

Sri Krishna Teaching the Gita

Those who have come across the Bhagavad Gita have heard innumerable times, do your duty and leave the rewards up to God. This is essentially the definition of Karma Yoga, do what you are supposed to do without concern for the fruits of that labor. Is this humanly possible? Let’s find out.

Karma Yoga Failed

So, recently we did a very large and comprehensive website update and upgrade. It took almost a year before it was ready to go-live and despite all the testing, when it went live, due to technical reasons the new site kept crashing. Thank you for your patience as we got through that phase :-).

Eventually, the technically issues were finally resolved, but the new website created an interesting personal issue for me. The duty part of Karma Yoga had been successfully completed, now the leave the results part to God was remaining…

You see, the holy grail of websites is traffic and the upgrade helped double the website traffic overnight, which was great, except that I noticed myself starting to watch the traffic stats more and more closely. Oh oh…

Us bloggers do analyze our statistics as we learn a great deal from them on how to improve the site, but in this case my watching certainly included an interest in the “result” and as these thoughts gained in importance, they started to gain emotional strength. Which meant, joy and disappointment, rose and fell with the sine wave of website traffic. Certainly I was failing Karma Yoga!

So what to do? Can the understanding of Karma Yoga, the knowledge of what it means, free one from the desire for results? Apparently now. So what was the way to realizing and therefore living this Truth? Can this be done? I turned to the one way, the only way of finding out the Truth of things for yourself… Meditation.

True Pathway to Karma Yoga

The Path of Meditation

With great urgency, intensity and focus I sat. And sat…

First watch the breath. We will get to Karma Yoga, we will get to freedom from results, but first watch the breath. It calms the mind and brings you into the present. The great momentum of the thinking mind is diminished by this practice, and this a prerequisite so the subtle can be grasped directly. Thoughts are the most subtle, so first you must center and steady yourself, and have the velocity of thoughts slow down.

Now bring the focus of awareness to the thinking process. Start to understand the mind and thoughts as they occur in real time via observation. This is the point where most meditation attempts cease. Meditation is the entire process, from time to timelessness. It is not just the focus on the breath, that is the starting point, real meditation start after that phase, it starts here.

So what is being said it that thoughts will occur and as each thought occurs you “digest” that thought entirely, and then digest the next. Digest meaning understanding the entire story behind that thought via direct perception.

This will require, Energy, Awareness and Intelligence. Lots of it. You are not analyzing the thought, you are simply comprehending it and all that it implies at a glance - directly. You are seeing the fact in motion, the intellectual understanding is occurring in parallel.

Observe With Great Intensity

So you are seeing the thought which is placing importance in the result, which means you are seeing how the mind creates time, for the result is in the future. You are seeing the fact of desire, as you are wanting, craving something. You are seeing that you want the future to be a certain way, and this is the root cause of agitation and worry.

As I sat and watched. The demand for watching each thought reigned supreme, no thought must go unnoticed, so the demand created more and more energy to rise and flood the brain. That is Kundalini moving. Greater levels of impersonal intelligence were brought to bear on the thinking process and awareness was sharpened to a razor’s edge.

Understanding started to blossom. Any effort to shape the future, meant one was being trapped and that this would lay the foundation for worry and anxiety. Time, psychologically, was being self introduced. All this was the root cause for suffering. Therefore the fact was that entertaining any thought which was result oriented would perpetuate agitation and discontent. This insight exploded.

As a result, the whole direction of result oriented thinking shattered and ceased totally. Karma Yoga was thus understood and embraced via direct perception.

Total freedom and peace ensued due to the realization of this fact, this teaching. The teaching itself, read and understood intellectually, is not effective, it must be realized to have impact. And to realize you must read the most important book of all, your mind. That is where the Gita will be understood and then real Karma Yoga will be a possibility.

Conclusion and Further Study on Gita and Karma Yoga

Meditating Lord Krishna

The lesson here is of vigilance. Great and constant vigilance so result oriented thinking is not being fed. Vigilance so that orientation and pattern is not being strengthened and that thoughts which contribute to that pattern are being understood and dismissed. So work that needs to be done can be done, but one remains free of the burden of the results.

There are many articles on the website which will help you understand Insight Meditation or Jyana Yoga deeply, which is what this practice really is. The following videos will explain this form of meditation and break it down for you. Also the following articles you will find useful.

Sri Krishna On Enlightenment and Illumination Teachings

What is Karma Yoga?

The Yoga of Meditation - Sri Krishna Teachings

Supreme Jyana Yoga Meditation

Yoga Pose of the Month - Plank Pose:

One of the most needed poses for us to practice these days in Plank Pose. If you are experiencing back problems, from sitting at work all day, or need to strengthen your core and upper body, there is no better pose to do.

Yoga Plank Pose - Hatha Style

Plank Yoga Kundalini Style
Yoga Plank Pose - Kundalini Style

As a personal challenge, I suggest you practice this pose for the month of September and try to build up to 1 minute. Being able to hold Plank Pose for 1 minute is an indicator that you are in good shape.

Make sure you start off slow though and build up your time systematically.

More information on Plank Pose can be found on the website here.

a. Instructions for practicing Yoga Plank Pose:

Most of us are familiar with doing push ups, and plank pose is essentially the up position when doing a push up.
For plank pose be sure to keep your body in a straight line, like I have demonstrated above. Don’t allow the butt to sag and the hands should be directly underneath the shoulders.
There are also the two typical eye position variations. You can keep the eyes open and fix your gaze steadily at a point in front of you (typical of Hatha Yoga), or you can do this pose with your eyes closed (kundalini yoga).
Breathing is normal, except if you are doing a particular Kundalini Yoga Kriya, which might require you to do Breath of Fire while holding Plank Pose.

b. Duration for Yoga Plank Pose:

15 seconds – 5 minutes. As I mentioned shoot for 1 minute, as that means your core, back and arms are in good shape.

c. Benefits of Yoga Plank Pose:

Strengthens the arms, wrists, shoulders, back and spine.
Develops your core strength and abdominal muscles.
Helps with alleviating lower back pain and problems.
Good for improving your nervous system.

d. Practice Tips for Yoga Plank Pose:

Advanced variations of Plank Pose include, lifting one leg up and holding the pose, or lifting one arm up and holding the pose.
In the Kundalini Yoga variation, the toes are kept extended as show in illustration #2. This can put more pressure on the lower back, so be careful when using this version.

Find more Kundalini Yoga Poses here. Find more Hatha Yoga Poses here.