My tryst with yog-asanas

 Yog asanas.

1974 

Final yr b.com at nagpur.

Mind almost 'vacant'...🙂

I enrolled myself for 'asanas' class by a swami there aged 90+  ( he could do shiras-asanam on floor without support, standing erect on his head, steady🙂)

Lasted a month.

He sighted me in a couple of days, decided to fine-tune my postures( preferentially, compared to 99 others in that batch. We were100 learners)

The volunteers told me " you are the best & class apart". I felt humbled  🙏.

I felt lucky,  greatful etc.

I missed their exam after that month ( certificate, being govt recognized, meant a guaranteed job as a yoga teacher in govt school.  I was the topper too! The volunteers later said " you disappointed us, by missing the exam 😰". I had gone to Akola for temporary job in my bank, 3 months. I wasn't interested in any "certificate")

Till 1992 I thought "nothing more" to learn in these asanas. 

That founder of yoga-abhyasi-mandal , that swami is today in a samadhi at nagpur. A long queue to just bow once at his samadhi🤣... and I was taught by him personally, one-to-one, for 28 days,

When jaggi was reclining on stage, propping his head on one palm, enjoying music, and a volunteer demonstrating the same set of asanas.... I felt "teacher himself enjoying music? Not bothered to "watch" any of the 70 plus participants,  whether they need correction? ( but I was doing it flawlessly from first minute---1974 practice. )

3 day session ( compared to 30 days by Janardhan Swami 🙏

https://jsyog.org/  )

My-mind said " no comparison!"

The second day.....something strange happened in-me.

These postures suddenly started interacting with me, within me....waking up a strange+strong energy flow,  unmistakably 

Tears of gratitude 🙂

At once my mind conceded "no comparison"( same words, but in a 180° opposite direction 😜)

I understood what "yog" asanas mean? The teacher lying down was only resting his physical body and his 5 senses withdrawn. His "being" filled that huge hall, and was permeating into me 😳

I resolved " i have now....something very-very intense to work upon! These asanas are a huge benediction unto mankind!" ( never had to look back afterwards. My gratitude to janardhan swami multiplied many times, for "seeding" those postures in me in 1974🙏. It made jaggi's task simple! He just flooded his pranic energy into me😶... I understood the sequence, though 20 years apart. Masters coordinated thus

The sense of gratitude, transformed into a resolve

I will, when I become sure, help others towards this experience.  The  only payback possible

This resolve, instead of granting me any satisfaction, multiplied the indebtedness for me😰🙏😭... the experience of volunteering educated me about the process of imparting what I learnt, the subtlest of all sciences---spirituality.... 

This time, I understood "futile to attempt any effort to try a repayment of this huge indebtedness🙏"( just keep doing my best, and remember--i can never hope to repay😰🙏). 

Vacantly yours,

psn(30 oct., 2024)

I am an idiot

 Yes.

And this idiocy is a part of the original equipment in me ( karmic/causal body)

Why else would I misconstrue that sage Patanjali was addressing the first line of his monumental work ( yoga sutras) in a strange way,......was being to be addressed to me? 🤔

And now, yoga … he says ( अतः yoganushasanam). When you ‘saw' that nothing else has worked, now……the discipline of yoga! A teacher even emphasized this to me ( a guru who opened my eyes using strange non-invasive and subtle surgery. A bearded one, whom I knew as jaggi, in this birth! He even went to the extent of demonstrating to me, by me, for me…...about a possibility of the phenomenon  called rebirth 😜 . He did it quite-irrefutably.)

Thus the embedded nature in me that “this author was addressing only_you, you-idiot”( others were given a litmus test in the very-next verse/sentence, and therefore bulk of the reader adopted a need-not-read further, or read plus forget👍). Nature provided a teacher as well, for my lessons in yoga, and he taught me how to stay “within his range, irrespective of proximity”. Mobile towers need certain periphery to remain within its range of connectivity.

This “meant for me” concept took deep roots in me🙏😰

I started misconstruing that, the welfare of others around is my primary concern ( duty consciousness…..as opposed to “fight for my rights” wala attitude….😭). I have been paying a heavy price for this misfit-attitude. Only of_late, being battered mercilessly, i learnt to try-to-disengage myself in its manifest-form, from the lives of others 🙏

Now that I have explained about the unique and beyond-repair idiot-in-me,

look at a few souls who went unacknowledged …..

The evaluator of an answersheet who awarded a centum to an examined, was never known to have been a recipient of "thank you" from the centum/gold medal awardee😜…  the teacher gets thanked, the parents & well wishers get thanked. Ironically, a fellow getting lesser or fail scores seldom misses to curse that paper-evaluator🤣. Only brickbats for him, no bouquets 🙏😰.

Saturn too is looked at as a punishing_evaluator, despite his label as KARMAPHALAdaata/giver of fruits of past actions ( i am a “living evidence” that saturn gives blessings too🙏. And, Unconditionally too. I never had to propitiate shani-dev.  Mind you he is dev…god….not shaitaan/devil 😜. Gods are benevolent and not vengeful 🙏. Just that, he/saturn is assigned the unpleasant task of awarding NEGATIVE marks as well. If,  the failures with negative scores are in majority, is it fair to curse a “god”? Shani-Dev?

Oops! None of my concern….what you choose to call-him! 😞 sorry!

When a whole_perspective is based on a stupidity like “meant for me, addressed to me, for my sake alone, my duty unto others, others are my concern etc”…..the functionality of such an idiot(me) presents no difficulty to identify  me as an ‘original idiot’.  ( nature obliges by responding with a smile, when I look at earth, trees, air, water, sky and space etc……as “meant for me…my mom, from whose womb I came forth” etc!.  I can perhaps, find solace in the lap of this mom, not too late, either as ashes, or as decomposable organic garbage!)

Hope this helps, 

those around me( my victims, especially) 

to try to find a “way”

to pardon me for

My Unpardonable idiosyncrasies 👍

Idiotically yours,

psn(28 oct 2024)

Our inbuilt OBSERVATORY labs

Our inbuilt obsevatory labs

Normally,
Parents miss to "notice" a kid's "growth".
If....physical growth is so difficult to "notice"( seeing the kid daily,  is the attributed reason), then what about the subtle progress of mind,  intellect, response-system, reflex mechanisms and numerous other subtleties?

🙂

Instead of dismissing it, what if we decide to sharpen our observation?
( we will sharpen our focus, attentiveness, attention span, quality of grasp, quieting our mind for better intake, etc...long list!)

This quality might come handy to improve our-own  faculties of sensing.
We might "notice" early signs of infirmity, dementia, unsteadiness, lack of body-mind coordination etc...setting into our aged parents,  and try reversing the process to possible extent.

Extended benefits? We won't         miss
1)Early signs of dis-loyalty creeping into the trusted people around us!( something that espionage agencies specialise into 😜)...

2)Early signs of a chair becoming weak in offering resistance to our weight😜, and we avoid a fall!

3) early signs of moon's extreme phases causing imbalance in weak minds( mental health homes specialise in this 😆)

4) etc.... long list.

Such observations,  if it happens effortlessly.... we end up living-in-the-moment!

Ah yes!
Kids are the motivators for honing our skills of observation.  Because, we love them Unconditionally ❤ 

Observingly yours,

psn(28 oct 2024)

Random thoughts getting fulfilled

 

Those of our thoughts......

Which are in synchronicity with cosmic laws ( technical name for cosmic laws, has been for thousands of years, known as Sanatana Dharma.

Almost every one finds......
random thoughts of theirs, getting fulfilled ( appearing to be like a "miracle".... anything we do not understand,  seems like a miracle), though such thoughts are a bit rare. True spiritual seekers find the frequency of its occurrence to be a bit more than average!

The phenomenon is scientific. The 'snag' is.... its occurrence depends on stringent-conditions.

( i am able to notice an increasing rate of its occurrence in me😭.... I am therefore a little over overcautious about what-i-think. I call it side-effects of becoming meditative. Obviously,  I dont expect subscribers to this experience of mine🙏. It defies known-logic in psychiatry😜)

Randomly yours,

psn (24 October,  2024

Stormy life events

 We go through stormy sessions in our life.

This hectic schedule, bulk of which is about the 'situation' that drives you, pushes you to the limits ( what our mind aptly describes it  as "just surviving the storm" 😂),....

has certain advantages as well, only if we "had-happened" to use our tools of awareness and alertness.

In fact these 2 tools get invoked during that "storm" ( crazy navigation for survival leaves us with no choice about using our alertness and awareness). 🤣

Then what is the point?

Focus.
Where is our focus during a storm which has gripped us? Maneuvering 'somehow' isn't it? We 'feel choiceless about focus on  quality of our performance. Even an Olympic sprinter does a mad -run when chased by a tiger( he simply forgets about track-technique, breath-management, foot-work, optimizing elbow swinging....etc.  Ofcourse, he invariably does better than average common people, merely because of muscle memory, acquired over years of practice, in running for sports-racing. His focus is on survival from tiger,  not about creating a world record😜)

What if.....
We had already practiced adequately, to maintain a bit of self-awareness? This self-awareness, can co-exist parallel to our activities on the outside, whether hectic or normal-paced 🙏
Without that self-awareness, the "advantage" of any stormy-session  is out-of-reach!

Self awareness is a powerful defense against the vulnerability to emotional imbalance. We are equipped to be forewarned about likelihood of losing our emotional balance. 🙂
An emotionally balanced mind handles even-a-storm better than otherwise🙏.

And, during a drive through a storm.....the susceptibility to losing our emotional balance is highest ever!

Self awareness helps recalling of even-minor details of the experience during storm, when we are in a calm-after storm. Recalling of memory in a cohesive-sequence helps immensely for learning and value addition. Compare this with an imbalance of emotion, which snatches away our ability to even properly store the events in memory ? Recalling meaningfully is out of question. All we remember is how-mad-we-were 😰😜🤣🤣

Calmly yours,

psn (23 October 2024)

The no-time people

 The No-time people

Modernisation has churned out a lot of “no time” people 😂 ( until some 2 centuries ago, people seemed-to-have had time for anything & everything. Pace of life was snail's pace)

Just make sure that people have “no time” for something and then, it is easy to sell to them anything 😉 

What we call as “modern gadgets” are essentially time-saving things. Logically, of course. But factually, they eat away our time, and to understand this, ( only then, “any scope” to agree/disagree 😜) we don't have time ! That's  were the “modernity” nailed our coffin!

Well,

A sophisticated detonator might try to threaten earth “ i can destroy you….in-no-time”....and it really can👍… it is just technology!  But that gadget forgets that it is the very earth( which it ‘seeks to destroy’) that provided the raw materials of destruction !

Patanjali ( an ancient sage) has infinite time for those who don't have time for attending to the-most-vital aspect of their existence😜… 

And, it includes everybody ( atheists,  fanatics, jihadis, bhakts, mentally sick, and everybody 🙏)  Patanjali begins “ and now…..yoga….”( the implication of that strange-way of beginning a monumental and timeless work, dawns when nothing ‘else’ works for those who had “no time” since their numerous lifetimes….😜😂🙏🙏🙏

When a giant like Patanjali gives a timeless guarantee….. I can cheerfully walk out-of-the-way of those who have “no-time”  👍 ( He, for sure blesses me, when I managed to “realise” what he  meant 😜)

Un-Timely yours,

psn ( 1 oct, 2024)

Post script (30 oct 2024)

When 

Something turns into a passion in us,

time, leisure and wherewithal required for its pursuit begin to creep into us 😜