The blending of silence: yoga as a path to a heart-guided Life

Life is both the physical and spiritual. Any division into layers is a mind-made perspective. It’s all here, it’s all happening, right now, at once and everywhere. The mind is habitually tied to its apparent reality. Most of us in the west emerge from childhood and adolescence with little or no guidance how to “let go” of the mind. Within our modern education systems, we have learned how to serve an expanding system of consumption through science, mathematics, and language, and not how to serve Life, through experiences in meditation, yoga, and compassionate communication. High schools do not teach us how to enjoy Life.

Many of us emerge into adulthood with a disconnect to our instincts, that sense of “knowing”we once felt children – most of us knew how to intuitively play as infants. For whatever reason, the modern world has trained us to disconnect from our true needs.

Transmission of knowledge through writing necessitates mental concepts. The description of the physical and spiritual as separate layers is useful towards our understanding – we transmit and receive from where we are. We can acknowledge that the spiritual and physical are one and we acknowledge the utility of dividing them conceptually. In this matter, we acknowledge that our minds are tied to the conceptual plane and use these concepts as “seed crystals” to initiate choices towards personal experience where wisdom can be known through experience.

Here, I explain my perspective towards yoga and meditation as a path towards

integrating our animal, child, mind, and divine layers – the process of blending. This path has no destination or end state that has to be reached. It is a dance towards unity beyond our individual lives and is continued and shared with all beings past, present, and future.

The animal

Beyond out active minds is an animal constantly looking and sensing. It drives our desires for food, rest, companionship, and sex. It cares not for how much money we have nor our

nationality or career status. It is here in the now in its entirety. Yoga is a way for the modern

human to access their “inner” animal’s need for movement, rest, and community. By engaging in the regular practice of yoga, we create a space for our animal to realize its inherent needs.

We become less in conflict with ourselves. We experience intimacy and sensuality with

ourselves, and our craving of others to fulfill these needs lessen. The modern world does not

offer this solution in its own construct. We choose to blend the animal within our conscious

identity. By acknowledging the needs of this animal, we “become” what we already are, and

gain finer access to our instincts and the voice of our inner child.

The inner child

As children, no one had to tell us how to play. We just knew. If we could live from the same

intuition in our adulthood, we would simply do what we love. Here, our personality exists in its authenticity. Our deepest wounds also reside here: traumas from the past, coming back in the everyday to the happenings of life. This is where our humanity resides, its jaded edges and its deepest felt joys. There’s no point to wasting thoughts as to how things should

we are, and we can’t begin again from the start.

And yet we can start from where we are now. This is our power of choice – to feel into the

pains and joys of the inner child, to accept them all. The traumas we experience manifest in

adulthood as pains of the body – the tight hips, the sore back, the hunched shoulders – are all expressions of a child protecting from pain. This is closing to Life. Yoga is a route to relieve these traumas without having to understand them. We sink into the pain and surrender. We find our edge. We learn self-knowledge: not as who we think we should be, but as who we are.

The mind

The mind we formed as children took the form in needed to take to survive psychologically

within the circumstances we experienced. This child’s mind is the “hard wiring” of our adult

brains. It is as it is, formed with the micro- and macro-environments of days long passed. Our adult knowledge and experiences are simply “layered” on top of the hard-wired patterns of our inner child.

Meditation and self-reflection are roots to recognizing that patterns and perspectives of our

mind our often not in favour of our self-interest. We tend to do what is habitual, not what is

natural. Our minds become filters to our experiences, filters that view each moment as a

repetition of a childhood construct – a wounded child preserving the survival of a threatened animal. We choose to practice yoga and meditation as a path to a more connected and loving life. We maintain it as a daily or regular practice, for the ups and downs of life can be equally hypnotic, drawing us back into familiar repetitions of our past.

The divine intelligence and accessing it

As we learn to witness our inner animal, child, and mind, we cultivate our capacity to access our intuitions. Our personal knowledge that this is the appropriate response in this given circumstance. It’s instincts. It’s our divine intelligence – our knowledge that this action we take is part of the “charm trail” of Life. This is a seat of being from which we can always return. Yoga and meditation support us in returning. The mind is cultivated to being a faithful servant rather than a reckless master.

To me, the heart or divine intelligence within us is the “compass” and the ego and our body is the ship that gets us there. Set the course with the heart, and then engage with the ego to

move in the new direction. And importantly, do all this with lightness, for we can miss the bliss of the moment if we become too engaged with our self image. Keep it all as “well-meaning aspirations” and simply enjoy Life.

The blending of silence

We can learn to operate from silence. Our greatest creations are sourced from here. It’s being in the moment and operating from stillness. The thoughts of the mind and the emotions of the inner child may make noise, yet we remain with the moment and respond as needed, no matter the inner and outer noise. This ‘blending’ is the yoga of Life. We are already in the biggest of processes and there’s nothing to do or force.

Blending means all the parts and personalities acknowledge and see one another. We do not

punish ourselves for vices. We avoid attachment to divine visions. We simply witness

them all as part of the experience, part of our being. We are our divinity, and we are our

humanity. All voices are welcomed here.