Author Archives: DonBothell

DESIGNATED SPACE

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The Practice

The daily practice will take approximately half an hour each morning after you become familiar with the routine. It is important you do it each morning even if ill. If you don’t get enough sleep, still get up early enough to do the practice. If, for some reason, you can’t do it immediately upon waking, do it as soon thereafter as possible. If by chance you come out of a daydream and realize you’ve missed a day, get started again right away. This is your chance for a new life.

You don’t need much space. On the floor beside the bed, in the kitchen, on the lawn — anywhere there’s enough space to lie down flat with your arms and legs spread and stand up with the arms extended above your head will do. A designated space is good, but don’t let any little irregularity upset your practice. You don’t need any tools. You carry everything you need with you everywhere you go.

Think of the effort and expense people go to: seeing hypnotists, counselors, diet doctors and personal trainers and joining weight loss clubs and gyms. How many diet books are published each year? What invasive, expensive medical procedures are you being offered, and at what risk? Think of the clothing you wear because you are overweight, the opportunities you’ve missed, and the multitude of daily inconveniences you suffer every hour of every day. Think of the way society would have you feel about yourself if you hadn’t already developed an iron will. Yoga is going to work for you, because you are motivated to make it work.

Weight Loss Through Yoga, Jewel in the Lotus — page 13

 

DO THE WORK

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Our world is a mess. We are killing each other, starving our children, robbing the future and destroying our mother planet. At any stage of our spiritual development, we can get stuck along the way. The only salvation is to raise our vibrational frequency. This is a personal responsibility. A personal undertaking. It involves WORK.

Each spiritual day (48 hours) each of us needs to have the discipline to do asana, pranayama, and meditation. This is necessary to prevent crystallization, create the necessary energy, awareness, focus — and mainly to reside for awhile as a higher expression of our Self.

No church, teacher, alien benefactor, or lover can do this for us.

YOGA WORK-YOGA GOOD-WORK GOOD

YOGA WORK-YOGA GOOD-WORK GOOD

I call upon my indigo star-seed angel chosen friends to make the effort — look inside. Trust only direct experience.  Do the work to tear down the structures preventing full divine personal expression. Just because we’ve made some relative progress, we are not safe from self-congratulatory delusion.

FIFTH CHAKRA — THROAT CHAKRA

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LIGHT BLUE, LIKE A CLEAR LIGHT BLUE SKY

LIGHT BLUE, LIKE A CLEAR LIGHT BLUE SKY

The fifth chakra’s color is light blue, like a clear light blue sky. The element associated with the throat chakra is space. Understanding and learning are two of its qualities. Rather than accumulation of knowledge (what there is to know is infinite and always changing), what is needed is an understanding of the eternal and how to be a part of that constant. Space is by far the greatest component of the material world. Look up at the night sky and see the vast distances between the stars. The distance between the individual atomic particles that make us up are proportionally as great. We, and everything in the physical universe, are comprised of very little actual matter. The energy that binds that matter forms the impression of things being solid.

LEARNING AND UNDERSTANDING

LEARNING AND UNDERSTANDING

WEIGHT LOSS THROUGH YOGA, JEWEL IN THE LOTUS    page 62

MIND

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STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN    VII

MANOMAYA KOSHA (Mental Body)

The sheath of the mind, the Manomaya Kosha is often called the mental body. It is the tool consciousness uses to perceive the world. The mind uses the brain to process information and performs at every level of the body. It utilizes the sense organs to gather stimulus and the mind stores and sorts information drawing conclusions.

The intellect’s sense of self, the ‘I” that is the ego (composed of memory, everything you’ve been taught about the world and about yourself) is also within this sheath. The Manomaya Kosha is also the seat of the emotions. The Manomaya Kosha must be tamed to allow you to be at home in the more subtle koshas.

'Beyond Vanity' artist Kate Clark

‘Beyond Vanity’ artist Kate Clark

 

 

SELF

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STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN    III

Yoga technique allows direct personal experience of complete SELF. We exist as physical enigma. What animates our chemical and mineral composition into a living being? What intelligence organizes the multitudinous balanced relationships vital to a single cell? A sentient being?

All spiritual traditions assume that the physical body isn’t the only vehicle in which consciousness can express itself or in which the Self or Spirit manifests itself.

KOSHAS

KOSHAS

In yoga, five sheaths (the five koshas ) are recognized as occluding the pure light of the transcendental SELF.

BODY

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STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN    V

ANNAMAYA KOSHA (Physical Body)

The outermost of the koshas is the physical body (the Annamaya Kosha). ‘Anna’, in Sanskrit means food, and this is the body formed by the ingestion of food. It is sometimes referred to as the ‘gross body’, the least subtle of the koshas. The physical body is the temple of the soul. It houses organs that make it possible for consciousness to exist on this physical plane. It deserves care and respect. The reasons for being on the physical plane are the lessons that can only be learned in this material form. If the physical body is not properly maintained, it can be more difficult to advance spiritually.

Another paradox: the Annamaya Kosha is the most gross and dense of the koshas, but it is the most malleable. It is actually a manifestation of the unseen, more subtle koshas, and balanced sincere effort toward spiritual awareness echoes throughout the body and is reflected in the physical form.DSC0020-web

YOGA REVERES BALANCE

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If the earth were a little closer or further away from the sun, if the moon wasn’t balanced in orbit acting as a stabilizer, the planet wouldn’t have been able to foster consciousness in this human form. An intricate balance of hot and cold gasses, liquids and solids form this womb, Mother Earth.

BALANCE IN BODY, MIND, AND SPIRIT weight loss through yoga, jewel in the lotus

BALANCE IN BODY, MIND, AND SPIRIT weight loss through yoga, jewel in the lotus

The human body is a finely balanced vessel for awareness. Multitudes of balanced chemical and functional relationships are requisite for our being. Just as the earth revolves in its perfect orbit without the coaching of our minds, so our infinitely complicated bodies draw upon a higher order. Our bodies are always woking to maintain a proper relationship among the gases, liquids and solids animated by the life force into a living organism. This sacrosanct coalesce is constantly going on without direction from our thinking mind.

 

Weight Loss Through Yoga, Jewel in the Lotus        Page 44

INTUITION — YOGA THOUGHT

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After doing yoga and meditating for a while — getting more acquainted with your complete self — many things are going to start to become clear. Living fully in all of your koshas will facilitate a new form of understanding. The Knowledge Body Kosha knows beyond sensory perception. What existed as concepts or murky theories suddenly becomes obvious.

A Higher Form of Thought — INTUITION — courtesy of Weight Loss Through Yoga

A Higher Form of Thought — INTUITION — courtesy of Weight Loss Through Yoga, Jewel in the Lotus

To the yogi, the highest form of thought is ‘intuitive’, but beyond the way the word is commonly used to describe having a ‘hunch’. In this context, intuition is an absolute understanding that just is. Suddenly it is so obvious, you wonder how you didn’t always have this understanding. Then you realize, of course, a part of you (your higher self) always did understand, but you didn’t consciously inhabit that part of the self. Now your increased awareness through yoga, simply sees and knows.

ENERGY

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STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN VI

PRANAMAYA KOSHA  (Energy Body)

The sheath of energy (life force) animates the physical and mental bodies. The Pranamaya Kosha energizes the minerals and chemicals composing the physical body into a living being; supplying energy to all components. The air element, or pranic force, creates vibration and life. Prana rides the breath. It allows our True Self to animate in the physical universe. It initiates life. The Old Testament tells of God breathing life into Adam.

courtesy Spirit Science Metaphysics

SHAKTI AND SHIVA

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DANCE OF SHIVA

DANCE OF SHIVA

Consciousness is purusa, unchanging. In order to exist as a material life form it must combine with matter that is always changing, prakriti. This is a paradox. The Hindu yogic tradition uses the myth of Shiva and Shakti to explain.

They are a divine couple, lovers in the fields of creation. Shiva is the seer, purusa, never changing, and Shakti is energy, prakriti, always changing. Shakti, the lover, wants to play a game of passion and creates a world inviting Shiva, the beloved, in to join her. Shiva points out the world is always changing and he is always the same. How can he play in her creation?

“You be the center,” she replies. “You remain in your unchanging bliss and I’ll intermediate between you and the outside world. I will build sheaths through which you can experience the fun of my world while doing nothing in eternal bliss.”

Five koshas (sheaths) surround Shiva, allowing the lovers to experience passion as the embodied soul.

 

Weight Loss Through Yoga, Jewel in the Lotus        page 69