Om asato ma sad gamaya

tamaso ma jyotir gamaya

mrityor ma amritam gamaya

Om shanti, shanti, shanti

This Shanti (peace) quartet or patha, is a traditional introduction to several of the Upanishads.  It is a beautiful prayer that many recite daily.  Do you know that it is in sung in one of the movies of the Star War Trilogy.

Om Lead me from the unreal  to the real

lead me from darkness to light

lead me from mortality to immortality

Om peace, peace, peace

These are the ideas that live in the perennial teachings of yoga.  Not this stretching and getting healthy aspect that is often expressed as yoga.  Just look at the reference of these words.

Etymology

Gamaya has it’s root in movement.  Movement here as translated as “leading”.  Leading whom or what?  Moving whom or what? and where?

Moving from this selfish aspect of myself that is mortal  and moving to this self that is eternal never ending.  Moving from this focus on materialism (and gaining knowledge, power, wealth and all the things of this sensing and doing part of life) to or towards wisdom and love where we all are no longer separate beings looking at only what is in front of our external eyes.

Philosophy

This type of yoga is not exclusive to seperating ourselves on the inside from the outside.  It is not to admonish and deride the life we live daily.  Truly yoga is to bring together this life we have been living on the outside and “include” this life on the inside.  Allow this movement of the mind to awaken to it’s being vs always trying to become something yogic or ethically better.

A major aspect of yoga is this movement is a natural tendency of the mind to this state of awareness and light.  Able to see clearly once all the obstacles and grim are removed from the path of moving and seeing.  What is there is this truth, light and immortality of our true selves.

• Recognize what is truth at the deepest level.  Then the confusions of this vs that fades.
• Recognize what is dull and dark and simple uncover the light that always shines.
• Recognize what is limited and live from what is without limit (not the motivational “you can be anything”)

Simply do a practice of cleaning up on the inside and outside.  Let this natural movement lead one into a life that brings together and stops pulling all of us apart.  Listen for the breath that moves through this life.  This force of life, this breath called prana will connect us or reconnect us in our love and wisdom.  It will not happen from finding out something or doing something.  But in not finding or doing, we have to work very hard.  These paradoxes are real and one must stay engaged in ones practice of cleaning in order to truly know this simple truth.

Tasmai sri-gurave namah