So like the fish we swim around in our own personal version of pain and we take it as a given that this is the way things are!
If you have a headache and you take a pain killer of some kind, more often than not the pain goes away after awhile and you forget about the headache. There are many causes for headache but let's just say that this headache-ness is part of your make up and that you have always had a headache. You don't appreciate that you 'suffer' from headache-ness until one day you find out that not everybody has headaches all the time. At this point someone may point you in the direction of pain killers and you take one and for the first time you feel what is is like to have non-headache-ness. Blimey a whole new world opens up for you and you can enjoy living in a non-headache state for as long as you keep taking the tablets.
Then through some chance or another you find out that there are other cures for headache-ness and you try some of them. You then find that you no longer have to take quite so many tablets as long as you continue to do this 'other thing' that also helps you maintain a state of non-headache-ness. Wonderful! This process may continue until one day through trial and error you find that you have eliminated headache-ness from your own life completely, and all you have to do is whatever it is you have discovered as a cure.
First of all there is the 'becoming aware' of headache-ness through chance or some other method, then there is the exploration of finding a non-headache-ness state of being. This process may take many years or a few weeks dependent on, what? Need? Desire? Desperation?
Most of us as adults know that if we take a drug it will alter our chemical make up and change something within our physiological disposition. Drugs are widely available and so is alcohol. Drugs and alcohol are used as part of social interaction, it is very normal to have a drink or a smoke in the company of other like minded people. We are 'affected' by chemical changes within our body's. We are affected perceptually as well. We may feel miserable and we have a drink or two and we then feel happier as a result, or not as the case may be.
'The body reacts to fear whether real or imagined' Anon.
In other words what you think about will affect the body chemistry and alter your mood, perception, whatever. If your body has been conditioned to behave in a particular way for 20 or 30 years or more, to think that saying positive affirmations will change that overnight is a big mistake.
The body and mind will condition themselves around the input they receive.
And this is where yoga steps in, Asana and Pranayama are the start of the process. The Yamas and Niyamas will grow sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly depending on your desire, need or desperation. The ability to sit still and gaze into the infinity of nothingness within your own mind will grow over time so that you can then experience the experiencer and see the seer.
As one begins to realise that 'thought' is not reality in the true sense but that it is a conditioned experience based on may different things, one may then realise there is something beyond thought. Hmmmmm, what would that be then?
Having seen Stephen Dawkin recently on television slaying some poor unsuspecting new-agers into looking like complete fools. I'm writing this now with a view to being blasted an criticised by him or someone like him. I would willingly argue the point/s I mention on here with any scientist. We, in the arena of so called alternative health field should be pushed to prove our outrageous claims, this is only right I believe. To squeak naively that it is all just energy and stuff is one thing but to talk about what actually happens within the dynamic framework of, in this case, a practising yogi is quite another.
Essentially we are a series of electrical impulses (thoughts) and chemical responses (hormones), are we not?
Ha Hari Om
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