Muzings by Muz

   This is fine for a hatha yogi who wishes to enhance personal power and develop physical energy.

Q. I am following a Yogic path, but find myself plagued by my Christian upbringing. I am constantly troubled between what are supposed to be ‘good thoughts’ and what are deemed ‘bad thoughts’ and struggle to find some balance between them.

A. All struggle stems from ego involvement. Stop struggling and look at what is. You will get nowhere with the game of juggling “good” thoughts and “bad” thoughts.  Concentrate on the nature of thought itself.

   From whence does it arise? Seek its origin, not its pathetic ramblings. Has the endless thought-stream (mental diarrhoea) any actual validity, except what you decide to give it? Thoughts are the flotsam of our conditioning on the mind-stream. Do you really need to scoop up any particular bit of detritus and chew on it? Whenever you latch on to a thought, that gives it strength and magnification through the lens of past ideas and conditioned concepts.

  Mind is Maya (the nature of illusion). Thoughts are a mirage mist covering over the Reality.

  You have become fixated on ideas. And ideas are the stumbling block to living spontaneously. As long as you are trying to act according to some fanciful idea you have in your head, about how you ‘should’ be, or how you ‘ought’ to behave, then you will always be in turmoil. Your idea conditions the way you imagine you ‘ought’ to act or react. 

   Because the imagined idea is NOT what is, right here and now.

   It is the carrot on the end of the stick in hanging front of the donkey.

   The donkey will never reach the carrot no matter how it strains. Nor will you reach your projection of a way you ought to behave. You will remain a donkey struggling to reach your idea: always struggling to reconcile it with your situation in the world. There will be no end to it.

  Then what to do? The whole point is not to try and reconcile your action to your ingrained belief or idea, but to find out why you decided to fixate on this particular idea or conditioning in the first place. Why have you bought into it? Why have you taken it on board?

   What is your real reason behind accepting it?  Look at that. And you might discover the reason for letting go of it.

   Consider: if there was no such idea, there would be no conflict. It is, after all, only an idea.

  Practice looking at life from your heart and not from pre-conditioned judgements.

.

   Finally (and thanks for your patience) the long-awaited Sanskrit Glossary – Words on the Way is now online and available as a downloadable PDF book. This contains my understanding from a lifetime’s research into the esoteric meanings of many Sanskrit words that you are likely to encounter in your reading of Indian texts.

  My original intention was to create something of an online consultable magic book, having it always growing larger each time you consulted it, by updating it every few months, when time allowed. But I only learned at the last minute that the mysterious capacities of my website programme were not capable of granting this possibility. Therefore it now has to be presented as a one-off downloadable e-book.

  However, over the years, I shall continue to upgrade it with lots more information and first time buyers will later be able to purchase it at a reduced cost in future and fatter editions.