Discussing: the limits of our senses and how they limit us. How Higher Knowing is already ours, and how Yoga can help us reconnect with this innate Knowing.
Our minds perceive our surroundings via the senses.
We have an understanding of the reality around us built on the input we have received from our senses.
From birth (even before, as we develop in the womb) we take in information via the senses and build our understanding of the world around that information.
We call this our 'worldview'.
Our senses have their limits.
We can only perceive of so much via the senses.
We can only see/hear/feel/taste/smell so much.
Take the eyes as an example.
Our eyes see a small percentage of the entire light spectrum, which we call 'visible' light.
Most of light, by far, is invisible to our eyes.
We live, quite literally, largely in the dark.
We are, in visual terms, more-or-less blind.
And even using what sight we have we can only see so far around us.
We cannot see round corners or through walls.
We cannot see what is beyond our immediate location, yet there is so very much more going on.
Even at the top of a mountain we can only see a small part of the total area of the world, never mind the entire universe.
We can expand the capabilities of our senses using tools like spectrometers which 'see' more of the light spectrum for us.
(Perhaps/probably there's more light than even they they can detect? How would we know?)
Then there's tools like telescopes and microscopes.
These are wonderful things, which help expand our awareness and understanding of our physical reality.
But, nevertheless, these tools merely serve to augment our existing sensory capabilities.
And we depend on our senses in order to use these tools.
They too have their inherent limits, and can only show us so much.
So ... generally speaking, our worldview is built on limited resources.
This limited sensory input creates impressions/patterns in our minds.
(Karma also plays a significant role in this which I'll write about soon.)
We call these 'preconceptions' - Yoga Calls them 'samskaras'.
These preconceptions then, dictate much of our day-to-day actions, which we call 'habits'.
Our behaviour is, by-and-large, habitual.
We become slave to our habitual thinking.
We live a habit-based life built on our preconceptions which are founded on limited input/data.
Often as not, so comfortable are we in our established worldview, we do not even consider that there is anything other than that.
Ignorance of our ignorance.
The belief that there is no more to learn is a major barrier to learning.
Recognising and acknowledging the limits of our worldview is a major step forward.
Even then, recognising our own limits/ignorance/blindness and opening to the possibility that there is more, we are met by the limits of our senses.
This puts us in a difficult position when it comes to understanding Reality beyond what we already think we know.
And so for evolving beyond where we currently are.
Bummer.
How, then, can we learn about realities beyond what our senses can perceive?
Yoga principles say that these preconceptions/distortions are barriers to clear understanding.
Reducing faulty preconception is required to free innate correct perception.
In order to widen our understanding, to expand our awareness, we first need to unlearn, to dis-conceive those preconceptions.
It methods are specifically designed for reducing (and eventually eliminating) habitual, limited/limiting thinking and behaviour.
Yoga offers tools/techniques for going beyond the senses deeper into Reality than the senses can penetrate.
Yoga practice reduces and eliminates habitual thinking/samskara by working to clear/calm/master the mind.
(Please note that when I say 'Yoga practice' I am not simply referring to bending and stretching. Though this can be a valuable part of Yoga practice it is not what Yoga is. More on this in future articles.)
Our ability to perceive is correspondingly enhanced.
Yoga practice makes clear that the Reality of life is hidden from us ... that there is so much more that we are missing.
This is what it means to expand one's awareness.
It sounds somewhat paradoxical to the logic-dominated mind ... by reducing mind-activity we come to perceive, and thus understand, more.
Yet that is how it is.
Ideas beyond our current knowing can only be abstract to us until we directly experience them.
In order to experience them we must calm/clear/tame/purify the mind.
Soul.
Limitless Freedom.
Kundalini.
The Highest Creative Principle.
These are just words, understood via preconception, until we experience them for ourself.
We can know these things.
But we must get beyond our limited sense perceptions.
We are blessed with innate but hidden, knowings.
For example, our feelings, our intuitions beyond the senses, are more closely connected to Truth/Soul/Source/God (insert the word that works for you).
But we have been taught to override these with rational thought, sense-based, habitual.
While logical thought has it's place, it can, and most often does, dominate and close us off from our higher/deeper knowings.
All is inside us all.
Inside is where we find the pure gold of our True Nature.
We live in the dark.
Our thinking, and thus behaviour, is based mostly in misunderstanding, based on inherently limited sensory data.
Yoga/meditation practice (they are the same thing - more in future articles) breaks down the barriers of stale, limited and habitual thought.
The mind becomes increasingly clear of error.
Our actions/behaviour move increasingly into balance and harmony with Reality, as dictated by the Laws of Nature.
The abstract becomes actual, that which was hidden visible.
Truth, realised, takes it rightful place at the centre of our being.
We are transformed.
Oh Joy.
