MyLifeYoga

Oil and water do not mix. This is why if we add a drop of oil on a wide surface of water, it spreads all over, coating it with a very thin film. The volume of the tiny drop of oil may be millions of times less that the volume of water, but it still manages to covers its entire surface.

Most saints tell us that this vast universe is but like a thin film of oil covering the entire body of reality. Saints who have experienced deeper aspects of reality say that most of it is beyond both space and time, and the reality that we directly experience is but a vanishingly small fraction of the sum total of all that is. But our obsession with what we can see and experience prevents us from directly experiencing the deeper and much more substantial aspects of reality.

Since everything around us participates in the play of space and time, everything we see around us is temporary and subject to constant change. That is why most saints tell us that the reality we directly experience through our senses is “unreal” and illusory. While the deeper reality that is experienced through mystical states of consciousness is considered to be “real” as it is beyond space and time and is permanent.

One day an atheist happened to see a saint meditating under a tree. On a whim he decided to pay his respects. He approached the saint and bowed before him. The saint opened his eyes and asked why he was bowing.
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About seven years ago Dr. Peter Attia was asked to treat an obese lady patient whose leg had a diabetic festering ulcer. Dr. Attia had to take the decision to amputate her leg. Years later when he looked back he did not regret that he had made the decision to amputate. In fact this was the right thing to do and may have saved his patient’s life, but he regretted the contempt he had felt for her and the dismissive way he had been towards her. Instead of showing empathy he had felt the need to judge her.

He came to the realization that he had been wrong in judging her when a few years later he found himself in the same boat. He found that he too had become overweight and had developed insulin resistance. This was the first step in his downward spiral to Diabetes and other related complications such as Heart disease, Cancer, Alzheimer, and other ailments. He had been doing all the right things: eating the right foods as recommended by the food pyramid and he had been exercising regularly. So if had done all the right things, how could this happen to him? Dr. Attia then made immediate changes to his diet and though he exercised less, he lost 40 pounds and also shed his insulin resistance.

It then occurred to him that it was not his obese lady patient’s fault to have found herself overweight and diabetic. She like him, had probably done everything as recommended by healthcare professionals and yet found herself spiraling into obesity and diabetes. Dr. Attia was forced to conclude that the system had failed the lady and instead of his judgment she had deserved his sympathy. Dr. Attia is now on track to find out the answers that will help patients like his obese lady patient. Like many other health professionals, doctors, and scientists, Dr. Attia has come to the realization that sticking to the traditional food pyramid is not enough to keep you healthy. He feels that a drastic change in the food pyramid is called for and his best guess hunch is that the overabundance of sugar and processed Carbs is the cause of most of our diet related health issues.

Related: Eleven Things You Need To Know About Sugar

Since the personal benefits of practicing yoga are becoming widely known, the practice of yoga is becoming increasingly popular. But it is much less understood why the world needs more yogis. Here are five reasons:

1. Consciousness explorers

All our knowledge and information comes to us because we are conscious creatures. Without consciousness we have nothing. No life, no humanity, and no civilization. Yet we spend more time exploring the external world than our own internal consciousness. For Science consciousness is more like a puzzling after-thought than something fundamental that needs to be explored. One reason is that Science does not have the orientation or even the vocabulary to deal with Consciousness. This is because Science focuses on the external directly manifestable and measurable world and not something that is inside and directly experienced. Luckily we need not start from scratch. For thousands of years we have had people who have specialized in exploring consciousness. These are the Yogis. And Yogis have created the methods and the vocabulary to explore consciousness. To be sure this is not all wooly-wooly stuff. The methods of yoga are demonstrable, measurable, and replicable and hence as rigorous as science can be. It is best to view yogis as “consciousness scientists”, and we need more yogis because we need to urgently and rapidly understand consciousness. This is because understanding consciousness may be vital for our very survival as a species.

2. Force for peace

The reason that the science of consciousness can become a force for peace and a key to our survival is that it points to our underlying unity. If at some fundamental level we are all inter-connected, would there be any reason for these false divisions and fights? The uniform message from Yogis past and present, is that we are all connected at a fundamental level. Yogis tell us that consciousness is not something that happens to emerge from our brains, but it is the very building block that constitutes us and everything around us. The message of our essential oneness is a very powerful message for peace that needs to be expanded and amplified. And we need more yogis who can directly corroborate the truth of this message. In the past the yogis were few and far between and their message would either get dogmatized or get garbled and misunderstood. If the number of yogis multiplies thousand and million fold then the message of our underlying unity and oneness will be heard loud and clear.
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