"The restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga" (Satchidananda, 3).
This instruction seems simple, but to put it into practice takes a great deal of effort and practice. In simplest terms, it is training your mind to be at peace no matter what happens in the physical world. It is feeling liberated, no matter how real the prison you are in is. It is releasing the desire, no matter how much the physical senses are drawn to the temptations. It is giving and receiving love from and to all beings, regardless of their actions. It is important to remember that the entire world is based on individual thoughts and perceptions from the mind, and therefore, every experience of the world is unique until we can see it with pure truth, devoid of ignorance, fear, hate and grief.
Our ego controls much of our mind, creating anger, hurt, disappointment, and all those things which bring us suffering. Finding peace does not mean seeing the glass as half empty or half full; it means just seeing a glass with water in it, with no further interpretation from our ego. If we can learn to love ourselves and then love all other living creatures without expectations, free of ignorance, with an unconditional love, we can find peace and be at one with the higher power we believe in and all other living beings, just as that higher power loves us without condition.
Imagine if each and every one of us could see clearly the truth that our essence and the essence of everything in the universe exists in the form of energy. Seeing this, we should be able to realize that we are all the same. Even the atom is energy. What we radiate in that energy affects the experience of our world. If we open our energy and let our love radiate without condition, our compassion expands and we help others that are in need without question. If our actions are selfless and without condition, then we will do good without having to think because our compassion and love will guide our actions. Our actions will save ourselves and others from suffering. Our deeds which are done with compassion and love in our hearts bring us back to peace with all living beings and with the Divine. The more good we do, the more positive energy radiates, and the stronger our unity becomes with all living things and the Divine.
With this unconditional love and seeing only truth, we find peace.
We gain the wisdom of understanding that our attachment to people and things in the form that they are currently in is part of what creates our suffering. When we can see reality as it truly is, we can understand that the essence of all things is energy, and that energy is constantly changing. As stated in the Law of Conservation of Mass, "Matter cannot be created or destroyed." Looking at constant change from a scientific perspective, we can understand that nothing ever really leaves us, it simply changes form. Much of our suffering in this world comes because we become attached to the form that all things (including living things) take in our eyes. We rely on our senses to know and understand things, rather than knowing the energy within those things. The world is constantly changing and things will constantly be changing form. If we can learn to know these things by their essence, rather than by their physical form, then we can be comforted to know that though all things are constantly changing, nothing ever really departs; it just changes its physical form to something we may not recognize with our senses.
Learning to be at peace with the constant changes and to love everything as it was and as it becomes is the path that yoga takes us on.
Works Cited
Satchidananda, Sri Swami. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Integral Yoga Publications, 2012.
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