Discipline & Spirituality
While you go through day and nights and days, you are mostly doing a repeated set of things to keep your life in order. Life and this routine means different priorities for people in your own ways, do take a moment and think about yours.
Life also means to check how efficiently you are going about it on a daily basis, are you going about it peacefully or ragefully or with utter disappointment. Are you living with utter contentment or not ? What does it take you to do it without fighting with it ?
Spirituality helps you lead daily life peacefully irrespective of the factors you are facing. It helps you understand that peace that you are searching for is not in the outside world but within you and this is irrespective of the circumstance you are in right now. And you can find it only once you spend time by yourself, starting with the techniques of spirituality that suit you the most.
It takes discipline to achieve this contentment, a disciplined and conscious practice you do on daily basis. A practice that will keep you grounded, centered yet fully alert and centered in the moment. Most of you have experiences this as glimpses while you have been absorbed into a book or an activity you enjoy doing. This discipline can be cultivated consciously just as another habit until it becomes part of your attitude. You would be surprised how peaceful these practices can make you because there is an internal core change that is happening in your body and mind. You will slowly start getting detached with the world, although completely alert and active in your interactions and enjoy time with yourself.
It can be a permanent state and forever if the discipline of yoga Asana, Pranayama and Dhyana is maintained.
- Yoga Asana — Every posture that you hold per the practise, needs to comfortable ( SUKHA ), steady ( STHIRA). Also, the breath should be smooth during the posture.
- Pranayama — Once that perfected posture has been achieved, the slowing or braking of the force behind, and of unregulated movement of inhalation and exhalation is called breath control and expansion of prana (pranayama), which leads to the absence of the awareness of both, and is the fourth of the eight rungs.
(tasmin sati shvasa prashvsayoh gati vichchhedah pranayamah) - Dhyana — The posture (asana) for Yoga meditation should be steady, stable, and motionless, as well as comfortable, and this is the third of the eight rungs of Yoga.
(sthira sukham asanam)
Refer to this site for further deep dive — https://www.swamij.com/yoga-sutras.htm
Awareness of breath: One of the finest methods there is to stabilize and calm the mind is breath awareness. First, be aware of the transitions between the breaths, and allow them to be smooth, without an abrupt transition, and without pausing between breaths. Consciously practice seeing how delicately smooth you can make the transitions. Allow the breath to be quiet, and to have no jerkiness.
While you follow these three steps religiously in your daily practise, you achieve a centered and stable state called as Sthithaprajna in Sanskrit
To feel this centered state, you can also absorb yourself into the activities that you love — it might be praying , meditation , reading, art, music, writing poems etc. As an unique individual you need to choose that helps you go within yourself. Asana, Pranayama and Dhyaana might suit a few but might not for all. If any technique is syncing with you, you will at least have glimpses of peace, contentment and that lets you focus in the moment. Keep the routine up, keep it up for yourself to attain the highest state of you , because
— You are a unique creation of this universe !
