Each Person Can Make a Positive Difference by Turning All Life into Yoga

0:07 Namaste. People are discouraged, depressed, worried. The world is seemingly breaking down in a number of different ways. We're focused on the political disruptions, the economic concerns, the toxic chemicals that are polluting our environment and increasing our health issues. We're concerned about the climate change and the change in disease vectors and the wars and the mass migrations and all these other problems. We've discussed endless times.

0:52 And people are simply tired, burned out, discouraged. What can I do as just some small individual here to solve any of these problems? And this leads to either apathy or distraction. But we have another option, and that is to support the development of a new form of consciousness that can transform the way we look at things, transform the way we act, the way we think, and the way we interact with others and with the world around us.

1:50 We think, what can I do? I'm just some individual here out of 8 billion or more people on the planet. But there is a way forward, and that way forward is really not complicated. We think, oh, there's 8 billion people, but not all 8 billion people have the same influence or power of concentration and focus and action. And so we find that there are what was called in some sociological research done back in the 1960s, what we may call opinion makers. These are people who have an outside, outsize influence on what people think, what they do, and how they act. Many of us have heard about the 100th monkey phenomenon. The 100th monkey phenomenon was an observation made by some anthropologists and some primatologists that there were certain monkeys in a part of the world where one monkey started washing his fruit before eating it and then other monkeys started copying it and pretty

3:22 soon that whole tribe of monkeys began to wash their fruit. The interesting part was that once a certain number of monkeys started washing their fruit, this behavior seemingly promulgated to monkeys worldwide who were not in contact directly with the specific group of monkeys that initiated this behavior. So this was called the 100th monkey phenomenon, and it involved what we might call a tipping point by which a certain consciousness, a certain awareness, a certain capacity suddenly develops and manifests across a population when a certain number of that population make the change and adjust their awareness, their consciousness and their action. And so the question that we raise is if we do something, if I do something, if you do something, if the next person next to you does something and we influence other people and they do something just by our actions and behaviors and thought patterns.

4:54 Who will be the corresponding 100th monkey in the human race to change the approach of fragmentation and separation and division and conflict into one of cooperation and harmony and increasing understanding of the unity of all existence? We need to reflect on that, and then with that understanding, we can begin to act. What can we do?

5:37 First of all, each individual can take up spiritual practices for inner growth. This is not a prescription for a specific religious background, philosophical background, scientific background. It's simply that each individual, where they are, with whatever their belief system is, should take up the practice of inward observation, meditation, concentration, to begin to understand the forces that move them and begin to separate themselves from that motivating energetic force that just drops on them from outside, from the world around them, from their contacts and their correspondence with other people.

6:38 And begin to understand that they have the ability to choose, the ability to refocus their attention on higher things, higher principles, more harmonious resolutions, rather than a vital reactive nature based in separation, fragmentation and hostility. When that happens, we begin to see that our own lives take on a new tenor. We begin to change. Our understanding of things grows and develops. And as that happens, we begin to interact with people in a different way, and that begins to change the way other people respond and react.

7:36 So this is a way for each individual to become part of the solution rather than remaining part of the problem. Now, we also work externally, We do things in the world. And generally we try to separate our inner life, our spiritual life, our spiritual practices from our outer life. And we say, I'm going to sit for meditation, or I'm going to go and pray, or I'm going to do a retreat.

8:17 And then we come back to our outer life and we seemingly forget all that. We go out and we do our jobs and we earn money and we live our lives. And it's like we've made an artificial separation. When we get to the point of seeing that the outer work can and should express the inner consciousness, then we begin to extend the influence of our new insights, our new capacities, and our new standpoint into everything we do.

9:05 Whether it's some work that we consider trivial or meaningless, or it's some larger program in the economic, political, scientific, or technical fields. Whatever it may be, if we treat it with an understanding that it is the expression of our spirituality, then we begin to have an outside and outsize influence on things, events and people around us.

9:47 And so we look at what Trio Robindo had to say that all life is yoga. What does that mean? It implies that we can transform our activities, our lives and our purpose into a yogic process. If we look at the Eightfold Path of Patanjali, the first step is to develop an asana. Asana means seat in their traditional yogic practice. It means that you sit in a particular posture, with your legs crossed, sitting upright and still, quiet and relaxed, in order to undertake the spiritual discipline. But in a broader sense, our asana is the standpoint we take in society, in each situation, in our work, in our families, the seat of our consciousness.

10:59 The next step is pranayam. Pranayam is the control of the breath, and in the traditional path of yoga they have particular breathing techniques that you have to do and practice. But in a broader sense, pranayama is the control of the vital energy that comes into you and that you absorb and that you then transmit through your being and that you then release back into the world. And so we can make our vital interchange into a form of pranayam. Before the practice of asana and pranayam come the preliminary practices called the yamas and the niyamas, and these are really usually treated as some kind of moral observations. You shouldn't harm other beings.

12:03 You shouldn't be jealous, you should have contentment, you should treat others with respect, etcetera. These are however, not moral statements. They are practical scientific statements. They are statements to create the correct mental, emotional and vital basis to hold higher energies as they begin to manifest, without spilling them, without erupting and without breaking down our physical, mental, emotional, nervous and vital being through the force of those higher energies.

12:52 And so practicing the Yamas and the Niyamas is essential, not necessarily as a moral statement of rules, but as a methodology for understanding the vibrations that can act upon us and that distract, disturb and disperse the energies of our lives. We then come to pratyahara, which is withdrawing the attention from the energies that are active in our lives so that we can then begin to concentrate and focus.

13:37 And this means to in the practical sense of the traditional yoga, it means withdrawing your attention from all the senses. But in a wider sense, pratyahara means simply to change the focus and attention of what we deal with in the world. Do we focus our attention on the various energies of accumulation, of food, of sex, of fame, of vanity? In other words, are we trying to aggrandize our ego or are we switching our attention to the spiritual purpose, the meaning of our lives, the opportunities we have to contact and attain a higher state of consciousness?

14:43 Withdrawing our attention from activities which are dispersing and lowering of our level of awareness that are distracting to us is the deeper meaning on an external sense of the practice of pratyahara. The obvious next step in the eightfold path is called dharana, which is the focus of the concentration. And again in the practice of yoga, it means to then concentrate the force. Generally, there are prescriptions to concentrate it in the energy center between the eyebrows or behind the heart or above the head, and that's important.

15:30 But the real sense of dharana in a wider viewpoint is to focus or concentrate on the positive uplifting activities and the growth of awareness, the consciousness, beauty and positivity in the world to begin to enhance our ability to tune and focus to these higher forces and energies and concepts as opposed to being distracted. The next is tiana or meditation. This is to again create a mental space of calm and quiet that can be centered, that doesn't get drawn out every time something happens that is not externally focused and reactive, and which can then appreciate what is taking place in the world from a new, calmer, more balanced perspective.

16:47 We come then to Samadhi, which is in the practice of the traditional path of yoga, the development of a trance like state in which all outer awareness is withdrawn and we are totally focused inwardly. And this also can be reapplied on an external sentence to just maintain throughout our lives in all of our activities, all of our actions, that centered space, that separation of the witness consciousness from the active nature of our being, where we can see and act and respond totally from what we might call a divine standpoint as opposed to the ego standpoint.

17:49 Now, there are certain other formations that are used to enhance the yogic practice in the traditional paths of yoga. One of them is called mudra. Mudra is the physical expression or gesture, and mudra is the stance we take in the world in how we interact with others. The energy we put into the world and our receptivity to higher vibrational forces is what we could call our mudra. There is the mantra, which is the use of various sounds to concentrate and develop energies on certain vibrational levels. And the mantra in the world is the way we express ourselves, the way we put energy out into the world using the power of voice as a mode of expression of our consciousness. And then there's bhava.

19:05 And bhava is more or less the mood or the standpoint we take, the energetic stance we take as we go through the world. We can convert every action, every deed, every expression into a form of yogic practice. There is no separation between our inner life and our outer life. When we do this, we can find that the influence that occurs naturally not through some kind of power of money or politics or connections or whatever else the world has traditionally found, but through simply the power of the radiance of your being.

20:12 You begin to have an impact and build around you people and circumstances that support the expression of a higher mode of consciousness. And this is the first step in the solution towards creating a better world. There are many more steps, and we can discuss those in future sessions, but for now let's take away from it that the first step is to Orient ourselves towards turning all life into the practice of yoga.