Hi ZN:
*Hi there. I appreciate your comments, yogani
The fact that you are coming down as much as going up in your practice is most likely the key to your balance.
*Yep. To me, working polarities up and down/reversing polarities in and out and arriving at the point where there is a multiplicity of and no direction of flow... *is* balance. However, I found that to resist the sway of the snake is NOT balance - it is the dance which manifests the rhythem.
This is similar to the use of spinal breathing in AYP, though we avoid the crown until much later -- using the third eye instead. Your spiraling approach is fascinating, and is consistent with the swirling of energies that occurs as the ida and pingala nerve channels are awakened in conjunction with the spinal nerve (sushumna).
*Most of my practice is using the third eye, lately. I receive, um, communion with HEr through the crown, and, to me, this is the Ultimate balancing point.
Is there a particular part of your routine that you would say is involved in the cultivation of inner stillness (our unbounded, unshakable inner witness), or do you see this as happening throughout your routine? This gets to a central question that arises when considering all chakra/energy-based paths.
*I never considered this really as a 'goal', more as an outcome? To me "cultivation" and "stillness" seem somewhat of an oxymoron. In direct answer, if you would call "inner stillness" BLISS, well, yes. No time, no space, everything in a point yet expanded into infinity ... this would be a sorry description, but the best simple description I can come up with at the moment.
*It comes for me, when I have the opportunity to spend an entire afternoon in meditation, with no distraction. I'll go, say, 45 minutes and then a 15 minute break .. then another 45 etc... for hours sometimes. It's really great, but, for me, requires a rare day where I can afford to play, all by myself
*The corollary to this, by the way, is the activated side, where the obviation of time/space/physical/whatever allows for the more shamanistic practices of moving between, um, quantum vectors?
In AYP we view the cultivation of ecstatic energy and the cultivation of inner silence to be the two essential poles of enlightenment.
*I don't like to think in terms of enlightenment, but I entirely agree that balancing the polarities is the crux of the issue
This is analogous to setting up for the shakti and shiva union, which leads to the inner rebirthing process and outflow of vast quantities of divine love through our nervous system. Unlimited outflow of divine love into the world is the final stage of all that we are doing in yoga.
*Ah. I have had the good fortune to enTwine with another, telepathically. There is no Shiva without Shakti, he told me
It is much easier to make quantum leaps working tantric as an additional balance, no question.
*"I'm other you"
So, you can see why I ask about the cultivation of inner silence.
*To me, silence Flows, it is more like the creek which runs than the flower in the garden.
To tie back into the subject of this topic, it is certainly possible to accomplish full ecstatic awakening using sitting practices alone, such as those in AYP, or other methods like those ZN has been so kind to share.
*Yep, I'm an object lesson, for better or worse!
The purpose of the tantra lessons in AYP is to provide additional means for those who are sexually active, to whatever degree. In this way, our normal sexual activity can become a periodic aid to spiritual development, rather than be a drag on it. Tantric sexual practices are not a replacement for sitting practices, of course. And neither are sitting practices related to the cultivation of ecstatic energies alone a replacement for methods such as deep meditation and samyama, which are for the cultivation and expansion of inner silence.
*The way I see it is that the analogy would be the tantric/kundalini equivalent of the "afterglow" of physical sex, but I don't consider myself enlightened, so take it for what it's worth
*Also, for me, my sitting practices *are* tantric practices.
I keep bringing up the inner silence component of yoga because it is easy for any of us to forget about it in the face of the huge energy shows we are capable of stimulating within ourselves. So this question about inner silence is not pointed only at you, ZN. It is a reminder to all of us who are inclined to "trip the light fantastic."
*I'm a lush, I admit it freely!
It is the blending of these two qualities within us (silence and ecstasy) that will bring us home.
The guru is in you.
*Except when SHe kicks you in the back ...
Love,
ZN
