Topic 4.11.05 Five Observances, niyamas

zTopic 4.11.05 Five Observances, niyamas. VERSION CONTROL: 7 December 2016

Purity, Cleanliness, saucha

Let all your thoughts, words and deeds be pure. Look for and see the whole (good) and beautiful.

Cultivate spiritual energy. Refrain from smoking cigarettes, doing drugs, consuming intoxicating substances. Purify your mind by increasing your spiritual reading. Reducing your recreational reading if necessary. Be energetic, vigorous and persevering.

Contentment, santosha

Cultivate a balanced mind. Become calm, serene, unruffled, peaceful and cheerful. Cultivate patience, contentment and equanimity.

Greet the day with “Today is a great day” approach and attitude. Riding the breath, cultivate a Yes, Thankyou attitude.

Effort, tapasaya

Tapas has traditionally meant austerity, self-discipline and asceticism.

It is linked with selfless service. Life’s most pressing question is ‘What are you doing for others?’ What karma yoga are you doing in your life? Cultivate burning desire and strive diligently until you achieve your goals. Fearless in facing austerities, dangers, hardships, courageously surmount all obstacles. Be firm and resolute and have an iron will.

Self Awareness, Self Study, svadhyaya, atma-pranidhana

The Truth of who you are is prior to who, what, when, why, where. Embrace yourself.

Recognise that you have been living in ignorance. What you want is enlightenment. Practise renunciation of your ego. Become less selfish and self possessed, more selfless and disinterested. Consider sacrificing your pleasure for the sake of others. There is only I – found everywhere, at all times. I is not somebody in particular. It includes all bodies, all experiences, the totality of all beings.

By being self-aware, you find out who you really are. Then go out and do it on purpose.

When you are struck dumb from all words, concepts, striving, identification, in a moment outside time, you realise that who you are has never been touched by any concepts. The evolutionary point in a life-stream is precious, internal, fulfilling, and not a concept of mind.

God Awareness, ishwara-pranidhana

The hunger for God and the thirst for (self) knowledge arise when the will to desire in the objective world is replaced by the will to liberation in the spiritual world.

Cultivate wisdom. Be wise and able to see things as they truly are. Everything is as it should be. This doesn’t mean that you can’t change it, because then it will be as it should be. Use your enlightenment wisely and to enlighten others.

Surrender your actions and will to the God-space, the god force within you. From the light of Truth, lead others from darkness to light.