by Melisa Marsett
Have you ever thought why yoga gains popularity every day turning into one of the most popular spiritual practices? The person who is deeply in love with yoga will immediately answer this question. In addition to incredible health benefits, yoga gives at least general understanding of the meaning of human life. Yoga helps to find answers on the range of important questions that occur every day in the thoughts of people seeking for truth and the real purpose of our existence.
Meaning in Feeling
What’s the most important thing in life? Where and how we live our lives? According to yoga, we live in so-called “I”, we live our lives in our own feelings and everything else has no real relation to life. As strange as it may sound, but our life is our feelings, mood and emotions. When we have a good mood, we are inspired by everything – the world around us, people, atmosphere and even things. When we have a bad mood, nothing can force us to feel pleased and satisfied, even the most “valuable” and vital things which usually lead to happiness. When we are happy, the whole world is in harmony, everything brings joy to us, and vice versa.
Therefore, generally speaking, the meaning of our life is to be happy. In other words, the meaning of life is to experience the feelings which give force, pleasure and joy. No matter how rich we are, money, power, houses, cars and sex mean nothing if all these do not please us. At the same time, if we live in harmony with the Spirit and experience the feeling of joy and life satisfaction, we will be happy even living, for example, in a cave and eating one spoon of rice per day. To improve the statement that the meaning of life is hidden in our feelings, we only should to look closely at our everyday life and feel the influence of our emotions.
Finding the way to happiness
So, what shall we do in order to be happy? We must live so that our feelings were pleasant and find things which strengthen good feelings. We must live so that we could avoid negative, harmful feelings which make us week. Thus, our Spirit will gain strength and give more happiness.
How do we know what strengthens us, what to do and what not to do? It’s easy, and we all know the answer. Find actions that inspire you, retrieve our spirit and arouse the desire to live and to move forward. And of course it is important to avoid negative feelings and everything capable to awake them: unpleasant places, nasty people, annoying colleges and so on. For example, we do not like our job, but we are still working there, since we need a lot of money or we are aimed to “live better”. Traditionally, we think that it is acceptable and normal to work at a hateful job. But in fact, we go to work since we are afraid of being poor or unsuccessful. The point is that such work weakens our spirit and cause actions that weaken us even more.
But how can yoga help us? In simple words, yoga is a technique of practical experience, it helps us to obtain knowledge through our perception. For example, Yoga body (called Hatha Yoga) is a method of getting experience of our own body, this is a technique of obtaining knowledge about ourselves (“I”) through the body.
Yoga should help us to live. It helps people to notice feelings and live through these feelings. It helps to attune our lives to our spirit (our internal “I”) and to live in harmony. Yoga gives courage to perform actions that strengthen us (our spirit) and avoid actions which destroys us.
If you feel that yoga can help you in searching for the meaning of life, do not choose a person who will teach you sitting positions only. Try to find a teacher who will show you how to start noticing your feelings and live in harmony with the world.
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