Yoga Philosophy
“In the practice of yoga no effort is ever lost, nor is there any possibility of retrogression in it.”
Yoga philosophy points to how we have forgotten our true spiritual identity and how we have come to believe ourselves to be very limited and separate beings. That forgetting is the source of all our false beliefs and judgments and the reason we suffer in fear, depression, and loneliness.
We love to challenge all the assumptions and concepts about enlightenment, especially our belief in barriers and struggle. We have all been taught to believe we are a person, a separate somebody identified with this particular body and mind. Since everybody received this same conditioning, we don’t even realize we have forgotten our true spiritual identity. Our belief in our personhood is responsible for the infinite variety of false thoughts, opinions, and beliefs in our world. It is the real reason we suffer in fear, depression, and loneliness.
Awakening is simply waking up to our true nature, our natural state of being. Discovering our identity is only difficult if we are unwilling to challenge our assumptions and concepts about ourself and reality. Why would we need to struggle to recognize what we already are and have always been? Yoga philosophy and Advaita Vedanta are teachings that help us recognize our true nature that is already right here and right now.
Awakening becomes beautifully simple and clear when it is seen that no “person” ever wakes up or gets enlightened. Awakening is coming out of the illusion of personhood. Our true nature or consciousness wakes up to itself and recognizes it never really was a person.
The Buddha gets a lot of press in the West compared to other awakened beings. Often people searching for spiritual teachings encounter the Buddha first. The truth that the Buddha discovered is the same truth that all awakened beings find. We offer the essence of the Buddha’s teachings in the same way we offer the teachings of Jesus, Krishna, and awake beings from many traditions. Our focus, like the Buddha’s, is simply on recognizing or realizing the truth of what we are. We seek the direct perception of reality—our radiant divine nature.