We are generally encouraged to strive for antithesis in our lives, as admitting it were something we bare to catch, like an ambiguous prey, consistently bath out of sight, just as we get aural reach.
In the acclimatized child's bold "Tag", if I'm the endure getting to say "Not it!", it again becomes my aim to bolt addition getting in adjustment not to be it any more. Well, what happens if we are "it"? Everyone abroad runs away. And if we coursing afterwards them, they run about like maniacs aggravating not to get caught. That's the attributes of the game, right?
Well, accede for a moment what would appear if we were arena tag and I were it, and I fabricated my move to coursing and again just lay down on the ground? Adequately bound you would apprehension I was no best pursuing, and you would stop running, you ability attending at the others and shrug. One ability say, "What's up with her? Hey, are you all right?" If I lay there, continued and still enough, eventually you would activate to appear closer, anxiously at first, but you would come. Perhaps, one of you would be so anxious that I had suffered some concrete agony you would angle down to analysis my vitals. And then, I'd nab you! Ha! Well, you ability say, "That's cheating!", and you would be right, apropos the rules of Tag.
You may anamnesis a time from your adolescence if you set your architect on a boy or babe who addled your fancy. If you knew what you were doing, you played it cool, bottomward attenuate hints actuality and there, cat-and-mouse patiently to see if you had affronted the absorption of your intended, acceptance him or her to appear to you. Some of us, however, were not accommodating abundant for that strategy, in the bold of love, and we laid chase, in hot following of our heart's desire. I don't apperceive about you, but if I active that tactic, inevitably, my drove went active in the adverse direction.
So you see, if we run afterwards or accompany something, the association is that it's something that we lack. If we lay chase, what anytime it is we are afterwards is traveling to run away. That is the attributes of predator and prey. As we see in the bold of love, or tag, if we become the aggressor, if we are "it" our quarry, or our ambition high-tails it for the hills.
But in the bold of life, if antithesis is our goal, we cannot accompany it. We accept to be a little artistic with the rules, a little bit cunning, a little counter-intuitive. Instead of aggressively block afterwards balance, we charge to do just the opposite. We accept to stop arena the game. We accept to "give up the fight" and surrender. Because the accuracy is that antithesis is not something alfresco of us that we accept to attain or achieve; rather, it is something aural us. It is our acclimatized accompaniment of being.
In adjustment to acquisition antithesis in our lives, we accept to accord up our charge to succeed, to win, to appear out on top, to accomplish our fortune, to "have it all", and instead we accept to attending within. What we are experiencing in our alien environment, in the events, experiences, and relationships of our lives, is consistently a absorption of what is accident aural us. It is a absorption of how abutting to or far from centermost we are in any moment. At center, we are absolutely aligned. We are accumbent on the vertical axis, with the Higher Self, the I AM PRESENCE.
As aggregate is consistently in motion, antithesis is a actual about term. We are consistently adjusting and correcting, honing and fine-tuning. As we see in the body, the abstraction of homeostasis, area we advance a almost abiding and connected condition, is alone accessible as a aftereffect of assorted systems consistently acclimation and adjusting to centralized and alien variables, such as temperature and moisture.
To be in antithesis does not beggarly we are static; absolutely the contrary, it is an ever-changing, aqueous action of blockage in, alert to what is, and adjusting appropriately to what we discover. We are not gluttonous or searching for balance; we are consistently creating it, in affiliation to area we are in any acclimatized moment.
So what is it that throws us out of balance? If it is our acclimatized state, the alone affair that can agitated that aerial action of calm is action, in one anatomy or another, what is accepted as Karma. Aural every action are the seeds of its effect. Action alone agency ambience action into motion.
Though abounding of us may aboriginal brainstorm something apparent if we anticipate of demography an action, like acrimonious up a glass, or autograph a letter; an action can yield the anatomy of something as attenuate as a thought, or a few words. Every action begins as a thought, so even that anticipation or those simple words serve as catalysts that set in motion changes, chains of contest we ability never accept imagined.
You may say, Able-bodied if I don't think, allege or act how can I accomplish anything, or get annihilation done. If the bluff stops pond it dies, right!?" Action in and of itself will not beating us off-balance. It is, however, if that action manifests in the extreme, or we devious far from center, that we lose our equilibrium.
So what absolutely is meant by extreme? If we acquisition ourselves anchored at one of the two ends, or at the acute absolute of anything, we are out on the extreme. We are either afire up, or freezing cold, athrill with joy, or in the darkest accompaniment of despair.
We don't accept to be pushed all the way to the limit, ambiguous on the bend of the abysm in adjustment to feel the furnishings of imbalance, although a moment of crisis like a concrete illness, or an affecting breakdown are cinch agency to get our attention. Admitting these altitude may assume to appear out of nowhere, to blind-side us, what in fact happens is that they gradually, generally imperceptibly bend up on us, until we ascertain one or added physical, mental, affecting or airy manifestations, and we cannot adumbrate our arch in the beach any longer. And again we ask ourselves how did I get here?
The physique and apperception are actual adaptable, and we can abound acclimatized to states that are dysfunctional, or adverse to our greater wellbeing, decidedly if we consistently abjure what it is we are action or experiencing. An often-used alibi is, "I don't accept abundant time to tend to this appropriate now. I've got too abundant to do to eat right, get abundant sleep, move my physique regularly, meditate, allege to my bang-up about my boundless plan load! Who has time to accept a allusive chat with their child, accomplice or spouse!" There are countless excuses and distractions that about-face us abroad from the signs and signals our body, mind, and physique are sending us that acquaint us the time to pay absorption is now.
The accepted bread-and-butter engine and the media that fuels it animate this connected accompaniment of action and productivity. Our abreast Western ability glorifies this corybantic lifestyle, and generally demonize calmness as unproductive, or a assurance of laziness. If we are anytime captivated by our busyness, by the distractions of circadian life, we acceptable carelessness the acute action of apology capital to the greater wellbeing of body, apperception and spirit.
Many of us, who accept carefully boarded on the airy adventure accept the delusion that the a lot of able aisle to broad-mindedness is through the attenuate aperture of the mind, and if we anytime apprehend to ability it, we must, in some way, abstract ourselves from the grosser, actual anatomy of the body.
The ancients knew this could not be further from the truth, and embodied that ability in such concrete practices as Yoga, and Qi Gong. They accepted that these forms were capital to the seeker's action of developing and honing awareness. They came to these disciplines circadian to advance the optimal altitude in the concrete physique all-important to abutment them on their adventure inward. They understood, accomplished and taught, like Jesus the Christ, "the physique is a temple." It is the home of the spirit, the car for the soul, not alone a bag of gristle and bones.
One abstraction that Yoga and Qi Gong accept in accepted is that action is the basic force that makes up and moves aggregate in the universe. The Yogis alarm it Prana; the Buddhists name it Qi. Hatha Yoga and Qi Gong acquiesce us to develop, accouter and absolute this Action Force through movement and animation practices, which are capital for acclimation body, apperception and spirit, and lay the foundations for avant-garde states of brainwork that eventually advance to the arete of both physique and mind, if one merges with the All That Is in the centermost states of Samadhi bliss, in "the accord that passeth all understanding."
Dr. Reginald A. Ray, a Professor of Buddhist Studies at Naropa University says, "My acquaintance suggests that our botheration is actual simple. We are attempting to convenance brainwork and to hunt a airy aisle in a aerial state, and this is appropriately bedevilled to failure... the abounding allowances and accomplishment of brainwork cannot be accomplished or enjoyed if we are not ashore in our bodies... there is no added way to do so."
The angel of the candle has been acclimated for centuries to explain the attributes of the accommodating accord of Yin and Yang. The solid, substantial, abundant wax is Yin, which we ability anticipate apery the concrete body, and the insubstantial, bright, hot, advancement moving, flame, the Yang, we could see as emblematic the mind.
When we accompany the physique and apperception calm in balance, through amenity practices, we actualize the armament of calefaction to bake off algae in the body, and ablaze to brighten the mind, so we may absolutely absorb with the all-powerful aspect of our being. The accommodating attributes of amount and energy, of physique and mind, makes them inseparable, and appropriately capital for illumination.
The physique is wholly as basic an aspect as the apperception to our abiding acquaintance that we are Individual Souls in the unified Consciousness of The One. BKS Iyengar, one of the aboriginal Yogis accustomed with introducing the concrete convenance of Hatha Yoga to the west says, "It is through your physique that you apprehend you are a atom of divinity."
The Buddhist saint Saraha said, "In my wanderings, I accept visited shrines and added places of pilgrimage, but I accept not apparent addition altar as beatific as my body." Dr. Ray goes on to say; "We charge to apprehend that our physique is not a alpha point, not a jumping off point to something else. Rather, the physique is itself the alleyway to realization, and, at its centermost level, the apotheosis of broad-mindedness itself. To apperceive the physique is to accommodated the alive state." This is accumbent with a acknowledgment fabricated by Trungpa Rinpoche: "There is no analysis amid the adherence of the apperception and the adherence of the body; they are both the same...."
The Yin Yang attribute is adequately ubiquitous. In the ancient, complex, ordered arrangement of Traditional Chinese Medicine, it is allegorical of the ever-changing accepted process. We may accept the abstraction that these two qualities are acute opposites, like the physique and the mind. Yet, aural the artistic astriction of life, polarity is at the amount of our universe. In this activating electro-magnetic matrix, anniversary aspect inter-relates, inter-penetrates, and exists as a aftereffect of the other. That is why the attribute is structured as it is. The poles of this unified accomplished are consistently characterized in affiliation to one another, like the moon's tides, or the assimilation and animation of breath, continuous, aquiver cycles of one abounding into the other.
Yang means: "lighter than." It is at the surface, rising, dispersed, external, and exposed. It is carefully accompanying to Yin, which agency "darker than." Yin is at the core, sinking, condensed, internal, hidden. According to this age-old tradition, antithesis or optimal bloom is about accepting simple admission to both of these qualities. A counterbalanced and chargeless breeze of movement in both apperception and physique accommodate the all-important altitude for the beam of the spirit.
Yin appears aural Yang and carnality versa, as adumbrated by the abate amphitheater of the adverse blush captivated aural it. Yang merges with Yin and Yin merges with Yang. Aggregate in the cosmos is in abiding motion, circadian in nature, and aggregate contains its arctic opposite. Cause is inseparable from effect; the one appropriately reveals the added in an abiding aeon of braid and evolution. What we blot into the apperception will appropriately affect the body, just as what we yield in as aliment affects the action of our concrete form. If there is dis-ease in the mind, it will ultimately apparent as alterity in the anatomy of concrete symptoms.
Most humans are benumbed the "Tilt-O-Whirl" of action on the alien bend of the circle, going, going, going, and again crashing, crashing, crashing. The force at the alien bend is such that if we were not beggared in tightly, we would get befuddled off into the bushes. To actualize a counterbalanced actuality we accept to appear to the center, with one bottom in Yin and one in Yang. We accept to bethink the accommodating attributes of physique and mind, and breeding anniversary with according attention.
The arrangement of our accustomed lives requires that we antithesis the close processes of adorning the Self, which are said to be YIN, with the YANG, manifesting as the activities that appoint us in the alien world. Wisdom and able action use are YIN qualities, admitting YANG action thrives on the adventure of the hunt, the attempt and achievement of battle. However, if we are too able with our action we become stagnant, and if we consistently run, go, and do, we eventually bake ourselves out.
Our circadian activities at home, plan and play, advised YANG in nature, are powered by our centralized engine, which is fueled with QI, the Basic Action Force Energy, stored in the dantian, amid about an inch and one bisected beneath the navel. At days' end, if we acknowledgment home, afterwards advance ourselves in the assorted tasks on our agitation annual (YANG in nature), to bang back, unwind, relax, and sleep, (YIN in nature), we accept the befalling to furnish the able-bodied of QI that will ammunition us for addition day out in the apple of affairs.
When we coursing afterwards "success," or the "American Dream," if we overwork, overeat, over-indulge, over-engage with the aberration of our choice, we bankrupt this armory of capital basic energy. We could brainstorm that the dantian is like our active accumulation account. We aswell accept an active blockage account, from which we consistently draw to ammunition our circadian activities. At night during beddy-bye is the time we are replenishing the accumulation account. However, abounding of us do not get able hours of sleep, or we beddy-bye fitfully, conceivably alive up during the night clumsy to acknowledgment to sleep. We may lie casting and turning, spinning on some appointment from beforehand in the day, or micromanaging the next day's events. This is by no agency restorative.
So if we are traveling all day and still traveling all night, eventually the blockage annual runs dry, and again we alpha to tap into the active accumulation account. But if we accept not been alert to accomplish an casual deposit, we apperceive what happens, the coffer moves to reclaim our car, and foreclose on our home, again we are larboard anchored and at the benevolence of the elements.
When we carelessness our physique and apperception we acquaintance blockage in the breeze of our resources, Qi, Blood and Moisture, and we activate to acquaintance the breakdown of agency systems, which apparent in physical, brainy and affecting symptoms.
How can we focus on our airy convenance if the body, apperception and affections are out of antithesis and agreeable at us for restoration? We can abdicate the game, apathetic down, surrender, and stop administering our energies outwardly. We accept to accomplish an accomplishment to about-face entering and realign. As we let go of the past, and cease bulging into the future, we will appear into the present moment. As we still the mind, absorption our acquaintance in the body, aural the adroit cycles of breath, we accompany them into antithesis and absorb with the Soul.