Parinama

    Klesas (afflictions) and antarayas (obstacles) issue from cluttered vritts, which form the basic material for spiritual evolution rejecting these means rejecting the path as well.   All these impediments are blessing in disguise on the journey of realization of purusa (soul). BKS Iyengar, Core of the Yoga Sutras   The experience of helping my mother move into assisted living has given me a deeper experience of faith and courage and the deep interior presence which support this.       I had been worried about my mother for several years now as her cognitive abilities have declined.   I did not know how I was going to find and afford care for her when she lost her ability to care for herself.   She did not want to talk to me about it preferring to focus on the funeral after she died rather than the help she might need in getting there.   But when things began to unravel for her this fall and then more rapidly this winter, I had to ...

    My mother is letting go of so much now, driving, her home, most of her possessions. She recently moved into an assisted living facility and has a room about a third of the size of the home she is leaving.   My mother collected clothes, shoes, lotions and potions.   She doesn’t have much furniture.   The China and so many other things were given away after the last move when my father died and she sold their house and moved into a much smaller condo.   She has expressed no desire to go through her things leaving it up to me to decide what to move, what to discard or give away. She doesn’t own very much and recently told me, “They are only things,” a shard of her clear thinking piercing through an ocean of fog and confusion.       I prefer to live in an uncluttered home.   In my move to a new house last summer, I took the chance to discard or give away many things I had stuffed into drawers, cupboards, closets,...

  Discriminative discernment gives the yogi the ability to distinguish between that which changes and that which is changeless-which is what is needed to make the final distinction between the individual self and the Purusha and attain Self-realization.   To be forever free from the delusion that anything outside the realization of the Self can bring lasting fulfillment is the second factor necessary to attain enlightenment. J Carrera, Inside the Yoga Sutras   In yoga philosophy, freedom (kaivalya) is built upon the two foundations of (viveka) discriminative discernment and (vairagya) non-attachment.   With viveka, we begin to comprehend how everything in nature is constantly in flux and that only Purusa, presence or the inner Seer remains unchanged.   With vairagya, we become non-attached to worldly outcomes knowing that connection to the inner Self, the true source of fulfillment, can never be disrupted by outer events.   I had a recent expe...