What is Enlightenment? Aahh... enlightenment. What is it? An annoying red herring, actually. The lights won't suddenly turn on, and there will (probably) be no halo of light surrounding you. What there will be ultimately is a direct experience of reality and a state of absolute freedom. That doesn't mean that you will become the Buddha, or a magician, or that freedom means never getting a red light. But if you still get red lights in the traffic and you don't become the Buddha - or gain any celebrity at all - never mind, I can promise you that you won't be bothered by the traffic jams, and who you are will be the most authentic version of yourself, not a pseudo-version resulting from conditioning. You might be expecting a detailed instruction on meditation, here. But no, we are going to start from the beginning of the Yoga Sutras. The opening statement of the Sutras (apart from "And now, to Yoga") is Yogascittavrittinirodha Yoga - union Citta - mind stuff Vritti - things that roll over Nirodha – stop The next Sutra says, when you're in a state where your mind stuff is not disturbed by thoughts, reactions, ideas, opinions, concepts, etc, you are much closer to reality than when you are locked into all the activity of the mind. They then go on to say that the rest of the time, you identify yourself with all the ups and downs and turn-arounds of the mind. It is as though the see-saw imagines that its real nature is movement, and that the ups and downs that the plank moves through is what it actually is. But when it is completely still we realise its true nature: it is a steady strong plank of wood, whose nature is never altered by all the ups and downs it moves through. Then the next sutra begins to describe what accounts for the volatility of the mind, and why at present you're not able to experience reality directly. It says All Vrittis are either Pleasurable or Painful To put this into context, look into your own mind and you will find that every single thought is flavoured by the quality of "I like it" / "I don't like it". Every single one of your thoughts, every single one of your perceptions, every single one of your reactions. Do you disagree? (Like it, or don't like it?) Find one that's neutral. You'll be looking a long time. Someone once said to me, "What about the colour brown? That's a neutral thought." Do you think so too? But what if I asked you, "Which do you prefer, blue or brown?" We soon find that even the most apparently neutral idea is polarised. So why does it matter? Well, because reality isn't like that! Reality is not polarised by your likes and dislikes. But your present experience of reality is! You experience reality through the distorting filter of your like-it/don't-like-it mind. Instead of seeing reality as it is, you imagine that the polarised view is realistic. From that compulsive polarising tendency of the mind arise the deepest possible illusions, along with all the distress and disharmony that they bring in train for most of us. We even have a polarised view of ourselves. So if you want to practise Yoga for enlightenment, you could start by simply watching the polarising of the mind. That's all for starters. Become conscious of it. Then we'll explore a bit more. Have you been watching the polarisation of the mind?  Hard to see all at once the way it pervades our every glimpse of reality.  Did you recognise that one of the outcomes of getting free of this polarisation is that you will never find 'the right answer'?  We tend to say, "If this is not right, then what is?"  But you can see that by doing that we only jump straight back into the polarised view that the mind likes. So what is a good way to begin to become at least a little less hidebound by the compulsions of the mind?  One is to practise a 'neither/nor' approach to processing information.  Another is to practice consciously becoming comfortable with uncertainty. And you will notice shortly after you begin your practice, that uncertainty and vulnerability is the hallmark of our experience of life.  We prefer to imagine that we have certainty, control and invulnerability.  Such nonsense!  But that is what our compulsions are for - to keep us from encountering the scary fact of uncertainty and vulnerability.  Too bad that they also short-change us in our ability to experience reality in its very nature! And then sometime later in your practice you will discover that uncertainty is OK, in fact it feels more like flying than the dreary mindset that wants to cling to control.  And that a state of freedom and ease simply cannot be generated by the mind in its insistence on certainty, knowing and control.
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