In a Nada Yoga (sound yoga) concert, as I closed my eyes and heard the first note played, I felt a healing presence filling every corner of my body. Just as water would fill a cup, I felt it taking the shape of my body, anchoring me down to earth and radiating healing to my every cell. I became aware of my Spirit (Prana or Life Force). It was as if I could hear it whisper, ‘this is home, where I want to be the most’. I felt totally one with it and fully embodied. As a result, there was a sense of harmony and utter perfection! It was so clear: the spirit’s job is to keep us centred, alive and whole for as long as we shall live. And this is is made possible when it is present and here. And why we feel half alive and drained when it is scattered around…
It dawned on me just how often our spirit leaves us in a day. Sometimes, as per the mind’s unconscious instructions, the spirit leaves to tend to matters we believe, are more important than ourselves. Other times, when we believe a situation is too tough or too much to bear, we want to escape it. We want to escape how it feels inside so, we lose our willingness to be here and, that’s when we unconsciously push the spirit away. What the mind believes it cannot bear, doesn’t even have to be negative, it can be a very positive sensation which the mind labels as ‘too much to tolerate’.
It is very easy to notice when the spirit is pushed away, when we’re in an ‘escape mode’. Next time you feel even slightly overwhelmed for as little as a few seconds/minutes, notice where in your body there is a sensation, you believe, is too much to stand. That is where the mind wants to escape from. Hence, it is exactly from that place in the body that the spirit is pushed away. Feel the sensation and notice how the absence of spirit feels…the descriptions I’ve heard so far are: dark, tense, closed, burning… To feel light, open and free all we need is our spirit’s strength and healing. So, we can learn to call it back to the exact sensation by inviting the mind there, so the spirit can come back. When the mind, sees the result of the spirit’s presence, it learns that:
Our spirit can handle all that there is and,
with such a powerful ally, there is nothing to run away from!
When we’re aware of the mind-spirit connection, when we can feel how our spirit follows where the mind goes, we can take a more informed decision as to whether or not to let it fly.
On occasions, we might want to send our Spirit elsewhere, for example: we might think about or pray for someone who’s going through a difficult time. That’s how we give them a bit of our life force, a bit of our support. A parent spends time thinking about their children; again it is how they send their spirit for the child’s protection… This is all well, when it is done by choice. When it is unconscious, a parent for example, can overload themselves with thinking about the welfare of their children. To the point that, their spirit never has a chance to come home, leaving them totally drained. It is impossible to live a full life with the spirit wandering about all the time! It is in our lack of awareness that we deplete ourselves from our spirit, the source of our energy and, end up empty and totally uninspired.
When we’re conscious, however, we can notice the moment our spirit has spent too much time out there. We can then can call it back for it to rejuvenate, enliven and empower us so we can serve.
February 2013
Thanks for this Dorna! I've grown up worrying about so many things and I've never thought of it as sending my spirit to and fro on pointless errands much of the time, so this is really illuminating. And also explains why I am always tired 😀 Well, not always, but often. I live and learn xx