YES in the face of change

As we approach the end of another calendar year, and in fact the beginning of a new decade, our thoughts may turn to the inevitability of change. When we embrace change and the challenges of a new year in our own lives, we find that our transformation is accelerated. Resistance to change does not alter its inevitability. On the path, only a continual "YES" to the processes of change moves us forward in a substantial way.

Aurobindo on inconscience

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil with its sweet and bitter fruits is secretly rooted in the very nature of the Inconscience from which our being has emerged and on which it still stands as a nether soil and basis of our physical existence; it has grown visibly on the surface in the manifold branchings of the Ignorance which is still the main bulk and condition of our consciousness in its difficult evolution towards a supreme consciousness and an integral awareness. As long as there is this soil with the unfound roots in it and this nourishing air and climate of Ignorance, the tree will grow and flourish and put forth its dual blossoms and its fruit of mixed nature. It would follow that there can be no final solution until we have turned our inconscience into the greater consciousness, made the truth of self and spirit our life-basis and transformed our ignorance into a higher knowledge.

-- Aurobindo, from The Life Divine, p. 627

Srimad Bhagavatam 1.2

The wise say that the truth of reality is known as Brahman, Paramatma, or Bhagavan -- the highest, unmanifest cosmic Consciousness. Sages who with wisdom and non-attachment delve deeply into this will see within themselves and this conciousness in pure devotion what they have read in the scriptures. For all types of human, regardless of station, the highest form of practice is found in devotion to God. With this devotion as a focal point for the mind, the Lord within is unveiled to one.

-- Srimad Bhagavatam Canto I Ch. 2, vv. 11-14.

Petros class: Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Petros will be giving a one-hour class introducing the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali on Friday, 11 December 2009 at Alpha Books (4532 N. 7th St. Phoenix).

The Yoga Sutras may be read at: http://home.earthlink.net/~xristos/patanjali.htm.