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Living the Yoga Life: It Is All Up To Us

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“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6). The yogi must truly hunger and thirst for purification and liberation. He must realize that all else is death, so attaining perfection in yoga is literally a matter of life and death.

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When I was a beginning yogi who had moved halfway across the country to seriously study yoga, I found myself with others who had come hundreds and thousand of miles to do the same. But I also met a string of spiritual slackers who just talked metaphysics and said: “When the disciple is ready the master appears,” the implication being that they need do nothing until a master came along and offered his services to them. But moksha does not come in search of us, we must actively and continually seek moksha on our own initiative.

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The Raja of Chandod told me that his family, though of royal lineage, had been living in poverty in Rajasthan. Learning of this, their relative the Maharaja of Baroda wrote and asked them to send him some of their male children of suitable age, one of whom would be chosen to live with him and be educated to become a raja of the principality he intended to form for him out of his own kingdom. Three boys were chosen and sent to him, one of them being the Raja of Chandod’s grandfather.

The Maharaja had them brought one by one to a room where he was sitting behind a screen. His chief minister, at his instruction, asked each one a single question: “Why did you come here?” The first boy replied: “To get something good to eat.” The second said: “Because my mother told me to come.” The third, the grandfather of the raja who was telling me the story, told the minister: “To be the Raja.” He was chosen by the Maharaja to become a raja.

It is the same with us. Those who seek God for any other reason than the attainment of moksha do not find God–and so do not attain moksha.

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Two friends of mine, Anne and Elwood Decker, had some truly precocious grandchildren, and at the beginning of December one year Anne said to Elwood: “I told them you would write a Christmas play, and we would record it and send it to them.” Elwood was amazed and chagrined, but he put his mind to it and wrote a two-character play about the birth of Jesus. Elwood was one of the shepherds the angel told about Jesus’ birth, and Anne was an angel who helped him go into Bethlehem and find where the Child was. At the end, the angel tells the shepherd she must return to heaven, and he says: “How I wish I could go to heaven!” She asks: “Do you really want to go to heaven?” He says, “Yes,” and there comes a great whooshing sound and that is the end of the play. He really wanted it, so he went there. Only intensity of desire had been lacking, and once he had it… whoosh!!!

Next in Living the Yoga Life: Madness, Divine and Worldly

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About to Living the Yoga Life–Perspectives on Yoga

Living the Yoga Life–Perspectives on Yoga

Living the Yoga Life–Perspectives on Yoga: Introduction

    1. Living the Yoga Life: Climbing the Ladder of Consciousness
    2. Living the Yoga Life: Sanatana Dharma, Sanatana Yoga
    3. Living the Yoga Life: The Atman/Self
    4. Living the Yoga Life: Bhakti and Jnana
    5. Living the Yoga Life: Brahman
    6. Living the Yoga Life: Ishwara
    7. Living the Yoga Life: Breath
    8. Living the Yoga Life: India and Sanatana Dharma
    9. Living the Yoga Life: The Importance of Independence
    10. Living the Yoga Life: The Intelligent Path
    11. Living the Yoga Life: The Internal Life
    12. Living the Yoga Life: Japa and Sound (Shabda)
    13. Living the Yoga Life: Japa with the Breath
    14. Living the Yoga Life: Jnana
    15. Living the Yoga Life: The Jnani
    16. Living the Yoga Life: Karma and Karma Yoga
    17. Living the Yoga Life: Kundalini
    18. Living the Yoga Life: Liberation
    19. Living the Yoga Life: It Is All Up To Us
    20. Living the Yoga Life: Madness, Divine and Worldly
    21. Living the Yoga Life: Manas (Mind) and Buddhi (Intelligence/Intellect)
    22. Living the Yoga Life: Buddhi Yoga
    23. Living the Yoga Life: True Masters (And Not)
    24. Living the Yoga Life: Maya
    25. Living the Yoga Life: Meditation
    26. Living the Yoga Life: Prana
    27. Living the Yoga Life: Raja Yoga
    28. Living the Yoga Life: Reincarnation
    29. Living the Yoga Life: Religion
    30. Living the Yoga Life: Samadhi
    31. Living the Yoga Life: Sadhana
    32. Living the Yoga Life: Dedication to Spiritual Life
    33. Living the Yoga Life: Self-realization
    34. Living the Yoga Life: Shivashakti
    35. Living the Yoga Life: Spiritual Experience
    36. Living the Yoga Life: The Spiritual Teacher
    37. Living the Yoga Life: Subtle Anatomy
    38. Living the Yoga Life: The World
    39. Living the Yoga Life: Worship
    40. Living the Yoga Life: Yoga, the Body and the World
    41. Living the Yoga Life: Dharma and Adharma
    42. Living the Yoga Life: Yoga–The Supreme Dharma
    43. Living the Yoga Life: Yoga Nidra
    44. Living the Yoga Life: The Yogi
    45. Living the Yoga Life: Some Advice to Yogis
    46. Living the Yoga Life: Qualities of a Yogi
    47. Living the Yoga Life: This and That
    48. Living the Yoga Life: Touch Not
    49. Living the Yoga Life: The Gita Speaks To The Yogi
    50. Living the Yoga Life: How It Is Done
    51. Living the Yoga Life: Use your mind
    52. Living the Yoga Life: Some things it is wise to avoid
    53. Living the Yoga Life: Things you should definitely do and have in your life
    54. Living the Yoga Life: Spiritual Reading
    55. Living the Yoga Life: Gorakhnath Speaks To The Yogi
    56. Living the Yoga Life: And A Final Word From Me
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