stability

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Now is the time to put into practice all you have learned and trained for.

When in the midst of a churning whirlpool if one loses stability, what happens?  Turbulence, confusion and perhaps even despair may be the result. Whatever means you have found to calm your mind, now is the time to put it into practice as continually as possible. When you wake up in the morning and before you close your eyes for the night, endeavor to practice so that you mind can be in a constant state of comfort and stability.

Some of us use the breath, such as counting the breath. Others may exhale fully with the sense “I am not the body” (naham) and then inhale with the sense “Whence does this I-ness feeling arise?”(koham) and then hold the inhalation for a bit – closing the sphincter, focusing between the eyebrows and lowering the chin to your chest in a bandha or ‘lock’ – and feel “I am” (soham).

A very simple way to clear the innumerable fuzzy and entangled thoughts is to feel the touch of the breath at the tip of the nose when you inhale and also to feel the touch of the breath at the tip of the nose when you exhale. Practice this for a count of ten or for five minutes.

If it works for you to imagine something strong, gentle and stable and your mind calms down, do that. There are no fixed rules – only “what works” for you. In any case, avoid letting your mind go unchecked into the current of craziness that is now unfolding around us.

Be your own person at all times.

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CHAPTER TWO
UNREALITY OF THE WORLD

1. Just as the great ocean of milk became still when
the Mandara Mountain (with which it was churned by
the Devas and the Asuras) became still, even so the illusion
of samsara comes to an end when the mind is stilled.

2. Samsara rises when the mind becomes active
and ceases when it is still. Still the mind, therefore, by
controlling the breath and the latent desires (vasanas).

source: PDF Yoga Vasishta Sara

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