by Stephanie
(Boston)
How do we best nurture and allow our truest self to exist?
Answer by Yogi Mir
This begs the question: What is our truest self?
According to Yoga, our True Self is part of the Universal Self. It's eternal. It's beyond the world of material things, and beyond any energetic, emotional, or mental worlds. It is the realm of the unknowable through the mind. One can only know his/her True Self through a direct mystical experience.
How do we best nurture it? Or, in other words, how do we have a direct mystical experience of our True Self?
Through dis-identification from the ego.
The ego keeps us attached. Identified with I, me, and mine. Once you let go of that, no "I" is left. What remains is the True Self. Everything becomes a magical experience.
The path of Yoga is the training of the mind to disassociate from the ego.
Our tools include Asana (for healthy physical body), Pranayama (breathing techniques to learn to control our available energy), Pratyahara and Bhavana (mindfulness, conscious deep sleep, sensory control techniques, and visualizations), and Dhyana (meditation techniques).
With practice, the mind becomes 'purified' of its egoic qualities and True Self shines through.
At that point, one doesn't see anything as 'I, me, mine' and becomes free from pain and suffering. The body may experience pain. The individual, however, may witness the pain as a phenomena of the external world without identifying with it. After all, we don't really own the body. We only borrow it to learn a few lessons.
One uses the mind as a tool to experience the world of the senses, without identifying with the mind. We don't own the mind either. We borrow it as well as the physical body for the duration of this lifetime.
The single most effective technique to realize the True Self: Dedicate all of your actions to benefit others. Surrender the results of your actions to a Higher Power, God, the Divine, the Universal Self.