?? Yoga, Meditation, and Samadhi ??

Hello, my friends!

A couple of days ago, a beautiful friend and client sent me a few questions:

"What Is the difference between yoga and meditation? Are they the same?

And I’ve heard about Samadhi, but don't know what it really is. I’d love to know more about it."

Well, as I do, I sent the question back, and listened for what came forth:

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"Meditation is a part of yoga.

In the sense of dhyana, it is the seventh limb of the eight limbs of hatha yoga.

Meditation, in the sense of dhyana, is a movement of the consciousness away from the outer world in order to rest upon a specific focal point of the inner world in contemplation.

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Everything that we see, we rest our attention upon.

And, in the state of meditation, this is more than just an outer consideration.

It is an energetic union with the focal point, which reveals intuitively that which is beyond our logical understanding.

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Samadhi is the point where meditation becomes constant.

Attention leads immediately to concentration, to contemplation, and to intuitive revelation.

Samadhi is the point where the meditator becomes one with the object of meditation.

And it is the portion of human development where this inner state is stabilized and becomes our baseline.

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Meditation is a practice of one-pointedness, concentrating the entire consciousness on a single focal point.

Over time, the subjects of our contemplation will deepen towards the core of our being.

When the contemplation goes deep enough, it transcends words and concepts and moves into the I Am. This is the Real. All else is words that we place upon the Real.

Samadhi is the point where the little I becomes aligned with the big I, and we know ourselves as the I Am.

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Yoga is three things:

1. A goal

2. A Science

3. Paths to this goal

The goal is Union. All Yoga serves the goal of Union, and all yoga is designed to take a student from their starting point to complete illumination, which we could also call samadhi.

Along this path, we learn that we are not bound to the outer world, bound to respond with specific feelings and set reactions.

We learn that we can choose and evaluate from an inner Self which is free of these limitations and conditions.

So, we learn to disengage from the outer world to engage more directly with this inner dimension of Being.

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This is why we learn meditation. So that we can engage with our inner experience and embody the freedom that comes from such a shift of attention and identity.

Now, before we can truly benefit from meditation, we must learn to follow the flow of the breath, and we must learn to concentrate the mind, teaching it to rest reliably on a desired focal point.

All of this is part of the science of yoga, which is a clear understanding of the constitution of the human being and the archetypal journey of human development.

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The arts of yoga are the different styles which make use of this science to achieve the desired goal.

And, since a shift of focus from outward to inward is a huge part of this core human journey, most paths of development will make use of meditation to facilitate clarity and fluency in our navigation of the inner world.

So, yoga is the whole science of human awakening. And the word yoga is also used to describe the many practices and traditions which make use of this science.

Meditation is a part of yoga, but it is not the whole thing. And it can be used as an escape if we are not careful.

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The fruits of yoga, the fruits of Union, are to anchor oneself firmly in the Real, and completely embrace the Now.

This is not done if we reject the Now for some imagined sense of Heaven or Right or Good.

When we awaken, we realize that all of our ideas are fantasies. And this, right here, is what's happening.

What is here is the highest Real we experience on the human journey. And all of our stories are filters through which the Real is distorted.

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Thus, Samadhi does not pass beyond the bounds of the phenomenal world. This is not some magical condition. It is right here, right in this world.

And yet...

While we see the world through the lens of our stories, we cannot actually see the world.

As we pare our stories down and return to the present, anchoring ourselves into the I Am, we find that the world is far more amazing than we had ever imagined.

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To live in this wonder and awe is samadhi.

And to honor the blessing of this moment by contributing to the flow of creation in the highest and best way, this is the yoga of samadhi.

Each step we take, we see how much more of the path lays out before us. So samadhi, in this fashion, is still just a step in a much larger journey."

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If you’d like to know more about this, let me know!

Also, I’ll soon be starting a lecture series on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

We'll be diving deep into the core of yoga and the deep transformations of the yogic path.

If you are interested in joining the lectures, drop a yes in the comments and I’ll reach out with details.

Thanks and blessings, my friends!