The Overlooked Journey Within

Though we are all conscious, we often overlook the journey within to discover our true selves, the observer of life’s spectacles. Upon making this journey, we find our inner self more dazzling than life’s spectacles combined. Such is our inner splendor, yet we often remain ignorant of ourselves, knowledgeable about the world but unaware of our true nature.

We are like the child of a king or queen who cries for a carrot, not understanding the entire kingdom belongs to them. Spiritual sages highlighted our small-mindedness and naivete, for they understood the immense privilege of being conscious beings, eclipsing the world of non-conscious, insentient material.

Although the seven disciplines described by ancient yogis in India are formalized as Ashtanga Yoga, these disciplines also exist in other spiritual faiths. Here are the seven steps leading to the eighth, the culmination and experience of pure bliss and omniscience:

1. Self-Control (Yama)
2. Self-Observances (Niyama)
3. Comfortable Posture (Asana)
4. Controlled Breathing (Pranayama)
5. Sense Withdrawal (Pratyahara)
6. Concentration (Dharana)
7. Meditation (Dhyana)
8. Ecstatic Awakening (Samadhi)

Steps five and six cultivate mindfulness, focus, thought-awareness, and self-awareness connected with mind and meditation.

Through these ancient disciplines, whose immense value is increasingly recognized by scientists, yogis and other spiritual teachers discovered the interconnectedness of every atom and living being with a Universal Consciousness—a loving, intelligent, omnipresent Being, perhaps the same universal conscious observer suggested by Quantum Theory.