The Gathering of Selves
Whenever we engage in spiritual disciplines, meditation, pranayama, we bring new energies into the dynamic matrix of our personal mandala. Things start to rearrange. The psyche has to dream a new dream of integration.
The process is not just subjective – meaning, emotional and psychological and spiritual. It is also physical, in that the material our nerves are made out of has to be upgraded to handle the higher intensity of bio-electricity, of prana. And the brain rewires itself to accommodate the new impulses.
Contact with the Self
In the Hindu scriptures somewhere – maybe the Bhagavad-Gita or the Upanishads, it is said, “Contact with the self is joy.” I love the internet – here is a quote from the Katha Upanishad:
“Though seated, he travels far; though at rest, he moves all things. Who but the purest of the pure can realize this Effulgent Being, who is joy and who is beyond joy.”1
That contact challenges the small self, the sense we have of being embodied humans who know what they are doing.