1.3 Then you can be who you really are.
1.4 Otherwise, your identity is the vortexes. Nothing against your ego, but its perspective is too small to experience the ecstasy of being awake to the reality of Oneness moment by moment. This isn’t about being impure or unworthy. Even if your ego were “perfect,” its vision would still be too narrow to see the whole.
1.5 You can shift from the myopic vision of the atomic ego to the omniscience of the infinite universe—through the power of Consciousness. You’ve probably already noticed it in your field of awareness. René Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” How did he know he was thinking? Consciousness.
Consciousness is the Loving Awareness that observes your mental vortexes—not as problematic or unproblematic, but simply as five kinds…
1.6 Knowledge, misconceptions, imagination, dreams and memories.
1.7 Knowledge comes from sacred texts, but also perception via the five senses, as well as inference and reflection.
1.8 Misconceptions arise from mistaking a particular thing for something completely different.
1.9 The intangible realm can also be a source of knowledge via abstract thought and imagination.
1.10 In sleep is the vortex of dreams as well as the notion of nothingness.
1.11 Memories are just things experienced and not forgotten.
1.12 By the constant practice of detaching your identity from your mental vortexes, you attain mastery over the ego.
1.13 Try it now, there, in that position, sit and be present to whatever arises. Observe it all with loving awareness.
1.14 If your practice is well attended to, for a long time, consistently, with honor and reverence, it will become firmly established.
1.15 An emblem of detachment from the ego is to see or hear something without craving it.
1.16 The highest state of individual consciousness is to be free of the desire to judge things by their various qualities.
1.17 This fully aware state follows from awe (exploring consciousness with the rapt attention of the five senses), wonder (contemplating the nature, meaning, and purpose of consciousness), bliss (experiencing the pleasures of consciousness) and I-am-ness (conscious existence).
1.18 Through the constant practice of this fully aware state, you are freed from the way your past experiences trigger cravings and judgements. Identification with the ego ceases.
1.19 When your past experiences no longer control you, you are freed from physical bonds and dissolve into your essential nature.
1.20 You deepen your practice of awe, wonder, bliss, and I-am-ness by adding devotion, vigor, perfect concentration, mindfulness, and discernment.
1.21 When desire is intense, liberation is imminent.
1.22 What makes the difference is how badly you want to be free, whether your desire is weak, moderate, or beyond measure.
1.23 That, and surrender to Loving Awareness.
1.24 Loving Awareness is a special aspect of your individual consciousness that is untouched by the residues of your past experiences and exists in perfect unity with the indivisible cosmic totality.
1.25 In Loving Awareness is the seed of unsurpassed omniscience.
1.26 Loving Awareness, possessed by the ancestors, is the guru of everyone who has ever lived, uninterruptedly, forever. It exists in everyone and everything, in every form of separation, down to the smallest atomic particle.
1.27 The onomatopoeia invocation of Loving Awareness is Ah (awe) Oh (wonder) Mmm (bliss) and the silence of conscious awareness: Om.
1.28 The repetition of Om is the king of prayers and turns your body into a temple of Loving Awareness.
1.29 Tada! Epiphany! No more moodiness! No more obstacles to your liberation!
1.30 The afflictions that drive you to distraction and disturb your inner peace—illness, sluggishness, doubt, impaired judgement, burnout, overconsumption, low self-esteem, failure and relapse…
1.31 …and the grief, despondency, trembling of the body and irregular breathing that accompany these obstacles…
1.32 …can be overcome with Om, the highest state of being.
1.33 By calming the mind, you can cultivate loving kindness, compassion, delight and equanimity in pleasure or pain, fortune or misfortune.
1.34 Through the release and retention of your breath, which is your vital energy and life force…
1.35 …and focusing your mind to witness the sensory experiences arising from the inner realm…
1.36 …you will become free from grief, happy, radiant with divine light, as if you were illuminated by the stars.
1.37 You will go to a place free from desire.
1.38 Even as you sleep and dream, you will be rooted in the knowledge that leads to liberation from human suffering.
1.39 Or, you can just meditate in Loving Awareness according to wish or will, at pleasure, wherever desire leads.
1.40 You will become the master of your relationship with everything from the smallest atomic particle to the great cosmos.
1.41 When you stop feeding the mental vortexes and they start to waste away, consciousness becomes like a wish-granting jewel, like a genie within. It is the giver, the receiver and the gift; the knower, the act of knowing and what is known. No longer caught up in the vortexes, consciousness can take the shape of any form. Here, on the verge of Cosmic Consciousness, you obtain the power of thought transformation.
1.42 But awareness is still confined to thoughts, the perceptions of the five senses, and observation of tangible objects. It is limited by the words we have to describe things, the meaning of our words, and our intellectual understanding.
1.43 When the mind is refined to the extent that it is no longer involved in or affected by the replaying of recorded thoughts, it empties itself of the ego and only its essence shines forth. Through awe, we go beyond awe to a state where the mind is no longer limited by words, meanings, observations, and perceptions.
1.44 Likewise, contemplation of the intangible realm can also be refined to a state that is beyond wonder. This has been described as…
1.45 …contemplating that which has no characteristic marks. This is the highest and final stage of contemplation.
1.46 Those are the seeds of Cosmic Consciousness.
1.47 A further refinement is inner peace, the most blissful state, where the mind is perfectly soft, pure, unaffected by anything, with no thoughts at all.
1.48 In this state resides the intuitive wisdom that transcends the limitations of space and time, a state of consciousness saturated with the most basic principle of existence, which can never be distorted, violated or altered, and gives meaning and definition to “truth.”
1.49 This wisdom goes beyond what can be learned through and inferred from the scriptures because it comes something totally unique, being one with Cosmic Consciousness.
1.50 This experience neutralizes the effects of all other experiences.
1.51 When that is mastered, all is mastered, and you will be in a perennial state of Loving Awareness.
Patanjali's yoga sutras 