Discover Your Potential Through Practice of Yoga

If there are two piles, one of gold and one of dirt, we will always choose the pile of gold. If the dirt and gold are mixed, we will separate the gold from the dirt. But are we able to do that with ourselves?
Our personality is a combination of both rubbish and gold, and generally we are affected by the rubbish and we ignore the gold.
Despite having so much to give, so much to receive, and with so many positive qualities within, we identify with the negative.
The purpose of yoga is to create the awareness to separate the negative from the positive. We have to reject the negative and connect with the positive. Why do we react?
Why do we desire one thing and not another? Reactions are a result of identification with negativity and dislikes. Actions follow positivity.
Neither meditation nor performance of asanas is important. We can practise asanas only as long as we are fit. We practise meditation only as long as there is the desire.
If there is no desire to practise yoga, we give it up. If we just revolve around our likes and dislikes, actions and reactions, desires and rejections all our life, it means we have not learned the lesson to bring out the positivity.
That positivity has to be expressed in every situation whether it is an exam, a human relationship, social living or reclusive living.
This is the understanding that yoga tries to give. This understanding cannot be intellectual. It has to be an experiential understanding of the process that leads to self-development and infuses one with contentment, peace and tranquillity.
We go through various experiences, some good, some bad. Whenever we react, it is a bad experience and whenever we accept and act, it is a positive experience.
Positivity and acceptance have to be our focus if we want to succeed in life. If this focus is lost, we cannot claim to be practitioners of yoga, only practitioners of asana, or meditation.
Change has to come from within. This is not a momentary gain, but a gain of positivity in life. The satisfaction or fulfilment we experience within is due to harmony, which is both external and internal.
If we only identify with the inner experience of happiness, but react externally in our attitudes, behaviour, relationships and communication, then that experience can never be complete.
That is the true meaning of yoga. In the third sutra of the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali discusses being established in one's own nature as the seer, the drashta.
To be established in one's own nature means there has to be harmony, a flow in life. This optimism and balance does not encounter nor is affected by blocks.
A river will simply flow around a large rock on the river bed and carry on with its journey. It does not come into conflict with an immovable object.
We all need to learn this lesson, because personal attain-ment is only a selfish subjective attainment, which can be lost at any time.
It is easy to attain and also easy to lose because life follows a principle of give and take. This is the flow of life with which yoga identifies.
At this stage yoga becomes a way of life, not just a practice. There is identification with and expression of nature which is balanced, positive and opti-mistic, and one attains physical health, mental health and spiritual wealth.
The writer,SWAMI NIRANJANANANDA SARASWATI, is head, Bihar School of Yoga.