Wholistic Fitness

BEST SEAT IN DA HOUSE
Taking a Squirrel incarnation could mean that we ‘hoarded’ and ‘gathered’ too many possessions in this or another lifetime. The compulsion to ‘attain and hoard from others,’ is one example of a kleshic tendency of which all Conscious Fitness Warriors, intend on Wholeness, must be watchful. i grabbed this shot yesterday as “Bert” one of our local long-eared Abert Squirrels assumed a great spot atop “Shahky’s” Sahasrara Chakra.

NOTE: my “3-Chi Clan” will be taking a few days away from Temple Service as we camp and explore some (warmer and more riparian) terrain in the Verde Valley. i’ll also be desperately seeking miles on my road bike as i attempt to gain some adequate fitness for the IRONHORSE 3-DAY Stage Race coming up waaaay too fast on May 23rd-25th. Enjoy the DL Archives and the WF SanghaLounge and Blessed Be Thy Practices…

yesterday i wrote,
“Each of us confronts the Science of Human Suffering according to our etheric gearing…our karma. Here is where we find the Kleshas or the ‘afflictions’ which keep us mired in forgetfulness of our Divine Self.”

today, i’m going to give examples of how a WF Warrior begins to apply our proven spiritual weaponry to thwart the seemingly endless avalanche of afflictions and begin the slow BattleDance toward using our Kleshic Awareness as vital training toward Wholeness and eventual Enlightenment.

remembering that the five Kleshas are be-haviors and conditioned beliefs, first and foremost we must be stoked to WANT to Rise Above these anchors of delusion and spiritual slumber. in other words, it’s like doing a HP PROP WORKOUT…if you don’t really, really want it, you’re just going to schelp your way through the workout. and if you schlep your way through a workout, you may make some degree of physical fitness attainment, yet you’ll lose the spiritual merit and consciousness tenacity which is vital for Awakening. it’s bit paradoxical of course. in order to be freed from Desire, we must first have the Desire to want to be liberated! Even before He became the Buddha, the Yogi Known As Siddhartha first had to become fed up with the crazyness of the ‘false fitness prophets’ of His day and just friggin’ sit down on Mother Earth until Enlightenment. well, these days, those ‘false fitness prophets’ are more prevalent than ever and yet our worldwide Tribe is more fat, unhealthy, dis-eased, and unAwake than ever before.

so, what ilg is attempting to say, is that reading this 3-Part Teaching is one thing.

wanting to implement the mindful actions to reverse our conditioned behaviors and totally bogus belief structures is categorically different.

REACHING INTO THE WF QUIVER
with five Kleshas as our targets, the WF Warrior can now ‘know our enemy.’ this Knowledge alone is absolutely a distinct advantage over the unAwakened commoner. ask any Warrior how important it is to know the enemy’s whereabouts and he or she will reply, “Absolutely vital.”

so, let’s take aim at that biggest root Klesha Number One and i’ll tell you which of the five WF Arrows you should draw out of your quiver in order to take aim and begin the Highest Workout of all; purifying our karmic state…

1 – Avidya (spiritual ignorance)
DEFINITION:
Avidya is endless. fortunately, it can also end at any m(om)ent when spiritual illumination is attained. Avidya causes us to move further away from our True Self and obscure our knowledge of the Truth. In the Bhagavad Gita it teaches that all sufferings and limitations imposed by the ego come from Avidya; consequently man has to swim upstream, against the current of laziness to seek Wisdom and Compassion (Knowledge), with which hatred, injury and greed are incompatible.

WF ARROW TO BE USED:
WF Noble Fitness Discipline #4: Meditation
Subdiscipline: Svadhyaya
unless a fitness warrior meditates, there can be no tracking and cultivation of our inner world which includes our inner guru and guides, thus we over identify solely within the physical body enamored by egoic layers eon-thick. in each of my books, in the SanghaLounge, and in numerous DL’s the WF approach to Meditation is clear and concise for beginning a Meditation Practice. Svadhyaya, or Study of Scripture to inspire Self Study – is absolutely pivotal to keep cutting through Avidya. in the WF Path, i work very hard to keep DL an ongoing scroll of multi-layered teachings which, when studied, continue to pave a Proven Path toward Wholeness.

2 – Asmitta (“I-ness”)
DEFINITION:
without knowledge of our True Nature, we identify ourselves with our thoughts. ooops. a BIG ooooops! we say to ourselves a bijillion times per day: “I’m an anxious person, I’m an angry person, I’m an intelligent person etc. I am not skinny enough. I am not good enough…”

as a horrifying cause-and-effect, our individual divine soul (Atman) starts identifying Itself with our own self limiting thoughts. beguiled by asmita, we just need to look around as see all of us pretending to be something which in fact we are not. ‘Look, I’m have a PhD! I am a professor!” While another lets the world know he’s a great athlete as if that is something superior. Again another is all caught up being a a student or a teacher. this misinterpretation is caused by Avidya. A truly religious (ie. tied back to their source), intelligent human can really only admit that he or she is Brahman: “I’m the unspeakable, unlimited nature of the UniVerse. In me the whole cosmos can be found. Everything is knowable to me, for i am the Divine Vehicle which carries everything within me. We all share the same Divine Nature which starts us living and to which we reside when our biologic functions wither and stop.”

WF ARROW TO BE USED:
WF Lifestyle Principle #1: Breath and Posture
Subdiscipline: Cultivating the Witness
Conscious Breathing is the supreme spiritual ‘default mode.’ whenever we bring our Conscious Breath and Posture into our Awareness, instantly the Saving Grace of the completely neutral “Witnessing Self” inevitably does what it does; it ‘watches’ us as we adjust our breath deeper into the richness and completeness of the m(om)ent. it ‘observes without judgment’ as we adjust our postures into a more Aligned component of our in-vironment. Without continual Practice in using the arrow of Breath and Posture Consciousness, we fall into mis-identification of the unconscious breath and posture which re-iterates endlessly the wrong fact that we are what we can see with our physical eyes. Asmita must be stood under by the perspective of the subdued Seer.

3 – Raga (attraction)
DEFINITION:
as per the Yoga Sutras (2.7); dwelling upon that which is pleasurable. key word; “dwelling.” it’s not that the spiritual athlete must push away pleasure…it’s the dwelling and longing for sustaining pleasure which sets up the polarity of Duality thus killing spiritual progress toward at-One-ment.

WF ARROW TO BE USED:
WF Lifestyle Principle #3: Appropriate Action
Subdiscipline: Mantra
the WF Yogi has a headstart on riding this bullish Klesha. since we train in Wholistic fashion, our temperament is reduced from arrogance to Beginners’ Mind because we never specialize in our strength(s). We, as WF Athletes, are constantly prioritizing bringing our weaknesses into balance for the sake of Wholeness/Unity/Yoga. over time, we become immune to the constant seeking of Pleasure because our Practice has elevated our perception of impermanence. we realize through the techniques of WF that pleasure never sticks around for very long so why waste so much time, effort, money trying to sustain the unsustainable? By Acting Appropriately from an expanded state of spaciousness (the training effect from Lifestyle Principles #1 (Breath and Posture) and #2 (Mindfulness) we find the conduct of a Warrior; unattached to hot/cold, pain/pleasure, wealth/poorness, happiness/sadness. we edge ever closer to the Middle Path of equanimity and equipoise through the ups and downs of a Human lifespan. Mantra paves the Glorious and Suspended Middle Path through Attachment and Aversion.

4 – Dvesha (aversion)
DEFINITION:
Dvesha is the opposite of raga, aversion towards things that produce unpleasant experiences. if we cannot avoid the things we dislike, we suffer. even thinking about unpleasant experiences produces suffering.

WF ARROW TO BE USED:
WF Lifestyle Principle #4: Practice
Subdiscipline: Mantra
let’s say we are in fact, using the Practice of the WF Lifestyle to close down the gap of Duality to the Middle Path of equanimity and equipoise through the ups and downs of a Human lifespan. we may make gentle inroads by using WF Techniques such as not being addicted to the pleasures of furniture, cars, gossip, or the unconscious use of our dominant hand or the pleasure of not watching the purity of our nutrition, of our spelling or of our spoken Word Choices. astounding it is to see how many professed teachers and students of ‘yoga’ are absolutely entrenched in aversion when it comes to cold weather, or doing other fitness disciplines that might spoil their sultry command of hyperflexible yoga poses. the WF Warrior is trained and devoted to Wholeness, thus we must ferret out our aversions, step in them, and extract the deliciously potent kernel of Unified Wisdom which lies in the heart of that which our egos wish to push away.

5 – Abinivesha (clinging to life and fear of death)
DEFINITION:
classically viewed as fear of death, Abinivesha can also be viewed as fear in general.
We are all born with inherent and instinctual fear which helps keeps us alive; fear of heights, fear of separation, etc. Other fears blossom as we grow older and inculcated by societal convention; fear of failure, fear of success, etc. Shifting from a Fear-based life to a Love-based life remains for many of us the ongoing goal to get us close to the Podium of the Human Race; Enlightenment.

WF ARROW TO BE USED:
WF Noble Fitness Discipline #5; Nutrition
Subdiscipline: Asana
you may be surprised that in our WF Path, we fend off Fear through Nutrition, yet it is so. i am speaking here, of course, about spiritual nutrition. namely, Gratitude. in the 80’s i Taught you that, “In order to be freed from fear, we must devote ourselves to it.” My Teachers, for instance, set young ilg on an early life journey as a rock, ice, and mountain climber. They did this so that at an early stage of my spiritual training, i would be forced to overcome both natural and karmic Fears. ilg was being schooled in Gratitude because when you risk losing your life every dang day of your life for a couple of decades, you quickly become appreciative of Living and then turn toward training for death as a result of loving life. climbing – often unroped – up steep rock or ice walls, the yogi becomes quite intimate with the Herculean strength of the ego trying to ‘protect’ the illusion of what is not really ‘us’…our body.

by nourishing our minds and spirit through a focused life built upon Loving and Focused Fun, the essence of our life becomes fluid. we feel ourselves as a river of endless energy, to which the toxicity of death grows dilute. We are all born Divine and within us the Atman dwells in the changeless, all-pervading transcendent reality of Brahman…the supreme essence from which all creative derives. Ramakrishna reMinds us that, “Only the Divine can worship the Divine.” so too, only a heart that has been opened can live a heart-based life. many of us are living a chakral experience as we journey through a WF Lifestyle, a lifestyle that cannot help but open our Hearts. Fears are replaced by Love, Compassion, Understanding, and For-giving. where once we did sports and kept healthy out of Fear of not being approved or Fear of being fat, we now workout for what matters within. we’ve learned to turn up heat of the Sweatlodge not from heating rocks, rather, from heating up our Fears…getting out there in the wind and cold to run or ride…doing what it takes to sit and focus our minds…learning yoga-asanas that open our Heartspace be it through backbends, hip openers, inversions, or twists…whatever it is takes to become Whole; we learn to say, “yes, sign me up for i am WF Yogi; seeker of Wholeness, no longer a subject of fear.”

until we can meet and gather again like this,
and do this Inner Work…
may your Daily Sweat be purely motivated for Higher Ascension,
and may your Daily Stillness be Ascending toward divine motivation…

your faithful friendly warrior along the Inner Workout Way
abbaji