Just a little introduction about our Ego.
When you were born into the physical world you were fully present, even though you were only a tiny baby.
The ego came into existence to protect you from all difficult feelings. Essentially, the ego is your protector. As you become mature, the ego becomes stronger and more sophisticated and after a while the ego thinks it is you, and so the game shifts from protecting you to protecting itself and its role in your life.
It becomes addicted to power and control and it becomes very unwilling to surrender that control. The ego has become so dominant in human life that it is now the main obstacle to human awakening. Essentially, all spiritual practices aim towards minimising the interference of Ego in our life.
So, if you are a Yogi, ask yourself this Q : “IS YOUR YOGA PRACTICE ENHANCING YOUR EGO OR OTHERWISE?
Our Yoga culture tends to divide students into category of — beginner, intermediate, or advanced.
So may be if you can go on performing inversion, legs on head.. your Yoga teacher will categorize you as intermediate-advanced level. This is what we call ego boosting Yoga and a beginning of a series of new phase suffering.
SO WHAT CATEGORY ARE YOU?
Test:
1) Do you identify/ label too much with the term “yogi”?
2) Is your yoga practice an obsession or a bragging point (your friends/family will think you’re cool because you practice the ever-popular yoga or they’ll be impressed that you can stand on your head)?
3) Do you feel superior to others because you’re a senior yogi? Do you often work on the fact that you’re a yoga practitioner into a conversation as a way of increasing your sense of self-worth?
4) Do you push your way through or do you flow by allowing your body to be as it is?
5) Do you always complain about others and if you are a Yoga teacher, do you complain about the quality of your students, especially those who are new to your class?
6) Do you feel the need to “keep up” or do only a certain type of practice?
7) The more practice you do, are you consistently getting into a less happy mood, easily frustrated when things don’t get done your way? Are your regular students getting more moody after your Yoga class instead of becoming happier? Do you need only certain “environment requirement” to practice Yoga? eg, no noise disturbance…etc.
9) Do you feel the need to “push harder” when you practice in class-like environment?
10) Do you look for teachers or pursue further under guidance of a teacher with a humble heart and great wisdom or are you fascinated with teachers who are “famous” and only able to perform advanced Yoga poses?
How do you approach your yoga practice — to feed your ego?
Well, you know it clearly and now you can stop being a clown and start practicing true Yoga.
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