2012-03-22

5 Causes of Suffering: Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

Ignorance of who we really are (we are beings of unconditional love and bliss, but we forget that)
Egoism: Our ego fools us into thinking that our labels/title in life define who we are: Intellect, Business Exec., Lawyer, Teacher, Mother, Daughter, etc. We develop programs which have nothing at all to do with who we really are but are merely what we do. Who we are is a much more esoteric force and is often buried deep inside the body we live in and which we observe.
Attachment: This is our need to cling to what brings us pleasure. When we attach our happiness to having a person or a thing and that disappears, what follows is great suffering. Learn to let go.
Resistance of what we do not want. This is the same as denial. We create all forms of ways to avoid both what will lead to freedom from pain because we do not want to go through the passage of looking at what we might not want to deal with.
Fear of death. If this weren’t present in most of us, we wouldn’t hold on to all the reasons we work so hard to build in safety nets, both physically and emotionally.

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