Meditative I AM Yoga Nidra
Integrative Amrit Method (I AM) Yoga Nidra is a set of practical methods to maintain the unconditional polarity of life’s ups and downs. Through reactions and past conditioning, personal choice arises and separates us from omnipresent polarity which has no preferences.
In Yoga Nidra we use:
the posture of consciousness
an intention for integration
alignment at the Third Eye
These tools help us disengage from the duality of seeing life as “for or against me.” Thus, we reconnect with our prana body, operating through the purity of impersonal polarity.
This is the first of two additional articles on I AM Yoga Nidra that will be appearing in the blog. Enjoy.
MEDITATIVE I AM YOGA NIDRA
The conscious mind is either actively engaged or asleep. Yoga Nidra opens a third possibility where the body is deeply relaxed as in sleep, but the mind is aware and present, neither asleep nor awake. This is a transitional state neither under the influence of the waking mind nor an unconscious sleeping state. In this realm, the mystical powers of the subconscious can shift the level of the awareness to explore higher faculties of intuition, creativity, personal evolution and transformation.
The great secret of Yoga Nidra is the synergy it creates. Ordinarily, thinking, feeling and acting are fragmented and in conflict, a tremendous waste of energy. When all these forces are brought into harmony, the synergy of spirit in unified action is created, the integration of body-mind and soul.
In Yoga Nidra, our personal will that directs all voluntary action recedes into the background. The body is relaxed, the mind is still and the heart is receptive in a state of non-doing. There is no power greater than synergy to actualize intention and prayers. The synchronicity of body, mind and soul forces the ego-mind to withdraw, leaving the meditative power of Presence to perform miracles that cannot be attained through hard work, effort or more skill.
Meditation techniques are designed to take us beyond the technique.
Two methods are used in the practice of I AM Yoga Nidra:
one-pointed concentration, such as focusing and becoming absorbed in an object
witnessing or observing but not engaging the mind
The technique is successful when the performer and the technique, the subject and object merge into one. Then meditation happens. There is no saying ‘I am meditating’ because we are in the experience of union where separateness has dissolved into unity. Techniques prepare for the effortless entry into a meditative state.
When we practice, we are not in meditation.
When we are in meditation, we do not know we are in meditation.
Meditation is attention without choice. Attention without choice is objectless pure awareness. It is outside the duality of subject and object. Choice creates cause and effect, where the performer of the action causes the action for the effect it seeks therefore refraining from choice, cause-and-effect consciousness is released. Meditative Yoga Nidra is choice-less.
Yoga Nidra is a major shift from the linear mental processes to the vertical non-logical space where the doer is replaced by non-doing presence. This is opposite of ordinary waking consciousness where the moment of awakening from deep sleep habitually creates doing. Yoga Nidra removes resistance and reaction, while being conscious and aware. It brings all that was invisible into clear perception and relieves the self-image of the burden of identification. Karmic patterning is released. As the layers are peeled back, the light of consciousness shines through with greater clarity. Reality is now experienced without personal bias.
A paradigm shift occurs from doing consciousness to non-doing super-conscious being.
Pure attention is free from labels of good and bad or right and wrong. Meditation is an undirected, all-embracing, expanded state of awareness. It is attention without an object of choice. It is the total absence of reaction. Silent awareness is meditation. In the beginning, what distinguishes Yoga Nidra is its allowance of intention, affirmation, visualization or prayers.
I AM Yoga Nidra induction techniques use conscious action and an intention for integration. Secondarily is the direct experience of meditation, where techniques create a state disengaged from all physical, mental and emotional activities. It is rare to enter the non-mental domain and remain disengaged. Only exceptional beings, through purification practices of arduous sadhana, are able to consciously enter transcendental spaces. Yoga Nidra does not require such preparation. It takes us to deep meditation quickly and effectively where we reside in an integrated state of being.
All internal restlessness and conflicting voices are silent. We reside in a state of communion.
We can now act from our whole being by installing new programming to actively carry out and commit to an intention for integration. Self-healing is optimal in this state of awakened prana. We have left the limited circle of time and space and entered the infinite, divine potential of spontaneous remission, recovery and self-discovery.
