you can never reach what you never lost

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By: Anne Soffer
Before I started the practice of yoga, I have been practicing both classical and modern dance. From my youth onwards, I always loved to get into this flow by movement of the body. When I ...
Edited date: November 6, 2022Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

TABLE OF CONTENTS

catching my dreams

When I was a little girl, when I had to go to sleep,

I always wanted to catch my last thought before sleep took over.

I wanted to experience that shift between waking and dreaming,

and see how my thoughts would collide into dreams.

I always thought that, if I could minister that, my dreams would be more

valid, more real. As if I could catch that train that brought me to

wonderland. My dreams were always so fascinating, so unimaginably elusive.

And, in my dreams, everything was possible.

I could fly high in the sky,

I could stay under water for hours making friends with fish,

I could communicate with animals and all kinds of creatures,

I could be anything I wanted to be.

So, in bed I waited, thoughts came and went.

I made compromises with myself, ok, after this thought,

I will jump on that train to never never land.

Until I got so tired that I fell asleep.

And the next morning I was a bit frustrated, failed again.

But, tonight, it will work!

Every night, I failed, and still now, I haven’t succeeded in doing so.

These shifts, from one state to another, always intrigued me.

Which is probably one of the main reasons I started to practice yoga.

I wanted to change. Change my body. Change my mind.

Change my emotions. Change my behavior. Change my life.

Change it all and start over. A clean slate.

And yoga transformed me.

Of course, not in the way I thought it would…

Yoga means Yuk, or to unite.

So what is it that we are seeking unity with?

You’ve probably heard it a 1000 times, but maybe never fully realized it.

We are all one consciousness, you, me, your pet, that guy who was so aggressive in traffic this morning, your noisy neighbour, everything.

I will call this Universal Consciousness.

This Universal Consciousness is experiencing itself subjectively.

This individuality of consciousness experienced by most people is

formulated to be produced by the Universal Consciousness

being filtered through our nervous system.

Imagine a river flowing endlessly…

Picture that some of the water would solidify and form an ice cube.

This ice cube now is floating in the river under the illusion that it is separate from the rest of the water.

But downstream, it melts again into the river.

This ice cube was one with the river all the time. But it assumed to be a

sole object from the rest of the river.

We are seeking union with this Universal Consciousness, with this river.

And we try so hard to find this.

By meditating, by asana practice, by becoming a vegetarian or a vegan,

by using drugs, by reading spiritual books, by becoming a green feminist,

by having sex, by searching for the love of your life. And the search continues…

And we think that, when we find it, something exclusive will happen.

Something spiritual. Something extraordinary.

And, of course, these things can happen.

But if they happen, they are just experiences.

Experiences of this subjectively experienced individual.

This ice cube.These experiences will come and go.

So the paradox here is, you are already united.

Always have been and always will be.

You are one with the river all along.

This Universal Consciousness is looking through your

eyes right now. It is reading these words right now.

What is obstructing us to feel this unity, is our identification to

this ice cube. Causing us to lose connection with the river.

So, the ultimate shift here is seeing that there is no shift.

Just rest in being the witness. Rest in being the river.

Just like me and my unattainable attempts to catch my own dreams.

You can never reach, what you never lost.

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