Why yoga in the first place?

 Having been raised in a Christian household, the thought of yoga had never crossed my mind. I never saw it as a possibility in my life, after all, how could I? I only knew the religion I was taught, and I tried very hard to follow the rules so that one day I would be accepted in heaven and live a happy life forever but somehow, I was not following the rules.

Life had a different agenda altogether. I found myself embracing yoga because I had successfully taken my mind to a very negative place, and in turn, my experience of life was not pleasant at all. The solace that I knew was not working for me. I used to pray a lot, hoping that somehow God would hear my prayers and help me with my seemingly hellish situations. 

When I started my yoga journey I quickly realized that the Creator actually made us in a way that we are capable of dealing with the situations that face us, whether good or bad. The capability is there within us if we teach ourselves to quiet the mind and learn to pay attention. I realized that the ability to see life clearly and exactly the way it is is a very important skill for human beings and one that most people never get to explore because of various identifications with the mind and body.

But what exactly is the aim of all this? A seeker will make sure that every single day they spend some time, whatever amount of time, to withdraw and pay absolute attention to the mind and body. This can be by doing yoga and meditation, or whatever other way that they know how, but the bottom line is, they have the knowing that deepening their attention in whatever way, is what will sharpen their perception so they can not only see the world clearly but also learn about how their inner mechanism of life works. 

Where does this journey ultimately lead? I posted one of my articles on Reddit and I remember someone asking what I meant when I said I would want to experience the ultimate. What is this ultimate anyway? It is not something that is currently in my experience, yet today, I felt the need to write about this. 

Imagine this, what if we became aware of our past lifetimes and saw everything. We see the whole process of life and death, the way we were born, how excited we get at every stage of life, everything we go through, learn and die, then the process repeats itself again. This process could have happened many times over, yet every time we are born, we don’t remember anything and live as if it is the very first time. 

Again I ask, what is the point of seeking and doing all the yoga we do? What is the point of learning to pay absolute attention and sharpening our clarity of perception? Nature seems to have put us in some kind of endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. We live and die, then repeat the whole thing again in a different body. Doesn’t this get boring at some point? Or is it that because of this, people start to awaken to their true nature and begin the process of seeking the ultimate? Could this ultimate actually be about mastering the process of life, so that in turn we master death and get out of the cycle of rebirth?

We all find our path of yoga in a variety of different ways. For some it could be an illness, others may be because they want the capability to make money, or it could be because of a painful life situation, where one has no idea what to do, so yoga happens for them. The reasons are diverse and different for each person, but I think there can only be one aim. This is the path that reminds us of our mortal nature and teaches us the way of existence. We can only understand death if we master and know life. This is the only way to realize the cycles of birth, death, and rebirth, and yoga could be the chance we have to free ourselves from this cycle.