Mind Blown

Hello and Happy Monday, 

I'm writing today from beautiful Costa Rica. This is a trip Joe and I planned early last year and I'm so glad I am here. I am on retreat! I plan on doing as little as possible, which will be a lot of work for me. 

This month we are focusing on the last limb in the eight limbs of yoga, Samadhi. Samadhi is the word used for higher states of awareness in yoga. Samadhi is when we attain knowledge that is radically different from our usual methods. So, not from a book, from others, and so on. Instead, this knowledge is intuitive.

The Yoga Sutras, compiled before 400 CE by Patanjali, describe different levels or categories of Samadhi. How I try to understand it is that there are many paths to the same road or many rivers to the same ocean. There are so many ways to get to Samadhi and they all lead to a state of absorption or bliss. The only way I can describe this feeling is, for example, when we get a spontaneous realization, where you feel like your mind is blown. That's the feeling - that it's too hard to put into words what just happened, but everything seems to make sense. I think you know what I'm talking about. Imagine you were absorbed in that. I can't really imagine that, being in a state where everything made sense. The sutras state is this way, Samadhi is the state in which the differentiation between knower, knowable and knowledge dissolves. How I break this down is if I meditate on an object - after a period of time of intense and right (using the other limbs) meditation, I dissolve, the object dissolves, and what that object is/means dissolves - we become one, everything is one, we are all one. Is your mind blown? Maybe? Some days this makes sense to me and other days it's tough to comprehend. Please share with me any and all of these moments you have experienced. 

I'm working on the meditation course for February, Next week I'll send a sign-up form, thanks to all that have expressed interest. I'll send all the details in that note. 

Please scroll down - I have so many things happening in the studio right now, everything I've been working on, for what seems like years is all finally happening. 

With Love & Pura Vida, 
Jess