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technoyogi
Canada
158 Posts |
 Posted - Mar 08 2015 : 9:35:38 PM
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In much of the literature here on the site this reference comes up over and over, "nervous system impurities". I feel like I have somewhat of an understanding of it, but not totally.
So, I assume to some extent there is an energetic aspect to this that is not exactly quantifiable on a physical level in the same way prana is not. I.E. we cannot measure the flow of prana in the channels by hooking up a pranameter haha.
So, the impurities are energetic, yet are there also physical aspects we can easily point to? Some of my most profound "enlightenment experiences" came after combining a massage session with pranayama and meditation, so maybe there are physical aspects as well?
And can it also be chemical imbalances and such too?
What does everyone think when they think of the term "nervous system impurity" and how the various practices are actually purifying them? |
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jusmail
India
491 Posts |
Posted - Mar 09 2015 : 02:22:00 AM
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| There are also deep mental imprints called samskaras and karma which needs to be cleansed/transformed. All these are under the hood of course. Daily practice will take care of the housekeeping. |
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technoyogi
Canada
158 Posts |
Posted - Mar 09 2015 : 03:15:56 AM
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| I was familiar with the karma aspect but had never heard of Sanskaras Jusmail, thanks for adding that. |
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BlueRaincoat
United Kingdom
1734 Posts |
Posted - Mar 09 2015 : 08:34:30 AM
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The impurities/blockages I experience can all be included in the category of 'emotional baggage' - fear, anger, hurt, frustrations which I did not deal with at the time when they arose (either too painful or 'haven't-got-time to-deal-with-this-now' or both). Time doesn’t seem to heal them, they don't go away, we push them into our subconscious mind and it takes increasing amounts of energy to keep them all under the lid. We develop reactions of aversion towards these contents of the mind, which then colour our view of the present, and so we accumulate more dislikes, more aversion, more fight/flight/freeze responses and so it goes, often from bad to worse.
It doesn't stay in the mind, tension in our bodies also occurs as part of the aversion response, so aches and pains develop, sleep disorders, digestion problems, you name it - there is a long list of conditions circumscribed in the psychosomatic category. |
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technoyogi
Canada
158 Posts |
Posted - Mar 09 2015 : 1:06:05 PM
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Thanks BlueRaincoat, that is very informative. That does make me think then that some other things we do can help us dissolve them, like perhaps therapy, but I guess that still the practices are simply more efficient at doing that, otherwise a lot of people would be blogging about how therapy made them enlightened!
Another slight revelation you gave me though is how some of my OBEs can be aiding in the process. For example recently I met my mother, 32 years after she passed away. We only talked for a little while but I woke sobbing with joy and felt very healed by it. It was more real than real, as OBEs often are. I had it on my to do list to try to meet her but never had the guts to really intend it but it just happened. There might be other events I could try to heal, and turn that particular siddhi into less of a "distraction" and more of an active tool on the path.
As for the part about releasing these tensions in the mind, maybe this is why I was intuitively doing Pranayama during a massage recently. Kind of like sending healing to the part of the body where the tension was releasing.
Since I started this process, I have also found I am drawn toward taking epsom salt baths, something I never really did until recently. I even started adding in green clay to the bath with the idea of "removing impurities" as it is supposed to be detoxifying. I guess my scientific side can't help but think there can also be some physical correlates to the process 
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BlueRaincoat
United Kingdom
1734 Posts |
Posted - Mar 09 2015 : 4:56:32 PM
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| Yes, you can do psychotherapy and a number of other things that lead to some form of catharsis (emotional release), but they will not stop emotional problems accumulating again. Meditation and yoga do, by changing the relationship with the mind. As long as the mind thinks itself in charge of keeping the show on the road, it will create a lot of drama (because it's an impossible task for the mind, and deep down we all know it, yogis or not). But when you've experience the "peace that passes all understanding" the mind is put in its proper place (it's a tool - you take it out of the box, put it back in the box, it's not supposed to run the show). The new arrangement is good for the mind and for everyone involved - happy ending to the drama |
Edited by - BlueRaincoat on Mar 09 2015 5:05:10 PM |
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technoyogi
Canada
158 Posts |
Posted - Mar 09 2015 : 5:14:53 PM
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| I love your analogy to the mind as a tool and the idea of putting it in the box and taking it out of the box as needed. And it makes total sense, heading off issues at the pass before they accumulate. I am all for happy endings! |
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Holy
796 Posts |
Posted - Mar 09 2015 : 9:24:44 PM
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Hi technoyogi,
good things have already been mentioned, also it seems like you got it :D
Some more info to what you wrote:
Prana can be seen by your subtle senses, therefore its amount, type, quality and speed can be measured. Practically speaking, there is not yet a machine that can do it, but if the human system can do it, the machine is not too far away.
To understand impurities in the nervous system regarding yoga and its practices, look at its opposite, a super pure nervous system. A child is a good example of a pure nervous system, everythign is perceived and transmitted fresh and intensly. Food tastes very different as a child, everything looks different as a child. When a child thinks, the reactions in his body are intense. With continuous perception, mental and emotional interaction with perception, the nervous system gets conditioned in different ways. Thoughts move in specific ways, emotions in specific ways, even the physics. Look at the way you are writing with a pen or you speak or move your body.
All of these past impressions force your body-mind to move in specific ways and if they get such a momentum, that you start suffering under these movements, yoga is a handy tool to free the nervous system from these impressions. If you apply yoga to the end, not only the learned impressions after being born in a body would be deleted, even the the genetic structures can be deleted completely, resulting in body-minds which do not appear and behave human anymore (lots of examples you can find in the lifes of siddhas and Co.).
Some go this route of dissolving the past from the system, by this resetting their depency to move according to the past and gaining freedom to structure the system as they like. But some skip this very long process alltogether and just go for that which is beyond structure/movement/cause/effect already, aka the ever present.
The main benefit of dissolving the past is, that the body-mind's capability to become still increases. The only reason it cannot become still is the past, which forces it to move constantly on all density-levels. If these habits can be dissolved, the body-mind can become still and all the wonderful qualities of the ever present can shine through with most intensity. Again, this is an indirect way, some prefer to directly inquire into what is always and to keep the attention on it in parallel to daily life independent of the body-minds movements. But these people also experience the greatest bliss only when the body-mind also becomes still, therefore yoga (=
Peace friend and happy practice :) |
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technoyogi
Canada
158 Posts |
Posted - Mar 09 2015 : 10:40:01 PM
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Fascinating Holy! I now wonder if I have seen prana... I have had a number of quite visionary experiences, some as a result of long pranayama sessions.
The first time I did pranayama was about 2 years ago, we did it for about an hour in a workshop setting. There was a relaxation period afterwards. I had a scarf over my eyes and it was dark, yet suddenly I was percieving what at the time I called a "purple orb"... it was extremely bright and beautiful and I thought I could see a face in the center, and I could certainly feel some kind of benevolent presence, it actually went away and came back with more Presence each time. I was in bliss and I started to cry with joy. Later I learned about chakras and was struck with the resemblence of what I saw to the graphic representation of Sahasrara chakra, as the purple orb was basically faceted all around with what in retrospect did indeed seem like leaf shapes...
So, was that prana suddenly manifesting as something?
Another time I saw more like a star at the end of a tunnel, if I understand what Yogani has written, maybe that was seeing the spinal nerve itself, butis the vision itself aided by or actually prana itself?
The science side of me has always assumed that what was going on is that our lungs release INMT which methylates tryptophan thus producing DMT, and thereby giving rise to visions.
I was just reading a quantum physics paper on a new type of conductance that has been found in organic molecules, something like what you see in semiconductors, yet behaving much less linearly. Perhaps this too is related...
Anyway, your post has given me *much* to ponder. The part about genetic structures being deleted entirely in particular blew my mind, if you could elaborate more on that at some point, I would be all ears as they say |
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Holy
796 Posts |
Posted - Mar 15 2015 : 1:34:23 PM
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Hi technoyogi,
I had written a longer answer several days ago, but it didn't make it to the forum :P Here a fresh one:
You have seen prana, there are different qualities, densities, speeds, forms prana can take. To my experience and perception there is no difference between substance and prana anymore, therefore everything is seen as prana. The flow of life, the formation of life, both inside and outside, subtle and gross appear one. When something moves inside this body, at the same time something analogous moves outside of it, or in other words the subtle and seemingly smaller movement inside is in direct relation to the grosser and seemingly bigger movement outside.
Your visions are all prana in movement and form, if you look at them more closely, you can categorize their density by how they behave. The tunnel was obviously stable enough to remain in form, but not dense enough to be seen by physical senses, at the same time most probably not subtle enough to be easily deformed by thought, this type of pranic composition you would call astral. If you visualize the same tunnel and star right now, this composition of prana you may call mental. IF you intensify a mental image, you will start seeing it astrally, if you keep on concentrating depending upon your mastery it will manifest physically too. Ten years ago we have played with these relations among friends and were succesfull in making things getting warmer or colder, moving physical objects etc. It was good to get insights into how the gross and the subtle are related to each other, but our capability to clearly see was not there. Yoga is a handy tool to make one see.
Regarding DMT and other chemical reactions in the body, there is a guaranteed connection, DMT substance-intake can make the astral world quite intensly visible, still there are more subtle and grosser densities of lifeflow which it does not touch, therefore I assume that the chemistry behind perception is much more complex. The coming decades we may be able to brigde the gap between gross and subtle scientifically much better, till then there is a lot one can do in his own body-mind :)
The genetics have to do with the past. A gene consists of coded information creating directives for how life shall move. That this information can change is already known. The aspect of conscious change has not yet been discovered scientifically through machines, but through repeated observations of individuals who have applied the same techniques with the same results.
I am sure you have already read the one or other biography of someone who has practiced yoga consistently over years and decades? Yogananda's bio is very famous, in his book you also get insights into the lives of other yogis. Yogani's Secrets of Wilder is also very inspirational in this regard.
The genetic information has priorities in its movement, forcing the body-mind first to survive, second to reproduce, third to expand and so on. Never would the cells in your body do the opposite to survival, right? Still we see yogis with no food, no breath, no heartbeat. Other yogic bodies which light up and dissolve into nothing. Their body-minds do not behave as they naturaly would do. The accumulated information and continuity of behaviour of millions of years, even down to the genetic level, becomes neutralized by constant practice until even the physical cells dissolve.
Some people go this route of bringing everything to stillness, to that which is always, down to the physics. Some let the grosser parts of the body-mind keep going as they are used to and only adress the subtler ones. Some do not adress any moving densitiy at all and just acknowledge what is already and keep in blissfull touch with that eternal presence. Even within yoga all options are there. Other methods and paths are also available.
I have read some posts of you, astral traveller ;) A lot can be learned by astral travelling. Practicing while being in the astral body can easily bring you into samadhi, but without the stability of the physical body it is hard to keep a consistent spiritual practice as everything reacts and changes so fast. It is an ideal medium to keep in touch with advanced yogis who very often can give you clear answers to your questions and help you progress smoothly by additionally relating to you at nights. At some point your subtle perception may become refined enough that remaining in touch with those who can guide will not be limited to the astral density, then the importance of astral travel diminishes very much, at least that was the case here. In the end the astral waves also need to calm down, together with the mental and even intuitional waves for the bliss of presence to shine in all its beauty :)
Happy practice friend! |
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Dogboy
USA
2294 Posts |
Posted - Mar 15 2015 : 2:46:44 PM
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Lovely discourse!  |
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technoyogi
Canada
158 Posts |
Posted - Mar 15 2015 : 3:33:18 PM
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Holy, what can be said in response to this post you made? I am yet a babe in the woods with this, yet consider me a very inspired one as a result of what you have written. It rings so true on every intuitive level I have in me, even if I have yet to fully *experience* what you have described.
Indeed, the practice of Dream Yoga has been a series of seemingly random lurches forward, nothing solid to really hang my hat on and feel like there is continuous progress. Yoga has indeed given me that already, even though it has only been a month since increasing my practice to twice daily.
After reading what you have written, Mind = blown. Which on some level is the point, right.
And yes, Autobiography of a Yogi I read about half a year ago or so, and I believe it was part of what inexorably led me here. As soon as I got to the passage where Sri Yukteshwar gave him a shaktipat above his heart and he united with all the sextillion worlds and all the poetry of that passage filled my own heart, I was on a new journey.
I have all the other books by Yogani but had not yet gotten Secrets of Wilder, I will get that today. My challenge these days is to keep up my daily work. I work from home and would read about yoga all day if I could, and some days I do! Have to balance a bit more!
I sometimes feel like I am meeting masters in the astral, but I seem to only come away with feelings and impressions rather than full formed memories. It would be a nice next step to remember the full experience, and then, as you suggested, be able to be in touch without being limited to astral density. Wow, just wow.
Thank you Holy for the Bhakti boost I received from your words! And thank you to the all that is for allowing me to find this place populated with kind souls like you, Yogani, Dogboy, and all the rest, thank you thank thank you!!!
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Yogaman
USA
295 Posts |
Posted - Mar 29 2015 : 2:05:22 PM
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| Interesting discussion here. I'm very envious of all you people with these vivid inner visions. I've got nothing but the same blank blackness I had before I started. Makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong. |
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Toto
Norway
20 Posts |
Posted - Jun 12 2015 : 08:25:37 AM
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Thank you for this great topic.
1 or 2 times when I have been in somewhat deep meditation and I sneeze, I experience that somewhat like sneeze on table with table salt. Salt in the direction I sneeze blows away. This salt may bee prana? |
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What is the nature of nervous system 
