“I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my Soul.”
Dear Yogini,
Like the lotus to the sun, your soul is always reaching for the light to meet itself in truth. Throughout this process there are periods of darkness and moments you will be called to rest right where you are. It is a natural cycle and has an innate rhythm unique to your be-ing. Dharana is a state of mind in single-pointed concentration that unfolds from drawing in of the senses in pratyahara. It is the sixth facet of the yogic path, and the first direct aid to perceiving your true Self; in the first sutra of Book III of The Yoga Sūtras, Patañjali describes dharana as the gathering of consciousness to focus it within.
You retire your senses as the lotus flower closes in upon itself and retreats to the dark cool just below the water’s surface once the sun retires. You gather your attention to the gentle coming and going of your breath. It is said that flowers that tuck themselves in for the night aren’t sleepy; they are just highly evolved: The bottom-most petals of these flowers grow at a faster rate than the upper-most petals and thus coerce the flowers to shut, possibly a protective mechanism or a way to conserve energy (or odor) for the daytime when pollinating insects are most active. Perhaps you too, at rest in quiet concentration, are preserving your energy for when the outside world assaults you with its busyness and bustle.
You are transitioning, dear yogini, from the realm of practice, per se, to progressive internal states that evolve from your continuous application of the earlier facets of the Yogic Wisdom. Pratyahara begins the rather arduous (if I may say so) task of becoming familiar with your internal states and how they make you feel. With dharana, states Patañjali, you sit and begin to work on the various qualities of the mind, or gunas, and their energetic manifestation as vrittis, oscillations of thoughts like the repetitive motion of sine-waves.
The three primary qualities of the mind are a reflection of nature, or cosmic intelligence (known as prakriti in the language of the sūtras) which consists of energy, matter, and consciousness: (21) Sattva guna is defined by luminosity and brilliance; rajas guna by action, motion, and passion; and tamas guna by inertia, density, and darkness. According to this worldview, the gunas have always been and continue to be present as dynamic forces of influence and change in all things in the world, including your consciousness and mine.
As an aspect of cosmic intelligence, our consciousness is subject to the influence of these vacillating qualities, these gunas that inform our (five) states of mind:
This ultimate state of mind, nirodha, is characterized by the suspension of the thought-waves of the mind (22) (in order to see one’s True Self clearly). This then becomes the foundation for your next assignment dear yogini, the seventh facet, dhyana, the art of meditation.
With peace and ever more concentration in practice.
Sincerely,
Nicole