By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

Everyone matters.  But no one person matters any more than any other person.  Each and every one matters fully.  This is the mystical perspective.  You have this perspective when you are experiencing your own Self.  The One Divine Essence shines through as every single being and every single thing.  They are all lovable.  They are all to be revered and respected.  They are all to be protected and cherished. 

I can say the same thing in another way, “How big is your heart?”  Yoga will make you used to living in a greater love and a greater inner spaciousness than you’ve known before.  You’ve probably had tastes of it, perhaps in meditation or somewhere on a mountain-top.  Yoga promises that you will live in this, the bliss of Consciousness, all the time.

This is radically different than the image of a yogi in a cave or the forest, withdrawn and alone, rejecting the world in order to find God.  God is in the world!  When you reject the world, you reject God.  In order to know God, in order to find your own Divine Essence, you must embrace it all.  But here’s the trick.  You embrace it all, but without preferences.

Why?  Because God is not merely in the world, God is being the world.  It’s impossible to prefer one form of God over another, for everyone is made of the same mystical substance.  Bottom line, we’re all made of the same thing.

Tan-naanaa anuruupa graahya graahaka bhedaat. — Pratyabhij~nah.rdayam 3

Shiva chooses to become the multiplicity of the universe.

This universe is made of energy, conscious energy, as the physicists have discovered.  Matter is made of energy, which is aware of itself.  It is aware of all the atoms and sub-atomic particles it is being.  Everything is made of this conscious energy, including your bones and body.  Even your mind and heart are made of this energy.  You are a…

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