This is the second video in a four part Interview I did with the Founder of Anusara Yoga, John Friend. If you’ve missed part one, you can find it by clicking here.
In Part 2, I ask John what we, as people and yogis alike, need to do to create a positive shift in our planet. On this topic of creating a shift, I am reminded of my notes that I took during the Immersion a few weeks ago in February when this interview took place. During the Immersion in San Francisco, John defined Shiva and Shakti this way, “Shiva is the ability to know that you know. It is consciousness. Do you know you are awake? Consciousness is to be alive with awareness. Shakti is the power of consciousness.”
Expanding on Shiva and Shakti, John said, “Everything is the embodiment of Shiva-Shakti, everything is consciousness. The microcosm– our body, emotion, logic, intuitive mind, heart, are a reflection of the One. Everything is interconnected, a web, if you will, a tapestry on a loom, vibrating in delight. The highest intention, ever unfolding, is awakening of this essence. It is the experiencing of making art, being uplifting. The spiritual process/ practice of awakening is a systematic, progressive, sequential refinement of this supreme consciousness in embodiment…<awakening is>an expansion of consciousness.”
When you believe and perceive the world to be interconnected, you want to shift to be in harmony with it, to preserve and protect it. You begin to see the world as being in relation with yourself and as an extension of yourself. In essence, when you see yourself as interconnected with the world, you begin to plug in more to this life. You begin to have more regard for all beings from a heartfelt, genuine place of deep respect and pure love. During your yoga practice, when you make the mental connection that one part of your body influences another part of your body, and this one part of your body can even shift your entire yoga pose, i.e, spreading your little toe to engage your shin muscles, you begin to appreciate how one dynamic affects another, the part affects the whole. In this way, your body becomes a microcosm of the macrocosm. It is from the wellspring of the heart, one part of us, remembering and acknowledging our interconnectedness, that we can shift the course of history and make manifest the world we want to live in for generations to come.
Later during the Immersion, John said, “It’s not just the politicians, it’s up to us. We’re going to make the change in the next couple of years.”
I couldn’t agree more. Let’s get to it, yogis!
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Transcript Part 2
{Ginger} So you began the immersion speaking about how we’re at a momentous time in history {John} Yes {Ginger} and in this next decade we really need to make a shift. {John} Yes {Ginger} How can Anusara yoga help make this shift?
{John} Well, fundamentally, it’s really in a vision, each of us look at ourselves and the world and each other in a particular way, and that vision defines everything we do. That vision defines all our actions, all our words, all of our endeavors. So those things that are creating continual conflict among groups, countries, you know, we’re… the United States, we’re in two wars right now. We’ve been in war, again, since pretty much the beginning of the last decade. So for almost ten years we have been involved in a lot of bloodshed and to be able to recognize that this has to shift. When we look at the number of people on the planet, we’re at 6.7 billion people, and it’s growing steadily, even almost exponentially. We’re not going to be able to sustain that kind of growth with the way that we are behaving right now because of the way we use resources and so on, you know, we’re depleting and throwing things out of balance such that we’re really creating harm, not only to the planet, but to ourselves, and it can’t be sustained, so it is a very critical time where if we don’t make a change in this decade, there can be irreversible destruction. And the positive thing is, we have time, we have a shift and Anusara can make the shift by helping people to shape-shift their vision, to see their interconnectedness of themselves with each other, to see the interconnectedness our ourselves with life, with the planet, with everything, to see that supreme consciousness, that energy, that is supremely intelligent, is literally vibrating in everything. It’s just vibrating at different frequencies and different aspects of condensation and revealment. There’s ways of shifting our views and literally not just in an intellectual way, but shifting our views energetically, that we start to just, it becomes more of a even a natural way of perceiving things. This is a deep change that will change culture, it changes society, it changes the planet. All the cultures, every group is, again, based on certain visions and they have aligned visions. You have big religious groups, you know, of the six and a half billion people on the planet, we have the Christians, Muslims. Right there, those two groups make up the majority of the people on the planet. So, the majority, you can ask them, and they have a certain view point about who they think they are and the reason that they are here and what the planet is. If you think of the planet as being something that is just an inferior place that you’re here to visit for a little bit, and it’s here to give you, you know, some sort of more power or even your own upliftment, then you’ll treat it as an inferior thing. You’ll live your life in a way that will define your so-called afterlife and with that type of philosophical view, which is at the basis of all religion…we have to really look at is, is it really serving us? And so, the Anusara vision is one that can get in there and make some hopefully, positive shifts to all culture, all religion, all society.
{Ginger} Awesome!
{John} Yeah!
{Ginger} Thank you!
John Friend’s 2010 Melt Your Heart, Blow Your Mind World Tour
Related posts:
- Interview with John Friend, Founder of Anusara Yoga, Part 4
- Interview with John Friend, Founder of Anusara Yoga, Part 3
- Interview with John Friend, Founder of Anusara Yoga
- Interview with John Friend at Wanderlust
- Yoga Journal NY Keynote Address by Robert Thurman: “Yoga and Tantra: Out of Body or Magic Body”
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