Inner Being

"Yoga is the martial arts of the soul..."

-Unknown.

"Beyond the beauty of external forms, there is more here: something that cannot be named, something ineffable, some deep, inner, holy essence. Whenever and wherever there is beauty, this inner essence shines through somehow. It only reveals itself to you when you are present...
...Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness.  This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form."

-Eckhardt Tolle
 

 

This post is about you.

So you've been meditating, and perhaps you've noticed something inside of you. Not food, but something deeper. You are beginning to sense your inner being.

Many times when I ask people to describe their soul, they respond, 'It's me!' or describe a characteristic of themselves. But there is more to it than that, and is why to a degree I dislike the term 'soul'. Atman is what I refer, which in Hindu means 'self'.

Try to picture who you are.

For me I often picture this;

And sometimes even like this;

But I really want you to picture something like this; what defines you.

Most of us have a view of ourself being this. Or at least in some shape or form when we visualize it. But what I really want you to do is picture who you are. Ignore what you have done, what you have. Ignore your age, your gender. Even your physical form. Everything that is left is who you really are.

 

That above, is your inner essence. Many are unaware of it, from what actually allows our traditional self-conception to stem through. There are many practices which can allow one to identify it. Such as contemplation and defining oneself through thought and action, and meditation, especially Vipsanna.

 

One's spiritual goal, I believe, is to recognize their inner essence, and how it interacts with the rest of existence. What causes what we do, what we believe in, and so on.

 

My goal is to remove that which separates myself from my inner being. To instead of existing through my ego, which generates those qualities I identify myself as; my beliefs, my age, my height, and other characters, to instead exist through that presence itself.

 

This means removing those parts how I identify myself, leaving that which is both the ego I would like to have, and my inner essence. Many espouse destroying or eliminating the ego, but that jumps ahead a little. It isn't something destroyable, or at least no more than our inner being is, as it is a true extension of it. One cannot exist without the other, just as nothing can exist in sunlight without there being a shadow.

 

 

 

Eventually I want to harmonize with my inner essence; to become just that inner being and exist only in the moment as it.

As I remove these unwanted and detrimental attributes to identifying and being the best possible expression of my inner essence, I have found that as the space between these qualities shorten, the space is filled instead by that inner being.

I have found that as these two selves, my ego and inner being merge; my inner essence becoming allowed to join with the ego. Absorbing those qualities which are representative of that spark and flame and worth keeping for that reason.

Until;

 

They are one.

 

 

 

 

How does this relate to martial arts? How can one control themselves and live life as an art, without ever seeing, knowing, and being themself?