Thoughts from the talks given on the second week of April 2014.
The system is never concerned in your fulfillment. Whatever it presents to you is a mean of transient pleasure that chains you more and allow to enslave you more and more to the patterns of the system. The system; which is in no mean a person or a group of people, but the totality of social economic and power relationships; regards you only as a particular nut, a screw in a big mechanism… for the system you are not you but what the system wants you to be: a consumer, Mr. or Mrs. and such, an employee, a lawyer, a president… the system will not serve you. On the contrary… it is built in a way that you will serve the system, that you sacrifice your presence, your inner peace, your goals… for the sake of the goals the system sets for you. The system shifts your attention always outwards, away from yourself, away from your innermost desires.
Political parties are a good example (a bad example as a matter of fact). The youth, full of hope and desire to make the world we live in a better place, join political parties and sometimes give the life for the sake of this political direction or that… the youth thinks that being a part of a political party they will be able to manifest their energy and be fulfilled. But the result is most of the time disappointing… political parties are more of a “manufactura” in which the youth is standardized to suite the frames of the system. Schools? Universities? Not much better!
When Mahatma Gandhi wanted to change the world he is living in, he did not choose to be part of the system… he chose the inner path, the path of inner growth. He stated it simply: “be the change!” Ironically the system uses Gadhiji’s saying as a hollow slogan now… nevertheless, Gandhi did become the change he wanted to see in the world. Through the movement of Satyagraha he could bring the inner growth out, and showed that in a proper setting the inner strength of peaceful warriors can shake mighty thrones. If Gandhi had chosen the classic way of violent struggle, I doubt he could have achieved both personal and national freedom.
Satyagraha is a living example of how non-violence, personal growth and yogic values are not confined to the space of the mat. It shows how the path to the inner space can lead to a better world. It is not true that yoga except the world as it is without trying to change it. It is just that we start change the other way… from inside out, with fulfillment being the start point not the destination. (read more in the next blog post).
