ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. Is possible.
I got caught up in a really challenging situation in my head the other day. Retrospectively I realised that I could have expressed a desire that has been long suppressed. At the time as I was teaching on a retreat so my head mind and body were within the safety that I was holding. However as soon as the retreat was over I was beating myself up.
WHY DIDNT I JUST GO FOR IT??? However when I started looking at what had really happened I realised that my consistent practise of yoga and particularly the Yamas and Niyamas had held me within a safety net and that previous victim or immature behaviour had been - in the language of psychology - re-consolidated.
AND THEN I happened to go to a lecture at SOAS on this the following day, and Johannes Bronkhorst who was giving the lecture was speaking about how this memory-re consolidation - is pretty much what the following yoga sutras were talking about:
1.50-51
"When a yogi has attained the insight connected with absorption the mental trace of that insight comes about anew and anew.
The mental trace borne from that insight impedes other mental traces.
The mental trace that arises from the insight connected with absorption obstructs the stock of mental traces that has arisen out of the insight connected with everyday wakefulness. `Since the mental traces connected with everyday wakefulness have now been Overcome no mental contents arise from thise any longer. One this mental contents have been suppressed, absorption comes about followed by insight connected with absorption and then the mental traces connected with that insight. In this way the stock of mental traces increases again and again followed by insight then mental traces."
This is fundamentally neuroplasticity - how with continuing practise the behaviours that really didnt help us in life (conditioned patterns) can be reordered, reset and transcended even in the unconscious mind. I find this incredibly exciting!!!
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