X-Ftn-To: Wade Humeniuk 

"Wade Humeniuk"  wrote:
>> As you can see, serious practice doesn't mean a boring one, but a more
>> demanding one - and, also, more rewarding.
>>
>
>When you say demanding, do you mean demanding of yourself, or that God is
>demanding?  

Drinking beer and watching ball games is far less demanding than the
study of physics, but it's also far less rewarding. You'll find the
similar examples everywhere. 

>Serious and demanding, for me, imply force, effort and struggle.

Not necessarily. Programming in Borland Pascal 7 is demanding, but I
used to spend days, months and years programming in it and I found it
to be great fun. Reading 1000 pages of written material is demanding,
but if the book is good, I'm usually having a great time doing it. I
don't deny that there are demanding things that indeed "imply force,
effort and struggle", and that they usually indeed are spiritually
harmful. Drilling a hole in your own head would surely qualify by your
merits, and there indeed are people who think that it'll make them
more spiritual, but I was not talking about that stuff.

>Is this what you mean?  

Nope, and I also think that you could have come to that conclusion
sooner, because I already explained what I meant.

>This seems to be at odds with surrender.  

Surrender doesn't mean laziness and passive attitude. If you study
mathematics several decades, you must surrender very deeply to it, and
you must also find it very interesting. The same is with NBA
basketball, and also with yoga and everything else. If you define
surrender as doing nothing and always going where there's least
resistance, then it's a negative quality, and I don't teach people to
acquire negative qualities.
After all, _I_ teach surrender, and you could already see that I'm not
very compatible with your assumptions. According to my teaching,
surrender to power makes you powerful. Surrender to God makes you
divine. Surrender to knowledge makes you knowledgeable. Surrender to
sin makes you sinful. So, when I say that one should surrender to God,
I mean that one should acquire all the divine qualities.

>I have
>read your posts where you say you think surrender is the most important
>ingredient, but you seem to be saying that control is also important

I might _seem_ to be saying it, but I'm not saying it.
Awareness, yes. Awakened consciousness, yes. Realization, yes. But
control is something different. But yes, if you think that surrender
means lying down in expectation of imminent death, then I understand
why my words represent a problem.

>(especially is esposing raja yoga (Patanjali) teachings).  

Patanjali taught raja yoga? Well, if he did, it's the first time that
I heard of it, and I did read yoga sutra. Patanjali taught yoga of
eight limbs (asta-anga yogah), AFAIK.

-- 
Homepage: http://www.danijel.org