8. Relax into your True Nature🔗

Let us enter into the next sutra. The next sutra throws light on another truth.

This is another beautiful sutra. Let me give you the translation. Here Patanjali says, 'This results in relaxation into one's true nature of limitlessness and total understanding.'

Listen: When the thoughts disappear, when the cessation happens, when the chitta-vrittis are no more, when the mental actions are no more, it results in relaxation into one's own true nature. Please understand: anything you can experience again and again is a pattern. Any experience you can enter into and come out of is just a mental pattern. By this definition, even your sleep is a pattern. Even your sleep is a pattern. You go in and come out, you go in and come out; it is a pattern. When you really relax from everything, you are established in your own true self. Whatever you see and experience is because of your thought patterns. Whatever you see in the outer world - whether it is your body, mind, world, relationships

A small story about how our life experiences are changed just by our thought patterns:

Once an old villager traveled to a nearby village for some work. On his way back, from a distance he saw that his house was on fire. He started rolling on the ground and crying, ‘My house is gone, my house is gone!’ Hearing the noise, his first son came running to him and said, ‘Father, don’t worry. Don’t you remember, you sold that house just two days back? The villager suddenly sat up and wiped his tears, saying, ‘Oh, yes! I remember.’ He was completely relaxed. Suddenly his second son came up and said, ‘Father, it is true we sold the house, but we have not yet got the payment!’ Again the villager dropped down and started rolling on the ground and wailing, ‘Oh, my house is on fire, is there nobody to save it?’ He started calling out to all the gods... in India that is the only 911! Within a few minutes, his third son arrived, saying, ‘Don’t worry father, just this morning I received the payment and deposited it in the bank. The others don’t know about it yet. So it is not our house anymore.’ Then immediately the villager sat up again, smiling, ‘Thank God, everything is okay! Everything is okay.’

Please understand: The same situation, same person - one moment he is feeling the deep suffering, but the next moment, he is completely relaxed. Just see how your thought patterns can influence your response even to critical situations! Without your knowledge, your life is being run by your thought patterns.

Write down 3 situations in your life, where you felt pained or hurt. Now, write down the fact as it happened, without bringing your perception into it. Compare the differences between the perceived situation and the actual fact.