"Unlocking the Path to Becoming a Yogi: Essential Steps and Mindset Shifts"

Yoga is not just some asana, pranayama practice, reciting mantras, or reading philosophy, it is a way of living, just like breathing. If you do not understand this and have no commitment to live Yoga, well better would be do not waste your time by giving it a second thought. Yoga in very short is the quest for liberation of "who you in reality are", it is an eternal sci-art (science + art) intended to reveal and manifest the Eternal.

आदिस्वभावः विकृतमहान् सप्त विकृतस्वभावाः

षोडशकणानां तु विकारो न यशसा पुरुषस्य विकारः

So, when we hear the Eternal, it simply means "just be yourself", just be unprogrammed, unconditional awareness. Yoga can be well seen as a tree, the bark is not the tree; the leaves are not the tree; the branches or roots are the tree, but all together is a tree, so if any of the elements is missing, the tree will die.

What does being a Yogi mean? In simple words yet deep meaning - To be a yogi means someone willing to break free of the coffins built around them by others. As in simple explanation and definition all over which says Yoga means union - a Yogi is someone who dares to be himself/herself by breaching the physical boundaries to be able to touch and experience everything in the universe by living life in alignment with moral and ethical values.

पार्थ नैवेह नामुत्र विनाशस्तस्य विद्यते ।

न हि कल्याणकृत्कश्चिद् दुर्गतिं तात गच्छति ॥

As a human being, we all move up the ladder of evolution, the way we want or say the way we let ourselves be played on by Prakriti (the three doshas and gunas), and thus the center of consciousness moves into successively higher bodies. We all are unique and different many let themselves be trapped by Maya and so all of us at the lowest evolutionary status are aware only of our physical entity and live as though that alone were real, for them simple survival and physical maintenance are their sole drives. In the next step of evolution, the individual begins to identify intensely with his feelings, especially his emotions, and gauges all things by his emotional reaction to them, and thus comes a state where this person demands that his religion be a devotional one of inspiration and “love” that will reunite him with his “loved ones” in “the sweet by and by” where he will be everlastingly “happy.” Moving on to the next rung of the evolutionary ladder, the being becomes identified with and absorbed in the senses, reaching out for more and novel sensory experiences. On the next rung, one discovers the wonder of intellect, the state where one starts to see themselves as superior to others. Although physical, emotional, and sensory conditions may still greatly affect him, he has grown somewhat tired of them. But now he has this new toy, the whole new dimension of the intelligent mind, the ability to bring into his scope of perception ideas of things he never dreamed of in previous lives. Just as a person who has almost died of thirst tends to drink too much, or someone who has been starving tends to eat too much, in the same way, the intellectual man ends up with mental indigestion.

Finally, the spiritual intuition arises, and it dawns on them that playing with all those ideas has not really produced any change or gotten them anywhere. So there comes a time when one realizes that abstractions are no longer enough and Yoga begins and later a Yogi/Yogini is born once we truly see that each of us is born with our bodies as a unique constellation of tensions and ease of the musculoskeletal landscape, the impact of habits, the impact of emotional-psychological-physical trauma due to Samskaras (mental imprints formed as a result of our past experiences). Many on the path do have a description of the goal but lose the map, as there is in reality no map for a spiritual conscious living and indeed finding oneself is to go into the unknown, so no map can be ever found. If there is any goal, the goal of the spirit is to be like the radiant drop of dew dropping and merging in the infinite Ocean of Being, question arises how? Now, a little frustration prevails and Yoga begins.

"Yoga is the beginning of the end" - Yogananda Ji

And Patanjali Sutra अथ योगानुशासनम् is to be known in little depth. "NOW THE DISCIPLINES OF YOGA" - ”now” indicates the state of mind. If you are disillusioned, if you are hopeless, if you have completely become aware of the futility of all desires, if you see your life as meaningless – whatever you have been doing up to now has simply fallen dead nothing remains in the future, you are in absolute despair – anguish, suffering, not knowing what to do, not knowing where to go, not knowing to whom to look, just on the verge of madness or suicide or death, your whole pattern of life suddenly has become futile. If this moment has come, now you can understand the science of yoga, the discipline of yoga. If that moment has not come, you can go on studying yoga, you can become a great scholar, but you will not be a yogi. Intellectually you can become interested, and through your mind, you can be related to yoga, but yoga is nothing if it is not a discipline. Yoga is not a shastra; it is not a scripture. It is a discipline. It is something you have to do. It is not curiosity; it is not philosophic speculation. It is deeper than that. It is a question of life and death. So, if the moment has come where you feel that all directions have become confused, all roads have disappeared; the future is dark, and every desire has become bitter, and through every desire you have known only disappointment; all movement into hopes and dreams has ceased. What is discipline? Discipline means creating an order within you.

A stone I died and rose again a plant.
A plant I died and rose an animal;
I died an animal and was born a man.
Why should I fear? What have I lost by death?

As a man, death sweeps me from this world of men
That I may wear an angel’s wings in heaven;
Yet e’en as angel may I not abide,
For nought abideth save the face of God.

Thus o’er the angels’ world, I wing my way
Onwards and upwards, unto boundless lights;
Then let me be as nought, for in my heart
Rings as a harp song that we must return to Him. (RUMI)

“Following yama and niyama is the basic qualification to practice yoga. The qualification is not simply that one wants to do yoga, for the holy text says: ‘But he who has not first turned away from his wickedness, who is not tranquil and subdued, or who mind is not at rest, he can never obtain the Self [even] by knowledge’ (Katha Upanishad 1.2.24).