Sutra 1.30: Obstacle #6: Attachment to Senses

Yoga Sutra 1.30 presents us with nine different obstacles of the mind on our journey towards samadhi. These obstacles are disease, dullness, doubt, carelessness, fatigue, sensory attachment, wrong perspective, non-achievement, and non-steadiness.

Today we are delving into the depths of how attachment to our senses (or in Sanskrit: avirati) can be an obstacle on our spiritual journey. As we have mentioned before, these obstacles layer upon one another and are always a symptom of a dis-ease present in body, mind, or spirit.

Sensory compulsion can be all consuming as we live in a world ruled by our senses. And that iron fist is slamming us from every direction imaginable. Wether that sweater I just mentioned is now popping up on my FB or feeling the rush of all those dings of dopamine flooding the airways or still on a sugar high of Christmas cookies, we are inundated not only with sensory experiences, but with those trying to manipulate and manage our experiences for the benefit of themselves, like ninjas in the night.

Sensory pleasure is not the problem. The problem arises when the pleasure becomes a compulsion arising as an expression of lack of consciousness. So because we are not aware that we felt abandoned as a child, we are now compulsively using sex, food, drugs, relationships, shopping, etc., to either give us a sense of completion or to numb out pain we don’t fully understand.

This unconsciousness could play out in an unlimited number of scenarios but will continue to keep us stuck on the spin cycle of chasing, using, and regretting, until we transcend it by creating our reality in relationship to spirit (this is spirituality) versus unknowingly acting out our desires numbed and dumbed by the night ninjas.

Only You Can Realize Spiritual Reality as Real and even more importantly as your Responsibility.

Grateful to YOU,

Thank you for taking the time to read about yoga and engage with my thoughts on the yoga sutras. As always, I hope you receive this as an offering and not a telling and I am always behind you encouraging you to figure out what’s true for you. May you live in joy and ease.

Blessings,

Andrea Dawn