Why Quiet the Mind?

What's the point of quieting the mind? Patanjali says that yoga is the quieting of the mind and then the seer abides in her own true nature.

Yoga students typically roll out their mats to stay in shape or reduce stress, not necessarily to know who they truly are. But when we quiet the mind, even for a moment, we experience an awakened state.

With a quiet mind, we observe the world without our past conditioning and future fears or expectations colouring our present experience. We can see that the world is not happening “to us,” but rather that we are all experiencing awareness.

With stillness, the true nature, or deeper self, is touched. When we drop the incessant mind chatter, even for a split second, we can get a flash of our true selves. This can initially surface as a feeling of deep peace, fullness, or joy bubbling up for no reason.

Once we connect to the essential aspect within, we can allow that peaceful part of ourselves to have a larger presence in our lives. We can start to resolve the age-old question “who am I?” Without doing this, we can spend our lives searching in all the wrong places for meaning and guidance. The heart of the spiritual journey is the quest to know who we are and is perhaps the purpose of our lives.