Yoga and Total Health — February 2018

(^2222) YOGA AND TOTAL HEALTH • February 2018YOGA AND TOTAL HEALTH • February 2018
The term appeared in the column
‘The Thinker’ in the November 2017
issue of ‘Yoga and Total Health’ and was
said to mean “everything and anything
is all right”. It made me think. On the
one hand it might say the same thing
as what I have often heard at The Yoga
Institute, i.e. that everything happens
for our best. That is not so easy to accept
at times where one might be ill, going
through a bad crisis, experiencing that
simply nothing one tries works out,
or feeling badly treated. Yet, over the
years, I have managed to accept quite
well that everything that happens to
me is for my best - even if it appears
not to be so at all. Because whatever
else it may be, it is a chance that
makes me try harder to understand
and change myself, a test of my
degree of acceptance, patience and
faith, and a very necessary exercise to
attain mental balance, until, one day,
positivity or negativity do not make
any difference anymore and the scales
stop moving up and down all the time.
When I say that I have managed
this quite well, of course, this is firstly
relative (it could be much more but it
could also be much less) and secondly
it covers only things that happen to
me personally. Things that happen to
society as a whole - or large parts of
it - might still get me excited and
far from accepting. So, sometimes I
wonder whether maybe I have not
changed so much in my feelings about
this “everything that happens is for the
best” Maybe I have just extended my
ego/person from an ego supported
by my personal feelings, fears, wishes,
and frustrations only, to an ego that
includes the feelings, fears, wishes,
and frustrations of others, too. That
seems to be a good thing, so much
better than if someone can only think
of his own good without caring in
the least about the good of others.
But the fact remains that it is still a
matter of ego, maybe some outlet for
my tendency to want to fight for or
against something, and that it contains
maybe much fantasizing. Because
my feeling, thinking and sometimes
resultant acting are only based on
how I see matters and how I think
others must feel. Maybe they all feel
differently from what I imagine they
must be feeling. Usually my opinions
are also very different from those in my
surroundings. So with all my good will
and efforts, maybe I am spending my
energy in not the most effective ways,
and I am stuck in an ego-mousetrap!
One solution to this problem is Dr.
Jayadeva’s advice of not forming
halta Hai”
Hella Naura

C

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