Re: Literature

I have lately been enjoying books (and a few CDs) by Eckhart Tolle. He translates the eternal truths of all spiritual literature to a form accessible to the modern man, without the baggage of extra concepts. One thing he always says is to not to become a spiritual seeker - a person who tries to achieve a state of perfection but never quite reaches it, because he/she is searching for it in time, in the future. So enlightenment becomes a future state to be achieved, and the present moment where all life happens is missed. He also advocates that people stay present in everyday activities such as washing dishes and turn them into a sort of meditation.

But I think this does not mean one could not have practices like NSR (or whatever else kind of) meditation, yoga, and other methods and techniques. It's just a matter of not making them a means to end and missing the life that happens right now ("I can't be happy until some future point where I have transcended these internal/external limitations in my life").

I was just reading some book on yoga the other day and it is very easy to get lost in a system that says: your mind can not be free until you've mastered a certain set of asanas and purified the body and cleansed the chakras. Then, only then, you should move into meditation and pranayama and after a lifetime of diligent practice you may reach the highest level. But that's just one system, one perspective. There is some truth to it, but no truth is THE truth as ultimately there are only perspectives.