Whole, Complete, Missing Nothing

Sri Brahmananda Sarasvati, the teacher of my teachers, defines yoga as the state of missing nothing. Essentially, he was speaking of wholeness, completeness, and fullness. Most of us operate from a place of thinking we lack something, we miss something. We are missing a man or a woman, or a particular element in our relationship with this man or woman; we think we are missing fulfillment because we do not have this object or property or adventure; we think we are missing something in the present moment because we wish we could change the past or we wish we were already in the future. Much of how the world operates, how people act, is from a place of thinking they are missing something. People do not wake up and think "I'm going to make as many beings suffer as possible". But people act from a place where they mistakenly think they have a void to fill. They have identified with this void and use others, exploit others, kill others, steal from others, etc as an attempt to cover up what they think they are missing.

Yoga teaches us that we are already whole. When one is whole, it does not mean one becomes passive in the world. Quite the opposite. Whereas the actions of a person thinking they have a void to fill tend to be selfish in nature, the actions of a whole person tend to be selfless. Instead of taking, the whole person gives, offers up his or her life to service, sees where there may be suffering in the world and does his or her best to uplift it. We are all whole, and our job in our practice is to uncover those blockages that prevent us from seeing this. We may make excuses as to why we are not whole-- because we did this thing in the past, said that thing in the past, hurt others in the past, will continue to hurt others in the future. But wholeness does not mean perfection. Wholeness means that we are complete as we are, with no prerequisites or conditions to fulfill. When we accept our wholeness, we can look at the world with a better understanding. There is no such thing as "good" or "bad" people, only those who have embraced their wholeness and those who still mistakenly think they have a void they need to fill.

Remember your true nature as a Holy Being, a complete soul missing nothing. When you change the way you look at yourself, the way you look at the world and treat everyone else start to change too.