Developing Your Love Connection: The Art and Science of Kirtan

Kirtan is both an art and a science. It is sung to evoke a feeling that is uplifting and

pure. It is not so much the chanting of the name that is important as the awakening

of the bhava, the feeling or emotion that is associated with it.

- Swami Niranjan Ananda Saraswati

Love is beyond our ordinary range of emotions.  The ego has many feelings associated with it: anger, desire, attraction, pride, resentment, but primarily self-loathing.  Deep inside of us we all feel a longing for love, for connection and acceptance.  Love is not just a personal feeling; instead it is our connection with the universe.  The mystic poet Rumi once wrote, “Love is the glue which holds everything together and it is the everything as well.”  When we are able to truly open to love, we go beyond ourselves and our personal limitations.  As the Bhagavad Gita states, “This supreme Lord who pervades all of existence, the true Self of all creatures, may be realized through undivided love.”

Love alone is real.  However, our egos have the actual free will to accept or deny that reality.  The problem is that our patterns of resistance become ingrained as samskaras.  These are unconscious patterns of thought and feeling that dominate our consciousness and which have been accumulated over lifetimes.  To get beyond these we need help, we need a method, grace, guidance as well as willingness and commitment.  Ego-clinging is worse than drug, alcohol or tobacco addiction and actually underlies all of them.  We tend to use these substances, as well as habits like sex or gambling, as attempts to relieve the suffering of our splintered ego selves; as substitutes for love. 

The ego always goes for a counterfeit: a substance, a “relationship,” career, or something.  It is a way of disguising our self-loathing; putting a pretty face over it and calling it “love.”  As Marianne Williamson wrote in “A Return to Love:” “Emotional energy has got to go somewhere, and self-loathing is a powerful emotion.  Turned inward, it becomes our personal hells: addiction, obsession, compulsion, depression, violent relationships, illness.  Projected outward, it becomes our collective hells: violence, war, crime, oppression.  But it is all the same thing: hell has many mansions too.”

The portal to love is not so difficult though.  It is just our convoluted defenses that make it seem so.  A powerful way to go beyond our ego defenses and open to love comes from the yoga tradition in the form of kirtan.  Kirtan is the devotional singing of mantras: the language of the soul which is incomprehensible to the ego-intellect.  Music itself is a language which transcends intellect and transports us into deeper emotional realms.  Mantras are sounds which, more than representing some rational meaning, are meant to open deeper energies and higher consciousness.  Kirtan is a means of transcending the ego and opening to the Self, who is love pure and simply.  Mantra along with melody and rhythm evokes bhava, or higher emotion.  You don’t have to begin with a specific feeling but simply allow yourself to enter into the experience. 

Prem, love, and bhakti, devotion, are certainly not things that we can fabricate through a technique.  Our true feelings emerge spontaneously.  If you have ever tried to love someone or something you know that it is impossible to make yourself do so.  Instead there is a reservoir of unconditional love and joy at the core of our beings.  It is our Self.  Ultimately, as St. Francis of Assisi put it, “What we are looking for is what is looking.”  Through Bhakti yoga, the path of devotion, we are reconnected with that greater being who lives in and through us.  To quote Rumi again, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

Currently kirtan is becoming popular in our culture.  There are a number of wonderful professional grade chanters out there today.  Much of the music is westernized and departs from the traditional kirtan of India.  This is not necessarily bad as it helps us to participate more easily.  The important point though is to join in and give yourself over to the music, mantra and the divine bhava of kirtan!

Mastering Mind and Emotions

"The only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn't continue to rule your life." – Pema Chodron

When we are overcome with anxiety, depression, anger, lust or even joyful excitement, we can begin to understand that we are under the sway of our thoughts and emotions.  A panic attack or an episode of depression can actually be recognized as a call to awakening.  Our emotions both pleasurable and painful can be utilized as a means of developing a deeper awareness.  Instead of trying to avoid certain feelings and seeking others, we can learn to be present as a witness.  We can move in the direction of awareness.

Ordinarily we go along thinking that the world is as we think it is and that we are as we think we are.  It can be upsetting to challenge our core beliefs about our world and ourselves.  A crisis though, can bring forth some of our subconscious conditioning and enable us to release it.  There is a spiritual saying that ordinary people pray that they avoid catastrophes in their lives while a saint prays that she may be able to face all of them.  Spiritual development, just like psychological development, requires that we undergo crises as we transition between stages. 

The medical model of psychotherapy tends to medicate away the uncomfortable emotional symptoms of possible spiritual development.  Many clients complain of a general numbing effect on their emotions.  Mindfulness offers a different approach.  Instead of avoiding distressing thoughts and emotions, we learn to observe them.  Instead of following the chain reaction of stimulus-response we learn to sit put, observe and let go.  The main key is – don’t buy in, don’t take the bait.  Instead be aware of how you get sucked into negative thoughts and emotions.  Then make a conscious effort to develop more positive thoughts and emotions.  Reading spiritual books can actually be very helpful as long as you remember to put those words into practice.

Ultimately, and most importantly, we need to realize that we are not our thoughts or emotions.  We are not our minds or our bodies.  We are beings of consciousness, i.e. spiritual beings.  We are beings of love.  Love is much more than our ordinary emotions.  It is the presence of God, Self, True Being within us.  The only antithesis of love is our resistance to it. 

Becoming a Conscious Co-creator of Reality

Form is emptiness and emptiness is not other than form.

-    The Heart Sutra

To create reality: Focus beyond the outcome - as if it already happened.
- Gregg Braden

You and I live in a world of outcomes.  We tend to forget that they are the outcomes of our thoughts and emotions.  Our world is not given or inflicted upon us from outside but created within us by our conscious and (mostly) unconscious choices.  The idea of creating our reality is recently popular.  However we have been unconsciously manifesting our reality all along.  Our level of consciousness determines our experience of reality. 

According to yoga psychology we do not come into this world as “blank slates.”  Instead we are already “seeded” with the karma accumulated in past lifetimes.  As Patanjali states in the Yoga Sutras, “As long as the root of karma exists there will be various fruits: the birth of different species of life, their lifespan and experiences.”  In other words, our life experience is the outcome of our previous thoughts and actions (and I will add on to Patanjali here in light of our modern understanding of the cosmos) going back to the Big Bang 14 or so billion years ago. 

What we experience in this life – what we enjoy and what we endure – is indeed given to us – by ourselves.  According to Chagdud Rimpoche our life experience is like reading a book which we wrote but then put away and forgot.  Although we may struggle with the way seemingly “innocent” beings suffer, the real message is about taking personal responsibility.  In order to end suffering we need to look seriously into how we continue to create it.  Often the best way we can help others is to encourage them to take responsibility for themselves.  As Paul Ferrini writes, “It doesn't work when you take responsibility for how others feel or make others responsible for how you feel. It doesn't work when you ask others to fix things for you or when you try to fix things for others. These old patterns do not empower you, nor do they empower others.”  Does that mean you shouldn’t try to say someone who is drowning?  Of course not.

As we awaken, as we become more conscious, we can take control of our karma.  We can’t really go back and change the past and we sometimes have to endure the present circumstances of our lives, but the future is up for grabs.  Through awareness and through a commitment to positive thoughts, feelings and actions we can overcome negative karmic seeds before they ripen in our experience.  Through commitment to the spiritual path and the goal of awakening we can overcome karma altogether.

Desire is not necessarily a bad thing.  It depends again on the level of consciousness from which it originates.  The desire for personal wealth and pleasure is natural but if we seek to fulfill it at the expense of others we perpetuate our own ignorance and suffering.  If we suppress our desires and let others take advantage of us that doesn’t work well either.  A higher level of consciousness tells us that we need to balance our needs and desires with that of others, our communities, our world, our planet . . . We are all in this together as one being. 

A powerful Sanskrit mantra to help us develop this level of consciousness is:

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu

(May all beings everywhere be happy and free from suffering.)

lokah: location, realm, all universes existing now
samastah: all beings sharing that same location
sukhino: centered in happiness and joy, free from suffering
bhav: the divine mood or state of unified existence
antu: may it be so, it must be so (antu used as an ending here transforms this mantra into a powerful sankalpa, or intention.)

We can use this mantra as a tool to develop a higher consciousness and to consequently create a better reality for ourselves and others.  Recite it daily as you meditate while entering into a state of oneness and feeling waves of peace flowing throughout all existence.  Try it and see what happens.

Finding Moksha through Yama and Niyama

“The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him - that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.”
-Swami Vivekananda

This weekend we made our way to Santa Monica to participate in the Moksha Festival, celebrating “yoga, health and sacred music.”  I found it a wonderful opportunity to immerse myself in vibrations of mantra, spiritual community and good vegetarian Indian food.  What more could one ask in life?  “Moksha” means spiritual liberation and is the goal of life according to the yoga tradition.

The truth is, I am a bit of a crank when it comes to yoga.  I find the commercialized yoga that exists in this country to be a more or less appalling travesty of the spiritual science I have studied since 1970s.  Yoga has become synonymous with postures and the cult of physical perfection.  In reality the tradition of yoga is about methodologies for merging the individual consciousness with the Universal Consciousness through meditation, devotion, discriminative wisdom and selfless service.  However, what I discovered is that behind the commercialized trappings the true spirit of yoga does exist in L.A. 

For me, the essence of yoga is presented in the eight-limbed, or ashtanga path laid out by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras.  The eight limbs of yoga are 1) yama 2) niyama 3) asana 4) pranayama 5) pratyahara 6) dharana 7) dhyana and 8) samadhi.  These can be loosely translated as 1) self-restraint 2) right conduct 3) posture 4) breath-energy practices 5) mindful introversion 6) focused attention 7) meditative awareness and 8) super-conscious awareness.  The first four are generally referred to as the “outer” limbs of yoga while the second four are known as the “inner” limbs.  The inner aspect of yoga culminating in samadhi is the essence of yoga, however the outer aspects are a necessary support for its realization.

For now let’s just focus on the first two limbs of yama and niyama.  They form the ethical foundation on which yoga practice is based.  As Swami Satyananda Saraswati states, “Yoga is rooted in the notion of developing a positive personality. Therefore ethical discipline or the practice of correct conduct is necessary for success in yoga. This is the basis of yama and niyama, the two moral backbones of yoga. They define the attributes to be practised in everyday life by a spiritual aspirant.” 

It is important to note that the yamas and niyamas are not “commandments.”  They are not authoritarian rules to be met with external rewards or punishments.  Instead they are rules meant to help us develop inner peace, joy and spiritual awakening.  “When one is sufficiently advanced in the practices of yamas and niyamas,” states Swamiji, “one can face every temptation by calling in the aid of pure and restraining thoughts. When the mind becomes pure it attains the state of steadiness and becomes one-pointed. If these positive qualities are not cultivated, the mind cannot be led to steadiness. One needs to be well established in yama-niyama to attain perfection in yoga. When one is perfectly established in them, samadhi will come by itself.” 

Yamas and niyamas are each five-fold.  The five yamas are primarily concerned with self-restraint; restraining those impulses which lead to both negative consequences in life and to inner stress and turmoil.  They are 1) ahimsa – non-violence, 2) satya – truthfulness, 3) asteya – non-stealing, 4) brahmacharya - sexual and sensual continence and 5) aparigraha – non-covetousness.  Hopefully these are at least superficially self-explanatory.  They are the same rules that seem to underlie all of the religious traditions.  They help us to develop a healthy and positive personality. 

The niyamas are more concerned with the cultivation of positive qualities within ourselves.  They are shaucha – cleanliness, 2) santosha – contentment, 3) tapas – austerity, or “simplicity,” 4) swadhyaya – enquiry into the nature of the self and 5) ishwarapranidhana – surrender to a “higher power.”  The yamas and niyamas go together and support each other.  By developing the inner discipline of the niyamas self-restraint becomes easier.  “Yama and niyama are inter-dependent. Niyama strengthens and safeguards yama. For example, if one is contented, one will not steal, hurt others or tell lies and will find it easy to practise non-covetousness.”

So . . .   What I experienced at the Festival was a community of people who by and large exemplified yama amd niyama.  Certainly the vibes were non-violent.  Almost everyone seemed peaceful and content.  There was no overt sexual activity although there was a display of attractive physical features.  Overall it was stress free and blissful.  There was a plethora of sacred mantra chanting which is a powerful way of entering into spiritual surrender.  I found my kundalini dancing with devotional energy. 

Perhaps a cautionary note is needed as well.  We need to avoid becoming too harsh and perfectionistic in the practice of yama and niyama.  Don’t use them as a new way of shaming and blaming oneself or others.  I simply try my best and hope to improve as I go along.  Remember to practice forgiveness and compassion for yourself and for others.  No one is perfect, but we can all strive for a more positive way of being in the world and with ourselves. 

For a deeper understanding of yama and niyama please go to http://www.yogamag.net/archives/2009/ajan09/y&n.shtml from which the above quotations were taken.

Time, Space & Consciousness

The mind of an individual is a part of the cosmic universal mind. You must understand that your individual mind is part of the universal mind. The space in this room is an individual space, but it is also a part of a greater space. Because you have four walls around it, you call it your room space. Similarly, the individual mind is a concept and not a reality. Actually there is only universal mind. Individual mind should not be brought into consideration at all. 'Your mind' is a concept and in meditation you have to blow it up. What happens when you break the walls, where is the individual space? It becomes part of the total space. So the whole crux of the matter is the individualisation of the mind which is actually a process of self-hypnotism.

-    Swami Satyananda Saraswati

Whether we want to admit it or not, we live in a reality which is a projection of our psyche.  This is a central understanding of Yoga Vedanta.  In the 18^th century the German philosopher Immanuel Kant declared that space and time were mental constructs.  In the twentieth century Einstein stated, “. . . the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”  However, we are so accustomed to accepting our sensory display as given that we rarely appreciate the consciousness within us that gives rise to it.  Without consciousness there would be no experience of a reality.

We are immersed in and enlivened by a larger being who is none other than ourselves.  At the same time we are, of course, individuals.  We have an individual choice as human beings whether we want to tune into and connect with our greater being or ignore it.  There is a seeming paradox in operation here: one needs to individuate in order to reconnect with a greater wholeness.  When we are embedded in the conditioning provided by our families, culture, media, educational system, etc. we are limited by it.  This is why shamans and yogis have traditionally separated themselves in forests, caves, or ashram communities.  A supportive community is very helpful.  Even then it is most important to tune into the quiet guidance of intuition within. 

Yoga practice helps us to learn to tune into our bodies as antennas.  We can feel things in our bodies before they ever reach our conscious minds.  We can also learn to influence our external reality through our bodily presence.  That presence is our awareness which is fundamentally free from the limits of our spacetime imaginings.  We are beings of interconnected energetic alliances, neurons in the hyperspatial Self.  We are all One.  As Max Planck, one of the originators of modern quantum mechanics, stated, “All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.” 

True meditation enables us to step outside of our personal and collective psychic cocoons, to observe our working models of reality in light of a higher dimensional perspective.  Lama Govinda writes, "If we speak of the space experience in meditation we are dealing with an entirely different dimension." He continues, "Vision is bound up with a space of higher dimension, and therefore timeless." He further explains, "An experience of higher dimensionality is achieved by integration of experiences of different centres and levels of consciousness. Hence the indescribability of certain experiences of meditation on the plane of three dimensional consciousness."  This is also true of certain psychedelic or “entheogenic” experiences.

The “ego” in this sense is that particular software component that keeps us fixated on our individual timespace realities.  It is absolutely necessary if we are to function coherently on in our collective 3D hallucination.  On the other hand spiritual awakening shakes us out of this collective dream and opens us to new possibilities.