Facing the Ups and Downs of Life

The mind is the agent that is interacting with the world through the senses day in and day out. Whatever interacts with the world through the senses subjects itself to the pulls of opposites, raga and dwesha – attraction and repulsion. It is the mismanagement of attraction and repulsion which creates problems in life. If we are attracted to something, it is we who are attracted, but we then expect the other person or thing to reciprocate, and when that doesn’t happen, attraction leads to frustration. Repulsion is the opposite reaction, whereby we try to repel things that continue to come to us no matter how much we try to avoid them, creating another cause of tension, anxiety. Through this mental disturbance, our balance is lost.  – Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati

 

Some people are more into Yoga, some Zen, some “New Thought,” and others into whatever it is that helps them to feel good.  We are all looking for some way to manage the “ups and downs” of life.  We are seeking inner peace.

I think that the spiritual path begins when we realize that we can’t really win at the game of life the way it has been set up.  Somehow we have been lead to believe that if we just had enough money everything would be perfect.  Or maybe it’s the right love partner, career, physical condition, maybe just a life free from problems.  If things were different we could be happy and fulfilled.  Thus we strive for some possible state of perfection. 

There is a wonderful verse in the Tao Te Ching that goes, “Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it? I do not believe it can be done.”  Think about it.  We are inseparable aspects of a fractal hologram unfolding in the theatre of time and space.  Everything is interrelated.  Do we really think that we can take charge of it all?  It’s pretty clear that our attempts on this lonely planet have brought us close to self-destruction.

True peace of mind comes through the Yogic practice of Ishvara Pranidhana, which means surrender to the will of God, Tao, higher power, super-implicate order, or whatever we want to call it.  This cosmic order is not something apart from who we are.  It is our own essential nature.  It is the unfolding of consciousness. 

The key to facing the ups and downs of life; the inevitable pains, losses and changes, is to welcome them with love and acceptance.  Understand that whatever happens is not personal to you but the working out of a greater process which we call evolution.  But don’t get hung up on evolution as some kind of future agenda.  Instead embrace this moment of being alive and savor it for all its worth.  There is nothing better than this.

 

Of course, our conditioned minds rebel against this.  We want to fix things or demand that someone fix it for us.  However, if we practice acceptance and surrender, along with forgiveness and compassion things do get better.  We learn to be happy in the face of ups and downs.

The Yoga Practice of Ahimsa (non-violence)

 

 

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

      I have often written articles attempting to dispel the obdurate popular notion that yoga=asanas (postures.)  This false notion has been perpetrated by a number of so-called “yoga” teachers.  For instance Bikram Yoga seems to be nothing more than a series of postures practiced in a sweaty environment.  It does have some value; even this fractured fraud helps people to relieve stress.  However it isn’t real yoga.

      Yoga refers to any number of methods for reuniting our individual selves, jivatman, with the Universal Self, Paramatman.  Or as Shankara put it, "To be free from bondage the wise person must practice discrimination between One-Self and the ego-self. By that alone you will become full of joy, recognizing Self as Pure Being, Consciousness and Bliss." Of course, these are just referential terms.  We can think of yoga as a means of de-hypnosis.  It is a way of overcoming the illusion that we are separate “skin-encapsulated egos.” 

      Staying at the Bihar School of Yoga ashram we learned the importance of Karma Yoga.  On its most basic level this means paying attention and observing one’s thoughts and actions objectively while engaged in daily activities.  As Swami Satyananda taught, "...When you do anything, from taking a bath to sweeping the floor to earning your living, try not to think of when it will be finished. Enjoy every action that you do at the time that you do it. Try to enjoy the fact that you exist and that an expression of your existence is in your every action."

      Ahimsa or nonviolence is an integral aspect of yoga practice.  The practice of ahimsa is not just in terms of behavior.  We can refrain from violent behavior and still harbor anger, resentment, jealousy, etc.  In this case we are only causing stress within our own systems.  Even when we are able to refrain from acting out anger for instance, we reveal it in our body language and we feel it as our body unleashes a flood of angry hormones.  To truly practice ahimsa we have to become aware of and detach ourselves from angry thoughts and beliefs.  We have to let go of thoughts that tell us that we are separate from others – that we are not each equal parts of one greater being which we might call God.

      Ultimately Yoga is the practice of being Love.

Conscious Relationships

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things. ~ Dogen Zenji

                What would it be like to be in a truly conscious or enlightened relationship?  In order to answer this we must enter into that experience ourselves.  We must be willing to let go of our ordinary notions which are based on attachment, object relations and ego-identification.  No problem, right?  Such relationship is free from possessiveness, jealousy, control, dependence or codependence.  A truly conscious being is complete within herself.  There is joy in sharing time together but there is the recognition that these temporary forms that we assume arise from and will return their source in pure Being.  As Rumi says, “Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.  They’re in each other all along.”

                Real love is a kind of enlightenment, an awakening to a shared sense of being.  Unfortunately we tend to pull back from this into our defensive ego-positions.  Where there was unity and harmony we fall back into conflict, seeking to please or control, deceit, blame and judgment.  We forget that we have shared the sacred universal force of love and start to question, “is this person really meeting my needs?”  Although we might stay together the pain of our inner separation drives us further apart.  Love is ecstatic, powerful and empowering.  In response the ego retreats in fear and defensiveness.

                Enlightened love begins with work on oneself.  One doesn’t need to change in the ordinary sense of “self-improvement.”  Instead it is a process of self-acceptance and self-inquiry.  Instead of turning to the objects of the world for self-confirmation and gratification, one turns within to find one’s source.  Meditation is key.  Meditation has been shown to accelerate psychological development.  This means that with consistent ongoing practice it can take us into higher stages beyond ordinary ego development.  It can help us to evolve.  It can move us into the possibility of conscious love.

                The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad tells the story of an ancient sage named Yajnavalkya who reached a point in his spiritual development where he decided to renounce his family and wealth and go into the forest to meditate in solitude.  The purpose of the ascetic path, of course, is transcendence.  The ascetic seeks to transcend the world of appearances; of name, form and change.  His wife Maitreyi approached him and he assured her that he would leave his considerable wealth to her, that she would not be left in material need.

Maitreyi, it turns out was also somewhat spiritually evolved.  She asked her husband, “Will wealth keep me from death?”  Yajnavalkya of course replied “No.  You will live and die as an ordinary rich person.”  As we begin to awaken we start to realize that all of the things that we seek and cling to in this world are very temporary, whether wealth, fame, relationships or anything else.  As the common saying goes: you can’t take it with you. 

Maitreyi asks her husband to share the secret of immortality with her and he begins by explaining, “A wife loves her husband not for himself but for the Self within.  A husband loves his wife not for herself but for the Self within.”  We can easily understand this on one level.  We love another person for how they make us feel.  When I encounter my beloved I feel a sense of inner ecstatic delight.  In the same way all of the things that we love in life are basically triggers for an internal state which we call love.  On a deeper level this feeling of ecstatic delight is the momentary recognition of the transcendent being that lives within each and every one of us.

                When we get stuck on the level of name and form we think that there is an object of our love which separate from us.  We fail to recognize the presence of the non-dual Self which is love itself beyond name and form.  As Ram Dass jokes, “We are all God in drag.”  When we look inside ourselves, when we inquire into and rest in our self-nature we find that we are one with the Self whose nature is Being-Consciousness-Bliss.  United inwardly with the Self we are beyond name and form, suffering and mortality.  We are liberated beings, jivanmuktis.

The Yoga perspective says that human beings have three basic psychophysical behavioral modes or gunas.  These are known as tamas, rajas and sattwa.  Tamas is characterized as unconsciousness, inertia and sleep.  Rajas on the other hand is characterized as passionate emotion, strong desire and attachment.  Sattwa is characterized by wisdom and mental/emotional stability.

We can see these three modes embodied in the physiology of the brain.  Science views our brains as evolving over time.  Within us we have a reptilian-brain, mammalian-brain and neo-cortex which is uniquely human.  Nature seems to have incorporated various stages of neural evolution within us.  Our reptilian brain is basically instinct-responsive.  It is concerned with self-preservation and species reproduction.  Our mammalian brain is more sophisticated and associated with the capacity for feelings.  Our more newly evolved brain is shared somewhat with the higher primates but is significantly larger in human beings.  It is associated with our capacity for language and abstract thought. 

We are each composed of these three modes of being, perceiving and interacting.  Our job is to integrate all three in our experience of living in the world.  Ideally our more highly evolved brain should be in charge of our thoughts, feelings and behavior.  However human beings are more than just abstract intellectuals.  In terms of relationships our feelings and emotions are an intrinsic part of who we are.  Even the poor maligned reptile within is necessary for our continued existence.  However, we should rarely rely on it for advice.

                Conscious relationships are based in an awareness of all three modes of functioning within us.  We relate on sexual, emotional and intellectual levels with everyone we meet.  This is just the reality of who we are as embodied beings.  To be able to enter into a conscious relationship we need to have a deep self-awareness.  We need to be aware of our own drives and conditioning.  We also need to be aware that our real self-nature is beyond these.  We need to awaken to the reality that we are luminous, expansive, consciousness-beings perhaps trapped or perhaps just playing in the material world. 

             Conscious relationship means awakening to the Self within all: awakening to Oneness.

Have a Mindful New Year!

Have a Mindful New Year!

 

“Yoga is about becoming aware. Yoga is about managing the negative aspects of our character and developing the positive qualities which uplift our nature, and with that uplifting others as well. When we are expressing these qualities then other people are uplifted, and that is yoga!”

-    Paramhamsa Niranjanananda Saraswati

 

New Year’s Day represents a new beginning, new possibilities and renewed potential for us.  It is a day to consciously release the past and look forward. Many of us make resolutions for the coming year usually involving some bad habits we want to overcome, or perhaps some positive goals we want to achieve.  The reality, of course, is that we tend to fall back into the same old patterns within a short time.  “New Year’s resolutions,” as the joke goes, “are a to-do list for the first week of January.”

Just because we entered a new yearly cycle on an arbitrary date doesn’t mean that our habitual thought patterns, our samskaras in Yogic terms, simply go away.  In fact, according to Yoga they can persist for lifetimes!  They persist because we are mostly unconscious of them.  Our conscious mind is comparable to the tip of iceberg with the vast majority of the mind submerged in the depths of the unconscious.

Mindfulness does not just mean living in the present moment.  There is more to it than that.  We can “live in the moment” while still being quite unaware of the unconscious forces that drive us.  We also have to examine our own thoughts and impulses as objectively as possible.  Yoga meditation emphasizes the development of the “inner witness.”  This is the ability to observe our inner thoughts and emotions without identifying or reacting to them.  Although this capacity is generally developed through sitting meditation, the idea is to bring it forth throughout our daily lives.

I remember a morning when I had experienced a particularly peaceful, even blissful meditation session.  Afterwards I got my coffee and hit the freeway for work.  Within ten minutes I found myself experiencing “road rage” because of the commuter traffic.  So much for my inner peace and bliss!

Peace and bliss are nice and we need to be able to let go of stress and enter into these states regularly for our well-being.  However peace and bliss are not always the point.  We need to learn to be present with painful emotions as well.  As Pema Chodron says, “To stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening.”  Encountering the difficult areas of life with awareness and compassion is where true growth takes place.

So let’s go into the New Year with the resolve to be more aware of our inner selves; to be observant, compassionate, forgiving and grateful for each moment of life – and for our own gift of awareness.  Ultimately it is that dimensionless center of loving awareness which is the essence of who we are underneath all of the temporary identities and circumstances of life. 

"To meditate,” states Hui Neng, (the Sixth Patriarch of Ch'an or Meditation School (638-713) “means to realize inwardly the imperturbability of the Essence of Mind. The reason why we are perturbed is because we allow ourselves to be carried away by the circumstances we are in. Those who are able to keep their mind unperturbed, irrespective of circumstances, have attained Inner Peace." This is not a case of “fake it until you make it.”  Instead we have to be very honest with ourselves and accept who, what and where we are on the path.  As Carl Rogers put it, “As soon as I can accept myself exactly as I am, I can change.”

Namaste!  Happy New Year!