Let's Get Naked

Love is your Self. It is your real name and the name of every living being. But, you will not truly know and be this Self-love until you are willing to exchange your identity for Truth.

- Mooji

 

In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna explains that our physical identity is like a suit of clothes that we shed at the time of death only to don a new suit in our next rebirth.  I remember coming across this passage as a teenager and the tremendous impact it had on me.  The importance of this information is not so much about “reincarnation” which we may or may not believe in.  It is about the nature of our inner, deeper being; the soul or atman.  The teaching points to our inner core of being which is timeless and all-pervading.

In the yoga tradition we regard both body and mind to be instruments or vehicles of consciousness.  They are forms that our formless essence assumes for the sake of human experience.  They are wonderful forms through which we can dance, sing, create make love and stand in awe of nature as it is presented through the mind and senses.  When we are attuned to our inner being we experience life as joyful play.  We incarnated in these forms for the sake of expressing our joyful, loving essence.  Perhaps it seems that somewhere something went wrong.

What went wrong is that we fell into avidya, ignorance.  Remember that ignorance in this sense doesn’t mean a lack of intellectual knowledge.  Instead it means that we have mistaken the unreal for the real.  We have become identified with body and mind and have forgotten our true nature which is pure, loving, “naked” awareness.  Naked awareness is pure awareness, without thoughts, opinions, judgment, or analysis.  It is pure presence.  The whole point of Yoga is to overcome ignorance and once again rest in our intrinsic state of being. 

As we explored in previous posts, our basic nature as pure awareness is obscured by our attachments based on our own mistaken identity.  Our self-nature is love.  We don’t need to seek love, earn love or fear losing it.  Instead we need to relax deeply, surrender our hopes and fears and allow ourselves to be – not this or that, but simply to be.  The spiritual work, sadhana, we do is simply a means of clearing away everything that obscures the light within.  We need to get naked.

Getting naked physically implies a vulnerability.  We have been conditioned to be ashamed of our naked bodies.  Actually getting naked with a group of supportive people can be very liberating.  I went to a Tantric retreat for my first time decades ago.  Honestly I was expecting meditation, talk, mantra and yantra, etc.  I found the retreat center, a large cabin in the forest, walked up the wooden steps onto a beautiful deck with a group of nude strangers lounging in the sun.  All of the sudden I was embarrassed to have clothes on!

In the Tantric tradition nakedness is seen as an expression of one’s deeper nature.  Naked Tantric yogis aren’t out to shock or seduce anybody.  Instead they are present with the body as it is, unadorned, unapologetic and absolutely pristine.  It is a symbolic vehicle of our deeper selves. 

We are beings of consciousness and energy, formlessness and form.  Neither can be denied.  All forms however arise and dissolve within the formless expanse of consciousness, of awareness.  The Yoga Vasishta tells us that on the immense scale of the universe which comes into being through what we now call the Big Bang, expands and collapses after billions and billions of years, there is an underlying consciousness that exists before, during and after.  And, yes that consciousness is present within us.

When I was second or third grade I had a favorite shirt.  It was a forest green (which I called “army green”) corduroy shirt.  I thought it made me look military and badass though I suspect no one else was fooled.  It was also very comfortable.  I wore it so much that it became worn out.  The ribs of the corduroy became worn down and the color faded away.  Still I insisted on wearing it until one day my mother, who was embarrassed to send me to school in it, threw it away.  Although we did find a new shirt that was very similar, I lost my attachment to it.  I was not that shirt!

Similarly we adopt beliefs, roles, and identities that are not who we are on a deeper level.  Our awareness is obscured by our conditioning.  At some point these no longer serve us and may even be ripped away by life circumstances.  Let Mom take your shirt.  Revel in naked awareness!  Awaken to your true nature as Love.  When we let go of concepts, beliefs and descriptions of ourselves and the world we can enter into the abiding peace and joy of our natural state.  When we step out of our minds and open our hearts we can experience the radiant love at the core of our beings.