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.
