A challenge came recently. As so often happens it came as two simultaneous messages that initially seemed contradictory.
Message 1: A question — why are you still doing the practices? Isn’t it time to stop? The question arrived in a manner that could not be ignored and must be taken seriously.
Message 2: An event — I spent several days at a Yoga/Meditation/Vedanta retreat with a teacher who is deeply valued and trusted. At this retreat we dissolved into the practices and their value and impact was undeniable. How could I stop? Why would I stop? I brought a few friends who hadn’t spent time with classical yoga swamis. The impact the swami had on my dear friends L and V seemed to provide additional confirmation that Something Big is Happening Here.
Practices: By practices here we mean specific daily processes of meditation, kriya yoga, hatha yoga. Specific activities undertaken in an atmosphere of ritual and devotion. I’ve been doing this daily for years, after being initiated into the practices of the Isha and Sivananda schools.
Understanding and Reconciliation
Stop the practices! The practices are divine! It took some time and guidance for this seeming contradiction to melt away. As it did a new understanding dawned:
Ego was again in control, and needed to be sublimated into a more proper perspective.
Who are the practices for? Who does the practices?
Practices are a tool for bringing the body and mind into peace and stability, and they should be done by the body and mind. Once the body and mind are stable and peaceful they can step out of the spotlight of our self-identity. Only then are we ready to manifest the Divine nature within, the Atman.
So the reconciliation of the seeming contradiction above is that I (capital-I, the Atman/Spirit/Source/Divine) don’t do the practices, even though I may witness them being done by i (lowercase i, the body mind and ego). I may allow i to do the practices, keeping them in their proper perspective of tools to raise energies and provide space for the Light to shine.
So what happened? Didn’t I already know this?
A year ago I was initiated into a second school of classical yoga, and a new set of practices. The Pranayama practices as taught by the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta school are powerful tools, increasing and balancing the energies of the body, mind, and other systems. It felt like leveling up, to add these practices to the Isha kriya yoga I’d been doing for years.
Every day the body and mind were energized. This person felt and acted younger than he had in decades. And so the activities of the body and mind increased. And so focus drifted in this direction. And so focus on that which is beyond the body and mind dwindled. And so ego was again in the driver’s seat.
And the cycle continues, returning to the first and last lesson. It is expressed in countless artworks, innumerable philosophies and teachings.
- John Lennon wrote the Beatles’ song “All you need is Love“
- In the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13 enumerates the myriad actions and capabilities and activities of human beings, and ends with “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. … And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.“
- Sadhguru’s Isha Kriya meditation repeats over and over “I am not the body, I am not even the mind.”
- The teachings of Vedanta are summarized in the 4 Mahavakyas. Among these is “Ayam Atma Brahma“, which can be translated as “The Self is the Absolute”.
Gratitude to teachers who manifest the Light and continue to help shake this person out of their ruts and tendencies and samskaras:
Terry Swejkoski of the Conscious Clarity Center
Peace Swami Sankarananda Saraswati of the Divine Grace Yoga Ashram
And a cameo appearance from another teacher reminding us to continually practice the separation of i and I:
Bob Marley and the Rastafarian model of I and I.