Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll
Ian Dury and the Blockheads (Youtube)
is all my brain and body need
vs.
I have given you the tools. All you have to do is use them.
Sadhguru
I tend to dive into new endeavors with enthusiasm and 100% effort. For me this passion can last for years or decades, but doesn’t always last forever. So I find myself moving through repeated patterns like this:
- Discovery — a new field captures my attention.
- Love Affair — I fall in love with this new interest and devote much of my spare time and energy to exploring and developing its possibilities.
- Mastery — I reach some level of mastery in this new field or accomplish a goal.
- Maintenance — I keep active in this interest, but perhaps with less enthusiasm now that I’ve explored the new field and revealed its mysteries.
- Decline — The joy, fun and enthusiasm wane, and I likely stop or slow my work in this area.
Like this I’ve moved through a number of interests in my life, including engineering, political activism, anti-religious activism, business, alternative energy, exercise, sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Some of these interests have stabilized in the middle phases, and some have faded away.
I really thought yoga, meditation, and spiritualism were immune to my cyclic tendencies. Finally I’d found a true eternal love, a passion that could never be quenched. For the rest of my days I’ll be saturated in the communion and bliss of yoga.
Well, it turns out I’m still the same person, I still have these tendencies and patterns.
I first discovered yoga and meditation in a dramatic way, and was catapulted into the most intense ‘Discovery’ and ‘Love Affair’ period of my life. This lasted for years, initially I did my daily meditation practices without fail, not missing a single day in years. I would do my meditations and yoga wherever I was and whatever the situation. I did yoga in airports, alongside the highway, in parks, on the job, wherever I was at the time. I excused myself from family affairs to go meditate in a spare room, porch, basement, or off in the corner of the room where everyone else was. I had absolutely no hesitation about dropping everything else for meditation.
I thought “Surely this is a lifetime love affair and not subject to my typical cycles”.
After a few years a friend convinced me it was a potentially problematic compulsion and obsession with the classical yoga/meditation practices I learned from my guru and his school. So I quit everything for a few days. I felt terrible and returned to daily practices.
But the spell had been broken, and it gradually became easier to skip a day here, a day there. Eventually skipping 2 days in a row. Over the last 6 months I might have completed my practices perhaps 3 days a week. I still felt fine, the Grace and magic was still with me. In this “lazy period” I started a local meditation group and began to realize the effect I can have on other people. I started this website and began to exercise my voice to speak my Truth. I had continued success in business, work, financial, personal affairs.
So gradually I began to think “Hey this is awesome! I have the magic of yoga, but I can relax and live a life that’s pleasing to the ego. I can indulge my senses and play with everyone else. I’ll do a little yoga and meditation here and there, and it will be enough.”
In January and February it can be very beneficial to engage in a period of renewed sadhana and devotion. Sadhana is a Sanskrit word referring to the daily work of spiritual practices, a “disciplined surrendering of the ego” as yogapedia says. I did a 42-day devotional program last year at this time, and this year I started another devotional sadhana cycle on the most recent full moon. For these 42 days, 1 1/2 moon cycles, I do all my normal daily practices and more, and intentionally and consciously engage in disciplined choices regarding food, clothing, and hygiene.
So what have I found so far?
On the first day I felt a renewed invigorating energy, alive and skipping and bouncing here and there. On the second day I felt my crown chakra, the Sahasrara, buzzing at the top of my head. “Hey, I haven’t felt that in a while”. On the fifth day I jumped out of bed at 5:00 AM with less than 5 hours of sleep, and wasn’t tired all day. On the sixth day I started waking up before the 5:00 alarm went off. On the 10th day I sat down and typed up this piece without thinking, it just pours out of me as fast as I can type.
I’m clearly much closer to the way I should be than I’ve been in months. It involves work and denying the demands of the ego and body, but the rewards are immense.
Sadhana means:
- “I have given you the tools. All you have to do is use them.” (Sadhguru)
- “A personal process in which you bring out your best” (3ho.org)
- “the very nature of a human being is such, unless there is some dynamism, some movement in his life towards betterment within and outside of himself, he will feel frustrated.” (sadhguru.org)
- “a disciplined surrendering of the ego” (yogapedia.com)
There are people who naturally live in yoga and communion with their true nature. For these people sadhana may seem unnecessary, something to occupy the mind and body while the real change happens elsewhere. But for most of us sadhana can be an amazing tool for self-transformation and dropping the baggage we’ve picked up along our path through this life.
I hope this cycle for me lasts longer, that the “love affair” lasts longer and allows me to move further toward understanding my true nature.
Just do it.