The past few months have been spent both in matters of the body and mind (traveling, visiting family and friends, sunshine, beaches, cruises, dances and parties), and in matters of spiritual pursuit ( 5+ hours daily of meditation and yoga, a very careful diet, strict avoidance of any drugs). It was an interesting combination of two approaches I thought might be contradictory. In the end each was affected by the other in a positive way.
We spent a week on Daytona Beach, a week in the Bahamas, a week traveling in a new RV camper van, and a week on a cruise ship. The cruise was a special event that was all-day nonstop parties, dancing, alcohol and debauchery. This had been planned by my wife as a grand send-off just before I was to leave for India for 6 months of yoga and meditation work. Alas that 6 month program turned out to be inappropriate for me. Instead I’ll spend 2 months this summer in Quebec at a Sivananda ashram.
But the vacation was already arranged and off we went. I was ready for some travel and fun, but my mindset hasn’t been so lighthearted lately. 2023 for me has been a year of re-establishing diligence in sadhana. Sadhana is daily spiritual work that serves to bring our experience closer to the divine and more separated from the typical body-mind-ego mode of existence. I’ve spent years in regular sadhana, but in the recent year or two I’d fallen into laziness. Not all the yoga and meditation practices happened every day. Life was still fabulous, Grace was still here, every day brought joy, and I’d consequently just lost immediate motivation.
So I started 2023 with a renewed intention toward daily sadhana work. I was even on the longest drug-free streak of my entire adult life, finally leaving cannabis behind. I had been reaping the benefits of a near-constant state of awareness and serentity infused with all the vigourous energy any situation could call for. And in addition I signed up for Samyama, an intense meditation program with a 60 day preparation period that overlapped this vacation. So I was under strict requirements to adhere to a certain diet, and avoid all drugs, even caffeine.
So I find myself at Daytona Beach, on the beach in the Bahamas, and then on the cruise ship, in the middle of giant parties, surrounded by dancing drunken revelers. I’m up at 5AM for yoga and meditations, again in the evenings. What is the aspiring yogi to do in such a situation?
Yoga means “Union”, uniting the body, mind, and spirit. Moving our conscious awareness toward being centered in the unity of life, not seeing ourselves as separate animals inhabiting a separate body and mind.
So I found that as long as I stayed centered in the unity of yoga and allowed my former uptight reserved nature to fall away, well then dancing and fun are perfectly natural for the body and mind. The fun and games of the body were not necessarily detrimental to the benefits of sadhana and spiritual work. I could have my cake and eat it to. I was careful to maintain the discipline of the sadhana schedule I’d been given as preparation for the Samyama program, and made to the program in Late April feeling almost prepared, far more prepared than I had been when I first attempted the program in 2019.
The Samyama program itself required 100% effort, intensity, and concentration. It’s rare that this is required of us in this wealthy modern society. For decades I’ve occasionally undertaken projects of 100% intensity, ranging from marathons and Ironman triathlon to the stillness at the end of Samyama. Always there has been a reward, even the effort becomes its own reward. At the end of the Samyama program the intensity yields to silence, and the silence remains.
And here I sit after the vacation, after Samyama, back home. But with memories of dancing and good times, and with the intense silence of Samyama always here.