Reflection: Looking into the Mirror...

What if the only mirror you had was the one sitting right in front of you...

Yogas Citta Vrtti Nirodhah - Yoga Sutra #2

Yoga is "the control of thought waves of the mind" - as one translation of the Second Yoga Sutra states. Mr. Iyengar puts it another way, "Yoga is the cessation of movements in the consciousness." Sri Swami Satchitananda says it this way, that Yogas Citta Vrtti Nirodhah translates as "the restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga."

Stopping Your Thoughts

So . . . What now? What do I have to do? It sounds like your thoughts are like horses and all you have to do is build a fence around them and they'll stay corralled and under control. Or they're like a swarm of mosquitos; unlikable, pesky things that you shoo away with all get-out with some kind of fly swatter or bug repellent (the soy kind). Or perhaps more like a barking dog tied to a post and hopefully you can find the muzzle. Hmmm - I don't know how to do that with my thoughts. Do you? Do I deal with each thought separately or do I lump them all together?

When this is taught in most yoga or meditation classes, sometimes the translation of the sutra gets lost and teachers and students tend to talk about stopping a thought or a number of them. I suppose it's a Christian thing - you know, your thoughts are the sin or . . . it's not about what you think but rather what you do with the thought, or it is what you think and what you do with the thought, etc. Confusing, isn't it? It occurs to me that that must have been misquoted for centuries probably as well. Stopping thoughts always catches people up. After talking to a lot of people, it is the one thing that most fixate on.

The Thought About the Thought

What I've been taught and what I've experienced though, is that it is the movement of thought rather than the individual thought itself. But how do you stop movement? And is that what we're supposed to do? The movement of thoughts to me is like the movement of air like wind. Sometimes it's gusty, and sometimes it's gale force strength. And other times, it's a welcomed breeze. Thoughts flow constantly. Sometimes you take notice. Sometimes you don't. So when do you take notice of thoughts? When they bother you of course. When someone says something that just gets under your skin, or when something happens and you have a strong reaction to it - like you feel embarrassed, or when you have to get or do something because your life depended on it. All worthy thoughts. How many times have you reiterated a conversation in your head hours, days after the conversation - or before the conversation has even happened . . . even if you didn't want to think about it, yet there it is? What makes thought waves so powerful? Pema Chödron said that her teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche would say - it is not the negative, but it is the negative about the negative. In other words, it is not the thought, but the thought about the thought which turns into another thought about that thought and so on, that gets us into trouble.

My First Meditation Retreat

I remember my first meditation retreat some years ago. I am a self-declared 'idea' person; Give me a problem and I will give you a number of solutions that are pretty creative and sometimes even original. Anyway, I was at this meditation retreat for the first time, sitting Zazen. I was determined to do a good job. I went with a friend who is a seasoned sitter, and so I mimicked him the first day. I sat for 4 hours straight without moving. OMG - I was so sore for the rest of the time. In order to get through this, I made sure I sat a lot (it was a very relaxed atmosphere about your schedule to sit - still very strict about eye contact and silence.) I battled the whole way through. I sat and sat, and still my thoughts came, ideas about: how to fix the roof; what gifts I can make each and every person there because they are so great; how much I wished I could eat (I was fasting as well); how much I wished I could wash my hair (little facility to do that at this place), and how I was right about being eaten alive by mosquitos (it was a hot week in August). Afterward, I told my teacher I found out how I wasn't as still and silent as I thought I was; I had always thought that I was a pretty laid back, quiet person. But I wasn't. Maybe that's why some of you don't want to do the meditation that asks you to be still. It can be a pretty shocking, and an eye opening experience, and some of you may not want to know. Through my years of practice, I learned that thoughts will always come and go, but it is most certainly about how your organism responds to those thoughts.

The Paradox of Still Mind

"Yoga is the suppression of the transformation of the thinking principle", as someone else puts it. Suppression? Hmm. I am not a fan of our potential interpretation of the word suppression. In psycho-talk, it can be interpreted as 'swallowing' or 'eating' your thoughts or words and that never ends well. How I have experienced this, "suppression of the transformation of the thinking principle" has taken a number of years of hard work to understand my reactive responses to external stimuli. Most of us react because we feel threatened by something/someone, or, we are anxious to prove something, and so on. What needs to happen is simultaneous to developing a Still Mind. Once you develop the Buddha Mind, you will realize that you are not separate and there is no threat (really) because there is no you. Before you develop Buddha Mind, you struggle with all the thoughts which anchor you into an identity that is separate. In other words, you need to develop Buddha Mind before you can transcend your reactionary self and you need to transcend your reactionary self before you can realize Buddha Mind. It is a paradox. Like peeling the onion, or chipping away at a stone. The only way through is to open your heart and risk the death that all of us are so afraid of - ego-death.

I always liked the word Transformation. Here it is talking about the transformation of the thinking principle. Transformation? Is a thought a thought if you don't react to it? Like the falling tree in the forest thing - it is a conundrum. Is the mind-stuff just like scattered dust particles in the air and only when you start to collect them do they become annoying dust-bunnies? Is that what "transforms" thought particles into real thoughts, whether you organize them, collect them or corral them?

Steps to Yoga

Movement of thoughts is the undulation of the mind when it is reactive. Now we're getting somewhere. It is not the thought that needs work, but the reactive mind. A lot of yogis/yoginis, swamis, etc. say that any kind of therapy is not necessary when you do yoga. But the key here is that you do "YOGA", not little 'y' yoga (mostly asana practice) or what it has now turned into because it is mostly a hedonistic practice to most - bhoga (meaning, doing yoga for its own sake for the appeasement of your own ego - i.e. look at what I can do). To do YOGA is to delve into the workings of your mind and how it effects your Being. Awareness is key, and to affect awareness, there needs to be some sort of dialogue (with a teacher who knows, a therapist who knows, etc.). But this is still not Wakefulness. Almost every yogi/yogini I know equates being aware of the present moment, of what you do or say in that moment, of how your organism reacts and so on, to and in line with Enligthenment. But this is not so. In awareness, there is still the "I" - You are aware.

The Heart Path

This is really only the beginning. The process that is the Heart Path will take you Home. The Heart Path really to me is about the final step toward Enlightenment and that is "Acceptance". You have seen who you are and you accept it. You don't try to hide, mask or manipulate it. You have seen the world as it is - truly, and you don't run from it, or hide. And you don't try to manipulate it. You have seen what other people are like and you don't do anything to change them. You just accept them. You have seen the truth of the wild, untamed world of animals, vegetable, mineral and you see them for what they are. Without greed or fear in your Heart. There is only Love.

My friend says this - Yoga (Union) is just that. You need nothing else. We're already there. Yoga IS the Cessation of the Thought Waves. That is Yoga. Yes, yes, yes I say. It is that simple.

. . . Yoga is the Stillness Within. Let It Be.

Walk with Grace.

Namaste

, 

A note from SBYC's FB page...wanted to share it here

Hi - while I genuinely appreciate the work and dedication of those who sincerely study, practice and teach yoga in their particular way to encourage, and effect change in social and individual consciousness, I can not allow the posting of these teachings on SBYC's FB site because I can not endorse the method with which they are presented at times.

I have a very clear notion of how yoga is to be presented, and with my heart, to me, it is not about joining a single group, following a particular swami, seeing 'god' as a separate and isolated entity that is beyond our intimate and personal knowledge, or advocating for the Light only, etc..

Everyone living is a separate entity - of course we all know that. And while practicing and studying these teachings we must remember that everyone is different. The human heart/mind has certain sensitivities, or preferences which guide an individual along their chosen path. These eventually dissolve to show that we are not separate at all. But in the initial stages of Self-discovery, our egoic nature gets caught up in the how we are read and seen by what we chose to do. It is a lonely path truly, because no one else feels or sees things the same way you do, and so the individual must begin and continue for years their journey in a way that speaks to them.

Anyone who has been walking the spiritual path knows this intimately. How many 'styles' of meditation, asana, teachers, books, workshops, retreats, have you gone through in your years of practice? This is good. Opening up to different practices and work, only deepens your process. It deepens the process sometimes by confusing us at first. The mind has a way of latching on to a particular thought or way by convincing itself that this is the ONLY way until the heart is no longer served by whatever it is, and must move on to find 'flow'. The searching will continue until the heart settles into a LOVE that is deep and eternal, and directed outward.

Yoga practices which include everything from asana styles, meditation traditions, Bhakti especially, all help to bring about Self-realization, Union with the Beloved.

I encourage you all to find your own path. To be still for a moment and really listen to what is being asked of you. Then move in that direction.

I am grateful that along your path you have stopped here if only for a moment.

Namaste

Peace!

The Hard Lessons You're About to Learn... (Part 1)

When did having a yoga class in a boutique or tea house or any other retail space become a good way to market a business? What does it say about that business? Is it cool? Hip? Chic? Interesting? Relevant? What does it say about us? What is this need to identify with anything that uses yoga as a catalyst for more sales? Has yoga become a label to identify ourselves with those other cool, relevant people? Has it become exclusive in the way that if you don't do yoga then we don't want you around? Has "YOGA" become so vapid in the eyes of those who do it that it's only use is to help promote, sell, or trend? Has yoga become just another item on the list of must-haves at the party of the year?

The attachment to the physical aspect of yoga (asana) without the graciousness of the spiritual aspect has led those who choose to believe it, marginalize yoga to the place of workout, the fountain of youth, and just another thing to help you relax at the spa. All fine benefits of yoga, yes, but not the raison-d'etre. Bringing yoga to our ego-ic level and understanding lessens its impact on our organism: our being. Projecting onto yoga all the same stuff of ego-identity that drive some to have face lifts, be the first to do: to have something, to brag, undermines yoga's essential and primary benefit: union with the Beloved. the Divine Heart, God, the energy of the cosmos. However you like to "name" it, it is all that and more. (As Ramana Maharshi says, to even name it, you have lost your connection to it.) All the stuff that yoga asks you to shed (boosting, grasping, attaching, hating) is actually amplified by the need to make it a part of who you think you are...all the adjectives: good, nice, chill, spiritual, cool, hip, relevant, interesting.

With the words, "I-do-yoga" come many reactions. There's a definite stigma: bad or good. Some of us let other's reactions dictate what we do. It used to be that I never talked openly about my practice or my teaching in front of my family because of all the jokes about it.

Yoga is NOT any of it.

Haha - but that publicly traded yoga wear corp (I even dislike mentioning the name because I don't want to market them) have helped shape the way in which yoga is seen, how we interact with it. Yoga, for a lot of people, has become just another commodity to exploit like anything that trends in social media: flavor of the moment. Look what they've started. And by a guy (the owner) who says he doesn't  do yoga. What a great little marketer. He's helped shape a generation of displayers: Look at what I can do; at what I've got; at who I know...or I've seen (rather).

Is this really the way you want to experience yoga?

Yoga asks you to be the antithesis of a good little marketer. To do without thought of reward. To give without thought of recompense. The lesson is to learn to shake this illusion (maya) of the material world and what you need from it...happiness, love, connection, comfort, prestige. It's all there, you've already got it all. But if yoga is used and not practiced then it can never bring you into the light of day and help shed the doubt that looms over us like a darkening cloud.

The emptiness is always there whether the material world seems to give you everything...you have become a slave to that idea...ask anyone who is encountering their own mortality!

It's a hard lesson to learn. But I will gladly teach anyone willing to go there! Are you? Willing I mean...

The True Magic of Yoga…

Throughout the centuries of Yoga practice, not only in our age, but since the dawn of Yoga, practitioners have been caught up with some idea or another of what yoga can do to help them “make friends and influence people”. And one of them is that meditation, the practice of asana, etc., can give you powers (siddhis). I’ve always been quite skeptical of that notion and have been vocal on occasion. Through my years of dedicated practice, I have never come across anyone who could actually do what they said they could (levitate for instance) or have never experienced it myself. What I did experience is a shift in the visceral feeling of my body which is probably the burgeoning connection of body-mind; a leveling out of my emotional body, a form of contentment, where now sadness is really sadness, happiness really happiness, anger is really anger, hurt is hurt; and a shift in body-mind consciousness, a taste of non-duality.

This became apparent slowly through years upon years of practice. My practice of either asana, meditation, and pure present-centeredness did not come without struggles, disillusionment, frustration and in some instances, real joy. It was a quiet unfolding which after years of arduous practice, on a retreat (my last at this particular place) something was revealed to me which altered everything and life has never been the same. The practices of Yoga can transform you and draw you in to catch a glimpse of Non-Dualistic reality, our true condition.

Yoga is not Magic; it’s Alchemy. It will not give you powers. You’re not about to bi-locate (although that would be fun), turn someone into a toad, or make the one you love yours just because you did an hour of asana, and some meditation. In fact, it won’t happen at all (but only for those who are to be true adepts). And if someone claims to be a great yogi because they can do such things, turn around and run! Yoga unfolds and unravels you slowly without a tremendous amount of hoopla!

Yoga is Alchemy where, like the quest to transmute lead into gold, your practice is the flame which transforms the raw material of – your body, emotions, and thinking mind into the Diamond body. To fan the flame of your practice, you immerse yourself into no-mind which together with the breath is the fuel for the flame. As Georg Feuerstein says: the traditional purpose is the radical one, not the one for the pursuit of a good looking body and becoming forever young, but rather, where the use of asana is to assist the development of the transubstantiated body – the Diamond Body (…no it doesn’t have “yoga butt”). But, he says, there are very few of us who have the determination and stamina to develop this mastery of the practice. Because of this – Are we left with what he calls “garden variety yoga”? No luckily we’re not. Through asana practice, one can “taste” the existence of non-duality, which is essentially like Samadhi. We can flow in and out of this state . It’ll happen, whenever it is to happen. You have no control over it, can’t predict it or plan it. Although, if in fact you do have expectations of developing some extraordinary powers, they will surely be shattered or dissolved – depending on the strength of the expectation. With sincere and constant practice, self-evaluation and observation; engaging in alchemy with the breath and no-mind, one can achieve this state and experience our true condition, the Non-Dualistic Nature of Reality. This is the true Magic of Yoga.