Bhagavad Gita: The Four Yogas

My sadhana has been juggled around, and is moving in a new direction. I believe my Guru has been leading all of us up to and through this change.

I have to realize that actions that attempt to use discipline to overcome my limitations and delusions currently never work for me. I have spent my whole life disciplining myself and wildly grasping with super-human effort to try to get the grand experience I have been seeking, and to address what has been missing, and my misery about this.

For me, the "dos" like disciplining my activities with specific goals about meditation and other practices, as well as trying to keep spiritual experiences permanent, are not the opposite of sadhana. ALWAYS using my life and moments to try to create a new and permanent state is based on a delusion that I am lost, unfulfilled, away from God. Grasping and doing for my own limited results has created huge karmas and samskaras for me.

I found myself writing about how Karma and Bhakti Yoga--and much of Jnana Yoga--have come to the fore in my sadhana. The fourth Yoga, Raja Yoga, is a synthesis, with elements that form a system based on discipline, which is not helpful for me.

Krishna talks about how an individual will find that some yogas will work for them better than others.


1) KARMA YOGA~THE YOGA OF ACTION: Any time I am grasping or pushing, trying or making myself do anything, I am jumping on the great wheel. The harder I push and hang on, the harder I'm going to fall when the wheel goes around the other way. Rajas creates karma. I've got way too much longing made into rajas in every moment!

My path is not doing, and it is not not-doing. HOW? Through dharma/duty. Lord Krishna has taught me about Karma Yoga, and this knowledge and yoga is very important to my sadhana.


2) BHAKTI YOGA: Bhakti Yoga is a new emphasis for me. It is divine love, longing, and worship in a personal relationship with a chosen form of the divine. This is the "doing" that I offer, avoiding karmas (Karma Yoga). Commitment to experiencing love and worship for the Divine fills me with an intensity of shakti that is burning my impurities away.

A short description of a very powerful yoga.


3) JNANA YOGA: The focus of my sadhana for the last few years has been to notice and name the elements of my mind in action. I challenge delusion by noticing what arises and holding what will bring delusion. When I hold a train of thought or etc., it naturally dissolves. Consciousness dissolves into consciousness.

I have for the most part eliminated self-pity, collapsing (giving up), and self-hatred, and I at least notice many things such as jealousy, anger, and competitiveness. I especially have benefited from noticing when I begin to make a story about what is happening in the moment, with the assumption that it is happening to me.

My mind has become much more still and centered.

Other parts of Jnana Yoga which have been important are recognizing what is transitive in my reality and letting go my attachments to these things. "That's not real," and "that isn't permanent" are my mantras in using my mind in this way. I also practice "seeing" the world of the senses as consciousness, and remembering it may promise many things, but none of it will be truly satisfying or permanent.


4) RAJA YOGA: Royal Raja Yoga is a higher yoga that incorporates elements of the other yogas in a powerful synthesis. It is based on meditation and other tools to work with the mind.

Systematic and disciplined is not helpful or useful to me at this point in my sadhana. When I meditated, I went after dinner. I wanted to meditate. I ran down the steps to the kriyaloka meditation room at the ashram, sinking into my spot, my consciousness dropping into the depths of me as I settled in.

"It's almost 7:00, time to meditate doesn't work for me, at least not now. I have to wrestle with myself about it, my intention, and my fear. It is very unpleasant. It runs me, and I am stuck with it.

I need to go around this stuff. I realize almost all(?) yogis do this. I think I did so much of this in a past life that this time I am doing something else.

Hold

Steady.

This pulls me. That repels me.

Emotions and sensations happen.

I wobble. But I don't elope with them.

I want not to want.

I don't want to avoid.



No. Steady. I feel the pull.

Hold.

Sangham

For the first time, I feel that my Guru's teaching for the year is for me.

Instead of trying to find my way outside of the sattvic sadhana of the sangham. The sadhana--my sadhana--is sangham.

It is something that unfolds. No intellect or comparisons apply.

Pure shakti.

Painting by Rajhastani (1950)

Together in joy

The bliss bubbles up from the springs of my being.

I was miserable when it stopped. I burned the sodden, the twisted, the torn and trampled. Days. Weeks. I lost all hope. Martin Luther. Mother Theresa. The crisis of faith, the days of spiritual dryness. I remembered them yesterday--sadhakas like myself--and today the hope has returned.

Now I know it when it comes, the bliss bubbling up, the fountain of eternal life, of God's love. A personal, inner grasping, liquid, we are falling together in joy. Eternally, like a fountain.

I finally understand, recognize. This spring is sacred and wild. It is the fundament of my being. I worship it as it frees me. I reach to it, and it is always there.

Lord Krishna peeks in and laughs. Ha ha, I was here all along, you silly goof!!

The path of bhakti is embodied by Mirabai
Painting by Raja Ravi Varma

Confidence is my constant

It's all love in motion.

Confidence replaces self-doubt and reprobation.

Confidence.... and I can open my eyes... and trust what I see.

And then I can feel.... the love.

LOVE comes in all the forms I love.

There is no division between myself and those forms.

I feel that ALL has the same heart. Everything is joined in the heart.

ALL reflects the golden sun rising from the horizon. My eyes are golden. My heart flies open.

Open.

I can only keep my heart open with CONFIDENCE.

God loves my journey

I try so hard to reach perfection, and it crumbles as easily as it is formed. My life is a big cycle of change.

I thought I should 'go around' life's obstacles to achieve the ultimate union.

Now I am starting to think that God as me right now is His pleasure, to continue from where I am, in whatever way I do, on my journey to God.

God loves my journey.

Layers

The less I try, the less I fill in, the more empty I become.... the greater the space for God.

The layers of "me" are melting away.

My "go to" contemplation

My "go to" dharana/dhyana. My focus and practice. My contemplation. 

My "go to" dhyana is to nudge myself out of multiplicity. I experience myself as formless, unlimited consciousness, the knower, and everything else a play of consciousness on the screen of life, the known. The play normally seems three-dimensional because of the magic of maya.

Inherent in this contemplation is acknowledging that the projection of maya cannot satisfy/protect me, or cause lack/harm me. Thinking otherwise is bondage. 

I want freedom. I see myself "unlatching" from the screen of the world going by. I let the illusion of satisfaction and lack slip away. It becomes a dance of light. And I choose freedom, the source. The real prize.

I can only do this because of the grace of my guru, because I have received shaktipat.

Step well

I also use my mind to slip out from the experience of multiplicity. When I am in this state, I experience Oneness, One without second. A singularity. My awareness resides in the great consciousness, the only Self. Immediately I am filled with great bliss.

I can reshape my consciousness like this for several moments at a time. 

An interesting aside is that my ability to shape my own consciousness was greatly improved by my years in Wicca, where "spells" are created by this containing and shaping of awareness, a discipline and practice that grows in effectiveness over time.

I also use this skill as a writer of fiction.

Swami Lakshmanjoo:

The word dhyana means “contemplation.” It is another mode in anavopaya (a means of enlightenment). Dhyana is contemplation on some point.  

There are different forms of dhyana. For example, you are practicing dhyana when you contemplate on the lotus in your heart, or on the meaning of some mantra such as the mantra “so’ham” or the mantra “Shiva.”  

This is a higher form of anavopaya because it is contemplation without any shape, without any form. If you were to contemplate on Lord Shiva as having a particular form, a particular shape, that is a lower form of anavopaya. It is contemplation with form.

Source: Kashmir Shaivism, The Secret Supreme, by Swami Lakshmanjoo
All Content is subject to Copyright © Universal Shaiva Fellowship, John Hughes.

The One who slept

Look! Wow!!

(A gentle hand). Be still. Smile. Find wholeness within.

Oh! Oh no! 

(A reassuring touch). Be still. Smile. Find contentment within. 


God is at play here.

The entirety of God is here. I find it inside. Always here for me.

At last I can catch myself at the start of the surge toward or away from. Soon after an instant in which I have travelled so far, and not at all.

My dharana: I look around with a new awareness, strengthened each day with practice.

There is only One here. 

My dharana: All of this, including me, is One. How peaceful it is to have no other. Endless, perfect solitude. This unity consciousness surges through me as great bliss.

How my Lord loves to be found, observed and known with the awakening gaze of one who has slept.

I awaken in Your arms.

How my Lord loves to be found, observed and known with the awakening gaze of one who has slept  

This moment is not a vehicle

This moment is not a vehicle. I do nothing with it.

I absorb this truth as bliss: the highest is already attained.

My mind is set aside

I use my mind to describe, but I set my mind aside to experience.

Grace wakes me up

I am permeable. My habitual boundaries of self, the age old boundaries of my heart are softening. I can relax what I thought to be rigid in my nature. Consciousness, love and bliss flows into and through me like water.

Float on grace.

Grace keeps touching me, gently refocusing my attention, waking me up.

My dharana is larger than my mind. I am essential, with no qualities or dualities, seeing my limited consciousness from the outside, watching the play of seeing and moving without moving or being seen.

The bliss gushes up each time.

I want to live entirely in that higher consciousness.

I don't believe in doing

Krishna Radha

I am not what I do. I observe the parts of the play that I think of as me.

Yoga, meditation and other "do's" hamper me, chain me.

Do whatever comes with this form. To liberate myself from bondage is my dharma. To choose freedom in this way is supreme bliss.

To live this way is to "do" without creating karma.

I don't believe in doing.

Stepping out of multiplicity

When I step out of multiplicity, I see only one all around me, including "me," little me.

I am. There are no outer senses. I feel that I am. I feel bliss, and a great peace. Wonder, playfulness, joy. The burning desire to love and worship God, my source.

I do not see or hear. No taste, no touch or feeling sensation.

I am not heavy or light. Not cold or hot.

There is only my breathing. Only the bliss.

Then when I can, I step back again. I identify with the One, with Shiva. I have become Him; He looks out through my eyes.

I remember who I am. I remember.

I have no form, there is no space or time. I made all... to play.





Lord you are sweet bliss. The sighs of many contentments. I am on a journey to experiencing this truth: that we are One. You have called me home.

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My lifelong obsession

Photo: Raymond Eldstad 

I have discarded the lifelong obsession that I will somehow fix my broken life. 

I finally reached a moment where I stepped back and looked at myself. I noticed that I was in a great deal of pain. Familiar pain. Constantly unresolved pain. I was contorted by it, the last to know.

I freed myself. I whispered to myself, "I don't care." I no longer care about my life's work, a lifelong obsession to fix a ruined life. I don't care about the many past moments of failure and pain that flood into the my consciousness at the cost of now.

"I don't care" is the mantra to loosen caring too much.

My dance with this obsession is bondage, and letting go of an epic grip on my life is freedom. The details do not matter.

"I don't care." 

I visualize each painful memory when they arise—a slip of consciousness that I mistakenly thought was happening to me, the truth traded in for a kind of karmic coat check. As I focus my consciousness on the memory, I see it slipping away from me, burning in a sudden whoosh, or turning to dust, the pain rejected and spun off like dross. Consciousness disolves into consciousness. Immediately I feel lighter, slipping into the center place of bliss.

I am not the story, the places or the people. I am this inner place of bliss.

Only Guru's grace

To me, bhumisparsha means touching, standing upon
the witness of the earth, the unchanging truth

There is only one being here. This is all One pretending to be many.

This is not a know. It is there when I get my mind (story) out of the way.

It is my experience. A now made of incredible bliss.

How? Guru's grace. Only guru's grace.

To me, Bhumisparsha means seeking only, and grounded only in truth

Internal work

I notice when my ego arises suddenly, stepping up to take credit for an accomplishment large or small. It is a discipline that I have now, combined with grace. I notice and watch my ego arise without jumping aboard.

Truth be told, my ego is really a pest.

When my mind wants to follow something "difficult" into the past (thinking about it as if it is still present), I have the grace to step away from this old impulse, to stay in the present.

I have had a discipline for a long time now, years I think, where every time I feel hopelessness or self-hatred arise inside, I turn slightly until this feeling goes away.

This is my sadhana. It is internal work. I challenge the samskaras, and grace is dissolving them.

I think my part is that I maintain a steady place inside, my equipoise. Every day a little more firm, more far-reaching. A place for these forms of consciousness to arise in, so I can partake of that steadiness, forming the habit of letting these old habits flow past, as they arise and dissolve.

I don't discuss any of this with anyone. I am not thinking about it, or waiting for it to happen.

This is my sadhana. It's not something I really need to write about, so my posts have become very intermittent. I do want to mention it, because my seva includes sharing my sadhana in this blog.

Be happy, reader. All is well.

This is my sadhana.

It is grace

526 “And when you have diverted your mind towards Me always, in each and every action of the world, sarva durgāṇi matprasādā, all your difficulty will be vanished altogether by My grace, not by your action. By My grace, all your difficulties will be over, finished.” ~ Bhagavad Gita audio, Universal Shaiva Fellowship archive (emphasis mine)

"Hesiod and the Muse"
by Gustave Moreau

When I am having a spiritual experience, I have always tried to claim it as attainment.

Finally I understand. Whatever "success" I have in my sadhana is mine by grace only. I don't think, "oh, grace has helped me to attain this." I no longer believe my ego when I think, "oh, _________ happening at last means I am adept at such and such attainment, I am progressing, soon I will have everything."

How many times I have heard other yogis say, (and have said to myself), "you don't quite understand, I am really getting somewhere..."

That is the ego taking credit for attainment. "All my efforts as a sadhaka are paying off in such an amazing way!"

As usual, the excerpt in my inbox from The Universal Shaiva Fellowship has to do with this very thing.

Beloved Lord Krishna promises that focusing on him, and drawing his grace, will vanquish all difficulty by his grace, not by my action.

What does this mean? It means that when I am having the spontaneous "head falling forward" meditation several times a day, I am the recipient of this as grace. When my ego notices, and says, "my, we must be a really good yogi, one who will be realized soon!" I notice this and smile.

It is ALL grace. All of it, always. I love and worship the Lord. He loves me back, and I am the recipient of his boundless grace. Grace by its very nature is not earned or stored up. 

It is grace.

PS My helpful ego has decided that learning this very "high" lesson is a sign of my attainment. 

To remember... and to be

“On the pathway of your breath maintain continuously refreshed and full awareness on and in the center of breathing in and breathing out. This is internal asana.” (Netra Tantra) ~ From Universal Shaiva Fellowship

So delicate my touch upon my sadhana, the glow of my consciousness, the tiny "gloop" of God's nectar flowing down from my sahasrara.

There is only NOW. I bring my awareness into now, into the still center place, and withdraw the outward flow of my senses.

I am already there, the Self is attained. I can accept my level of awareness about this in every moment, and choose to be that.

I do not believe in struggle, not anymore.

The only doing, is to remember... and to be. To acknowledge grace, and offer worship. To change the impressions left on my mind by maya, to the impressions on my consciousness of that divine inner state... turning inward, the slightest change, and everything changes.

Here in the buddhi mind

I am journeying, and there is no place but here, no where to go.

I do not try. And that's all (this is not an intellectual technique).

I am HERE.

The kriyas.... the kriyas are Goddess moving.

I hear the plane on the tarmac all the time. (Pack your bags, my guru said). Sometime in the late afternoon or evening, the bubbly tinkly prana rising through the akasha begins, and now I notice the moment it starts.

And finally I understand, though it seems so obvious now. Which is fine because understanding is the booby prize.

That said...

Sound is very different from vision. Sound inside arises, and I am enchanted, I stop and tune in to the lovely divine tinkling... ohhh. Nothing could sound more beautiful.

This: the sound is about going inside.

For me, I fell from meditation, from japa and dharanas... fell through them and here in this velvet darkness it is suddenly so quiet, so still, so alive.

Outside I have equipoise. Oh, this is what is happening... I go with whatever it is. I can turn on a dime. Okay, now this.

My mind is steady. When mind does acrobatics, I am here in the buddhi mind, simply here.

The head falling forward kriya takes me deeper into the center place, where my mind is completely steady. No movement. No thoughts. Several times a day.