What the heart most yearns

I have not been able to write in this blog for about six months. It hasn't been because of any crisis, I just had nothing to say. Usually these posts are drawn out of me as a need to be seen. Then by writing once a month for a long time I began to feel an obligation. But for six months there has been nothing needing to be said, or feeling ripe for saying.

An ideal place for meditation
at Brahma Kumari Centre Frankston Vic

My practice has been ever deepening, as it does.

And of course I got so very busy preparing everything in advance for the big trip I took in January. There was simply no time for the reflection it takes to allow these posts to emerge as I put things in place that allowed me to be absent for three weeks. Over the past nine weeks my yoga students on Tuesdays and Saturdays have been coming on that journey with me as I answered the inevitable question, "How was your trip?" fully and honestly.

The trip was a pilgimage led by Christopher "Hareesh" Wallis, a Sanskrit scholar and initiated Tantrik Yoga practitioner with whom I began studies last year. In the combination of Hareesh's scholarship, his practice, extraordinary teaching gift, enormous generosity, his energy and good humour I have discovered offerings that are speaking right to my core. To say that the pilgimage through Tamil Nadu was life-changing sounds like a cliché, but it is true nevertheless.

Thank you to all the students who came on that journey during our yoga classes together over the past nine weeks.  Reliving it with you has been a great consolidation for me and I hope some of its immensity was translated through our classes for you, and you caught the flavour of "How was my trip?". And as we reached it's conclusion something else happened. The Christchurch attack rocked us all to the core.

The Arunachaleswara Temple at Tiruvanamallai (pictured here
 from the Arunachala Mountain) is aligned ona lay line East to
West straight to the heart of the mountain.
Om namah sivaya.
The mantra came alive in me at this temple.

In a video post after that event, Hareesh shared something really special. A Sanskrit prayer for the wellbeing of all. Hareesh posts a lot, and they are all gems of teaching. But this one had a special spark, and was in response to those dreadful events in Christchurch where 50 worshippers were murdered at prayers in their mosques by an extreme right, Australian born terrorist. We were all horrified. This is not who we are. Our hearts were crying.

Three heart to heart chats, with a teacher, a friend and a student contributed to the shift. I must proclaim my own heartfelt yearning and in that public proclamation fully confess, and be, what it is I am called to teach. And I really began that ownership in my Sunday morning class.  Thank you dear people who were present at that Sunday Meditation Body and Mind. I felt totally vulnerable and your support was wonderful.

You can listen to Hareesh's words through the link below, but here is a paraphrase of what he said, a rough transcription, please forgive inaccuracies:

No one can doubt that we are in challenging and troubled times, especially politically and environmentally.  No one who is paying attention can doubt that this quickening, this intensification, can only increase over the next decades. We don’t know what the outcome will be for the survival of our civilisation, of our species, of our planet, and it can feel as if we are standing on the brink sometimes, as we look at the rise of tribalistic ideologies and wondering if humanity will be able to overcome this tribalism which is an instinct in our brains to our evolutionary biology. And of course, the unknown factor here is awakening. In the time of quickening and intensification there are more opportunities for spiritual awakening. And awakening is what allows us to truly transcend our divisiveness within us and between us.  It allows us to transcend this tribalism, it allows us to transcend even our evolutionary instincts and to see ourselves in each other, despite all our differences. Also in a time of quickening and intensification, prayers offered from the deepest heart are more powerful.

"Awakening is what allows us to truly transcend our divisiveness within us and between us. It allows us to transcend this tribalism, it allows us to transcend even our evolutionary instincts and to see ourselves in each other, despite all our differences."

And then, the translation of the first stanza of the prayer:

May the wicked become good. May the good obtain peace. May the peaceful be freed from bonds. May the freed set others free.

It is the perfect storm. In class for the first time I publicly declared my heart's deepest yearning, and I said these words:

I dedicate my practice to awakening. I dedicate my teaching to awakening. 

Oh it is such a long, long time I have known my heart's true yearning. But for a long, long time I also dismissed it as a ridiculous fantasy, or not for the very ordinary folk like me. Engaging with the teachings of Richard Miller through iRest® have shown me it is not pie in the sky. Early flashes of insight were not imagined, and those flashes actually meant I could not not pursue it, no matter how long I looked in another direction. The very ordinary like me (or you) can attain to awakening, to freedom from the bonds of forgetting who we truly are.

Some people distil their Heartfelt Desire to a single word. Mine has been distilled as a feeling for a very long time, but when I turn it into words it is longer, one word does not seem to express it all, at least in English, how big it is! And in the last twelve months the first line was added to it.

Here it is, my heart on a platter. What does my heart yearn?

Stable in awakening

Awake … to Awareness

Open … to Openness

At one with Oneness

Manifesting as loving kindness and compassion.

I am not pretending that my reason for being is anything less. And to the degree that I have been freed from bonds, it is my duty to set others free. And that is the reason why I am called to teach. No pretending.

Which doesn't mean that I will not lead many wonderful movement classes where we stretch and strengthen and explore yoga posture, hathayogasana. Or that I will not also be dedicated to sharing how you might move more freely and with less stiffness and pain. Only in every class I teach I will no longer pretend that my personal goal is anything but being fully awakened, and as far as I have explored that path and fully embodied it, I am a teacher of that path.

Well it may have been obvious for some time, but it is also true that I have tried not to scare folk off with all this spiritual stuff.  But hey, it is who I am, it is my calling, now I am owning it.

What is your true heartfelt desire, your yearning? Are you, like I have for so long, not fully acknowledging it? I have to say, it feels totally liberating to have put it out there.

Here are the words and translation of that lovely Sanskrit prayer.

Durjanaḥ sajjano bhῡyāt

Sajjanaḥ śāntim āpnuyāt

Śānto mucyeta bandhebhyo

muktaś cānyān vimocayet

May the wicked become good. May the good obtain peace. May the peaceful be freed from bonds. May the freed set others free.

Svasti prajābhyaḥ paripālayantām

Nyāyyena mārgena mahim mahīśāḥ

Go-brāhmaṇebhyaḥ śubham astu nityaṁ

Lokāḥ samastāḥ sukhino bhavantu

Blessings on the subjects of those who are ruling, and may these great leaders rule the earth in a just manner. May food always be the lot of animals and spiritual practitioners. May all people be happy.

Kāle varṣatu parjanyaḥ

Pṛthivī śasya-śālinī

Deśo’yam kṣobha-rahito

brāhmaṇāḥ santu nirbhayāḥ

May it rain at the right time. May the earth have storehouses full of grain. May this country be free of disturbances. May spiritual practitioners be free of persecution.

Sarve bhavantu sukhinaḥ

Sarve santu nirāmayāḥ

Sarve bhadrāṇi paśyantu

Mā kaścid-dukha-bhāg-bhavet

May all be happy. May all be healthy. May all see only auspicious sights. May no one have a share in sorrow.

Sarvas taratu durgāni

Sarvo bhadrāṇi paśyatu 

Sarvaḥ kāmān avāp-notu

Sarvaḥ sarvatra nandatu

May everyone surmount their difficulites. May everyone see only auspicious sights. May everyone have their heartfelt desires fulfilled. May everyone everywhere be glad.

Svasti mātra-uta pitre no astu

Svasti ghobhyo jagate puruṣebhyaḥ

Viśvam subhῡtaṁ suvidatraṁ no astu

Jyogeva dṛśyema sῡryam.

May blessings fall on our mother and father; blessings on the animals, the people and the earth. May everything of ours flourish and be an aid to wisdom. And long may we see the sun.

Om śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ

Om peace peace peace

You can watch Hareesh's post and hear his beautiful voice intone the prayer here

Different views and details of a box made at a Sankalpa workshop
in 2018. I placed this box on the altar during class when I shared my heart.

Listening to the Heart

When you feel compassion, where do you feel it in your body?

When you feel loving, where do you feel it in your body?

When you feel kindness, where do you feel it in the body?

When you feel joy, where do you feel it?

For me these are all right in the centre of my chest when I feel them, the energetic, spiritual heart.

Have you ever noticed the tussle between heart and head? Head might be presenting many logical arguments, but heart is calling somewhere else? It is my experience that the heart does not lead you astray, when truly listened to.

Now I love to explore the connections between languages and did you know that the word courage is a cognate with the Latin word for heart, cor, which pops up also in French as coeur. (English takes the word cordial from the same source. To be cordial is to be heart-felt.)

Where do you feel courage in your body?

How much courage does it take to truly listen to and to follow your heart?

Often the call of the heart goes unheeded as it seems crazy. In fact it is difficult to even uncover the heart's true calling as it is so suppressed beneath the weight of thought and logic. So the heart's calling may also be scary. It does take courage to follow it.

How will you know your heart's true calling?

It's call is sweet. It is harmonious. It may be a whisper. How to hear a whisper? Become quiet and listen. Listen with the heart.

In yoga the spiritual, energetic heart is sometimes called Anahata, sometimes Hridaya. Let me explain these terms.

Anahata means "unstruck". It refers to the sound that has no cause, the seed sound of the universe also known as Pra-nava which is the syllable Om. Pra means before, the antecedent and nava sound, shout, exalt, so Pranava means "the first exultant sound"at the creation of the universe, unstruck because there was nothing before it.

Hrdaya is from hrd which is cognate with English "heart", you can see the similarity, and "heart" is exactly what it means.

So listen. You might hear the unstruck.

Change

Sometimes we crave a change, to get away somewhere, to get a new job, to live somewhere different. Other times we wake up to a realisation that our current habits or situation are not serving us well and we seek change for that reason. Sometimes change we did not invite happens, sending us into a spin. And sometimes change just creeps up on us and one day we realise that change has happened. It might be that such a realisation invites further change.

Of course, one thing is certain. Change will always happen. Even when we are stuck in a rut, it became a rut only because things were changing and perhaps we did not adjust to take account of those changes.

Today I am pondering the restlessness and desire for change that comes upon us.

The season changes. Warm weather gives way to cool. When the winter season began, did you find yourself in the clothing shop buying a new outfit? Why was that? Nothing to wear, but what about all those clothes from previous seasons? What was really driving it? Perhaps you perceive that the clothes from last winter are old-fashioned, or shabby. So how did that make you feel? What belief is underlying it?

What is a desire for change but a desire to fix that which feels broken, or to fill that which feels empty? Like the change that is yearned in these statements.

• I feel stiffness and pain and I want to be pain free.
• I am stressed and anxious and I want to relax.
• I need to lose weight and become fit.
• I am lonely and need to meet new people.

Perhaps it was a desire for change like this that first brought you to yoga.

Take a moment and jot down the things that you want to change .... and then sit a while and ask the question, if this change had already come to pass, how would I feel? Find the feeling in your body. Is there still a yearning or is it completely fulfilled?

This is a process that might help you to flush out your Heartfelt Desire, which we also sometimes call the deepest driving desire, Life's Purpose, or Heartfelt Mission. the Heartfelt Desire is like a beacon to guide us home to our inherent wholeness, where nothing feels broken, nothing needs to be fixed, and which is always full and fulfilled.

To close, you might wish to reflect upon the following words of Jean Klein. Jean Klein was a spiritual teacher and mentor to Dr Richard Miller, founder of iRest® Yoga Nidra. He said:

"Any desire is a search for Perfect Bliss. This perfect bliss is is part of the nature of the Self, therefore all desire is a desire for the Self."