Embracing embodiment

 Let us bless
The imagination of the Earth.
That knew the early patience
To harness the mind of time,
Waited for the seas to warm, 
Ready to welcome the emergence
Of things dreaming of voyaging
Among the stillness of the land.

So begins John O'Donahue's "In Praise of the earth". I turn to it as I contemplate the bottom-most tattva on the Map of Meditation, earth element. Not lowly for all that it sits there at the bottom, Tattva 36 as numbered from the top down, but remember, it is number one on the return journey! 

(Read my previous post "The map of meditation")

No, not lowly, but the fullest expression of the amazing unfolding of the universe. When the element of earth is manifest, creation is complete.

Think about this. Embodiment, to have a body, is to inhabit earth element.  Only earth element contains the totality of everything, from Śiva Consciousness to the ultimate of creation. As embodied creatures we are that.

Sage Patanjali, in forming the sutras on Śauca, Purity, displays a distaste for the embodied state which was common in many Indian spiritual traditions.

By cleanliness, one [develops] distaste for one's body and the cessation of contact with others. (Yoga Sutra II:40, Bryant tr.)

The original commentator, Vyasa, whom many scholars now surmise was one and the same person as the author of the sutra, observes that the yogin realises that the body can never be clean, no matter how much it is washed, and therefore he no longer would wish to contact with other bodies which is bound to be more polluting.  Sex is off the agenda, for sure!

This attitude arises when you believe that you are somehow separate from the body, believing that it is just simply part of that "other", Prakṛti, when one is attempting to realise fully that one is pure spirit, Puruṣa.

In Advaita Vedanta also, the body is dismissed as not real, the real is Puruṣa, now called Ātman, which is none other than Brahman, Universal Consciousness. There is nothing else. So it too is body-denying, shunning the pleasure and experience of embodiment.

The View of Non-dual Śaiva Tantra is different. There is nothing in your experience of the embodied state that is not a valid place to explore your Essence Nature. Right - down - to - earth!

Further lines of the O'Donohue poem are pertinent:

Let us thank the Earth
That offers ground for home
And holds our feet firm
To walk in space open
To infinite galaxies.

And:

Let us remember within us
The ancient clay,
Holding the memory of seasons,
The passion of the wind,
The fluency of water,
The warmth of fire,
the quiver touch of the sun
And shadowed sureness of the moon.

We thank and praise the whole of experience as anything at all can  and does illuminate the whole of Consciousness which is the author of everything.

So we take the body, and experience it fully. We let go of the concepts we might have about it and simply experience it.  It is sensation. Sometimes loud, sometimes soft. Sometimes it sings, sometimes it cries, but we do not judge, it simply is.  What is your experience of the body, without any thought about it? When we are fully experiencing the whole of what is here by fully entering into the felt sense of the body we are embracing the entirety of all 36 tattvas at once. 

If we divorce ourselves from that full felt experience, we do not fully embrace all of what is here. This not only creates a schism in ourselves where we are unable to fully process feelings and emotions but it also says, I cannot be awakened to the whole of my truth until I can be rid of this body.  And this tradition says, no, you can be awakened in an embodied form. Accept and embrace everything.

So being fully embodied, fully embracing the felt sense of the body with all that it presents, helps us to become more psychologically integrated but also helps us towards our spiritual awakening. Whoopee, let’s fully sense our body.

The Vijñāna-bhairava-tantra has many practices that invite us to be fully embodied, with the promise that this may be the experience that catapults us to Awakening, such as when receiving a body piercing, fully enter into the pain; when embracing a friend not seen for a long time sense into that embrace; swinging on a swing, through the soothing motion one knows the Divine.

Yoga Nidra always includes a rotation of awareness around the body. It springs from the practice of nyasa, a ritual of touching parts of the body in a rotation together with the intonation of specific mantras. The literal touching and the mantra are replaced by mentally touching named parts of the body with attention and then moving it on to the next point.

In iRest® this is a fully developed experiencing of the body as sensation, letting go of cognition and simply experiencing as sensation.

Movement practice such as asana, can be practiced as an athletic exercise, true, as in a vigorous vinyasa, however all asana practice is an opportunity to practice being fully embodied, sensing into the full sensation of the body, moving a bit more slowly perhaps to be more fully present. Somatics was not designed as an Awakening sadhana, but it is so mindful it too offers such an opportunity.  All our movement practices, with the right approach, can be "Embodiment practice", an opportunity to  connect to all the elements, right down to Earth.

Do not forget the simple act of living as an opportunity too. Walk barefoot and feel the earth, the grass, the sand, the rock, beneath the feet and between the toes. Put your hands in the dirt by gardening. 

What will you do to embrace yourself as Earth element today?

The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon at a distance of about 29,000 kilometres (18,000 mi). It shows Africa, Antarctica, and the Arabian Peninsula.

A map of meditation

The map and the territory

Alfred Korzybski famously said "the map is not the territory". Too true. I can stare at a map of Barcelona for hours, but I still have not had the experience of Barcelona. But a map is a truly useful thing and the yogis of yore have handed down a few that are still serviceable today as we journey the unknown territory of the spiritual journey. It is an irony that we must journey to the ends of the earth to find the goal is already right here! Then again, that is already marked on the maps.

By Unknown author - https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_1940-0713-0-79, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12813191

Just like the maps of physical geography there are different kinds ... street/road maps, topographical maps, street view, and so on. There are maps of the energetic body and maps of the Self as layers.

And then there is the map of meditation, or the Tattvas map, which is described in the Śiva Sūtra, but has its origins in the Samkhya school of philosophy.  

The beauty of this map is that we can number the elements, from one on, from either end, depending which you regard as your starting point and which is the destination.

Tattvas in Samkhya

The philosophical school of Samkhya, which is closely related to the philosophical school of "Yoga" ...  we can call it classical, or Patanjalian Yoga to distinguish it from the many other "yogas" that have developed over time ... describes the tattvas as far as one named Puruṣa. It is 25 if counting from the bottom. 

The Samkhyan school is dualistic, but non-theistic as there is no god. 

There is Prakṛti, often translated as "Nature", which evolves out into everything in the material world, down to the basic elements. The first step in the evolution into everything is the blossoming of Buddhi (Discrimination), the sense of an "I", me, of being separate, and the mind of sense processing and attention. Then there are five organs of knowledge, the organs of sensing, ears, skin, eyes, tongue and nose. Following on are the actions, pairs of "organs" and actions actually, mouth and speaking, hands and grasping, feet and ambulating, genitals and procreating, and bowels and eliminating. Then there are the seses themselves, sound, touch, appearance, flavour and odour. And finally, or primarily depending on which direction you are looking, are the elements, space, wind, fire, water and earth. So out of 25 tattvas, Prakṛti constitutes 24 of them!

And then there is Puruṣa, which you might call Soul, or "Individual Consciousness". 

Both are real. Puruṣa’s mistake is misidentifying as Prakṛti. The invitation is to put distance between you (as Puruṣa) and Prakṛti. 

Because Prakṛti is the material part, this school has a tendency to be body denying, world denying, ascetic, renunciate.

Classical Yoga differs from Samkhya mainly in being theistic, that is by allowing a deity, a supreme consciousness. 

Another perspective - Advaita Vedanta

Samkhyan philosophy is evident very early in the Vedic literature, but in the Upaniṣads another "school" is birthed, that of Vedanta, meaning the "end of the Veda". Vedanta divides into further versions, but here we will look at Advaita Vedanta, or "non-dual vedanta".

So, Advaita Vedanta, says, no, there is only One. That one is Puruṣa, but they tend to change the language – Atman. And there is the super one, Brahman, but Atman and brahman are the same. All that Prakṛti, that doesn’t exist at all, only Maya, interpreted as ILUSION, makes Atman think it is and to identify with it. Again, this is world denying, ascetic. Get out of the world, become a monk, stay away from women, and meditate, and you will realise that you are Brahman (big S self). Advaita Vedanta tends to be transcendentalist, the great silent stillness (Void, Śunya) is the goal. 

(I should make a little qualification here, this was how Advaita Vedanta was originally argued. In modern times it seems to have taken a step towards the kind of non-dualism that is proposed in the tantric versions.)

"But wait, there's more", says Non-dual Śaiva Tantra!

Non-dual Śaiva Tantra says, but wait there’s more. You missed something. Maya is not Illusion, but concealment and contraction. Through Maya, the Divine is able to manifest the world from itself, as an expression of itself. The powers of the Divine are brought into a contracted form, and then embodiment happens. In fact, then the whole universe happens.

So the map devised by Samkhya still stands, but above it are the limited powers that make everything below possible - we have location and dimension, causality and localisation; sequential time unfolds; desire and craving become an expression of the contraction of perfection; we have knowledge, but on a limited scale compared to omniscience; we can act, we have agency, but not omnipotence.

Maya, the agent of contraction to make it all possible, stands between the limited and the unlimited powers of the Divine. As we follow our map we are now beyond those limitations, tasting those powers: the power of Acting, the power of Knowing, and the power of Willing. 

There are two more powers (plus one). They are the power of Consciousness and the power of Bliss, and they are innate in the next two tattvas as we climb this map, as Śiva and Śakti respectively.  And the plus one? That is off the map and is complete freedom.

Śiva is transcendence, the still point, Śakti is immanence, the flowing energy of everything. Yet they are not really two.  Just as the centre of the wheel and the rim are not two but still one wheel, the centre the still point around which the rim and the rest of the wheel, revolves, but still one wheel, so too these principles of Śiva and Śakti. Tradition would place them side by side but numbering down Śiva would be 1 and Śakti 2, however this numbering is in no way indicating precedence. Śiva and Śakti are equal and could just as easily be interchanged.

This has now built 36 tattvas, or principles of reality and maps the path into manifestation and the path back up the map by which we find our way home. Beyond these 36 is the unenumerable, the Heart, Śiva-Śakti in perfect union.

Reference: Please read Tantra Illuminated by Christopher Wallis to understand more about all things Tantra, especially non-dual Śaiva Tantra.

Limiting the limitless - pointers to your True Self

The Kaňcukas part 2

Last month I wrote about the five Kaňcukas, which are like veils that limit the vast perfection of the Divine Everything so that it takes form as the diversity that is the manifest universe. Today I will say a few words about each of these.

But first, it is important to note that these limitations, though they lie like veils over our true nature concealing to ourselves the vastness of who we really are, they are not something to be despised or something we need to be rid of. Everything is to be welcomed on this path. And the wonderful thing is that the very aspect that is a covering is also a clue, even a portal through which we might find our way home.

This article refers to the way we can use our iRest® Yoga Nidra meditation practice to help us work with the Kaňcukas. If you are unfamiliar with iRest please visit www.irest.org/ to learn more.

I am also indebted to Christopher Wallis for assisting me in understanding the Kaňcukas and I recommend the relevant section of his book Tantra Illuminated. He explains it far better than I ever could.

Limited agency - Kalā

The first step on this path of creation is the limitation of omnipotence (the Divine power of action, which is limitless). The most important thing to note about this is that it does not make us powerless in our embodied form. Kalā is not impotence. It is indeed the Divine power of action itself, just a little pared down. 

Our spiritual path is to nurture and grow that divine Power until we finally realise our full and innate divinity.

In practice, this will mean that when we encounter the power of action in its limited form we have an opportunity to expand it a little. This is why they are pointers.

So meeting “there is always more needing to be done” and my urge to do more, I can also recognize the divine power of doing that brings all of this manifestation to being and dissolves it all back again. If I meet the feeling of powerlessness, can it point me to the feeling of potency? And while we might see these as two opposites in the movement of emotions in awareness, just as we come to know welcoming, and wellbeing as aspects of awareness, so too both omnipotence in its fullness, and its self-limiting form we experience in embodiment are ultimately aspects of that one consciousness as well.

Limited knowing - Vidyā

The limitation of knowing – Vidyā, is not ignorance. Māyā conceals the fullness of omniscience in order to project Consciousness into manifestation.

We are granted the ability to know something about our world and to continue to learn more about our world. The biggest trap of Vidyā is not the urge to know more, it is thinking that what you know is all there is.

The old story of the blind people and the elephant illustrates this.

“A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: "We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable". So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. In the case of the first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said "This being is like a thick snake". For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, "is a wall". Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.” (Wikipedia's version)

Each thought that they knew what an elephant was, but when they shared what they knew with each other they fell into arguing.

Image credit, medium.com

And this is the trap of Vidyā we see played out in life. This is the human tendency to believe our own limited subjective truth and to ignore, dismiss and even repress the limited subjective truth of others.

In terms of our personal spiritual path, we may fall into a trap based on a limited experience of thinking that we’ve “arrived”. So part of our path is to always seek to expand our understanding.

In fact the manifestation of “Vidyā” of believing “There is more I need to know” is to be welcomed as it keeps us questing.

Vidyā is nothing but the limited form of the divine power of Knowing, jňāna-śakti. As we expand our horizon of limited knowing we more closely approximate towards jňāna-śakti.

Ultimately of course we seek to move beyond words and thinking to the knowing that is an inner wisdom, a lifting of the veil of Māyā to sense that which all the words of teachers, live or in writing, ancient or modern, can only hint at, though they may point the way.

In practice – what we think we know is what we believe. In our quest to expand our knowing, we are seeking to situate what we know in a wider context. In iRest®, our practice in the realm of beliefs does just that. If I am believing “I am a failure, everything I do just turns bad, I have the touch of death for any enterprise” and I come up with all sorts of memories to support that, and I wallow in all the emotions of that, I can use the iRest process to expand that and situate in a broader context, allowing me to move beyond it. I can do that by work in the opposites, what is the opposite or alternative to “I am a failure”? We can work with it anthropomorphically – if this belief walked into the room what would it be … can you dialogue with it. Substitute any belief … “my religion/atheism is true and others are wrong, even evil”, “my politics are the best, the other mob are dangerous”.

The limitation of perfection - rāga - desire

 When the veil of Māyā limits the divine powers, divine perfection is thus limited, and in our embodiment, which is possible only due to all this limiting, we have the sense of not being complete. This leads to desire and craving, raga, as we seek that which will make us feel complete. We misplace the direction of our yearning and crave material possessions, recognition, fame, acknowledgement, food, attention, holidays, physical connection, sex, a different body, and so it goes. We may even fall into addiction to food, alcohol or other substances. If I feel imperfect in this now, in this body, then perhaps if I can get that then I will feel whole. If only everybody paid more attention to me, then I would know I am whole. If only I were 10kgs lighter, then I would feel more perfect. If only I had more money.

In fact all desire, all craving, is the yearning for Divine Perfection, which ironically is already here, just the veil of Māyā prevents our recognition of it. In our work in iRest® we invite connection with what we call the Heartfelt Desire, (though many like to use other terms and that is fine). Eventually we might come to recognise that Whatever we first identify as our heartfelt desire is ultimately that yearning for the wholeness of Divine Perfection.

Watch for the guises in which desire becomes cloaked by the mind … but I need this. But the other is lacking for not giving me attention. But life is unfair and I deserve such and such.

Other literal meanings of the word rāga are to colour or tint; and a musical harmony or melody.

Desire colours the mind and tints our perspective and influences how we see the world and other people. For example: The desire for attention will see everybody else’s attention as belonging to ourselves and we will become demanding of it, even manipulative to achieve it … and this will colour all our relationships.

In Indian music a rāga is also like a scale, but also like a theme upon which variations can be played. And the musical notes present themselves with dissonance and resolution. The dissonant notes will feel imperfect, they crave a resolution. And then of course the resolution comes and the harmony resolves. That dissonant note is the craving for fullness.

Desire, rāga, shows us areas where we may need to expand ourselves more fully. Self-inquiry, as in meditation but also in reflection, can reveal our cravings. OK if we have a craving for peanut butter that is easy to identify, but truly recognising something like our craving for attention may require us to open our eyes somewhat, to be come more self-aware in the small s sense. 

Rāga is not to be rejected, but transmuted.

• Recognise desire, truly
• Trace desire back to its source
• Recognise your yearning for divine fullness
• Allow that yearning to guide you home – you are just following the perfume!

The limitation of time - Kāla

From the timelessness of Pure Consciousness, linear time is a requirement of embodied experience. In pure Consciousness everything is simultaneous, but as embodied beings we experience one moment after another.

Our awareness of linear time also gives us the sense of past and future. Our sense of the past can make us feel guilty, regretful and also nostalgic. Our sense of the future can make us fear, worry, and also fantasize.

It is easy to appreciate the burden of guilt and worry. But less obvious is that nostalgia and fantasy are a burden. But we are grasping at both, attached to both and in that attachment we are missing the middle point.

Poised in the middle is the present moment, so much eulogised in our age of mindfulness practices.

It is the sense of linear time that seems to be the distinguishing mark of the human animal. Do the animals fret with guilt over their past failings or with worry over the potentiality of the future. Do they have nostalgia or do they fantasize?  Well we cannot know for sure but it appears not. Yet the mindful now we humans seek is not that of the animals. It is in our reflection on the past and anticipation of a future that we find a potential for evolution, for growth.

We seek to stay in the present with full awareness of guilt and nostalgia, worry and fantasy, all the while being free of them. Again, the limitation of time, manifesting as guilt or anxiety, nostalgia or fantasy, is welcomed as the pointer to the state of Presence. – The present which constantly flows, is constantly flowing from Consciousness and unfolding as manifestation and is simultaneously reabsorbed into Consciousness.

We can invite the law of opposites to guide us, working with pairs such as:

• Guilt and nostalgia
• Fantasy and worry
• Fantasy and nostalgia
• Guilt and worry
• Nostalgia and worry
• Fantasy and guilt

The limitation of space - Niyati

Niyati is very interesting. It is the limitation that results in us experiencing individuality and separation.

Pure Consciousness has no dimension. You may have experienced this immense spaciousness. In iRest we often ask the question: is there any centre, is there any periphery, inviting the discovery of, no there is not, there is everywhere-ness and nowhere in particular-ness.

(Richard Miller, creator of iRest, has said that that expression he uses so often, everywhere and nowhere in particular, was how one veteran in one of the early PTSD trials at Walter Reid described it, and he picked up those words as being the best representation he had come across.)

Niyati creates the three dimensions of space, in which materiality is possible, and in so doing the sense of location, of having centre and periphery, comes about. And since we also have the sense of not being able to occupy the same space as anything else, the sense of separation arises. Niyati then is the restriction of the formless transcendence that is Śiva itself!

In embodied life we constantly experience niyati by the very sense of our body as a spatial location. We also experience frustrations of space, not having enough of it for example, or the space we occupy not being good enough.

Everyday practice is to reorient ourselves to all our actions being in selfless service. This might seem tricky when we meet our pure motive prayer, I practice out of love for myself, out of a desire to know the truth … until we refine our understanding that it is only in the sense of separation created by niyati that we have a sense of ourself at all, and to serve ourself is to serve all others. HOWEVER, that does not really let you off the hook. In loving yourself, you need not seek endless fruits for yourself, and the more you ardently discover the Truth, the less that is seen as a true goal. And in the prayer for pure motive, it is underpinned by “for the benefit of all beings” which immediately removes “selfish” motive.

In meditation we invite an experiential welcoming of Consciousness – Awareness – as unbounded spaciousness.

That can also be a micro meditation for anytime. Just stop. Expand. Touch into that spaciousness, even if just for a moment.

It is like the dyer dying the cloth. To obtain a really rich colour the cloth goes in and comes out. Then it will go in again, and out, and in again, and so on until the colour is at the rich hue required. So too we are dipping into pure spaciousness, again and again. Eventually we are saturated with it and it never leaves us.

Go to Part 1

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.