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.

Re-charging well-being

Within you is an unchanging deep well of well-being. We call it your Inner

Beat a well worn path to your inner feelings of well-being

Resource. It is innate and it is natures gift to us to help us be resilient no matter what happens in life.

Just as important to our survival is our negativity bias.

This seems contradictory doesn't it? It is a paradox.

The negativity bias keeps us safe. If we hear a bump in the night the negativity bias would have us immediately think that danger lurks so we can become alert and ready to flee, freeze or defend, whatever the best option is in the moment. It is a deep instinct. It comes on stream before the logical powers of our thinking mind can kick in, deducing that it is windy outside and that darned tree branch just banged against the gutter again and to make yet another mental note to prune it before the next windy night!

The inner resource may be there all the while. The inner resource can hold us calm to allow the thinking mind to do its deducing. The inner resource can keep us calm us while we get back to sleep.

Why is it then that we have so often lost touch with the inner resource of well-being?

The detritus of life has buried it. This can especially happen if it is not regularly recharged, if there has been a string of misfortunes or challenges, or a major traumatic event. But even the constant stresses of ordinary modern life, feeling time poor, job insecurity, the bills coming in, more and more until we are in a state of overwhelm, and the inner resource can become buried.

So it is an important practice for life that we regularly recharge our inner resource. You can do this in outer ways, by taking some action that helps you feel calm and at ease. Maybe one of these is similar to your outer practices of recharging your inner resource:

• a walk on the beach
• a long deep warm bath by candlelight with soft music playing
• a holiday in cabin away from modern technology with a good book
• immersing in a novel
• losing track of time painting a picture
• going on retreat
• making music with friends.

Your favourite outer practices of recharge can also help you to find that inner place of well-being and calm. Think about that thing you do to recharge as if you are imagining it happening right now. As you do let all your senses come into play. Tastes, sounds, smells, the light, what you see, and tactile sensations. Are you alone or have you brought along a favourite person or people, or animal?

Now turn attention to the feelings of well-being that are evoked. More and more let your attention dwell in the feelings in your body of being at ease, secure, calm, the feelings of well-being. Notice as much about these feelings in the body as you can, as you allow the images to recede.

In this way you can make an inner practice of recharge. This can be done at any time and the more you do it the more clear the path to it will become. Wake up and practice it. Practice it while having lunch. On the bus. At the traffic lights. While waiting for sleep.

The more often you visit it the more clear the pathway to it becomes and the shorter the pathway to it becomes until it is simply turning attention towards it and it is there, always.

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."

What do you really, really want?

I am sitting to write this article for readers to see in early January and I am aware that it is the season of the New Year's Resolution. 

What goes on the list of New Year's Resolutions is usually something like this:

• Lose weight
• Eat healthier
• Get up early to exercise daily
• Drink less alcohol
• Drink more water
• Work harder/ work shorter hours
• Read more
• Get a new job 

The things that go on the resolutions list are usually to fix something we perceive is wrong with us. Last month I wrote about limiting beliefs and those veils of limitation. Here we have them in action again.  Limited perfection. Limited space. Limited time. Limited action. Limited knowing.

Remember though that they can always be lifted to reveal what is your True Nature.

What is it that you really, really want?

It is surprising how unconscious this can really be, but if we can flush it out into the open, many "desires" such as are reflected in the resolutions list, become superfluous. Be like a little child and keep asking the question why.

Let's imagine that your immediate answer to the question, what do you really want, is to have enough money to retire on right now. Let's have an imagined dialogue about that.

Why do you want that?

My job sucks.

Why?

I have to work really hard, but it doesn't pay very well and my boss is really bossy and seems to think she owns me, wants me there when it should be my own time .....

Well we opened a flood gate there, but what if we ask again. What do you really want?

Not to be in that job, to feel valued.

To feel valued. Could we take a look at that? You do not feel valued?

No, I feel unloved and unvalued, worthless, when I go to this job and am treated like I am treated.

So what do you really want?

To feel valued and appreciated.

So how would it feel if you were valued and appreciated? If you are valued and appreciated right now what feelings would be there in your body?

I would feel warm inside, and my edges would be soft and inviting. I would feel whole.

So would it be correct to say that what you really want is to feel whole?

You can do this with yourself. Take what first arises in answer to the question, "What do you really want?" and then workshop it just as I have in this imagined conversation above.

In traditional yoga nidra the practice starts with the Sankalpa, or resolve. In iRest® Yoga Nidra the Sankalpa is divided into three parts, the Intention, the Heartfelt Desire and the Inner Resource. I have noticed that many people take some time to arrive at their Heartfelt desire (or Life Mission, deep driving desire, Heartfelt purpose, what words you call it doesn't matter).

This questioning of what arises can be quite a useful way to open the process of discovery of what it really is. Another lies in what happens at the end of the practice when we invite the Heartfelt desire to arise again.

During the iRest Yoga Nidra meditation we open to the state of awareness in which everything arises and begin to experience our True Nature as open, welcoming, all-pervasive awareness. At the end of the yoga nidra practice it is directly from that state of pure Awareness that the Heartfelt Desire comes to us, and if we can notice it before the thinking mind begins to edit it, we will see it for what it is.

Sorry for the Spice Girls echoes in the title of today's post.

The Power of Intention

"You are what your deep driving desire is"

These lines from the Upanishads have always held great resonance for me.

As I am turning my thoughts toward teaching a new course "The Power of Intention" a four week exploration of the intention components of iRest® Yoga Nidra, the ancient upanishadic words are repeating in my mind.

They continue (Eknath Eashwaran translation):

"As your desire is, so is your will;
As your will is, so is your deed;
As your deed is, so is your destiny."

So powerful is the way that we shape and frame our intentions, that we are advised and should take care in their framing. How does the mind interact with our intention? Is it undermining us with its constant chatter, its accumulated baggage of beliefs about ourselves. One way I find that iRest is so wonderfully powerful is that we are handed the tools to deal with all of this, and the tools to constantly refine our intention as well until we know it is the quintessential beacon to guide our lives.

Of course, iRest Yoga Nidra is not the only system to have recognised that intention is so powerful.

Lewis Carroll put it this way: "If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there." And in another version "If you don't know where you are going you will probably end up somewhere else" (sometimes attributed to  Dr Laurence J. Peter of Peter Principle fame, and sometimes to former American pro baseballer 'Yogi' Berra whose full name is Lawrence Peter Berra - I am going with the baseballer).

The point is, that without goals you are aimless, wandering around in circles, and ending up in meaninglessness. But a goal, intention or heartfelt desire, leads you on.

If however you are framing desires or goals or intentions without skill, they may be as useless as not having any. If I frame my intention "I want to be happy" this is nothing more than a feeling state of not being complete.  It is fed directly from a self-belief that might be stated out as "I am not good enough" and it will serve as a reinforcing feedback loop to that self-belief.

A more powerful intention would be framed as an affirmation "I am complete and happy just as I am".

Through meditation and paying careful attention to how the Intention arises from our deepest states, the Intention is honed like steel in a fire until it is recognised as resonating deeply. When you find that resonance your "deep driving desire" changes no more. It will shape your will, and your action and your destiny.

Sankalpa - Recipe of the month

This article was first published in the Yoga Spirit Studios newsletter "On the Mat" in December 2013

At this time of year you might be feeling that you have had enough food to last awhile. So, this month I am stretching the definition of "recipe", and the Sanskrit word "Sankalpa" meaning "intent or resolution" - taking Sankalpa to be a recipe for successful living. 

 When we make a New Year's resolution, it tends to be something that identifies a perceived shortcoming in ourselves resolving to do better in the coming year.

If I say "I will lose weight", "I will exercise more", "I will give up smoking" I am really saying "I am inadequate and there is something I need to do to be more deserving".

The Sankalpa of our yoga practice is a little different to the New Year's resolution.

"You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny."
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.5 tr Eknath Eswaran

The Sankalpa may take some meditation to discover, but once you bring it to the surface, and repeat it often, it will inform your will and thereby your actions. By identifying it, it becomes your reality.

That is why we always phrase the Sankalpa as if it is our present reality, affirmation style, and we identify how it feels in our body when it is our present Truth, thus affirming not just in words but with our whole body and mind.

So the Sankalpa is a deeper resolution than the typical New Year's Resolution. How to find it?

It will reveal itself to you as you practice the niyama (personal observances of the Yoga Sutras), Svadhyaya, which means "self-study or "self-inquiry". One way is to not stop at "I hate myself because I am over-weight, so my New Year's Resolution is to lose weight - again", but to inquire of yourself, what lies beneath all of this and what is the real deep, driving desire that may be manifesting in the conditions that cause your body to be at greater than optimal weight, and your aversion that makes you wish your body to be other than it is.

Let yourself become really quiet to allow this self-inquiry to unfold.

Underlying the New Year's Resolution statements there may be additional layers, such as "when I am overweight (unfit, smoking) I do not feel whole and healthy", so the real intention could be rephrased as "I will be more whole and healthy". So perhaps your Sankalpa might become "I am whole, healthy and perfect just as I am".

Strictly speaking a Sankalpa would remain unchanged until it is fully realised, when a new one might be set. But as it might take some inquiry to really discover your Sankalpa, you might take the one that immediately arises as the working model, but it may yet change as you also continue your self-inquiry.

Affirm your Sankalpa at the beginning of your day, your yoga practice, your meditation, but also invite your Sankalpa to re-emerge at the end of the day or practice. Listen carefully to the way in which your Sankalpa presents itself when you are in deep meditation or relaxation. As it bubbles up from the depths it will have Truth and power; it may present a little differently, and it is good practice to take careful note of that and adjust your Sankalpa accordingly.

So why not this new year, start working with Sankalpa as an alternative to a New Year's Resolution.