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