Calming and strengthening in difficult times

At WOMAD last weekend, I had a number of instances of discovering that people from different circles, and not even necessarily residents of Adelaide, were connected to each other in some way. So I appreciate the enormous task that the health authorities have when it comes to tracking down the people who have been in contact with people who have tested positive to COVID 19, and all their contacts. We are so interconnected. A virus's dream! And also our own, as a sense of connectedness is one of the most important things to our mental health.

Of course connectedness is the truth of all Reality, streaming forth as it does from one source "on the 'canvas' that is Herself"*. So our sense of connectedness is a little bit of ourselves recognising the truth and coming home to it.

Today I want to offer many ways your sadhana (yoga/spiritual practice) can support you and all others during these tricky times. It is true to say that when we are under pressure we have more tendency to grow and evolve. So if Corona Virus is making you think more about what you do and what you expose yourself to, use that to deepen and double your sadhana.

A strong energy body is a stronger immune system

Many yoga practices will assist you in warding off disease. Certainly practices that are aimed at your physical fitness will help - a fit body is always going to be better placed to resist disease. But I am referring to practices that build your energy body in other ways.

Breathing practices, practices that directly bring you into experiencing and working with your energy body, visualisations and mantra are all going to help you here. And there are practices also that you can utilise to assist others as well.

One great way to bring sadhana into daily life is to dedicate everything you do to the benefit of all beings. Start your day with the mantra lōkāḥ samastāḥ sukhinōbhavantu meaning May all beings in every realm be centred in happiness and joy, free from suffering and centred in the state of unified peace! May it be so. Listen to it here so you can learn it. It is easy.

Dedicating yourself and everything you do to the benefit if all beings in this way has an immediate impact on your state of mind, and it aids you in cultivating discrimination in all you do. It also navigates the mind away from fear and into a state of loving kindness.

Add on visualisations

There are many visualizations that you could use but I'd like to share this one with you that I have been practising for years. It once helped me heal from a very serious injury. Always frame this visualization in a way that will be personal to you. For example, you may have a personal relationship with a deity and could use the visualization of the deity as the golden light described below.

I like to do it this way.

Above me is a golden light. It is full of healing. As I inhale, the healing energy flows down and into my heart. As I exhale it spreads out into every corner of my body. If I have a particular part that needs healing, I will direct it there especially. After a few minutes, I am so full of healing light I can send it out into the world. The golden light above is infinite, and this process can go on forever, and nothing will be depleted, only filled.

Make hand-washing a sadhana

Since you will be spending more time washing your hands, spend every hand-washing with a mantra and it too becomes yoga. You need to spend at least 20 to 25 seconds on your hand soaping right? Three rounds of the lōkāḥ samastāḥ together with the Oṃ śānti śānti śānti will time it right. Or you might use the mahāmṛtyuṃjaya mantra which is powerfully healing.

Yoga is more essential than ever

Your yoga practices are more important then ever. Don't skip your practice because you are feeling fearful or stressed. Double it. Yoga will antidote your fear and literally build your resistance to disease. It may surprise you also that more than your physical yoga, thought that is also helpful, but your meditation, mantra japa, energy body work will build the system's resilience far more.

May you be peaceful and happy. Om.

* Quotation from the Pratyabhijñā-hṛdaya of Kṣemarāja verse 2 translated as the Recognition Sutras by Christopher D. Wallis.

Asking the question, what is true?

Sigmund Freud's posited construct of the mind was tripartite, consisting of id, ego and super-ego. Id is the instinctual drive; Ego is more than just a sense of self, it is the organising aspect of our psyche; while Super-ego aims for perfection and is super-critical, punishing imperfection with feelings of guilt and shame.

I am no expert in Freudian psychology. No doubt if I were I could write a book just talking about these three aspects of self and telling you how Freud's own thinking on them developed. But I am not and I cannot. It is interesting, however, that our common everyday use of the word ego has parted company somewhat with Freud's theory. Ego is the Latin word for I, so we tend to make the word synonymous with our sense of I-ness. What in non-dual tantra might be called ahamkara. 

The word ego is tossed around as if it is something undesirable. As such it is being confused with another term, egotism, which is the state of being excessively self-absorbed. So when we say something like "Oh, he has such an ego!" in that judgy, perjorative way that we do, we are really saying that he is egotistical, that is, self-absorbed. And what a terrible way to be, poor person!

Of course, the self in which this poor person is so absorbed is not that capital S Self that is used as a descriptor for the Universal Consciousness, beyond concept, which is therefore impossible to describe. No, it is the small s self, I, me. It is a thought and a bunch of ideas, beliefs about what "I" am.

Note well that it always another person, never ourselves that we hold this belief about, that they are self-absorbed and egotistical. Yet this belief about another is surely created as a reaction to another belief, that things should be a particular way which make me feel comfortable and this person is in someway violating that and therefore must be wrong, namely, they are self-absorbed. Is it not our own self-absorption that created a belief that things should go our own way that leads to this other belief that another person is self-absorbed.

The message here is that it is all belief, all thought and you just cannot trust it to be in anyway true.

Maps of the territory 

Freud's theory of Id, Ego and Super ego is nothing more than a map or model of the mind and sometimes perhaps its view is useful, but there are other views which might serve us better, sometimes.  It is like Google maps.  We can see the map, the street view, perhaps we might even be able to see a satellite image and so forth. We use the view that is most useful. 

The yoga tradition has also mapped the territory, in many ways, with the purpose of pointing us beyond the mind to the essence of our true nature.

What do we really know is true?

This is the essential question on the spiritual path. In many ways it merges into this other big question:

Who am I?

In answering Who am I? we might come up with all sorts of labels and beliefs. A name? That is a label. A place in a family, wife, husband, mother, father, sister, brother? Are they not labels too? Can a label be true? Do they tell you what is your essence nature?

It can be scary as you begin to peel away all the labels, all the ideas, all the beliefs and begin to recognise them as being quite unreliable, things that in fact feed your own self-absorption. The pathway to Self-absorption is destructive. Big S Self-absorption, which is to rest in your essence-nature, cannot co-exist with small s self-absorption. The moment we fall back into small s self-absorption we are forgetting our big S Self.

Small s self is quite worried about being destroyed and is as adaptable as a super-virus to any attempt to undermine it. But the thing is that it is the absorption that we are overcoming in order to abide in our essence nature. Then we can utilise the small s self to navigate life without being pulled into absorption, simultaneously knowing our true Self, which is so much more!

Practice

If you are ready for this scary journey here are some things you might do.

Practice iRest® Yoga Nidra meditation. Within the iRest protocol you are invited to examine your beliefs, pair them with opposites , notice the emotions that co-arise and trace them into the feelings in the body, pair them with opposites and ultimately recognise that neither is completely true, opening the way for experiencing that which is true.

Another practice is to take a notebook, a pretty one is best, one that you could really value. In it write everything that you think is true about yourself , others and the world. Putting it out there can help you find objectivity and might help the process of taking it into meditation and really examining its veracity. When it is full find an opportunity to ritually burn it. With it burn all attachment to those beliefs.

Surrender

In the end there is no doing, no practice. It is simply being prepared to surrender.