Tag Archives: spiritual path

Alternative Health & Yoga

The Spiritual Side of Yoga: Introduction

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“When (the yogi’s consciousness) pervades all things

by (his) desire to precieve, then why speak much?

He will experience it for himself.”

~Spandakarika~

One of my goals in writing about Indian philosophy is to clear up some of the New Age misunderstandings, which, though they carry some grain truth, are only adding fuel to the fire of materialism, selfishness and corruption that is the hallmark of our age. Not that there is anything wrong with wanting a better life for ourselves, but to increase our own inner power at the expense of the outer world is incompatible with with truly gaining a better life. Incomplete notions of many of the key concepts of Indian philosophy (such as purity, karma ,the cycle of birth and death, and even the role of Mother Nature (Shakti) in our lives) is causing a subtle backlash from people who have interest in yoga but can see only the materialistic side that often collides with their own experience and understanding. I grow tired of hearing all the pseudo-philosophies that are so tirelessly spread through the western yoga communities.

Tantra is especially susceptible to abuse. For this reason it has attracted me for several years. Little of what I saw in the west made much sense to me: the manuals of Kundalini Yoga, Pranayama, meditation, hatha yoga, raja yoga, posters for tantric couples retreats, or whatever it might be. If enlightenment comes by grace, then none of these things matter.

And what is enlightenment anyways? These days I just imagine it as a deep wisdom. We have all met people with this deeper wisdom. We too have acted with it a time or two, it’s just not art of our everyday life. We’re generally acting on a whole different realm from wisdom. Wisdom is even scorned as foolishness these days. Everyone has the potential for this sort of wisdom, it’s there, but too often we get caught up in the power of knowledge as we climb.

I don’t claim to have anything figured out, my writing is merely my way of trying to put the pieces together for myself. In a way, you can say I’m even writing for myself as much as for you. The conflicts that arise in my work is much more of a conflict that is happening inside of myself rather than some conflict I might have with anyone else’s path. Freedom is an uncompromising path that we are all on, and though there are several manuals out there that will lead us to right action, nobody can agree on their meaning so everyone just searches for freedom where they want it to be.

Most people these days are looking for material acquisition to give them freedom. This is the abode of earthly things and is ruled over by Karma and Kama (action and desire). On this path we are tied to our actions, things and common desires. The powers (of Shakti) we gain in order to increase our material standing in society only serve to bind us more tightly to Karma and Kama. The point is, we have little freedom when we align our lives with the material world. Our inner life remains just fluctuating as the waves on the ocean or the wind in the trees.

If we want freedom we have to go to the source of the power by directing our energy inward. Your true self is the source! That moment of intent that arises before we do, think or say anything is the source of all things. When we learn to relate with this inner consciousness, our innate wisdom, then we have learned how to use our freedom; then we become free to act rather than remaining bound to react.

The problem is that most of us are just floating thru life going wherever the tide of our karma takes us. Life in the modern world can be incredibly easy if we allow it to just carry us, but at some point most people figure out that it isn’t very much fun. The real fun is in the choice, that way we know we will always get what we want. Real fun is living a self directed life. Accepting our karma is one thing, but rising above it is quite another. Most people are quite happy with the former while only a few people strive for the later. The true power of yoga isn’t in the power at all, its in the true freedom choice over how to use that power.

Alternative Health & Yoga, Philosophy

Traditional ways come to the city: in brief

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Traditional culture goes by a lot of names these days. Every region has their own ancient practice. The Americas have their shamans connecting man to nature and the cosmos thru fire and smoke rituals, chanting, and vision questing. China followed the Doa and yin yang with the precise awareness of balance that found expression in herbalism that implies a strong connection to the land. In India the Tantrics watched the inter-play of Shiva and Shakti dance in every molecule. Europe had the pagans worshiping the bounty of nature with gods of various sorts living in every tree limb. There is no difference between any of these paths.

In those days, people followed the Dao because they had to. By todays standard, they were no more than animals living in the forest; such was their connection to the forest.

But then, of course, cities began to rise up and civic life style began to take whole generations of people away from the land. The city has become a problem because they have dominion over land they have no connection to. Cities are about commerce and security, and cities can be very selfish in this way. Cities are areas with a dense population of numerous communities mixed about in a broth. In “successful” cities, these communities get along and co-mingle, while the less successful cities get no peace. But most cities at some time or other break in their own way. This is fate: as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, every city will have its fall. Not the surest argument to be sure, but sound none-the-less.

As for the tantrics the tribals, and the pagans, they too will fall (just as their ways have fallen to the weigh-side), but they will have more peace and fuller enjoyment along the way. With life comes death and suffering. What we call life is only animated matter. But we are not merely animated matter, we are higher than that; higher even than the life we treasure so much. Traditional practice and the perspective it offers allows us to connect in that higher manner and, as some would say, act as witness to the fate of the animated matter while remaining aloof.

When we speak in terms of tradition practice, we are forced to speak in broad terms, thus the body and mind become matter. When we speak in terms of the city, we speak in specific ways of the specialist who know a lot about one thing but nothing of the whole. It’s nothing new that the times we live in is dominated by narrow vision, we are dominated also by the city.

This is why there arose fresh spiritual masters to help navigate the city perception in a civil way. We were warned about the merchants and the militaristic way of thinking by Christ who sought to create a modern community that held to higher values even within the context of cities. Cities found a way to use Christ’s message to sway people away from paganism and into monotheism. Monotheism is like city worship. No one can argue against it because everyone agrees that there is only one god, but that one god is not separate from you or me or anything else in this world. Cities separated this modern god perspective just like they separate themselves form the land, but these modern god perspectives (there are many more than the one offered by Christ) were never meant to separate one from god but unit. There has been a war of sorts raging over this topic ever since.

These days there seems to be a revival of the traditional ways. The funny thing is that these traditional ways are now considered to be the alternative while the practices of the city, which, as I’ve mentioned earlier are narrow and self-serving, bask in the murky light of the mainstream. The healing arts of the shamans and medicine men and women of tradition are slowly being cut and pruned to fit city perspective. Old medicine is perhaps finding a new face, or loosing face altogether. Some days it’s hard to tell.

Om namah shivaya

Personal, Philosophy

Identity

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I realized something the other day. For a man on a spiritual path, it was a solid realization like running into a wall. The realization came about thru practical analysis of my will and desire as well as thru acknowledging my fears.

By mind and by impulse we want many things in life, but we only follow some of these mental promptings. We can know our true desires by the path we consistently follow. This is why people generally begin to know themselves better in middle age; we have some history to help guide us into the future. We begin many things only to have them fade away, other things that we do just seem to be a natural part of who we are. If we look close at the things that have faded from our lives, we can often relate them somehow to the more consistent path we are on.

Most of the time, most of us take action with hopes of some beneficial reaction. We give money, we get candy. We give our time and energy to work because we want money. We put our time and energy into meditation because we want peace. We want something in return for our expenditures of time, money and energy. But the truth is that most of us don’t know what we want and we wouldn’t know how to get it if we did. In the mean time our actions are often counter productive to attaining the higher goals of our life.

In our actions is everything: knowledge of ourselves, our abilities, our desires, and even our luck. But we have to look at our past actions without judgement or attachment to really recognize ourselves.

“Loose yourself and you will realize that there was no self to loose.”

This is a powerful spiritual statement. Loose yourself. Detach from your ego. Cease identifying with all your ideas of you. Imagine this scenario for a moment. Imagine yourself on some other path; perhaps the path of some rickshaw walla in India or some simple beggar in Canada. Some whole new you in some radically different situation with a radically new direction inn life. It’s quite an uncomfortable thought: disappearing from friends and family, not striving for name or fame or wealth or relations or anything at all.

I can honestly say that I’m not ready to give up on my ‘self.’ I have been cultivating myself and following this particular path of destiny for almost 38 years, I’m not particularly ready to throw it all away. This is the first wall I hit in my spiritual path. Or perhaps it’s more of a door that has opened in my spiritual life. I can never really tell. What I do know is that I’m happy with my life and direction. I don’t want to lose myself.

My sense of self is what it is. I’m not frightened or in conflict by what is inside me. It will all come to the surface when the time is right: the bliss, the pain, the fear and the courage. It will all dissipate too when the time is right.

The philosophical path I’m on started to become noticeable to me in my early twenties. Young and full of hope and optimism I began studying philosophy. Most people laugh at such idealism and remind one that there is no money in philosophy. Philosophers laugh at such people because there is no humanity in money. But they were right, I don’t think I’ve ever made a single penny with philosophy. But I have come much closer to humanity.

For a long while I turned my back on my own philosophical foundation and sought to identify myself as someone with more fiscal hope in life. Admittedly I didn’t raise the bar of fiscal hope very high. I changed my studies to writing and began identify as such. Later I dropped writing and dove into acrylics and canvas only to later switch to photography. I knew I’d never be an artist but I did have some small success in these areas.

The thing is, I never liked being identified as a construction worker; it was too base for my intellectual pride. I enjoyed the outside work, the hard labour, and the easy comradery with the crews, I just didn’t like the identification. The most humiliating question a person could ask was, “What do you do for a living?” Once the hours and the labour and the lifestyle started deteriorating my body, I knew I had to get out.

My luck took me to India eight years ago. I immersed myself in the various aspects of yoga: the asanas healed my body, the meditation helped me find calm, the lifestyle changed my own permanent behaviour so that many bad habits dropped away naturally and the philosophy and astrology have richly fed my mind. I began to see my own new lifestyle practices boom in the marketplace and I thought perhaps luck was leading me out of construction. Yoga and philosophy and holistics have simply become a part of my life; but the market place has not. It’s a dirty place this marketplace. Much dirtier than the shit smeared streets of Varanasi and the petty corruption that is part of my life here.

I’m not one to sell myself to the masses. To be honest, I don’t think I have much appeal for the masses. Perhaps it’s the years of construction that instilled such practicality in me. Working with people who were generally quick to accept but slow to judge makes me too honest and practical for the marketplace. In absence of office politics and mutual friendships honesty can flourish.

I don’t try to sell people their hopes and dreams. Everyone has to take care of that for themselves. I won’t hyperbolize my skills and knowledge and I won’t speak, practice or  teach beyond my own knowledge and experience just to impress. And I’ll do my best not to repeat in my own words something someone else has said with crystal clarity. This is why I have not written a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita despite several suggestions that I do so; all I can do is complicate and already clear and simple translation.

I was thinking about my own social identity when the ideas about the separations between internal and external came to me; the spiritual and the physical you could say. I often struggle with my social identity, and struggle with this struggle as well. I feel l like I know myself quite well, I’ve stretched myself beyond many limitation and recognise some of the ones that continue to hold me back (social identity being one of them). I’m comfortable with my contradictions and I know that my true self goes beyond words. I suspect it’s the social media aspect of identity that causes the most turmoil, but it’s the same when I’m asked by some new person what I do. What do I do?

I do so much, but yet I do so little and on the outside it seems to change so much month to month, year to years. Inside, these changes are small things, I know my path even though I can’t describe it. My path is an spiritual one until I come sit at my computer to use it as entrance into into the marketplace. What you’re reading is the only publicity I have. But in doing so I have to create an identity that I know only scratches the surface of what I’ve actually done while not even scratching the surface of who I really am. It causes me untold misery.

My desire to enter the market place of yoga and esoteric practice is not fed by a desire for money or fame, but merely to remain independent in my spiritual practice. My fierce independence and wandering ways have been both a spiritual blessing as well as a curse. If I could submit to an ashram or some such thing I could have an easy spiritual living, but this is not a long term solution for me. Neither, any longer, are my short bouts of construction work. The only next step I can envision in my physical as well as spiritual evolution is sharing some of my knowledge of yoga and healing and other esoteric subjects. The other problem I face is that many of the practices in these fields demand a kind of secrecy. They’re custom made for the time and place I find myself in and taking them out of that place and putting them into the marketplace or some blog post depreciates their value.

But as long as we go into society, we must identify as something. Our clothes and hair style and even the places we go are clues to our identity. In my case, I write and blog and have desire to bring my knowledge into the marketplace somehow. It’s perhaps this need to identify as something that is the dirtiest part of the marketplace. Or perhaps it’s just my own desire to be a part of it that I find so repugnant.

I have several identities actually. There my internal spiritual true identity. The one those I see in the course of the day experience; this one too arising quite naturally, and then there’s the one’s that are haphazardly crafted on line thru Facebook and WordPress and social media. I try to keep the online identity as close to reality as possible, but you know how it goes, you just can’t describe a full person in a sound bites. Internal identities are expansive while the external ones contract and limit.

And this is one of my greatest fears, that my online identity will not be authentic, but of course it won’t, it’s only a couple kilobytes.