Until we are completely surrendered….

 December 25, 2016

Until we are completely surrendered to God, there will be times when we are blind.

When we think of the Christmas Story, we tend to think of Mary, Joseph, the three wise men, the shepherds who hear the angel Gabriel announce the birth of Christ, and Christ Himself. We rarely think about the innkeepers who turned away the couple.

When we read teaching stories we are to place ourselves in the story as one of the characters. As we grow, we move among the characters until finally we are ALL the characters.

The innkeepers who turned away the couple were not bad; they had no room at their inn. They were just functionaries moving the couple toward the place where Christ was to be born. And yet they did not recognize the Truth of the situation. They were blind to what was in front of them. They could have seen, and though there was no room, made room. They could have recognized Joseph and Mary for who they were, known there was no room, and left the inn to be with Mary and Joseph at the stable when Christ was born. The three wise men saw the Star of Bethlehem, knew inwardly what it meant, and followed, bringing gifts. Even when they had not physically seen the couple, they understood.

So who are the innkeepers? When is it that we are to identify with them? Always. Because until we are completely surrendered to God, there will be times when we are blind. If we refuse to acknowledge that blindness, we will never get to “see” Christ. We will never get to the stable. We will never encounter the other characters. We will never get to be ALL the characters.

So this holiday season, I wish that each of us surrenders our shrunken self so that we ALL are ALL the characters in this great play God is performing.

With Joy and Love and best wishes for the season,

Rohini

Unseeing….

 December 25, 2016

  Unseeing                Awake 

Off the hook              Responsible  

Guest Blog: The Way (Not) To Be Raps Five….

 December 18, 2016

The following are raps people wrote about their “ways (not) to be”—the litanies of their shrunken selves. Part of spiritual practice is learning how we operate when we are not fully conscious; this process is detailed in two earlier blog posts titled “The Way Not To Be” and “Not the Way To Be.” These raps helped their authors gain clarity and nonattachment.

The Way (Not) To Be Rap 13…

Waking up,
My hair’s all white,
My body aches,
It just ain’t right.

Where have I been?
My life’s gone by.
What did I do?
I lived a lie.

My Mom and Dad
Lived on in me,
Though I thought I
Did it differently.

Carnage ensued
To myself and all;
Though I called it good,
I created Hell.

What has been my “good”?
Wretched and ashamed,
Cowering, glowering,
A feral life, untamed.

I called myself a lady,
I was holier than thou;
Crazy as that was, I
Couldn’t, wouldn’t see just how.

I’d torment people with my “good”;
I’d disrespect them, too.
They never really liked it,
But I’d think, “What’s wrong with you?”

Mom was a vampire zombie,
Dad was a raging drunk.
I took them in and lived them out,
Stuffed me into the trunk.

Now my body’s old and creaky
And I’m looking at the ruin.
“Good God”, I think, I stayed there,
Living out my “Home Sweet Home”.

I’d thought I couldn’t get out,
Someone had to rescue me,
Until I finally got it that
I have some agency.

Rohini kept on knocking
But the latch was sealed up tight,
Until one day I let it crack
Cause nothing felt alright.

It’s been a rude awakening
To see what I have done:
Calling good bad, bad good,
And recreating home.

I never knew how nuts I was,
But now I’ve come to see it;
I can better call it what it is
And work to never be it.

The Way (Not) To Be Rap 14…

My way to be is not to be;
Instead I suffer internally.
To make things right I do not fight
Or feel or think or speak;

I numb myself, deny inside,
Always looking to run and hide
Hide and run, run away
Walking is also okay.

Dead and dumb
With no skills,
Sometimes show up for fancy meals;
Maybe go on a retreat
To a beach and take a seat.

Nothing to do,
No one to see,
Just alone in my misery.

I keep outwardly silent,
Never a complainer ,
Just sit tight in my brutal container.

Inconsiderate and uncaring,
The way to be is to sit there staring.

The Way (Not) To Be Rap 15…

My way to be is to be real mean.
Judging and insulting, I’m a mean machine.
This side of me, for many, is unforeseen.

I like to play innocent, but really I’m not.
And sometimes I thrive on being caught;
I’m in love with being a little punk snot.

The way to be is knowing life sucks:
Create my own misery and call it bad luck,
Then make it suck for others by being a fuck.

Having fun only happens at others’ expense.
Anyone can know this if they have good sense.
In my world true happiness is a capital offense.

When I’m not being miserly, I must be numb;
Achieve this state by watching TV and drinking rum,
Do nothing but stare and be a dumb ol’ bum.

Act as stupid as I can, make myself look like a fool,
Write an incomprehensible failing paper for school—
That’s the only way the teacher will know I am cool.

Get attention by doing things wrong, never right
Smoke weed in my high school bathroom in broad daylight
Then I get to feel humiliated for many a night.

People only care about me when I give them sex,
Literally screw up my life, lose my subject in them, what’s next?
For my exes and me, girls can only be objects.

Never trust my gut, just stay very angry.
Surround myself with assholes, then I’m allowed to be cranky.
It’s good to be miserable, if I put it quite frankly.

Don’t write this rap like Rohini had said;
I must put it off so I can foster my sense of dread.
I can’t be good when there’s nothing hanging over my head.

These things are awful, but not to worry, bad means good.
At least, that’s what I was taught in my childhood.
All my life, I’ve just been misunderstood.

Though it sounds horrible, these adjectives I actually believe;
Once I’m mean, dumb, and annoying I can really achieve.
Really, horrible is what I aim for, not a pet peeve.

The way to be is to be bad, sad, and mad.
Life gets no better than being just like my dad.

Diplomacy is not….

 December 18, 2016

Diplomacy is not compromising. It is saying something in a manner to accomplish your goals.

Integrity….

 December 18, 2016

  Integrity                       Fraudulent 

Self-righteous                Self-aware    

If you are not willing to….

 December 11, 2016

If you are not willing to be with it, it won’t go away.

Guest Blog: The Way (Not) To Be Raps Four….

 December 11, 2016

The following are raps people wrote about their “ways (not) to be”—the litanies of their shrunken selves. Part of spiritual practice is learning how we operate when we are not fully conscious; this process is detailed in two earlier blog posts titled “The Way Not To Be” and “Not the Way To Be.” These raps helped their authors gain clarity and nonattachment.

The Way (Not) To Be Rap 10…

I am a loser, and that’s a fact:
I will fail in every single act;

So spiritual practice is a device
To confirm how profoundly I am deprived.

Still you don’t fully understand?
Then let me take you by your hand.
Take sadness as “the way to be”
And twist the world accordingly;

And suddenly—within this scheme,
Cowardice is cautious, being a doormat is good,
Transparency it is! (formerly called ineptitude).
Anger is being alive, or not even recognized,
And even if it is it is immediately intellectualized.

True caring is indulgent and too much work,
And work is not fun, nor is the effort it worth;
Fun is to set your heart on its (selfish) desires,
Better to fully pursue what it really admires!

Did you recognize the not-so-subtle twist?
Honesty is now unfiltered filth!
Love got substituted for Yohei’s impulses;
The garbage got divinized and exalted.

All of this fosters the emergence of sadness,
A miserable wheel, forever spinning in drabness

And to never end the misery,
Just never forget “the way to be”;
And to perpetuate the misery,
Never depart from “the way to be”;
And to forever stay in the misery,
Always pursue “the way to be”;
We now understand it so easily
How sharing can be losing identity!

The Way (Not) To Be Rap 11…

I am miserable,
I cannot lie;
I act a slave (call it devoted)
And don’t know why.
They ask me to do stuff
And it’s a drag,
But I always do it
And it makes me mad.
Then I get so sick
And cannot go.
It’s my favorite,
I love it so.

The Way (Not) To Be Rap 12…

Rubber Ducky, you’re the one
That makes suffering so much fun.
Rubber Ducky, I’m awfully fond of you.

Rubber Ducky, pain of pain.
When I hold on to you again and again;
Rubber Ducky, when I think you’re my friend I’m screwed.

Every day, as I make my way through each hour.
I find that when I’m with you, each and every moment seems dour.
I love having no power.

Rubber Ducky, fear of fears.
With you I’ve wasted so many years.
Rubber Ducky, why do I still play with
Rubber Ducky, I need to get rid of
Rubber Ducky, you’re no friend of mine. It’s true.

Domesticating….

 December 11, 2016

  Domesticating                               Setting free 

Making approachable                      Unleashing  

You Are Not the Self….

 December 10, 2016

Rohini explains how we misunderstand the nature of the Self, conflating it with our own limited, individual selfhood.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription.

The Vibration of the World….

 December 4, 2016

For the last three years I have been warning everyone that we are heading toward a time of fear, anger and hate. We are here.

The way out for us is to see the composite vibration of fear, anger and hate within ourselves and understand how it runs our life. Then we are to be with that vibration, let whatever comes up from that vibration come up and function appropriately on the physical plane by discerning from the Heart, not the head.

Each of us is going to react differently to the vibration of fear, anger, and hate. We act based on our unconscious system and believe we are right, because this is how we have reacted to that vibration in the past. We believe we are only responding correctly to the outside environment, which we wrongly believe is the source of the problem. The real source of the problem is our own internal vibration; we are both the problem and the solution. The outside environment is only a trigger for what we have within ourselves. If we have stilled our inner vibrations, then when a prior trigger reappears, we do not take the bait.

The way out is to get off the grid completely; then we are no longer being run by the vibration of the world. Unless we free ourselves in this way, we are contributing to the global vibration of fear, anger, and hate. By working with the three fourchotomies below, owning and accepting all four qualities in each fourchotomy, we can get off the grid.

Fearful

Courageous

Cautious

Reckless

Angry

At peace

Invigorated

Inert

Hateful

Full of love

Powerful

Weak

Unfortunately, we want to fit in, and fitting in these days means manifesting fear, anger and hate. This is true even of people who say they are acting out of love; if we really feel where they are, we will find a thin film of love and positivity covering a stew of fear, anger and hate. These people are not acting out of Love but reacting against that stew. But the stew is still in charge. People who react against it are mired in the stew and have no recognition of what they are doing. They are like fish unaware of the water they swim in.

Our responsibility is to re-cognize the vibration and own it by being with it—not running away or clamping it down or numbing it. Those strategies only feed the vibration. Unless we are willing to be with it, it will not go away.

This is the job of every human being, but not everyone realizes it. Now we are having a great opportunity to see the vibrations, because they are all too apparent. And if we can see them, we can dissolve them.

The only solution is to stop focusing so much on what everyone is doing or failing to do and instead turn inward and face our own vibrations. We must solve, and resolve, our interior before setting out to repair the outside world. We must ground ourselves in Love—not a counterfeit “love” that is only the opposite of hate, but the Love that is the bottom line of all that exists.

Unless we free ourselves….

 December 4, 2016

Unless we free ourselves, we are contributing to the global vibration of fear, anger, and hate.

Name-calling….

 December 4, 2016

  Name-calling                                   Accepting / respecting 

Calling it like it is / candid               Smarmy / false  

The Vibration of the World….

 December 3, 2016

Rohini explains how the world’s current vibration of fear, anger, and hate arises within all of us, and how to face our own inner vibration so that we no longer contribute to the larger one.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription. 

Thankful for the Jewel….

 November 27, 2016

The Jewel is always here. It is the key to life. The answer. I am thankful for that Jewel. I am thankful that I know there is a Jewel. I am thankful for Baba, who embodied the Jewel. I am thankful I could see the Jewel in Baba—in everything he did, said, and didn’t do or say. I am thankful for everyone who recognizes the Jewel, who longs for the Jewel, who knows that somehow we will all long for and find and merge with that Jewel.

Baba used to tell the story of the great Guru Nizamuddin and his great disciple Amir Khusro. When we hear it we tend to pay little attention to the third man in the story, the man that went to Nizamuddin for help in getting a dowry for his daughter. Nizamuddin said to him, “I have nothing but what people bring to me. Stay here, and whatever people bring you can have.” Now this poor man could not see what Nizamuddin did have: the prize beyond all worldly objects. As the story goes, the two men sat for three days and no one came. No one brought anything. For three days this poor man sat with a great being and got nothing. Finally, he said that it was better at home because there at least he could get food.

How sad to have missed the opportunity. But this man did not have the eyes to see. He did not have the subtlety of intellect to actually fathom what he was in the presence of. As the man departed, Nizamuddin felt for him and gave him his only possession, a pair of sandals. The man left completely unaware of the treasure that had been given to him. The sandals of a Great Being hold and transmit that Great Being’s energy.

Because Great Beings intuit the whole of any lila, Nizamuddin knew that Amir Khusro was on his way to him. The poor starving man and Khusro then met on the road. The man asked for some water. While obliging the man’s request, Amir Khusro noticed the sandals and felt the energy in them.

“Where did you get these?” he asked.

The man replied, “Nizamuddin. I stayed with him for three days hoping he could help me afford my daughter’s dowry, and no one came, so his sandals were all he had to give me.”

“I have eight camels laden with treasure,” said Amir Khusro. “I will give you seven of them, taking only the one that holds my food and water.”

The man was delighted, and left with the camels. Amir Khusro sat down under a tree and placed the sandals on his head. Immediately, he went into samādhi for a very long time. When he opened his eyes, he continued his journey to Nizamuddin’s retreat. When Amir Khusro arrived, Nizamuddin looked at his own sandals in his visitor’s hand and asked, “How much?”

Amir Khusro answered, “Seven camels laden with all my worldly wealth.”

All Nizamuddin said was, “You got them cheap.”

Amir Khusro remained a faithful disciple of Nizamuddin for the rest of his life, and both are revered as Great Beings.

Too many of us, I fear, are the man who sat for three days without seeing anything. I am thankful that I saw the Jewel within Baba and continue to cherish it. My wish for all of us is that we know there is a Jewel to long for, and that a Great Being like Muktananda reveals it to us.

When we read teaching stories….

 November 27, 2016

When we read teaching stories we are to place ourselves in the story as one of the characters. As we grow we move among the characters until finally we are ALL the characters.

Thankful….

 November 27, 2016

  Thankful                                        Ungrateful / entitled 

Selling yourself short                       Self-affirming / self-worth  

Gossip….

 November 20, 2016

Do you know the difference between gossip and history? Do you know the difference between gossip and an entertaining story? Do you know the difference between gossip and a teaching story?

Gossip actually derives from the Old English godsibb (“god-kin”): a word for someone with whom you are linked through sponsorship at a baptism. Over the centuries, it gradually evolved to mean idle chatter, but especially mean-spirited chatter. We often make a distinction between “idle gossip” and “malicious gossip”, but all gossip is essentially unkind and untrue. Gossip is designed to hurt; its motivation is from hate. Idle gossip may appear entertaining, and malicious gossip may be seen as cruel, but both come from the same motivation. History, entertaining stories, and teaching stories can also be unkind and/or untrue, but in very particular ways and for particular reasons. People who gossip see themselves as having formed a bond with whomever they share stories with. Hence, godsibb. The purpose of gossip, then, is to connect—but also to injure the parties that are spoken about.

In gossiping, we are out to malign or belittle the objects of our gossip, and we are disrespecting and manipulating the listeners of our gossip in order to reel them in. In idle gossip, we reduce human beings to nothing more than sources of amusement. In malicious gossip, the only solution is to destroy or shun the objects of our gossip. We try to create allies within our destructive little dramas.

In history, there are witnesses from all angles. There are facts and therefore a certain kind of truth. The story of an event or a people may be unkind and make us cringe as we do with gossip, but the facts are the facts. For instance, when I lived in Wilton, Connecticut, a Congregational minister said to me, “Hitler did not kill the Jews. He just did not give them health.” Now, for whatever reason, she held that view. For her, history was just a story that could be adjusted for her convenience. Maybe she could not face the horror of what actually happened. Many Germans, however, have worked hard not to make everything nice, but to learn from the facts of the Nazi era. They do not mitigate or hide or whitewash. History—in this case, the unkind facts—is a great lesson.

Avoiding this kind of discomfort means losing opportunities to learn. When we were children, when our parents yelled at our siblings for something we may not have understood, did we listen? Or were we so uncomfortable that we did not watch and learn?

The parables, the teaching stories of all traditions, the stories of the saints—are they gossip? Or are they there for each of us to learn from them?

In the ashram in Ganeshpuri, Baba once had me come to his house. He had a group of people sitting in a circle and had me take a seat next to him. Baba went around the circle, one by one, and yelled at each person for something they had done. I was the witness. He was teaching me that I was to listen and learn not to cringe. This event was not gossip; this was an opportunity for each of us to learn.

Gossip is not meant for learning, and it isn’t even entertaining unless you enjoy hate.

Gossip

Truth / Fact

Entertaining

No fun / harsh / brutally frank

Learner

Pridefully ignorant / arrogant

Nosy / gossip / intrusive / indiscriminate

Self-contained

If I am not a learner, then to me every story is gossip. I can’t tell the difference between a parable in the Bible, a Hadith of Mohammed, the story of Moses, and the ridiculous gossip in magazines at the grocery checkout. So I learn from none of them.

We can discern between truth and gossip, but do we want to? If we view all stories as gossip, we can avoid the truth and call our avoidance virtuous. We then conflate gossip with anything that may challenge our shrunken self’s sense of goodness and well-being. We allow the shrunken self to dictate what we will listen to and what we will discard. Anything that makes it uncomfortable is not to be listened to because we call it gossip. If we say in our minds to a person who is telling the truth, “I have nicer thoughts than you, I am a better person than you are”, then we can never learn.

At times in my life I have been the object of people’s gossip. I understand the damage it causes. When I was gossiped about from the pulpit of an Episcopal church, for instance, it was not for the betterment of anyone in the pews. It was about malice. When some people whom I did not even know called me vicious names, it was not educational or helpful. It was gossip. Yes, whatever God does He does for good. That does not mean that gossip does not do injury. My job has been to learn from these experiences, learn when there is truth and when there is just gossip.

Gossip is telling stories that don’t make us better. History, entertaining stories, and teaching stories all have at their core something to uplift us. When we discuss stories from history, spiritual texts, movies and novels, or people we know, we should be doing so to learn—to uplift ourselves and each other. Will some of these stories be painful? Yes, but they are there for each of us to learn. Our task is to face the challenge of learning.

No longer hating….

 November 20, 2016

No longer hating someone does not mean that they are now forgiven.

Manipulate….

 November 20, 2016

  Manipulate                                          Let be 

Manage / handle the situation              Careless / neglectful  

What We Do in Meditation….

 November 16, 2016

Rohini explains how meditation is a concentrated form of spiritual practice, and what it means to be with your experience in meditation.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription. 

From hate to Love….

 November 13, 2016

I have spent the last three years encouraging people to own, master and transcend their hate. This has been an uphill battle.

At the beginning of this period, one person left. In one class, I gave everyone permission to hate; he was the most resistant and therefore the one most filled with hate. I called him out and said it was okay for him to hate. He continued to resist. Finally, I said he needed to choose between clinging to his hate and accepting and moving beyond it. Whatever he chose would be fine with me. He needed to take responsibility for his own choices, and he indeed had the agency to do so. After a few minutes he said he wanted to leave. He got up and walked out. Good for him: he acted on what he wanted. Sad for him: he chose to hold onto hate. He never returned, though the door was always open for him.

For this person and many others over the last few years, accepting the hate within was just too abhorrent a thing to do. It was not nice. It was not positive.

The truth is, when we do accept the hate within and give ourselves permission to be with it, the hate dissolves and the Love that underlies every vibration shines forth. Cleaning and stilling our vehicles allows for God to fill all of us.

This is a practice that takes time and vigilance. We have to be continuously willing to be with our experience whatever it is, let whatever comes up from that experience come up, and function appropriately on the physical plane.

For the people who have remained and persisted through this arduous period of practice, the reward has been the promised Love. We have begun to surrender the non-self in order to uncover and recognize the true Self. “Worth it” is an understatement.

Now, as we move forward in a world that is presenting such a great test, we are to continue to practice no matter what we have to face. Love is the only answer. People who cling to the false idols of self-esteem and positivity will find themselves withering under the weight of these tests.

Our strength always comes from God. It is God’s strength and wisdom that guide us through the maze of these tests. We have access to that strength and wisdom only if we surrender our will to God’s, not as a concept but as an actuality. When we accept where we are and what we have, we are in the beginning stages of surrender. From there, we must be willing to stay with each vibration with no judgment on our shrunken self’s part. Gradually we will become aware that where we were has dissolved, and we are now moving deeper and deeper inward as we continue the practice.

With the cleaning and stilling of the vessel, the Self is free to shine forth its true nature, Love. We then bask in the awareness of who we truly are, not who we thought we were. We are Love for all time.

We have to have….

 November 13, 2016

We have to have agency in order to surrender.

Team player….

 November 13, 2016

  Team player                           Prima donna 

Hiding                                     Willing to shine  

Guest Blog: The Way (Not) To Be Raps Three….

 November 6, 2016

The following are raps people wrote about their “ways (not) to be”—the litanies of their shrunken selves. Part of spiritual practice is learning how we operate when we are not fully conscious; this process is detailed in two earlier blog posts titled “The Way Not To Be” and “Not the Way To Be.” These raps helped their authors gain clarity and nonattachment.

The Way (Not) To Be Rap 7…

My whole life has been about
Living the “way to be”.
It’s a path filled with pain,
Hurt and injury.
I don’t call things by their name;
Rather, I impose my own label.
Just fooling myself,
And living quite the fable.
Not being with my vibes,
Rather I just notion build.
Residing in my head –
It’s with notions always filled.

I don’t say cruel things
Right to your face.
I am just helping you out
By putting you in your place.
It might seem that I judge you
Over things that are small.
Discretion is the label
That this we must call.
I am not isolated
Nor fear community.
I’m just self-contained,
And it works so well for me.

Is this whole charade
Really working for me?
So sure of my ways
But without clarity.
It hurts me to say this.
My life is not the way to be.
Now is the perfect chance
To quit my own story.
The delusion must end,
For I am not really good.
The story of my life
Isn’t making Hollywood.

Call things as they are.
Stop this life of falsehood.
Put the trash on the curb
And surrender “being good”.
I’ve fooled myself quite well,
But, alas, no other folks.
I’ve run from my entire life
And made it a bad joke.
I show up for class
And stand out in high relief.
So blind to my own anger
That it leaves me in disbelief.

Time to face my narrative
And how I operate,
Stop living in my head
Before it’s all too late.
Time to stop being “normal”,
Being stagnant and always dead.
I need to be alive and free
Not trapped inside my head.
See, Glenn has to die,
Or he will remain in his cell.
He can have liberation
Or choose to stay in Hell.

The Way (Not) To Be Rap 8…

Oh grumble, gripe, gimme some peace.
This again and again and again,
Sick of black feelings.
Can’t I just be happy again?

No, happiness is not meant to be
A permanent state for me.
It’s not for me, for me is awful grinding, gnashing,
It’s not about Love.

Blackness, blankness, what am I doing here?
Just drag along through my days,
No hope, no Love, no life, nowhere.

The Way (Not) To Be Rap 9…

I’m a nice guy nuh nuh nuh nuh nice guy
Duck your head, duck your head, there’s a balloon in the sky
Kick it, kick it, whip it, throw
My vicious intent you’ll never know
Poor me, poor me. It’s not my fault.
My fault, my fault, emotional assault.

I’m nice. . . My nice. . . is better than yours,
Denise, De Nice, do you want to go to war?
Confused? Me too,
Didn’t mean to offend.
It hurts me more and I’m not even preesent
Absent and passive, insubordinate, rude,
Churlish, chicanerous, there’s no substitute.

“Career”, independence, success,
It’s time.
Alone and stupid,
And now it’s mine.

The shrunken self cannot….

 November 6, 2016

The shrunken self cannot know the Real, because it ceases to exist in the Presence of the Real.

Upheaval….

 November 6, 2016

  Upheaval                            Steady 

Transformation                     Stagnant  

Guest Blog: The Way (Not) To Be Raps Two….

 October 30, 2016

The following are raps people wrote about their “ways (not) to be”—the litanies of their shrunken selves. Part of spiritual practice is learning how we operate when we are not fully conscious; this process is detailed in two earlier blog posts titled “The Way Not To Be” and “Not the Way To Be.” These raps helped their authors gain clarity and nonattachment.

The Way (Not) To Be Rap 4…

If you want to see why I act the way I do,
I’ll tell you about my family and the coping that ensued….

Sister confused me with the bullies at her school,
So she used me as a voodoo doll and I accepted her abusive rule.

Mom: insecure, overwhelmed, barely could handle life.
Discouraged competence or anger, since that wouldn’t be polite.

Dad: a phony, con, trying to impress the rest,
Only likes people with problems so he can look the best.

No time for listening or true caring in the home,
At least they’re physically present! Who cares if you feel alone?

Nobody allowed to feel emotions, especially not anger or pain,
And if you’re unable to stuff it, just try alcohol or cocaine!

It’s all about looking nice and having funny stories to tell,
But if you bring attention to our own problems, well, you can go to hell.

Work? Discipline? Responsibility? What a burdensome, un-fun weight!
Better to wait till last minute, get off the hook and procrastinate.

It’s never our own fault, we’re always victims in this game
But if you absolutely need someone, there’s always me to blame!

“She’s so gullible she’ll believe the false accusing
She’ll never even ask what crime she did. It’ll be so amusing!”

Never feel good enough, kill yourself for their praise,
Parents would rather laugh and push you down than acknowledge your successes and coming of age.

Attention and value: only they could grant that to me,
Being independent or having my own voice was downright blasphemy.

They told me I didn’t count and that I was dumb and wrong,
I accepted that they always knew better and believed this for far too long.

I avoided bothering my bullies by agreeing and lying low,
Learned best way to get love and friends was to be a sweet, messy bozo.

People assumed I was a good friend and listener but honestly,
I’d just lose myself in others and gladly give them my agency.

So how did I cope you might ask? Why didn’t I explode with rage?
Other phonies told me I had a great life and family so I learned to love my cage.

I conflated healthy with addicted and caring with neglect,
I believed I had a normal family and never thought to check.

I took this worldview with me everywhere, since it felt cozy, right and good.
I project my family on others, plan their scripts and freak if they don’t speak as I think they should.

Never reality-tested to see if this wasn’t the way worldwide,
Just stayed in my head, listening to records of insults and delusions, remaining tightly tied.

Never letting myself feel the weight and reality of this sad status quo,
I instead covered my anger and sadness with a confusion- anxiety combo.

Even though I have incredible help to get over and out of this travesty,
I’m still addicted to the bar in my head, where I feel close to my family.

I pray I’ll get closer to seeing things as they really are,
And finally be truly positive and begin to heal the scars.

Shining the light on the hurt naturally hurts, it’s true,
But who would want to stay trapped in a lie rather than truly living with an honest, clear view?

The Way (Not) To Be Rap 5…

To be the way to be or not the way to be, that is the question
The answer depends on if I follow my Guru’s directions . . . Or not!

The way to be is overwhelmed, exhausted, and burdened
There is no rest or peace, but at least I get to feel important . . . Yay me!

I have no value, I don’t matter, and there’s no appreciation
To validate this truth, I take selfish tyrants on vacation . . . Best trip ever!

What’s really fun is self-negation so you can have whatever you want
And then I’m called a fake-ass bitch and thrown under the bus . . . Woo hoo!!

But I’m so caring, the parasite says—why then don’t they love me?
My subject’s attached to my object, so I’m blind, I cannot see clearly . . . I love the way to be!

I wake up feeling terrified and full of fear and dread
Then I spin the same old thoughts again and again as I process in my head . . . Might as well be dead.

Well, at least my daytime job’s high profile, and I know my role so well
I get to do your anger and feel like I’m in hell . . . It’s swell!

My nighttime job is even better; I get to be your slave
But I believe I am a hero; think they’ll put that on my grave? . . . No, it will say sucker!

I’ll fight your battles for you so you can shake your head and walk away
And say, “I don’t know what she’s talking about, I thought everything was okay”. . . Really? Wow!, You’re welcome!

So I plan my great escape and you call me an avoider
Then you build a higher wall and put me in the corner . . . Where I belong.

My motto is the best; you might wanna get this on tape:
“I suffer and sacrifice myself for everyone else and never get to escape”. . . Ain’t it great?!

And if you love a sucker, I’m your girl, the best and cheapest around town
I’ll do everything for you, you’ll treat me like nothing, then I’ll do it again . . . Ah, this is the life!!

Well, I’ve got news for you, the, stressed out sucker bitch and angry slave has had quite enough,
I’m on a mission to find peace, and if you don’t like it that’s tough! . . . Go fuck yourself!

The “way to be” is an awful way to be, so I’ll listen to my Guru and eventually be free!

The Way (Not) To Be Rap 6…

I’m lookin’ for some coattails
To tag along
Be taken for a ride
Where I won’t be strong.

I’m lookin’ for a daddy
Whom I’ll adore
He’ll preach and lecture
And supply the core.

I’m lookin’ for a way
To be super good
(I say please and thank you
And forgive me, too)
But your pain and hurt
Are way outta my ‘hood
It’s all about me
I got my thoughts to chew.

I’m lookin’ for some peace
In a mental fog
(Nothin’ to say, nothin’ to do)
Just sittin’ there mute
Like a bump on a log.

Someone please save me,
Tell me what to do
I can’t find my answers
Till I hear from you

You show me the answers
I don’t wanna know
That break apart
My own favorite show.

Not good, not bad,
Not happy or sad,
Whole thing’s made up
Poof! We’ve all been had.

You’ve brought me back
Again and again
To that one place
We’re all the same.

I want to stop lookin’
Through the face in the mirror
And settle on down
In a heart that’s clearer

It’s all about Love,
That’s what you say,
And thanks to you
I’ve finally found the way.

To know the difference….

 October 30, 2016

To know the difference between the true Self and the non-self and Live is the greatest gift.

Preyed upon….

 October 30, 2016

  Preyed upon                       Set free 

Paid attention to                   Neglected  

Guest Blog: The Way (Not) To Be Raps One….

 October 23, 2016

The following are raps people wrote about their “ways (not) to be”—the litanies of their shrunken selves. Part of spiritual practice is learning how we operate when we are not fully conscious; this process is detailed in two earlier blog posts titled “The Way Not To Be” and “Not the Way To Be.” These raps helped their authors gain clarity and nonattachment.

The Way (Not) To Be Rap 1…

J-U-D-G-E
J-U-D-G-E     x2

I’m the judge and there ain’t no other
I learned it from the best, I learned it from my mother
I judge to be big, I judge to be small, I judge just to be a know-it-all

J-U-D-G-E
J-U-D-G-E     x2

I’m the judge, jury and judged
It’s not working for me, but I still won’t budge
I like to hide and I like to blame
“It’s not my fault”, I have no shame
Sometimes I feel pain inside
But judge it away, so I can hide
It never goes away, it never gets better,
Oh God I’m getting tired of these letters

J-U-D-G-E
J-U-D-G-E     x2

I’m the daughter of my mother
I call her “Christ”, “He” ain’t my brother
But I think I’m smart, think I have a part
And only find I’m further and further, and further from the Heart
When will this stop, when will it get better
I’m so attached to these stupid letters

The Way (Not) To Be Rap 2…

The way to be, that’s me
The way to be is an asshole, see
Objectifying lying and judging everyone
This is what I do to make my way, to be fun

Run around without a care, just happy go lucky
It’s the same mentality from when I was a druggie
It’s ugly, destructive, my kind of party
The decisions that you make when your way to be is Ari

Like shopping for a car and letting daddy do it
I’ll take that one, the one that says you blew it
But screw it, the only way from here is mitigation
No need to face any icky vibrations

My narcissistic tendencies are meant to be the way
Pretending we eventually will all just be okay
Say anything I want cuz I’m just being honest
I’m good, you’re bad, and I’m still being modest

Anything I have been told deliberately
I pick and choose and then I lose individually
The way to be is me and I refuse to see another
The way to be is just like my father and my mother.

The Way (Not) To Be Rap 3…

Let me take a moment just to introduce myself,
My way to be, exposed and taken off the shelf.
Our definitions of “the way to be” seem to clash,
So just brace yourselves for the coming whiplash.

You should not be honest, real, or true
About what you actually want, you just gotta make do.
Please do not go against anybody else,
Trust me, it’s best just to forsake yourself.

As long as I just do whatever she wants,
I’m safe, and I won’t be thrown under the bus.
It isn’t good to have any agency,
Or else decisions become responsibilities.

The only agency to have is the one that you give up,
So it can’t be your fault when someone else blows up.

Inflicting pain is the game,
It could be on myself or someone else—it’s the same.
I’d like to pretend that I’m “good” and nice,
But this is actually mean, a fool’s paradise.

Appeasement and indulgence are conflated with care,
Eh, whatever, pass the chocolate and the gummy bears.

Because I’m still attached, this writing really hurt,
But “the way to be” is just the dirt
On the mirror that reflects that I’ve gotten lost,
That Love’s been covered by a toxic blanket (of) frost.

Misery’s sustained by the way to be,
Because you can’t love yourself, I’m not loving me.
Now it’s finally time to take this garbage out,
It stinks, so leave it at the curb and turn back around.

Again, remember if you have no agency,
Then you can call yourself “the way to be”!

Love is not an idea….

 October 23, 2016

Love is not an idea, an ideal or a thought. Love is not thinking love. Love is being Love.

Futile….

 October 23, 2016

  Futile                           Meaningful 

Surrendered                  Self-important  

Honoring Baba with the Guru’s Words….

 October 16, 2016

There is no better expression of gratitude than to live the Guru’s words.

Muktananda says:

The world is an extraordinary drama. The Shiva Sutras say, nartaka ātmā—“The Self is an actor.” The world is God’s theater, God’s play, and the sport God has created for His own pleasure. A person who understands this understands everything. For him there is no room for duality or enmity and no reason for hatred. Any form of duality is merely ignorance, the gift of the great maya and the friend of the god of death. (The Perfect Relationship 66)

There is something that you should remember: A person who becomes aware of his own ignorance is drawn to the Guru’s feet, but the pride of knowledge gleaned from dry books leads one to look for scriptures rather than for a Guru. Although the scriptures emphasize surrender, vows, and discipline, they are lifeless, so one does not really have to surrender to them; one can interpret them in any way one likes. But one cannot interpret the Guru. You may change the scriptures, but the Guru will certainly change you. He will begin by awakening you, by telling you that you have forgotten your own Self. Lacking knowledge of your Self, you are deep in the sleep of ignorance. The Guru will open your eyes to your darkness, ignorance, and forgetfulness. Only after knowing darkness is it possible to find light. Only one who falls can get up. Unless a seeker knows what it is to fall down, it is difficult for him to rise. After the Guru has made you aware of your condition, he will give you the vision of your own Self. (The Perfect Relationship 67)

It is difficult to attain the true state of meditation; the fact is that you reach that state only when you are completely prepared to erase yourself. Meditation first obliterates you; it kills you. But do not be afraid—meditation is not a murderer or a butcher or a violent assailant. The words of a saint will help you to understand this…“When I realized the Pure, I became pure. My ego was no more. I myself became God.” When the saint discovered oneness, he merged into everything. When his ego was annihilated, he himself became God. This is very mysterious. To die while still living is to become deathless and immortal. Many people fear death, but in this sort of death the individual soul becomes Shiva. It is not a literal death: Meditation simply erases one’s small self and thus makes one God while one is still alive. (The Perfect Relationship 77-8)

Love is the supreme attainment. Without love, everything is useless. The world manifests through the power of God’s love, it is sustained by love, and it will ultimately merge into love. That love throbs within us at all times. (Secret of the Siddhas 38)

Jñaneshwar says:

There is none other beside Thee in the whole world; but see our fate, that we imagined ourselves existing [apart from Thee].
Filled with pride in my personality I thought that I was Arjuna in this world and said that the Kauravas were my relatives….
In this way, in an excess of egotism, I had leapt into the waters of self-will. It is well that Thou wert near, otherwise who would have saved me?
I, being no one, thought I was a person and called those my relatives who in reality did not exist. Though hast saved me from this great madness. (Jñaneshwari XI.50-59)

On this day, the lunar Mahasamādhi of my Guru Swami Muktananda, I pranam at his feet.

In order to move….

 October 16, 2016

In order to move, you have to feel.

Honor….

 October 16, 2016

  Honor                      Degrade 

Inflate                       Critique

Getting into the Heart….

 October 16, 2016

Rohini explains how to get out of our heads and into the Heart, and the importance of knowing the difference between the two.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription. 

Beyond Doctrine….

 October 9, 2016

When I was studying dance, we always talked about being technically proficient. We all spoke about getting technically flawless, magnificently proficient, in order to let go of technique and finally dance. That was an actual verbalization every single day in the studio: become so technically proficient that you can go beyond technique. We knew that if we wanted to actually dance, we had to master technique. We understood that if we were not technically proficient and we let go, we might dance, but we probably were not going to be onstage. Nobody would want to watch us. If we became technically proficient and studied and put in that rigor, and only afterward let go, we could become true dancers.

And what’s technique? It’s doctrine.

I studied several doctrines as a dancer, and always worked to express each doctrine purely, not tainting it with any other. I made myself a perfect instrument in each language. And then I let go. That’s the whole thing: whether you’re writing, street sweeping, banking, bagging groceries, it doesn’t matter. It’s the same. The technique is the doctrine. If all you’re going to practice is, “Oh, I stand in first position in the middle of the studio, I raise my arms and open them to second position, I bend, I jump, I land, I glide across the floor,” you’re never going to get past the doctrine. “Oh, here is the toothpaste. I open the cap. I have the toothbrush. I squeeze the toothpaste onto the brush. I close the cap. I brush my teeth.” If this is how you operate, you’re never going to be free while dancing or brushing your teeth; you’re only going to be doctrinal. There’s no joy, there’s no life, there’s no anything. You’re at the first level forever. We should be about being conscious and letting go at every moment.

The Sutra of Vimalakirti says, “Real teaching involves no preaching, no giving orders; listening to the teaching involves no hearing and no grasping.”
(Hui-neng, translated by Thomas Cleary)

At the point Hui-neng mentions in that passage, is there a difference between the teacher and the student? No. When we are in the Heart—at that place, and at that moment—we are equal in Love. And I’ll ask a question: who doesn’t want that? Apparently, a lot of people. “I’m not going to do what you tell me to do. I’m an individual in my own right.” Well, good for you. You lose. You don’t get the grand prize.

So what are we doing here? We are working to still all our vibrations so that Love can arise unobscured. That is all we do here. Everything else that happens is meant to bring us each to the point where we choose to still.

You realize that myriad things are empty, and all names and words are temporary setups; constructed with an inherent emptiness, all the verbal expositions explain that all realities are signless and unfabricated, thus guiding deluded people in such a way as to get them to see their original nature and cultivate and realize unsurpassed enlightenment.
(Hui-neng, translated by Thomas Cleary)

Understand that ultimately there is no doctrine. There comes a point where you let go of all the letters and go beyond doctrine, as dancers go beyond technique. Doctrine is the wedge to get rid of the wedge.

There comes a point….

 October 9, 2016

There comes a point where you let go of all the letters and go beyond doctrine, as dancers go beyond technique. Doctrine is the wedge to get rid of the wedge.

Absent….

 October 9, 2016

    Absent                                 Present 

Untouched / untainted            Entangled / tainted  

Baba was always….

 October 2, 2016

Baba was always speaking to the You, the sun and not the moon. The moon is our shrunken self that disappears and is enlivened only by the sun, our true Self.

Baba’s Mahasamādhi 2016….

 October 2, 2016

I miss Baba. I miss Baba’s form. I miss Baba’s laugh. I miss Baba’s speech. I miss Baba manifesting through Baba’s vehicles.

From everything Baba taught and shared, it is clear that he was focused on his Guru, Nityananda. The Self of All was Baba’s focus. Baba rested in the Heart, where God and Guru reside.

As for me, I loved all of Baba. So just the Shakti is not enough; I miss the container of that Shakti. I miss how that Shakti played with us through the form of Swami Muktananda.

The night Baba left is embedded in me. The sound of Om Namo Bhagavate slowly being chanted. The full moon brightly shining on the ashram. The unacceptable reality that Baba had left. The shock and disbelief being expressed through words and silence in the courtyard. I was determined to see Baba’s form one last time. My being seven months pregnant with Ian had some people afraid I would go into labor. “Don’t cry, don’t mourn, it will affect the baby,” they said. When I did see Baba, I did a full pranam. Baba’s body was still supple as he sat there in his house.

As the days went by and the reality seeped in, I found myself angry that he had departed and had left me lost without my focus, him. Baba had never encouraged me to do rituals; our relationship was based on the internal practice—keep driving in toward the Heart and resting there. This relationship was not abstract. The practice was not abstract. I loved practicing with Baba. I loved being in Baba’s presence and boring in to the Heart. So though the practice is internal, Baba and his form aided in its happening. With Baba, no matter what the play, what was being said or done, he was always still inside. So quiet, no vibration. Even when he manifested anger the stillness was always there.

The message was always the same: God dwells within you as you. Not as the shrunken self, but as You truly are. Baba was always speaking to the You, the sun and not the moon. The moon is our shrunken self that disappears and is enlivened only by the sun, our true Self.

Everything Baba did was a gift to all of us. So his mahasamādhi was a gift to all of us. Everything Baba did was a teaching, a removing of darkness to reveal the light. What was temporary left and what was permanent remained. Each of us is given the opportunity to experience what is permanent. Baba showed us over and over what was Real and what was going to fade.

So the more Rohini fades, the more Baba is here. The more we surrender our shrunken self, the more room there is for Love and Baba. Baba modeled this for us by sharing his love for his Guru, Nityananda.

Rohini fades by surrendering, by resting in the Heart. Rohini fades by being with her experience, letting whatever comes up from the experience come up, and functioning appropriately on the physical plane. In those moments when it is clear that Baba is walking in the garden or is in the meditation hall, when his presence is so strong, there is a knowing that all is right here in the world.

Astray….

 October 2, 2016

  Astray                             Focused / directed 

Exploring                         Dogmatic / narrow  

Stilling….

 September 25, 2016

Rohini explains how to achieve the inner stillness at the heart of spiritual practice.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription.

I Am Not a Teacher….

 September 25, 2016

I am not a teacher. What a relief. If people think of me as a teacher, they relate with me as stubborn and rebellious students. They think in terms of doctrine and doctrinal disputes. I do not. I am not a teacher.

I share silence, and the practice that brings silence. My Guru, Swami Muktananda, lived this and shared it with all of us. I share the practice he taught me. There is no rhetoric or concepts. You are either practicing or not.

People looking for nothing more than teachers want their sense of self to be enlightened. Their shrunken self is going to take the instruction and get all the goodies; it’s going to win the grand prize. And the truth is, what’s going to happen to it? In order to win the grand prize, what has to happen? The shrunken self has to go. So everybody’s going to hit that point where they either want to hold on to their shrunken self or they want the prize. You want that pot of gold? Then let go.

And now you’ll understand why Baba used to tell the story about the monkey with the bottle. The monkey would put his hand in—there’s a banana in the bottle—and he’d hold on to the banana because he wanted to get it out. But if he held onto the banana, he couldn’t pull out his hand. The only way the monkey could be free was to let go of the banana. You can’t have your banana and eat it. You can’t have your cake and eat it. You can’t have it.

And if you think your separate self is going to be the winner, you’ve missed the whole point of sādhana. And if no one else is making that clear, so be it. Most “teachers” will tell you that you can be a better version of you. That is not the goal, that is not the pot of gold, and that is not spiritual practice.

The one who is chasing after teaching and doctrine is not going to be there at the end. So whom is the doctrine for? For the shrunken self. The doctrine is for our narrative, to steer it in the right direction. It’s a beginning stage. It’s the wedge we use to drive out a wedge. And if all you want to do is keep putting in that wedge—“Let me put the wedge in again! Let me read that doctrine again! Let me study another doctrine!”—and you think you’re going to accomplish something, you’re crazy. That is not what doctrine is meant for.

Remember, the one who’s following the doctrine is not going to be there when you actually get to the Truth. This is a joke on all of us. And we’re all supposed to get it. And it isn’t as though the world doesn’t show us this.

Thank God I’m not a teacher. As a teacher, my commitment would be to getting through to my students, no matter how recalcitrant they might be. All that I do is share silence, and the practice that brings silence—which brings us to Love.

If you want Love….

 September 25, 2016

If you want Love, you have to do the rigorous work of knowing all your vibrations and stilling them.

Frustrated….

 September 25, 2016

  Frustrated                 Satisfied 

Driven                       Complacent 

Who Doesn’t Want Love….

 September 18, 2016

Who doesn’t want love? I ask that question a lot. Can someone answer that question for me? When people say yes, they want love, I then tell them how to get it: be with your experience, let whatever comes up from your experience come up, and function appropriately on the physical plane. That is where everything breaks down. No one wants to do it.

Everyone says they want love, but they don’t want to accept that real Love comes from stillness. If we want real Love, we have to do the rigorous work of knowing our vibrations and stilling all of them; then Love, which is underneath it all, can emerge undistorted. This Love is not at the mercy of anything outside of us. “Outside of us” includes our bodies, senses, minds, emotions, intellects, narratives, habit energies—any vehicles or vibrations. This Love arises out of the Heart.

The practice is nothing new. The Yoga Sutras say that Yoga is the stilling of all vibrations. In the Bible, Psalm 46 says, “Be still, and know that I am God”. The Desert Fathers say for us to guard the Heart and all will be quiet—their word hesychia is Greek for “rest.” Kashmir Shaivism instructs us to rest in the Heart by a mere orientation of the will. A great Sufi Sheikh once wrote, “When your heart is emptied of beings it becomes filled with Being and from that moment love is born between you and other beings”.

We have the free will to choose Love or not. We recognize Love when we experience it because it is our nature; we have just covered it up and then forgotten it. But once it arises there is immediate knowledge. We have to have at least a trickle of Love within us to feel love from others. Therefore, I have to love myself in order to feel someone else loving me.

This is so seldom the case. Everyone has their moments when they’re likable, because at those moments they tend to have stilled even a little, so Love is flowing less obstructed within them. We have to be practicing to have those moments all the time. Strangely, we usually don’t like those moments in ourselves; we don’t feel we’re being ourselves. When you come into the meditation room and sit, you might not like you. And that’s a big problem. Who is it that doesn’t like you? The one that doesn’t like the moment is not you. The meditation room is the laboratory where, hopefully, we continually choose Love.

To get to the place where we continually choose Love, we must have a guide, and that guide must encourage real rigor in our practice. People love the concept of a tough, no-nonsense teacher. They just don’t want to sit in the same in the room with a tough teacher. They only want the concept, which allows for the idea without the rigor. You don’t have to do the work; you do the concept of the work.

But if you are doing the concept of the work, you are doing the concept of Love. If you want Love you have to go to the stillness that is beyond all conception.

The meditation room is….

 September 18, 2016

The meditation room is the laboratory where, hopefully, we continually choose Love.

Stubborn….

 September 18, 2016

  Stubborn                           Receptive 

Determined                         Easily manipulated  

Love is not a notion….

 September 11, 2016

Love is not a notion. Love is off the grid. There is no opposite to Love. Love is the only way to truly fit in.

Savvy / smart / independent….

 September 11, 2016

 Savvy / smart / independent                             Stupid

Deceitful                                                           Transparent

Really Being Positive….

 September 4, 2016

Calling something what it is is being honest, which is truly being positive. Calling something what it is is not negative. What is really negative is not calling something what it is; it is calling something what it is not.

So if I am practicing, then I am truly honest with myself. I can choose. I can see what is what and name it. So I am really positive. This has been a surprise for me and many other people, as I am often called negative. But I confirm, and affirm, what is really there, so calling me negative is calling me something I am not. Those who call me negative, then, are actually being negative themselves; they are judging, not affirming what is.

When we are positive in sādhana, we are being with our experience, letting whatever comes up from the experience come up, and functioning appropriately on the physical plane. We begin to call each vibration what it is. We have to be willing to make that shift, which means starting to dismantle our notions, our narrative. That is why people leave. They want to change the story they tell themselves, not still their vibrations. They have notions of love in their minds, and superimpose them on the vibrations they have. They refuse to call their vibrations what they are.

If you are having a notion and listening to it and believing it, you are not practicing. At that moment, let go and go in; then you will begin to experience a vibration you did not allow.

If we guard the Heart, we can still our vibrations because we discern what they are and allow the letters to arise from the vibration and form words that call the vibrations what they really are. We are not denying or running away, and we are not calling the vibration anything it is not. We are then being positive, no matter what the vibration happens to be.

We are shining a light through our attention, and this light dissolves the vibration. This is very positive, and as we continue to practice, the stillness that comes allows the Love within to shine forth. We are no longer obscuring the truth.

If we remain in our heads, we will probably call our vibrations whatever we are comfortable with. We will judge and deny certain vibrations that we actually need in order to move forward in our lives. Under the guise of calling ourselves positive, we prevent ourselves from having what we need in order to resolve our life’s lessons. We unwittingly will be negative and out of harmony.

Until we get out of our heads, we do not have a chance of being positive. Our heads are about notions and maintaining our narratives. Our words are more important than authenticity. As long as we are in our heads, there isn’t anything that comes out of our mouth that isn’t a notion. Whenever a vibration comes up, we will seamlessly transition into notion-building, into narrative.

All comes down to trusting your own experience—letting it come up without judging it. I always say, “I would rather make my mistake than someone else’s.” Not superimposing on my experience, but allowing whatever comes up from the experience to come up and being appropriate, allows me to see the world as it is, not as I would prefer it to be. If you trust your experience, you will begin to discern.

Be with your experience. People think I am naïve for saying this. They say it doesn’t work, the world does not really work that way. Practice really does work. When we are with our experience, being positive, and calling our vibrations what they actually are, we can see clearly, and all the options for acting appropriately will be available to us.

Appropriateness is then flexible. I cannot stress enough that appropriate does not mean “acceptable.” Acceptable to whom? Appropriate is what is needed in the moment. If we act according to what we call “acceptable” we will be negative; we will be limiting our options according to our notions. We will not necessarily be appropriate.

This is all very positive, isn’t it?

If you are having a notion….

 September 4, 2016

If you are having a notion and listening to it and believing it, you are not practicing. At that moment, let go and go in; then you will begin to experience a vibration you did not allow.

Appropriate….

 September 4, 2016

    Appropriate                          Conditioned 

   Disruptive                             Soothing       

Being a Weirdo Freak….

 September 3, 2016

Rohini explains why and how we should make Love the new normal.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription. 

Really Being Positive….

 September 3, 2016

Rohini explains how really being positive means honestly accepting and affirming what is, not denying or running from it.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription. 

Notion-Building….

 August 28, 2016

If you are identified with your idea of the “way to be”, then you are not practicing. You are not being with your experience, letting whatever comes up from that experience come up, and functioning appropriately on the physical plane. Instead, you are keeping a lid on vibrations, or calling them something other than what they are, to keep your narrative intact.

But your narrative is just a notion you’ve built. It’s not even your life. And when you’re notion-building, you’re not practicing. I’ll say it again: you’re not being with your experience, you’re not letting whatever comes up come up from that experience, and you’re not functioning appropriately, because you’re functioning according to a notion.

If you think of the “way to be”, you don’t question it; there’s no reflection, it’s the way it is. But it’s just an idea. When that notion is confronted, you will defend it—you’re obstructed from seeing clearly by your “way to be”. And no matter how happy someone else is, if their way of life diverges from your “way to be”, then you will be unable to see its value. If you were actually practicing, you would in fact dismantle your own “way to be.”

If you are living the “way to be”, you are only playing at spiritual practice. You are superimposing your “way to be” on everything and everyone, including sādhana. Your “practice” is all being done with notions. You have a notion that says, “I am a good person,” or “This is love.” But you are never checking out the actual vibration.

There are two ways not to be with your experience. If, when I am having a horrible experience, I only think, “This is horrible”, I am not being with my experience. I am being with my notion. If I think “I am having a horrible experience” or “I am having a wonderful experience,” and I have put a lid on my experience, I may not be having either. How would I know?

If I have superimposed the word “love” on the vibration that should be called “putting up with,” when I see people putting up with each other, I will say they love each other. If we take the fourchotomy of “put up with”, we can see how people conflate, and how this superimposition works.

Put up with

Stand up for self

Accept

Intolerant

If I superimpose the word “accept” on the vibration that should be labeled “put up with”, then I cannot really accept. I put up with, and insist that others put up with me. If I superimpose “stand up for self” on the vibration that is actually “intolerant”, then I am not standing up for myself but just being intolerant. Until I am willing to call the vibration what the vibration is, I am just lost among my own notions.

We have all sorts of ways of notion-building. One of them is what we call “processing”. How many times have I said not to process? Processing is notion-building. Worrying is notion-building. Intellectualizing. Rationalizing. There is a long catalog of words we use to notion-build around things we would rather not feel. Here are some:

Processing
Worrying
Intellectualizing
Abstracting
Dissociating
Rationalizing
Mitigating
Defending
Spinning
Wallowing
Judging
Inflating
Convincing

Notion-building prevents us from ever reaching resolution. Resolution happens when we accept our experience fully and are able and willing to call it what it actually is. When we do this, the “way to be” and all our other notions will dissolve. Because where are those notions? In the mind. If we are actually practicing, we will be in the Heart, and whatever notions occupy our mind will dissolve.

The “way to be” is not the way to be. Narrating your feelings is not feeling. The notion of the Heart is not the Heart. Real Love is not a notion.

Narrating your feelings….

 August 28, 2016

Narrating your feelings is not feeling.

Put up with….

 August 28, 2016

  Put up with                         Stand up for self 

 Accept                                Intolerant  

On De-escalation….

 August 24, 2016

Rohini talks about the importance of confronting obstacles if we want to de-escalate and move towards resolution.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription.

Not the Way To Be, Part Two….

 August 21, 2016

Last week, I wrote about how we all must uncover what we believe is the “way to be” in order to free ourselves from that idea of “goodness”. We may know intellectually that our “way to be” is wrong—even that it is destructive—yet on an emotional level we are still sure it is good. But the truth is, the “way to be” is what hasn’t worked.

We have to be ready to not be the “way to be”. This can only be accomplished by digging in and being with our experience and letting whatever comes up come up. We cannot intellectualize and then think we have it. We do not have it then, because what is doing the thinking is not us.

So our wrong understanding is our garbage. If we want to be clean and clear within ourselves and in the world, we have to be willing to get rid of our garbage. We have to see our own crazy logic and let go of it.

Our idea of the way to be, our goodness, is a particularly nasty piece of our garbage. We have to put it out and let it be taken away. We have to participate in the removal of that garbage. Isn’t that what a student is supposed to do: put out the garbage for its removal and incineration?

I’m an internal sanitation engineer. I can remove and incinerate a student’s garbage—if the student is willing to work with me to actively and consciously separate the garbage from what he must keep. But I watch people say, “No, I want to keep my garbage. I can’t tell difference between the garbage and what I need to keep, so I’m keeping it all.” They are hoarders of garbage.

If a student believes that her garbage is pure, is she going to allow for its removal? No, and so she’s going to resist getting to this place because she’s so sure she’s pure, sure of who she thinks she is.

The responsibility of the student is to speak up so that she can get clear and to know what the garbage is. We can’t see unless we open up and show what we have. If we sit in a corner and are miserly, our garbage is not going to be removed.

If the garbage is removed, what do we get? Peace. And what do we find? Was there anything to attain? Was it always there? Yes, always there. And the teacher says, “It’s there. Just remove this. If you just let go of that…it’s there.”

Some people turn sādhana itself into garbage. They approach sādhana because they feel they are not successful at life; once they do sādhana, they can now feel that their inadequacies are karmic and are just lessons on the path. They then divinize their “way to be” and never have to change. So instead of healing their brokenness, they exalt it as a spiritual virtue, and see their failures as signs of their spirituality.

Once we resort to that delusion, it will take tremendous vigilance to catch it and root it out of our lives.

Ultimately, our garbage is our attachment to the vehicles as being the individual self. And though we must let go of all attachment to a separate self, the individual is still going to manifest and appear to be the individual. The Guru, which is the Shakti, is going to funnel into and through the vehicles unimpeded—but it is still flowing through those vehicles. As soon as the individual, if there’s any individual left, takes ownership of the Shakti, everything is shrunken and deflated, and the source, the Guru, is cut off from the individual. We are back in our pile of garbage. Hui-neng explains this:

The existence of state refers to the four phenomena of self, person, and so on. Unless you get rid of these four phenomena, you will never realize enlightenment. If you say “I am inspired to seek enlightenment,” this is also self, person, and so on, which are the root of afflictions. (Hui Neng’s Commentary on the Diamond Sutra, trans. Thomas Cleary, 126).

People living the “way not to be” are rare. As Hui-neng says, these people will have “no image of self, no image of person, no image of being, no image of liver of life”. They are fully living their lives without obstructions of any kind. They are not attached to their wrong understanding; they have given up their garbage. They are living life and are truly alive.

Doing everything “right”….

 August 21, 2016

Doing everything “right” is doing everything wrong.

Sassy / plays / smart….

 August 21, 2016

  Sassy / plays / smart                                 Dour /miserable wretch 

Sarcastic / nasty                                         Reserved / polite  

Notion Building….

 August 20, 2016

Rohini explains how spiritual practice requires us to be truly positive by being with our experience honestly. We are not to engage in “notion building”. When we notion-build, we unfortunately promote our wrong understanding, which we think of as the “way to be”.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription. 

Giving Up Goodness….

 August 17, 2016

Rohini explains how our attachment to our idea of “goodness” blocks us on the spiritual path.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription. 

In sādhana, the worst and….

 August 14, 2016

In sādhana, the worst and the best both keep us from Love. Both are parts of who we think we are.

The Way Not To Be….

 August 14, 2016

In the ashram, people tended not to like me. My presence has always had a strange ability to bring out whatever is inside of people. Depending on where they are internally, being around me will bring out the worst or the best. Many times Baba would direct me to walk into some office of the ashram, and shortly thereafter something unexpected would appear.

In sādhana, the worst and the best both keep us from Love. Both are parts of who we think we are. They have to be pulled into conscious awareness; then they can be disentangled from who we truly are. When these traits are positive, people tend to be pleased with themselves and with me. When they are negative, the response is not welcoming.

We may be identified with the negative but call it our best trait. Then, when the world does not receive it the way we believe it should be received, we will be defensive. We may think of ourselves as assertive and outgoing, only to find that when the world experiences our assertiveness and outgoingness, those qualities are received as rudeness and intrusiveness. On the other hand, if we do not value what is truly great within us, when it comes forth we will barely recognize it. When I acknowledge such a trait in a student, she will not believe me.

Until we let go of such wrong identification, we will see goodness as whatever we believe is “the way to be”. For each of us, “the way to be” is different. For example, if your “way to be”—your “goodness”—is not to take care of yourself, then if I advise you not to buy a suspect car, you will go ahead and buy the car, because I am advising you to take care of yourself. I am not “good”; I am encouraging you to depart from your idea of “the way to be”. If being “good” means not exercising any discernment, then no matter what anyone else says, you will not exercise discernment. It is crucially important for each of us to discover our “way to be”, our “good”.

Our delusional notions of “the way to be” lead us into some very interesting thought-forms. Let’s say you believe that hate is power and Love is weakness. Look at the nonsensical thinking that follows:

Hate is power.
If you have no hate, then you have no power.
Therefore, if you let go of hate, you are choosing to be a weakling.

Love is weak.
If you are weak, then you love.
Therefore, if you value love, you are hopelessly weak.

Life is about Alphas and people subjugated by Alphas.
You have two choices: be an Alpha, or be subjugated.
Therefore, the one condition that makes no sense is equality.

People also approach spirituality with their understanding of “the way to be”. For instance, they might decide that “goodness” can never be colorful, or that spirituality is just a way to compensate for their perceived inadequacies.

Goodness is about drabness.
Stylish, colorful clothes are bad.
Spirituality is good.
Therefore, if you wear stylish, colorful clothes, you are not spiritual.

If you are bad at life, spirituality will divinize your inadequacy.
If you are spiritual, you must be bad at life.
Therefore, the more you are spiritually committed and advanced, the worse you are at life.

Many people think that because I have committed my life to spiritual practice, then I must be completely inept in what they think of as “the real world”. I no longer bother to demonstrate otherwise.

As I have said many times before, “goodness” is not the goal. It has nothing to do with Love, and it isn’t compatible with happiness. We will never be happy until we are perfectly happy not to be “the way to be.”

Team….

 August 14, 2016

Team                           Lone wolf 

Mass                           Independent  

Removing Obstacles….

 August 10, 2016

Rohini explains the various obstacles we place in the way of our own spiritual practice, and how to let go of them.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription.

Love Is Not Goodness….

 August 7, 2016

I am disheartened these days watching the world steam ahead toward hate. And though we may acknowledge the character traits of reflection, honesty, care, and discernment, which come from purity and clarity, there seems to be ever-increasing inertia—heedless indifference—along with the painful traits of agitation, violence, fear, and turning further away from the Heart.

In the face of this upheaval, too many people seek refuge in a dangerous idea of “goodness”. Unconsciously confusing Absolute and relative reality, they convince themselves that if they clearly discern and acknowledge the disorder and destructiveness within the world, then they are not “good” in the way everyone else is. For them, seeing clearly and honestly is being negative. We are supposed to be blind to anything that doesn’t affirm human goodness.

The mistaken belief is that we are all innately good; the truth is that we are innately Love. But in identifying Love with an abstract ideal of goodness, we twist Love. This sentimental notion of innate goodness is then seen as so sacrosanct that we refuse to deny it even when the facts are staring right at us.

Saintly / seen as good

Demonic / corrupt

Doormat / sucker / used

Savvy / handles the world

We are confronted with a failing logic when we bring into our scheme of innate human goodness names like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Pinochet. People committed to seeing humanity as innately good will mitigate crimes and abuses in order to justify that belief. So “good” people project their idea of a unifying goodness everywhere they look. In a single moment of apparent goodness, these people will deny the real suffering in the world, deny a large portion of the world’s experience.

Yes, from the standpoint of Absolute Reality there is no suffering in the world. We all know that. In the non-dual systems, there is no real suffering. But until we live in that Love and come from Love without distortion or obstruction, there will be suffering in the world we inhabit. There will be cruelty and terror and pain. Have you ever noticed how often the very people who insist on universal goodness and tell others in pain to “let it go” demand attention and sympathy when they happen to be the ones suffering?

In truth there is just us, but we have to live that truth not just when it is convenient, not merely when we have the time and the inclination. Others’ suffering is our suffering. Others’ joy is our joy. When we are willing to acknowledge our part in the world, we then share in the play. We do not deny the suffering, but develop compassion. We develop dispassion. We develop Love. We share in community.

Shared human community

Isolation

No voice / lost personhood

Independence / voice

When we share in community we do not lose our voices. We each have a voice, and we share. When we are isolated, we may think we are independent, but in truth we have no voice.

When we insist on what we call innate human goodness and refuse to face human destructiveness and suffering, we are hiding from Love. When we hide from Love by cloaking ourselves in “goodness,” we will avoid anything that might give us true human community. And in our pridefulness, we blame others for not affirming our gauzy view, when they in fact shouldn’t. Remember, if we swim in this kind of “good” life, we will not feel the hate that surrounds us. We will instead resonate with hate and feel connected with others who share that vibration. This is the most destructive form of false community. Love requires surrender, but we instead defy Love in the name of our righteousness.

Surrender

Defiance

Placate / appease

Steadfastness

If we want to stop hiding from Love, we must give up our pride in our own “goodness”. We must surrender over and over again, day in and day out. Love is off the grid. There is no opposite to Love.

The mistaken belief is….

 August 7, 2016

The mistaken belief is that we are all innately good; the truth is that we are innately Love.

Shared human community….

 August 7, 2016

  Shared human community                                  Isolation 

No voice / lost personhood                                    Independence / voice  

Gratitude and Care….

 July 31, 2016

Keith, Ian, David and I had just walked out of the house and were examining Keith’s amazing sculpture of a head. “This should be in parks and gardens all over the country”, I said. “People of all ages will love this.” Suddenly there was a loud crash. We turned our heads to see a tree falling in the road and a large car going over the tree. The car, a minivan, came to a stop in front of the driveway. We ran to see if the driver was all right. Then Keith and Ian quickly moved the tree off the road and onto the grass. It was only about 9am, so traffic was brisk in both directions. The car was still in the middle of its lane, so we began directing traffic around it. David went to call the police, because the driver, a woman, was still in her car, talking on the phone.

Another driver stopped by the damaged car, and the two women started talking. I said, “You have to move on; there are people behind”. “Has this happened before?” she demanded as if she were in charge and the tree’s fall was somehow my fault. I said that it was not my tree, and could she please move on. She continued, “It is scary”.

Wow, I thought. Everyone has to make this about themselves.

The woman who had driven over the tree was of no help. She remained completely sealed off from everyone else. She was rude, and not at all willing to see that people were being impacted by her car. We told her to call AAA. Because she had never removed the sticker from the card, she called the wrong number. I took the card and scraped off the tape so she could call. She clearly felt entitled, and did not acknowledge what we were doing to keep the situation from becoming chaotic. Her demeanor was condescending at best; in her mind, we were just there to serve her. She had no responsibility toward others, either us or her fellow drivers. I offered her water, but she refused. We were not up to her level.

Her arrogant refusal to be part of a momentary community was fundamentally unsafe, for her and everyone else. Rather than be safe by engaging with us, she chose to insulate herself, which was hazardous.

Safe

Hazardous

Insulated

Engaged

We were thrilled when the police arrived. They quickly realized that talking to the driver was useless, so they spoke with us instead, and politely asked if they could roll the woman’s car onto our grass. We agreed to it though we knew the car was leaking fluid. The police were nice, respectful, and efficient. Once the car had been moved off the road, they left to handle some other situation. The driver didn’t speak to them, but we made sure to thank them.

A tow truck from AAA would take thirty minutes. Again, I asked the woman, who was standing by our mailbox still talking on her phone, if she wanted something to drink, knowing full well at this point she would just say no.

As I was walking away I very loudly said to her, “You’re welcome”.

The situation revealed this fourchotomy:

Grateful / sharing

Ungrateful / isolated

Obsequious / lost in others

Detached / own person

Here we were, four adults with work and lives, joining into this mess to share in the humanity of it all. We did that only to find the recipient was completely ungrateful. She did not care. The police cared. We cared. Some of the drivers who followed our directions cared. But the driver who needed the help was arrogant and isolated. At one point I even said, “Can you help here? I left my work to help”. Not even looking away from her phone, she spat, “Well, go do your work”. There was no humanity, no connectedness, no sense of responsibility to the situation..

I have been in accidents, and have been so grateful for the help of people who happened to be nearby and acted with humanity and responsibility. I have helped out when others have had accidents. When I go out of my house and engage with the world I am glad for the fact that we are All here together and share in our common Source. How sad it was that this moment, which could have been an occasion for all of us to come together, share, and help, was instead just another lesson in how people isolate, hate, and refuse to Love.

Refusing, even for a moment….

 July 31, 2016

Refusing, even for a moment, to be part of a truly human community is unsafe for you and for everyone else.

Grateful / sharing….

 July 31, 2016

  Grateful / sharing                              Ungrateful / isolated 

Obsequious / lost in others                   Detached / own person  

Never underestimate….

 July 24, 2016

Never underestimate the stupidity of hate.

Team….

 July 24, 2016

  Team                          Lone wolf

 Mass                           Independent

Guru Purnima 2016

 July 18, 2016

On the occasion of Guru Purnima, Rohini expresses her love and gratitude for her Guru, Baba Muktananda.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription. 

Guru Purnima 2016….

 July 17, 2016

Baba gave me everything—by taking everything away. For that I am so grateful. He shone the truth so brightly that it forced ignorance to run away and die. Wrong knowledge was the food he devoured daily. Our job was not to resist his taking away every delusion we held so dear. And sometimes he grabbed something away from us that we had no idea we were holding onto. In the moments afterward, we cried like small children who have lost an object only we found precious. If we surrendered, the joy and relief were beyond thought, and we were bathed in bliss.

[A] mirror is not kept clean for its own sake, but in order that a man may see himself in it. (Jnaneshwari XVIII.lxiv.1338)

Baba Loved and lived in the Absolute. For our sake, he emerged into relative reality and willingly engaged with our diminished, impure selves. He created dances so that we could see our shrunken condition for ourselves and work with him to get rid of them. So many times, the same lila had to be played out again and again. We just refused to let go of who we weren’t.

Baba was so patient. So patient. I don’t know how he did it. He would carry out a dance over years and still we would refuse to accept the truth. For me, he always had to take it to the extreme to get me to see. And when I finally surrendered, there was so much joy and freedom; I looked so silly to have been holding on for so long. All he wanted to do was to take away what kept each of us from being Muktananda—the Bliss of Freedom.

The Guru tirelessly gives by taking away our wrong understanding. He then incinerates it in his own body so it cannot return. He chooses to take on our karma in order that we will realize the Truth within ourselves.

Truly, the Guru functions as a mirror in which you see your own reflection. In the Guru, you see and attain your own Self. (The Perfect Relationship 87).

Baba always showed us the bliss within us. He was always pointing us in the direction of our own Self. Once we were lucky enough to have the experience of the Self, it was then our responsibility to work with Baba to clean everything that kept us from the Self. So Baba showed us the goal, showed us the path, guided us along the way, and removed the obstacles before us. He revealed how we really can never “attain” anything; rather, we must remove what keeps us from re-cognizing and realizing the Self. How could we not appreciate, honor, and pranam to such a Being?

His joy in Me is like the light reflected back and forth between two polished mirrors. (Jnaneshwari XVIII.lv.1133)

It gave Baba great happiness, though he didn’t have any need of such happiness, to see us give up more of our wrong understanding and find ourselves closer to Muktananda. His goal was that we all realize the Self. And the only way to do that was for each of us to give up the ignorance we clung to so tenaciously. Baba worked for all of us. He Loved all of us. In taking away everything we needed to let go, he gave us everything—so that we, too, could be Muktananda.

By means of a mirror one object may seem to be two; but in point of fact, are there really two? (Jnaneshwari IV.vi.46)

When we are non-attached….

 July 17, 2016

When we are non-attached, we are able to surrender and win rather than fight and lose.

Exacerbate….

 July 17, 2016

  Exacerbate                           De-escalate 

Confront / face                       Avoid  

Stand Firm by Surrendering….

 July 10, 2016

Practice requires us to actually practice. And because this practice is internal, there is no place where practice is not appropriate. And yet, we decide when and where and how to practice. More insidious than this willfulness is our tendency to misunderstand what practice is.

From the standpoint of the three gunas, our understanding of sādhana is determined by which quality is dominant at a given time. If we are tamasic, we resist facing the truth and see surrender as losing. People wedded to hate never surrender. If we are rajasic, we will say we are working, but our work will always entail fighting and struggling, and surrendering will still look like losing. When sattva is the dominant quality, clarity and discernment rule our sādhana, and we understand that surrender is truly freeing.

Without understanding the gunas, we fail to see what shapes our sādhana, and fail to see the crucial difference between questioning and wrestling on the one hand, and struggling and fighting on the other. Whatever we are facing, we begin by questioning it and ourselves, and then proceed to wrestling with what we find. Too often, though, we then turn to resistance. At first we may feel sure of what we are doing, but we are deluding ourselves that we are practicing, because all we are doing is being in our heads, struggling and fighting with no resolution and no desire for resolution. By doing this, we perpetuate the shrunken self.

We do not ask whom or what we are fighting. The answer is so simple: no one. We have merely created a dialogue between our shrunken self and our shrunken self. As I have said before, if you really listen, you will hear that the competing voices in your mental dialogues are really only one voice chiding itself. So how do we get out of this? We have to stop struggling. True wrestling, the kind that advances us down the path, comes only through asking questions that will reveal our wrong understanding for what it actually is: just a combination of thought constructs that will never be us.

If we believe our wrong understanding is correct, then whether we are challenged outwardly or inwardly we will resist letting any new knowledge seep in. Our resistance can take the form of silence, which we believe gives us the moral high ground. This may mean lying low—remaining invisible until whatever we are resisting all blows over. That is one way not to learn the lesson. We might also tell ourselves, “It is not safe to open my mouth”. But the reality is that we are protecting our shrunken identity from any blows that may in fact reveal the truth about it.

So the question we must continually ask ourselves is this: What do I want to accomplish? What is my motivation?

If my motivation is informed by hate, then whether I shut my mouth or open it, I will be cruel. When I speak, I will be cruel. When I don’t speak, I will be cruel. When I question, I will be fighting, but calling it wrestling. In these circumstances we are not clear at all, but believe we are totally realistic and reasonable.

When we believe we have something to protect, we will become fearful. In sādhana, our wrong understanding leads us to protect exactly the thing we want to let go of. This fourchotomy shows the confusion that results.

Fearful

Love

Directed / certain / clear-sighted

Abandoning reason / reckless

Questioning and willingly listening to the answer is not fighting. Always ask the next question. Be honest in facing your experience. Are you afraid that if you tell yourself the truth about your experience you’re going to get in trouble with you?

If we believe that complaining and fighting is what caring looks like, then once we have resolution, we will believe we won’t be connected or have caring relationships anymore. We will not be invested in resolution; we will work to avoid resolution. We then believe that we are doing people a favor by resisting.

Oppositional (unteachable / no need to listen)

Agreeable

Autonomous / Independent

Dependent

We are capable of seeing the truth and accepting that truth without a fight. But we tend to believe that in order to remain autonomous we have to fight and resist. So we never move forward. According to the shrunken self, tools to resolve are tools to end it all. And because we hold onto this belief we have a difficult time, which only perpetuates our fighting against life and the very people who could free us.

Fighting

Accepting

Wrestling / questioning

Gullible / impressionable

Wrestling is different from fighting. When we wrestle, we have shraddha, faith that is questioning. What are we questioning? We should be questioning what the lesson is for us, where our attachments are, what our resistance to growing is. Student and teacher should be on the same team. The student should not be fighting the teacher. Only this way can the student get clear about where she is and what she has to let go of.

When we are non-attached, we are able to surrender and win rather than fight and lose. In sādhana, surrender means accepting truth and removing our wrong understanding. We are then working with our teacher. Surrendering is a critical part of practice. We stand firm by surrendering.

Surrender

Resist

Lose

Stand firm

Baba explained, over and over again, the real meaning of surrender and where surrender leads:

Only the one who is constantly absorbed in the inner Self will be able to dwell in the divine state of love all the time. If you are alienated from the inner Self, then the question of experiencing divine love could never even arise. First, through intense, deep meditation you should get into the state which is beyond differences and duality. Once you have begun to go into that state, and can stay there and come out without suffering any loss, then that inner divine love will begin to pour out through you and you will not see people around you as different, antagonistic, hostile individuals. You will see your own self in everyone around you.

Mitigation is….

 July 10, 2016

Mitigation is such a weapon. We use it to conceal the truth of the injuries we and others inflict.

Caring….

 July 10, 2016

  Caring                                                        Apathetic / indifferent 

Parasitic / lose subject in object                  Independent  

Miserly Hoards the L to Get Misery….

 July 3, 2016

When life is all about “me”, I am a “taker”. I am stingy. There is no one else in the room with me—I am the only one. Everyone else is just an object that impacts me in some way.

Identifying as the one true shrunken self only makes us miserable. Misery, then, is the bottom line of all vibrations; it is the goal, the shrunken self’s “love”. This unfortunate truth is evident in the way the world is evolving right now. The miserable person receives all the attention and “love” from the world. So the way to get “love” is to be miserable. You suck everyone in. And in order to be included as part of “the world”, others have to be crushed and made miserable.

Attending to Baba in the ashram courtyard in Ganeshpuri provided amazing opportunities for my sādhana on all levels. Once, when the courtyard was empty except for Baba and the other attendant, I watched someone arrive from Bombay with a gift for Baba. It was a watch. As the man gave Baba the watch, I said internally, “Baba, my watch broke. I need a watch. I don’t have a watch anymore. I need a watch.” I was standing toward the back of the courtyard and obviously not part of the interchange Baba and the man were having. Baba took the watch and said nothing further. The man left.

About fifteen minutes later Baba got up from his seat. He would normally go into his house using the door to the left of his seat. But instead he started to come in my direction. Just at that moment my then husband, who went by the name Niranjan, came through the courtyard. Baba said to him. “Your wife needs a watch. I will tell the jeweler to talk to you when he comes.” We all kind of laughed, especially me, and then Baba disappeared to lunch.

After lunch that day I went to my usual place at the back stair. Baba came out in a beautiful blue velvet hat with beads on it. He asked me to get my husband. Once Niranjan arrived, Baba gave him the hat and said, “Now will you not be a miser and buy your wife a watch?” Niranjan laughed. And that seemed to be it. The next day Baba came out in a velvet vest with hearts for pockets. Baba asked me to get my husband. I did. Baba gave him the vest and said “Now will you not be a miser and get your wife a watch?” This dance went on for days; Baba lavished Niranjan with beautiful gifts. Each time there was laughter. In the end, Niranjan agreed to talk with the jeweler on Sunday. The watch came several days later; Baba gave it to me. The jeweler gave the bill to Niranjan. The story seems so playful, but Baba was always teaching. Would there have been any generosity in this situation without Baba’s generosity?

Even when misers give, they are merely performing gestures; their seeming generosity is actually robotic. It is behavior modification with no underlying sincerity. But the miser expects others to be generous and openhearted toward him, by which the miser means they should forsake themselves to please him.

Miser / robotic

Generous / openhearted

Self-contained / clear-sighted

Wasteful / lost in others

In Hui-neng’s commentary on the Diamond Sutra, he talks about charity:

When ordinary people practice charity, they are just seeking personal dignity, or enjoyment of pleasure: that is why they plunge back into the three mires when their rewards are used up. The World Honored One is very kind, teaching the practice of formless charity, not seeking personal dignity or pleasure; he just has us inwardly destroy the attitude of stinginess while outwardly helping all beings. Harmonizing thus is called practicing charity without dwelling on form….To practice charity in accord with a formless mind like this means there is no sense of being charitable, no idea of a gift, and no notion of a recipient. This is called practicing charity without dwelling on appearances….[T]he practice of charity is universal dispersal. If you can inwardly disperse all false thoughts, habit energies, and afflictions in the mind, the four images are gone, and nothing is stored up—this is true giving. (trans. Thomas Cleary)

True charity is never about an action; it can only exist when we have sacrificed our own miserliness.

We cling to….

 July 3, 2016

We cling to what we hate more than what we love.

Connected….

 July 3, 2016

  Connected                        Isolated

 Enmeshed                         Independent  

Conversion to Love….

 July 2, 2016

Rohini explains how Love is both a moment to moment practice and the goal of all practice.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription.

The Guru Manifests Personally for Us….

 June 26, 2016

Not everyone wants a personal relationship with the Guru. I did. I loved Baba personally and as the Guru, and I still do. Most people want the Guru without any personal relationship. When people see a Guru in human form, instead of being excited by the wonder of this manifestation and his accessibility, they diminish the Guru. This is like Arjuna not understanding who Krishna was. For Arjuna, Krishna was a wise friend, mentor and advisor. Krishna went along with that perception until Arjuna needed to be woken up from a delusion of great magnitude and consequence. Only then did Krishna reveal his true form.

The Guru in the physical form is so important for us as a model. He shows the intersection of the divine and the material. He aids us in learning how to function in the world and then how to transcend the material. I loved watching and being able to play with Baba on the physical plane, learning the outer and inner at the same time.

The Guru is not stingy. The Guru always gives. What does he give? Love. Love manifesting through the physical form at all times. The Guru’s Love is always manifesting, no matter what the Guru’s physical form is doing. He always gives Love, even in the form of anger.

People tend to have an idea of what the Guru should look like. But the Guru transcends form even as he inhabits it. Baba happened to be in the form of a monk, but he Loved the householder saints. They just lived regular lives, not separate from the lives of ordinary people. They showed us that the Guru is not a lifestyle or anything specifically material. The Guru manifests through whatever lifestyle the form has. So whether a mendicant, a charioteer, a farmer, a banker, a woman, a man, the form is not what matters—it is the Guru that matters.

I loved Baba’s form. But I knew that every moment, whether he was yelling at me, calling me stupid, playing a political lila, or just sitting there that last day in his physical body, when he helped me up from pranaming because I was so pregnant. Baba Loved. Strange are the ways of the Great Beings. Why? Because they are always loving in the way that is appropriate for that moment. They are God manifesting through them for the betterment of all, both personally and universally.

Most people are too immature spiritually to accept a true personal Guru. Though they profess to be seeking that, they would really rather have an abstract experience, because they are not ready for the personal. These people want someone purely ethereal, with no humanness. For them, the Guru just fulfills an idea.

Other people believe they are seeking a personal Guru when they really just want a counselor. A Guru is not a therapist. The Guru is interested in your soul, not your head.

Then there are people who regard the Guru as only human, like everyone else, so they will not see or hear what the Guru has to offer. They belittle the Guru because of the Guru manifesting in the human form. They feel that in manifesting, the Guru is diminished. But in order to manifest the Guru takes on a physical form. These people would rather just deal in ideas, never accepting that ideas derive most of their value from being applied on the physical plane. We have to manifest and test our ideas. Otherwise, we will believe that whatever we think is great, without any reality check.

The Guru is unfailingly generous of spirit; he participates in life. People who don’t participate in life are stingy and afraid. They use and they take, they protect their belief systems—and they get nothing out of life. The Guru has nothing to protect.

One way to avoid the living presence of a Guru is to be a devotee of a dead Guru. This is just one more way to keep things abstract. As Baba was fond of saying, there is nothing like a dead Guru: he never yells and always agrees with your desires. The problem is, I am still with a living Guru. Swami Muktananda’s form may be gone, but Baba is alive and yelling at me as he always did. Thank God.

Baba said all kinds of derogatory things about me to others. And people did get what they were supposed to get from that. It was all a play designed for all of us to learn. Whatever Baba said was appropriate for that moment. I am thankful that Baba derided me over and over again. Baba Loved, and it always came through, no matter what he said or did, at least for me. What a blessing to be yelled at by the Guru. My job was to obey and love, and it still is. After I had malaria, Baba had me eat bitter melon every day for my health. I hated bitter melon, but not once did it ever occur to me not to do as Baba instructed.

Having a personal relationship with the Guru is the rarest of opportunities. I understood that, and cherished every interaction I had with Baba. People used to say that Baba was different in his own house from how he was in public. As someone who knew him well in both places, I can testify that nothing could be further from the truth. His manifestation may have varied, but he was always the same. Baba was always Baba, and he always Loved. That last day he was in his physical body, when he helped me up from pranaming, he looked at me with total, unconditional Love. This is who he is, even now.

Are you afraid….

 June 26, 2016

Are you afraid that if you tell you the truth about your experience, you will get in trouble with you?

Personal….

 June 26, 2016

    Personal                            Cold 

Small-minded                       Universal  

Happy-go-lucky….

 June 19, 2016

I am writing this out of a deep sense of sadness as we keep heading down a road that hurts us all. Many years ago, I worked with an eleven-year-old who was extremely troubled. His parents were a big part of the problem, though there was no recognition of that fact. What I heard over and over again was the phrase, “He was such a happy-go-lucky kid. I don’t know what happened.” From this and several other situations, I grew to realize that “happy-go-lucky” is in truth a euphemism for someone whose heedless destructiveness is obscured by a bubble of carefreeness. Depending on how we have been raised, we can believe we are fun-loving without realizing that our fun comes always at the expense of others.

We talk among ourselves and in the media about addiction and epidemics of all kinds. Happy-go-lucky is an epidemic. These fourchotomies show how this public health problem manifests.

Happy-go-lucky (easygoing, fun, carefree)

Uptight / humorless

Heedless / destructive

Conscious / responsible

“Happy-go-lucky”

Careful / reflective

Spontaneous / unburdened

Rigid / depressive

If instead of facing this epidemic we continue to call our behavior fun, then as we grow our destruction will also grow. We then will find ourselves in a situation where we believe we only misbehaved for “twenty minutes”  when in fact we have a long history of wrong action that got us to that twenty minutes.

People who are called happy-go-lucky generally do not present as mean. They appear fun-loving but are careless and reckless, and they can produce the same destruction as a vicious person. It is usually a surprise to others that these people are found to be in trouble, and they continue to be called happy-go-lucky. They are the inevitable products of the destructive belief that the good life is a life free of responsibilities and consequences. A carefree life.

Indulged

Disciplined

Fun / free

No fun / imprisoned

Lascivious

Safe

Fun

Humorless

Flippant

Considerate / respectful

Witty / fun / playful

Boring / unimaginative

On a tear

Easygoing / lets be / fun loving

Taking care of business

Confused / befuddled / unclear

Instigator / incite

Secure / nonattached

Inspiring / funny/ playful

Apathetic / disconnected / unresponsive

If we look at the above fourchotomies, we see “fun” in every one of them. As a culture we talk about safety, but we really are going for fun. So children are encouraged to have fun. Parents are supposed to be fun. School is to be fun. And on whose terms? The children’s. How scary is that? How unsafe is that?

We are now a culture that sees responsibility as nothing but a burden. Our self-absorption leaves no room for accountability, and the consequences are horrific. Recently in Virginia, a woman dropped off her three-year-old at day care and proceeded to work. After work, she again got in the car and drove all the way to collect her eight-month-old before going on to pick up her three-year-old. Only the eight-month-old had never been dropped off. The baby was still in the car—in the car all day and now dead. The mother hadn’t noticed. She is now facing charges.

When bringing up my two sons, I always spoke about causes and consequences. Many people disapproved of the way I raised my children to be adults. The belief was that parents should insulate, not expose. My young sons followed the police cruiser in which I accompanied that happy-go-lucky eleven-year-old to a psychiatric hospital. They recognized how destructive his decisions had been. They saw the consequences of happy-go-lucky, and understood that we each have agency and choice. It was an important lesson for everyone.

If we are all supposed to be happy-go-lucky, then there are no adults. We have removed adulthood as a desirable choice. We all aspire to remain our idea of children: carefree and with no responsibilities or consequences. We have reached a place where we do not reflect on our own actions and how we are subtly heading toward those “twenty minutes” or eight hours of devastation. We are longing for our good ole days, which never existed except in our heads. The truth is, if we were to actually be responsible and discern the consequences before we proceeded, if we were conscious and awake to our lives, we would not be looking at the destruction in our wake.

We have to love….

 June 19, 2016

We have to love ourselves, the ones we created and identify with, in order to get rid of ourselves.

Happy-go-lucky….

 June 19, 2016

  Happy-go-lucky (easygoing, fun, carefree)                                      Uptight / humorless 

Heedless / destructive                                                                         Conscious / responsible

Guest Blog by David Soud: Anger Is a Drug….

 June 12, 2016

Reflecting on the nature of joy, the poet William Butler Yeats once wrote that he experienced it only when he let go of hate and anger. “I think the common condition of our life is hatred,” he set down. “I know that this is so with me.” His acceptance of his own hate and anger sounds so simple, so matter-of-fact, but in my own life I’ve found it anything but. Sure, I could always abstractly say to myself, “I’m experiencing hate or anger,” but actually being with it—the full extent of it, and the why of it—is another, altogether more challenging and chastening thing. But we all have to do it if we want to live more authentic, seamless lives.

Some thirty years ago I encountered a passage in a Neil Gunn novel in which a brave fisherman, betrayed by the elements, displays “a coldness of clear anger”—a conscious, appropriately measured response to specific circumstances. That’s not the anger Yeats is talking about; he uses the word “condition” for a reason. The anger that most afflicts us is exactly that: a chronic condition, a lurking vibration that we keep choosing, consciously or unconsciously, to indulge. It does a lot of damage, to us and others, and most of that damage we don’t even see.

That’s why, I think, the saints of all traditions are so serious about anger. The Desert Father Abbot Ammonas prayed ceaselessly for fourteen years to be delivered from anger. The Prophet Mohammed, in Hadith 16, repeatedly advises a seeker, “Do not get angry.” In the Mahabharata, Dronacharya instructs the Pandavas to tell the truth but never be angry. So we can’t afford to be abstract about our anger. We have to face it.

But, as with any quality, we can’t face what we refuse to see. And we conceal our anger from ourselves in countless ways. If we don’t try to bury and deny it, or dissociate and distract ourselves from it, we might turn it in on ourselves and call it depression, or say we’re tired, or get sick, or find something to be righteously indignant about, or unleash it in cutting jokes. Long ago, I came across the line, “A wit is an angry man in search of a victim.” Often true.

I grew up in a home dominated by a kind of ambient, sometimes explosive anger. As a kid, I coped with it by becoming expert at not being there, even when I was there—practiced at finding little hiding places or disappearing into books. Nonetheless, I absorbed that vibration, and have always been quick to dive into it. And, as with all chronic anger, there is a charge to it, a kind of pleasure in the feeling. If I didn’t like it, why did I keep going back for more helpings of it? Rather than be with it and accept the full extent of it—and accept that I actually enjoyed it—I kept it abstract, so it often found expression through irritability, self-righteousness, heedless impulsivity, or a callous dismissiveness. It still does, when I let myself slip.

Anger is a drug—it provides a high that destroys our discernment. Until we accept that we choose anger because we like it on some level, because it does something for us, we won’t really have owned it at all. Because there’s pleasure in it, but none in accepting that we enjoy it and seek it out, it’s always tempting to stop short of owning it. But the more we try to make our anger abstract or mitigate it or domesticate it in any way, the more damage we’ll inflict. And that’s the real danger, because wherever we let unacknowledged anger shape our actions and reactions, there can be no place for Love. This, I think, is the “common condition” Yeats saw. As far as I can tell, he was right: everyone who isn’t a saint is still at least a little in love with their own chronic anger.

So there’s a reason wrath is one of the seven deadly sins: not just that it leads to destruction, but that, more fundamentally, it makes Love impossible. If we want to give up our attachment to power and pleasure, facing up to our anger, and our fondness for that anger, is a good start.

If you don’t want….

 June 12, 2016

If you don’t want to solve anything, then just worry.

Mean-spirited….

 June 12, 2016

Mean-spirited                            Considerate

 Witty                                        Dull / unimaginative

When we do not know that we hate….

 June 5, 2016

When we do not know that we hate because we either numb, deny, or call the vibration something other than what it is, we can use the outcome of our actions as a way to unveil our motivations.

Evasive action….

 June 5, 2016

  Evasive action Direct approach Diplomatic Unprovoked attack  

Guest Blog by Aaron Ralby: The Hoop of No Hoops….

 May 29, 2016

Taller than a mountain and wider than the sea,

As heavy as iron and lighter than a breeze,

The ultimate challenge, the final task,

Distilled difficulty filled in a flask;

Many hoops you’ve jumped of fire and ice,

Of danger, dust, despair, and vice,

Hoops of toil, hoops of trouble,

Hoops of battle surrounded by rubble.

You’ve jumped through the earth, you’ve jumped through the sky,

You’ve jumped and jumped, prepared to die:

Diseases, wounds, and injuries,

Endured deceits and perjuries,

Each deadline met, each job complete,

How high, how low, how shallow, how steep,

You’ve jumped through the hoops before your feet.

All hoops but one — the toughest to beat.

Before you lies the hardest of hoops,

An endless beginning enclosed in a loop.

So low, no depth; so high, no height;

Adventure devoid of danger or fight,

Devoid of struggle, devoid of stress,

Devoid of malice, envy, and mess:

Before you lies the hoop of no hoops,

A challengeless task, a waterless soup,

A wind of stone, and a rock of air,

Jump through this hoop so long as you dare.

You’ll never return, nor be the same.

Jump through the hoop and end the game.

Your feelings….

 May 29, 2016

Your feelings should not define your practice.

Stingy / robotic….

 May 29, 2016

  Stingy / robotic                               Generous / alive 

Self-contained                                  Wasteful / lost in others  

Baba’s 108th Birthday

 May 28, 2016

Rohini honors her Guru, Baba Muktananda, by reading aloud some reflections on how he taught her and leading a chant, followed by meditation.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription.

Om Bhagavan, Muktananda Bhagavan….

 May 22, 2016

As I grow older, my appreciation for Baba only deepens. The more I learn and let go, the more my understanding of what Baba taught, and the way he taught, continues to expand. When I first followed him, I knew enough to be able to treasure Baba; now that I understand so much more, I can’t thank him enough.

Appreciate / treasure

Insult

Flatter / grovel

Candid / clear and honest

Deferential

Disrespectful

Obsequious

Undazzled

Give credit

Bury / suppress

Diminished

On top

Acknowledging

Belittling

Groveling

Independent

Appreciating Baba did not mean I was a blind follower. I simply knew that I didn’t know better than he. At least I was clear-sighted enough to understand some of what he had to offer. Baba used to tell the story of the jewel that was appreciated only by the expert jeweler; people who had no understanding just saw a worthless stone.

The ego loves to criticize and keep separate and call that discernment. When we appreciate someone else, the grip of our ego is loosened. But we have to be willing to appreciate someone openly. For many, appreciating someone they don’t know is easier than acknowledging someone close to them; power and the desire to win take precedence over intimacy and Love.

Baba just Loved. Whether he was angry, happy, sad, frustrated, or whatever, he Loved. It was never a question of power or winning, at least not for me. I knew I wanted what he had. I adored Baba and who Baba was. And Baba wanted each of us to have and be who he was. How lucky we are. He willingly gave each of us what he had to offer.

Baba taught every one of us according to our nature. When I started with Baba, my warrior temperament was all too apparent. So, of course, security was going to be my focus. Baba taught me security on all levels. He taught me first how to be secure in the most superficial, worldly sense, and then how to practice security as I pierced deeper and deeper inward.

On the mundane level, I was in charge of security for the Ganeshpuri ashram. As many as thirty men, including Gurkhas, worked on security at any given time. My job was to make sure everything was safe for the ashram to function properly. That meant removing mangy dogs, enforcing ashram dharma, catching thieves of all kinds, and guarding access to Baba. He didn’t need me to do any of these things, but he wanted me to learn what I needed to learn, and being head of security was the perfect venue.

Guarding Baba was the key to learning how to guard the Heart. Whether in the courtyard or by the back stair, my job was to be always one-pointed on Baba. There was to be no distraction, no wandering, no slipping. The place where I truly learned to guard the Heart was the back stair. I would go there after lunch. Baba would come out the back door of his house and sit on the stair; I would stand just a few feet away. We could be silent or conversing. Baba might want someone or something or not. In the interior background, there was a constant, intense pulling inward toward the Heart. So no matter what appeared to be going on, I was in the midst of an education in guarding, in one-pointedness, in focusing on where everything came from. Baba would not let me stray. He would teach me and then expect me to apply this practice away from him as well.

Baba called me Ganesh. Ganesh was the guard at the door for his mother, Parvati. He was constant, vigilant, devoted, and always reflective. Baba was always driving the lesson, always working to get me to stay in the Heart. He was willing to create outside activities to facilitate the practice. He did this for each of us. Whether we were gardening, sewing, cooking, cleaning, teaching, or guarding, for him personally or for the greater community, the practice of guarding the Heart was to inform everything.

What a gift he gave us. I will never be able to repay him. Baba taught me to guard the Heart by having me stand guard and never leave my post. Never leave the Heart. No desertion allowed.

While I was in the ashram, for the most part people did not like me. But I did not go to the ashram to be liked; I went to learn from Baba. That was my mission. It is still my mission, and I still get that some people do not like me. I am not very social, and I am definitely challenging. If, though, someone else is on the same mission, we share at a depth that I greatly appreciate.

When I had malaria for the second time, I did not report to my post at the back door to Baba’s house for a couple of days. I thought my absence didn’t matter. But it did. To Baba, everything mattered and did not matter. He wanted to know where I was and he wanted me there. Someone may think him unkind; after all, I was sick. In fact, he was freeing me from the malaise. This bout of malaria was different from the first, when Baba saved my life and had me quarantined for two months. This was a year later. He sent me medicine and food and then let me know I needed not to fall into weakness. It worked. The bout was not as severe, and I was well within a week.

I appreciated his care for everyone, and how in every situation he knew the right course of action in a heartbeat. Baba discerned the right path for each of us and then guided us on that path.

Though I have given up my warrior life—my stick has been retired—I use all the skills Baba worked to cultivate in me, so as never to leave my post. I am still Ganesh, still Security, and becoming still every day.

There are no words to thank the Guru, no words to thank Baba. I shed tears of joy and of longing for his darshan. Thank you, Baba, for giving me life.

When we appreciate….

 May 22, 2016

When we appreciate someone else, the grip of our ego is loosened. But we have to be willing to appreciate someone openly.

Deferential….

 May 22, 2016

  Deferential                    Disrespectful 

Obsequious                    Undazzled

The Manchurian Candidate Student….

 May 15, 2016

Some people do not have the capacity to see me. They decide me. So they never know me; they only know what they project on me. The picture they project depends on what they bring to the table unconsciously. And sometimes, I can’t even recognize myself in their projections.

These people already have a guru—their early guru. They are committed to that guru unconsciously. Usually, it is one or both parents—their first caregivers. I will see this, but they will deny it and are certain it is not true. In the ashram, Baba used to test people to see whom they followed. No one was independent, though they thought they were. They all had an early guru that they followed religiously, so they could never learn from Baba. I watched this resistance, but did not understand it. Now I do.

These people are actually like Laurence Harvey’s character in The Manchurian Candidate. The people who brainwashed him picked him because they knew he was committed in a particular way to his mother, who was their agent. He is almost completely programmed to see his mother as an absolute authority in all things; all she has to do is cue him by showing him his trigger, the Queen of Diamonds, and he will follow her every suggestion. If someone else by accident shows him that card, he will react just the same. Only through a wrenching and ultimately fatal act of courage is he able to break through that programming.

For us, the early stages of sādhana involve exposing and disentangling from the similar programming that has shaped our lives. We have to find a teacher who wants the best for us and has proved to be skillful and trustworthy. Assessing that teacher can be difficult, as we are still bound by our program. But there has to be a surrender to someone outside the program. People who are still unconsciously committed to their early guru will fight anyone who tries to free them, because they do not see freedom for what it is.

Their reaction is reflected in these two fourchotomies:

Know better than

Able and willing to learn

Testing / wrestling

Servile / hollow

Fight

Cooperate

Stand up

Cave in

Clearly, they have a problem with authority. They aspire to be their early guru, whom they believe to be all-powerful and all-knowing. For them, to accept any other guidance is to cave in, and to be willing to take instruction is to be servile.

So they really just come to have their egos affirmed. As long as my guidance dovetails with their chosen identity, I am a good teacher; as soon as the two diverge, I am no longer worth listening to. And as long as the focus is not on their individual selves but on abstractions and people in general, all is okay.

In other words, they like spiritual practice as long as it remains purely theoretical and no feelings get hurt. But I am a practitioner, so anyone who works with me is going to have to face themselves, and it will hurt. That is the nature of real spiritual practice. As Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse puts it:

It is such a mistake to assume that practicing dharma will help us calm down and lead an untroubled life; nothing could be farther from the truth. Dharma is not a therapy. Quite the opposite, in fact, dharma is tailored specifically to turn your life upside down—it’s what you sign up for. So when your life goes pear-shaped, why do you complain? If you practise and your life fails to capsize, it is a sign that what you are doing is not working. (Not for Happiness 8)

One woman who came to private classes some years ago did so because, in her mind, she was fine but surrounded by awful people doing terrible things to her, and she needed support dealing with them. As long as I didn’t focus on her and made sure she knew that nothing was her fault, all was okay. But at some point, we all have to see that the common denominator for every terrible situation we’re in is us. Once the mirror was held up to her, I became the mean person who didn’t understand. This is all too common.

If someone wants to cling to their early guru and their shrunken identity, they can simply think of me as ignorant and unrefined, and of themselves as sophisticated and knowledgeable about themselves and the world.

Practitioner

Theorist

Ignorant / artless / naïve / unrefined / unsophisticated

Cultivated / sophisticated

The Manchurian Candidate student knows better than the teacher he is looking at. He is “independent”—but in the sense in which the word is used as code for unteachable and unmanageable. “Stay strong” is his power trip. He sees everything in terms of power. So around me, he feels agitated, because the shakti discomfits people who are into power.

The work of spiritual practice, though, is about discomfort—at least for the shrunken self. Often, the Manchurian Candidate student’s belief is that if you deny problems, they will sooner or later go away. If someone calls a problem a problem and deals with it, that person is accused of creating problems. So I end up being cast as the promoter of problems.

Then comes the disrespect. Convinced that listening to me means caving in, the Manchurian Candidate student resents being taught. “I can’t do it without you, but I hate your guts”: this message comes through in countless ways. And that student then rationalizes his rudeness. “If you’re spiritual, none of this should bother you”, he thinks, “so I can say whatever I want to you.” No, he can’t. It’s still rude. At this point, I may need to raise my voice as I speak to his underlying vibration of arrogance, defensiveness, and hostility. Then the recalcitrant student can regard me as a tyrant. It never occurs to him that the real tyrant is his commitment to his early guru, which dominates his life.

To be clear, I am not talking about legitimate testing and wrestling and questioning. It is one thing for new people to question—that is completely appropriate. But when people who have studied with me closely for years, who have been shown the validity and value of the practice, continue to be skeptical and believe me to be cruel for telling the truth, they need to leave. They need to return to their original teacher, whom they have never really left, anyway.

The real question is this: how many times does someone’s life have to be dramatically changed for the better for them to decide that a teacher like me is worth listening to? People committed to their early guru will not even be willing to frame that question; they will confront the true teacher’s authority with the smugness and authoritarianism of their own sure voice.

Authority

Authoritarian

Smug

Stalwart / disciplined

On the other hand, when you do practice—when you work to be with your experience, let whatever comes up come up, and function appropriately on the physical plane—you will appear appropriate to most people in the world. If you are videotaped acting appropriately, then no matter what others are doing, you will look appropriate on tape. When you project onto a true teacher “tyrant” or any other kind of authoritarian tag, you look inappropriate. Watch your tapes.

Spiritual practice is not easy, and it is definitely not comfortable. Like the character in The Manchurian Candidate, you have to face and dismantle the forces that have controlled you. If you don’t want to do that work, don’t blame the practice. You can always stick with your early guru.

Most people are okay….

 May 15, 2016

Most people are okay with spiritual instruction, as long as the focus is not on their individual selves but on abstractions and people in general.

Know better than….

 May 15, 2016

  Know better than                       Able and willing to learn                   

Testing / wrestling                        Servile / hollow  

Five Kinds of Seeker…..

 May 8, 2016

Baba used to say, “I give you what you want so that someday you will want what I have to give”. He was Self-realized and saw the world as it really is. I am not where Baba is, and I am less patient. I have waited and waited and given many students what they wanted. But, as this body ages, I want to give what I have to offer to the few who want it.

When Baba told me I was naïve about why people came to the ashram, he was, of course, right. Now I understand what he was saying. I’ve seen that there are five basic types of spiritual seeker, only one of which is looking for the Real.

The first kind of seeker is really just looking to replace, transfer, or supplement their relationship with their mommy or daddy. Seeking a familiar vibration, they want me, or any teacher, to relate with them in such a way that all I can provide is what they have always wanted their parent of choice to give them—emotionally and intellectually. They want unconditional acceptance of the behavior they have always brought to the table, whether it is appropriate or not. So they project that relationship and expect me to play the desired role. If they harbor negative feelings toward that parent, they will either see me as a tyrant to appease or someone to be obnoxious to with impunity, expecting the spiritual teacher to love and accept them on their terms, no matter what.

But the jobs of the mommy and the Guru are very different. When you want your mommy, you will treat the Guru with the same deceptive deference that you believe your mother wanted. You will give the Guru everything you gave your mommy, not knowing that you were actually not authentic the first time you did it. You were just trying to manipulate your mommy with words and actions that may have been okay with her (or okay with her when you were four years old), but the Guru sees through all that. This is not what the Guru wants from you. If I had wanted to be just a mommy forever, I would never have encouraged my sons to become adults.

The second kind of seeker is a lonely person looking for community. They are not interested in the Guru, but in being with, and sharing with, other seekers. Group classes serve as ways to meet people—and that is the goal.

The third kind of seeker wants power. This hunger may take the form of seeking exotic experiences, cultivating a sense of elitism, or pursuing the illusion of control over others. They want the Guru to showcase supernatural powers that they as students can then gain for themselves. They don’t want the Guru to be able to see into them, nor do they want to be brought to introspection; they want a magic show. This is not remotely what spiritual practice is about, and the Guru should not tolerate it.

The fourth kind of seeker wants to have their pain removed. They are looking for someone they can rely on to relieve their suffering. There is an element of truth in this, because a Guru’s job is to remove suffering—and I do this. But unless a student commits to practice, their pain will only return. Unfortunately, most of these seekers want the Guru to remove their pain with little or no work on the student’s part. When they actually experience freedom from pain, a few—a very few—will awaken to what spiritual practice really means. The others are no more interested in introspection than the power-seekers; what they want is to have their pain transformed into or replaced with pleasure. They want little techniques that will help ease their stress. Most will only keep returning for a quick fix.

The fifth kind of seeker is very rare. This person is truly searching for a Guru—someone who conveys the grace-bestowing power of God. These seekers come prepared to undertake the arduous work of spiritual practice. They are disciplined, vigilant, and capable of sustained concentration and effort. When the Guru turns their lives upside down, they welcome it as a chance to learn and grow. They know that if you truly follow and obey the Guru, you will come to be who you truly are. This is what the Guru wants for all students.

Baba used to say that the Guru grants what the heart desires, so, in his ashram, these five kinds of seeker found what they were looking for. The misguided ones took the goal of spiritual practice to be either relationship with a higher authority that remained in harmony with their idea of themselves, or community, or power, or pleasure. Precious few wanted the true Guru. This has always been true—but it is also true that some who seek the wrong thing may wake up and turn to the true goal of spiritual practice. Baba always offered that possibility. It remains there for everyone.

All the work is….

 May 8, 2016

All the work is designed to make the shrunken self let go. And the more we practice letting go, the less of us there is to practice.  

Manage everyone’s perception….

 May 8, 2016

  Manage everyone’s perceptions                     Authentic

 Diplomatic                                                      Rude and hurtful  

Journey of the Practitioner….

 May 1, 2016

What is a practitioner? In many cases, academics, theologians, and intellectuals believe their expertise is the highest level—they assume they rank above practitioners. In truth, mystics are the practitioners of spirituality. According to Evelyn Underhill, what idealists and theorists can only speak of, practitioners live:

In Idealism we have perhaps the most sublime theory of Being which has ever been constructed by the human intellect: a theory so sublime, in fact, that it can hardly have been produced by the exercise of “pure reason” alone, but must be looked upon as a manifestation of that natural mysticism, that instinct for the Absolute, which is latent in man. But, when we ask the idealist how we are to attain communion with the reality which he describes to us as “certainly there,” his system suddenly breaks down; and discloses itself as a diagram of the heavens, not a ladder to the stars…. That is to say, Idealism, though just in its premises, and often daring and honest in their application, is stultified by the exclusive intellectualism of its own methods: by its fatal trust in the squirrel-work of the industrious brain instead of the piercing vision of the desirous heart. It interests man, but does not involve him in its processes: does not catch him up to the new and more real life which it describes. (Mysticism)

Many years ago I had an argument with a dear friend. He was in love with maps. I, too, love maps. For me, however, the map is a guide to take me somewhere, not just a picture to be devoted to. The map’s purpose comes to fruition only if I journey across the terrain depicted. My friend remained in his head, which was filled with wonderful ideas. Our conflict was that he wanted to remain fascinated by maps while I wanted to reach a point where I could leave all maps behind. The purpose was to travel the path, reach the goal, and remain. In other words, at some point we have to let go of the map. For my friend, the map was the end in itself; for me, it was just a tool, a means to be used for a greater purpose.

As a practitioner, I walk the territory. I perform my practice as a shrunken self choosing to practice—the wedge to get rid of the wedge. All the work is designed to make the shrunken self let go. And the more I practice letting go, the less of me is there to practice.

Ultimately, this all has to do with stilling, which is the goal of every practitioner. How do we do this? Be with your experience, let whatever comes up from that experience come up, and function appropriately on the physical plane.

Here is how to be with your experience. We have to first be willing to be with a vibration. As we continue to be with it—without getting lost in it—we will become aware of the vibration as something separate from us. In perceiving it, we will realize it to be an object of our awareness. With the vibration now an object, we can choose to disentangle from it and still be with it. Then, by keeping the light of our attention on it, we still the vibration.

Sahaj samādhi means being in the Heart and looking out at the world simultaneously. Again: be with your experience, whatever it is. Let whatever comes up from the experience come up. And function appropriately on the physical plane. This is what Baba taught me. By practicing this, we become Sat (Truth), Chit (Consciousness), and Ananda (Bliss). This is the journey of the practitioner, the mystic.

According to the small self….

 May 1, 2016

According to the small self, tools to still are tools to end it all.

Practitioner….

 May 1, 2016

  Practitioner                    Theorist 

Unsophisticated               Cultivated  

Tools To Still….

 April 24, 2016

No matter what the tradition, the goal of spiritual practice remains the same. It follows that every spiritual tradition draws from the same essential tools for practice. Teachers within a given lineage expand and refine its toolkit as time goes on.

Below is a list of some tools from the kit I was given by Baba. If practiced appropriately, with the right attitude, each will move us forward in our journey.

Meditation. Let go of the chatter and be still before God. If you still the vibration that comes out of the Heart, the chatter will dissolve and disappear. Do not focus on the chatter; focus on the vibrations in the Heart. Step back and you will have a greater view.

We cannot still something we are not disentangled from. We meditate to go as deep as we can within. Then we remain within and witness the meditation. When we open our eyes we then are to remain within that deepest place, so that eventually we are living sahaj samādhi: being in the Heart and looking out at the world simultaneously.

Fourchotomy. All qualities are made up of vibrations. Those vibrations then dictate how we label ourselves and all we encounter—how we interact with the world. The intellect sorts our experience of those vibrations into dichotomies. But our dichotomies are not rigid: each quality inhabits a semantic field with three other components, not just one alternative. For this reason, I refer to a set of four qualities as a fourchotomy. Here is one example:

Still

Agitated

Inert

Engaged

The way to use this is to own and accept all four qualities, which will then allow us to rest in the stillness at the center of it all.

Puzzle. Writing down all that comes up, without any editing or judging, in order to create the set of puzzle pieces that make up the whole picture of a situation or relationship.

Teacher/Guru. The Guru is our lifeline. Appreciate the Guru.

Listening. When we are unconscious, what runs us is what we believe unconsciously. Real listening is hearing our honest answer of the moment, without judging, editing, or denying it.

Humor. We must stop taking our character so seriously and personally, and really see the humor of the part we are playing.

Scripture study, books, teaching stories, blogs, practice points. All these are crucial resources. It will take many readings and much reflecting to absorb and be able to use what is found here.

Seed tool. Once we realize that we repeatedly fall into certain actions or behaviors, we can trace the vibration that causes the behavior back to its source and still it.

Service. The importance of service is that we get out of seeing ourselves as the center of the world. Service is an opportunity to learn how to give.

Disentangling from vehicles. Withdrawing our energy and attention out of our various vehicles allows us to no longer identify with them.

Surrendering/Ishvara pranidhana. By letting go of all that we hold onto at any given moment and surrendering to God as completely as we can, we lose our attachment to our shrunken identity.

Mantra. We can repeat a sacred syllable, word, or phrase to override our thoughts, and eventually to hear the mantra in the Heart, repeated continuously.

Sharing and community. When we isolate ourselves, we can believe all kinds of delusions. Community and open sharing is a great reality tester. It also supports us in our practice.

Confessing/revealing. We must be willing to admit—to ourselves above all—what we’ve actually said, done, thought, and felt, without running from the truth.

The thing about tools is that they have no value unless you put them to good use. They are not just there to be pulled out in case of a crisis; they are there to be used in sustaining your practice. So use them. Be with your experience, whatever it is. Let whatever comes up from that experience come up. And function appropriately on the physical plane.

We cannot….

 April 24, 2016

We cannot still something we are not disentangled from.

Secret….

 April 24, 2016

    Secret                         Transparent / open 

Special                           Mundane 

Subjectivity Is the Wedge….

 April 17, 2016

Rohini explains why individual subjectivity isn’t simply an obstacle to liberation; it is also, paradoxically, a necessary tool for reaching liberation.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription.

Seamless Always….

 April 17, 2016

There are certain questions we need to ask ourselves constantly: Do I have public and private faces? Do different people get different versions of me? Can I be good without someone else being bad? Is how I act in line with what I profess? Am I seamless?

In order to be seamless, we have to have good boundaries. This seems like a paradox. But the truth is, when we are seamless there are clear and clean lines. We are not vague, losing our subject in objects around and within us; nor are we compartmentalizing ourselves and our lives. There is clear distinction between how we are, who we are, and who we are not. When we “adapt” to what is around us, we are just chameleons. If we stay true within the Heart and act appropriately, we are not losing ourselves and therefore have good boundaries. But that does not mean we do not care. Now we can really care, because we are present to both ourselves and others

If we compartmentalize, we cannot be human. We will then not feel what we need to feel and face ourselves or others. We cannot empathize when we practice cutting off from ourselves and others.

Seamless (integrity / no gaps / whole)

Compartmentalized (partitioned into sealed segments / no integration)

Simpleton (unable to fit in / no modulation)

Managing life (in control / skillful / clever)

Yet we choose not to be seamless, so that our small self can believe it is in control. We do that by setting partitions between different areas of our lives.

Partitions, dividing walls—we try to box in or quarantine certain behaviors we engage in or regions of our lives. The dividing walls have to go. My job is to facilitate the bringing down and burning up of people’s dividing walls. Unfortunately, too often people rebuild them. When people crack, however, walls have been breached.

I don’t know what people do outside my classroom. But when people enter the teaching room I can feel their dividing walls. What you keep within your various walls is not of interest to me. The walls are what is important; they need to dissolve.

If you bring down the walls, your hidden behavior is exposed, even to you. Then you have a chance to become seamless. The opportunity arises for you to face yourself and choose how you manifest at all times.

Dissolving our dividing walls takes commitment, effort, and a willingness to hear and absorb what our teacher reveals to us. An athlete or performer must be able to receive and appreciate constructive criticism; if he is seamless, this ability extends across his entire life. It is much easier, however, to get something and then go back to sleep. Many people trivialize what the teacher uncovers, so they can mitigate discomfiting truths.

A recent study in professional working groups reinforced the importance of seamlessness. When a professional group did not work, it was because they compartmentalized: they walled off their work from the rest of their lives and did not bring their humanity to the group. When they were seamless, willing to integrate their professional and personal lives, they worked well together.

Why, then, do we keep our compartments? Because we want independence, even from God. It doesn’t matter: we may know we will have to surrender—just not yet. But we will finally surrender because we are challenged long enough and are shown that protecting our delusion of independence was not the answer to anything.

In sādhana, we have to be seamless, We cannot compartmentalize. People have to work with me to bring down their walls. We do this together. The point is to turn the corner toward seamlessness. This in itself does not fix anything, but it does create the environment in which healing and fixing can happen. Which means a lot of hard work.

We resist becoming seamless because, by integrating everything we do and being transparent, we lose our sense of specialness. But what does it mean for us if that sense of specialness is unavoidably tied to secrecy?

Secret

Transparent / open

Special

Mundane

The practice I teach is not a secret. I do not teach it as a secret. It is readily available, but because people only see what they want to see, few see it, and it remains hidden in plain sight. Truth is always available, hiding in plain sight until we are ready to see it. When we are open, we will see what was always there.

For me, practice is daily life. It is seamless. No matter where I am, no matter who I am with, no matter how mundane the situation, I practice. So it is not a secret. It is not special or privileged. God is, after all, seamless, everywhere.

If you are seamless, you seem less, because you just are.

Truth is always available….

 April 17, 2016

Truth is always available, hiding in plain sight until we are ready to see it. When we are open, we will see what was always there.  

Seamless….

 April 17, 2016

 Seamless (integrity / no gaps / whole)                             Compartmentalized (partitioned into sealed segments / no integration)

Simpleton (unable to fit in / no modulation)                     Managing life (in control / skillful / clever)

Subjectivity Is the Wedge….

 April 10, 2016

Subjectivity is the wedge we must use to get rid of the wedge of subjectivity. By subjectivity I mean “subject” in the grammatical sense. We have to accept our agency as the individual subject in order to let go of our limited subjectivity and get to the Absolute Subjectivity of God. We need agency to move from dualism to nondualism.

As a dancer, I worked intensely for many years to acquire expert technique, knowing all the while that the ultimate goal was to go beyond technique. Technique became the wedge by which I could get rid of the wedge. There is no leapfrogging mastery of technique—or of our limited subjectivity. Baba always said, “You have to have a strong ego to get rid of the ego.”

If we indulge our limited subjectivity rather than discipline it, we become narcissists. The narcissist sees himself as the Subject but is really cut off from his true core. Ignorant people see him as a confident subject and willingly serve as objects for him. In truth, our subjectivity is only a diminished echo of the infinite Subjectivity of God. We therefore have a choice: narcissism or real Subjectivity. Kierkegaard understood this when he wrote in his journal, “Subjectivity is the way of deliverance—that is, God, as the infinitely compelling subjectivity.”

Agent / subjective

Object / objective

Narcissist / self-absorbed

Accommodating / obedient

One day in 1975, I was standing by the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The day before I had received a letter from Baba’s organization that quoted Baba:

God forgets his own true nature and looks for God. God worships God. God meditates on God, and God is trying to find God. It is God who questions and God who answers.

As I stood amid the shrubs on the bank, I started to laugh. I got the joke. “It is God who questions and God who answers.” This was too hysterically funny. I could not stop laughing. The laughter lasted for over an hour. Ever since, dialogue has never been the same. We are all just speaking to ourselves.

Last week, when I was reflecting on the image of the mirror in the Jnaneshwari, I started laughing again because I realized God created us so that when God was speaking to Himself He did not look crazy; it looked like there was a conversation. Part of the joke is that God cannot “con” Himself—there is only “sciousness” when there is no duality. Jnaneshwar uses a question to reveal this reality. He knows who is questioning and who gives the answer:

By means of a mirror one object may seem to be two; but in point of fact, are there really two? (IV.vi.46)

For us to resolve this conundrum, we use a wedge to get rid of a wedge. We need to trace back and then eliminate our identification with our separate subjectivity. We do this by questioning our small self and tricking it into facing that it is just a functional device and not who we truly are. We use our small self to finally see that we are just a reflection in a mirror, and when we realize the Seer of the reflection, we return to our true nature.

God continues the play of manifestation so that God can express and feel God’s Love. Jnaneshwar expresses the dilemma of unity: Love wants to be shared. God wants to share God’s nature:

If separation were removed there could be no question and answer; and if they were united, there would be no joy in mutual converse. (XVIII.lxxiv.1578)

But we have to return to our true nature—to the Absolute Subject—eventually, and we do this by purifying our understanding. We have wrongly believed that the image in the mirror is who we really are. That belief and its consequences have to be cleaned away.

Most people doing sādhana, though, are attached to the purifying process and miss its purpose. “I am the best mirror cleaner ever”, they say. “And because I am so good I am always looking for and finding dirt so that I can be the best cleaner. My tools are the best also: cleaners, sprays, buckets, cloths, etc. The mirror is very important to me so that I can be a cleaner. If the mirror were clean there would be nothing for me to do. No mirror, no me”. When we finally let go of the mirror, we are nothing, which then allows us to merge with the illuminator of the mirror, the Self. We then are no longer the doer. The Self, God, does it all. No more action for us. Our only agency is the Subject. As we lose the mirror, and with it our function and identity, we are using the wedge to get rid of the wedge. Left then is only the Self.

You can’t see the Self when you are the Self. I used to watch Baba enliven his vehicles so he could engage with all of us and share the bliss of God as the bliss of the world. For him, the wedge was gone.

God cannot “con” Himself….

 April 10, 2016

God cannot “con” Himself—there is only “sciousness” when there is no duality.

Agent / subjective….

 April 10, 2016

  Agent / subjective                                Object / objective

 Narcissist / self-absorbed                     Accommodating / obedient  

Emotional Maturity….

 April 3, 2016

Baba used to say we have to have a strong mind and ego to get rid of the mind and ego. Watching many people over many years, I have found that he was so right. People with undisciplined minds could not last around Baba; they were unwilling and had made themselves unable to do the hard exercise of practice. Sādhana requires us to use our psychic instruments rigorously. We have to have developed the skills of reflection, perseverance, precision, and clear discrimination. Along with these, we have to have picked up somewhere in our lives the ability not to take our ideas about ourselves and life so seriously.

The great Japanese swordsman Yagyu Munenori spoke of using a wedge to get rid of a wedge. What he meant is that we must be able to use the mind to get rid of the mind. So we have to have a strong wedge to be able to get rid of the other wedge. We have to have the strength to face ourselves, and this can be very difficult. There is a paradox here, in that we need to be strong in order to give up, and to know and discern what to surrender to.

This also means that we have to be willing to call a vibration what it is. This is where emotional maturity begins.

Growing up, we use emotions to guide us. But as we get clean and clear for ourselves, we reach a point where we can no longer do that. We no longer rely on emotions as a guide for our actions, but rather act from a place of nonattachment, even if the emotions are still present and felt. We then learn to discern appropriate action without using emotions as a compass.

This is difficult at first, because our emotions color our lives. They emerge as vibrations from the Heart, and then we decide what they are, where they come from and what they mean. But because we will avoid the truth about these emotions, we tend to mislabel them. We then act based on those labels rather than what the vibrations are really saying to us.

Most people judge which emotions are valid and which aren’t. This is a massive mistake. None of our emotions is valid; they are all just vibrations. They are like clouds passing in the sky. In order to understand the workings of our emotions, we need to be able to identify all their variations, much as meteorologists understand how to predict weather from a precise knowledge of the many kinds of clouds. But we must always remember that emotions, like clouds, come and pass. They are not valid because they are not who we are.

Mastery of our emotions requires us to get behind our emotions, not in front of them. If we remain in front, then we are like a ship in the changing currents of the seas, with no control over the boat.

But we are trained to believe that emotion makes things authentic. If we are not running around emoting, we are seen as cold. This fourchotomy maps the dynamic:

Emotional

Clear and calm

Authentic expression

Cold and fake

As a result, we are bound to our emotions. We identify with them and defend that identification—which makes us extremely immature emotionally.

Nowhere is this immaturity more on display than in how so many people are so quick to take personal offense on an emotional level while denying others’ experience. Everyone is identified with their judgments about their own and others’ emotions. This creates violence within and without. By shutting down and denying any place to express feelings considered “not good”, we create volcanoes waiting to erupt.

In order to be free, we must be able to still all our vibrations. This means we must cultivate nonattachment. A strong wedge is a mind that, rather than judging or denying emotional vibrations, can be disentangled from them. We cannot still something we are not disentangled from. We must first be strong enough to be willing to be with a given vibration until we can disentangle from it. Only then can we begin to still it.

Disentangling is not dissociating. We must be with our experience before disentangling from it. It’s easy to pretend to be facing yourself when in fact you’re deflecting reality. Sādhana requires real self-inquiry: not a facile “I know I’m a jerk”, but a willingness to face unflinchingly the vibrations of our obnoxiousness. While a genuine sense of humor about ourselves helps us to achieve this separation, a false one can simply be a way for the small self to save face by looking nonattached and reflective. We must know the difference, for ourselves and others.

So the emotionally mature person guards the Heart, recognizes his vibrations as soon as they emerge, accepts them for what they are, is willing to be with them, disentangles from them, and stills them where they emerge. It is crucial to understand that this is not an intellectual activity; done properly, it all takes place before we can superimpose self-serving labels on our vibrations. The practice looks like this:

1. Recognize

2. Accept

3. Be with (not in)

4. Disentangle

5. Still

6. Continue guarding the Heart

Be with your experience, whatever it is. Let whatever comes up from the experience come up. Function appropriately on the physical plane. This is what Baba taught me. It is true emotional maturity.

Sadhana is….

 April 3, 2016

Sadhana is mirror cleaning. A sadhaka is a mirror-cleaner.

Committed….

 April 3, 2016

  Committed                          Fence-sitter 

  No options                          Flexible  

The Real War To Be Fought, Part Two….

 March 27, 2016

Once we have realized that the outer world is not the real battleground, we then must turn to the place where the real war is to be fought. We turn in, within our own territory, and do battle with ourselves. If we do not do this inner work, the work we do outside will not be clear and clean. By our very manner we will cause disruption. Our job, then, is to surrender to God and have God direct the actions we perform.

As Ezekiel says, “And he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers” (26:9). We can either resist God’s will or be in right relation with God and help dismantle the fortifications of the shrunken self.

We accomplish this dismantling by doing the work of being with our experience, letting whatever comes up come up, and functioning appropriately on the physical plane. By practicing this, we are moving towards sahaj samādhi, walking bliss. Every time we manage to be with our experience and function appropriately, we are grinding down the ego’s wrong identification. We are facing the battle that needs to be fought.

The Sufi teacher Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen understood this:

Do not wave your religion like a banner and go out to capture others. Only one kind of war is permissible in the eyes of God: the war you wage within yourself to defeat the demonic forces of lust, anger, jealousy, desire for revenge, and other evil feelings and attributes that may exist within your heart.

The irony here is that we believe that asserting our individual will brings us freedom, and that surrendering to God limits us. But the truth is, the more we pursue our individual “freedoms”, the more we are imprisoned. Only through the right internal action of surrender to God do we win the war to attain true freedom.

As we face ourselves inwardly, we find our interior space expands. More space is within than without. The universe for us becomes deeper and deeper. Like that vastness, our understanding expands. What made sense before now seems young and superficial; what seemed incomprehensible before now becomes clear.

Few saints and teachers have written about the interior war with more authority than St. Symeon the New Theologian. In the Philokalia, he instructs us in how to do battle:

Attention should go on ahead, spying out the enemy, like a scout. It should be the first to engage sin in combat, and to oppose evil thoughts entering the soul…. On this warfare against thoughts by attention and prayer hangs the life and death of the soul. If by means of attention we keep prayer pure, we make progress; if we have no attention to keep it pure but leave it unprotected, it becomes soiled with bad thoughts and we remain futile failures.

Symeon goes on to explain the three levels of attention and prayer. Not until we reach the third level, which is called shambavopaya in the Kashmir Shaiva Tradition, do we have any success in this war:

[T]he mind should be in the heart–a distinctive feature of the third method of prayer. It should guard the heart while it prays, revolve, remaining always within, and thence, from the depths of the heart, offer up prayers to God….To those who have no knowledge of this work and no experience of it, it mostly appears difficult and oppressive. But those who have tasted its sweetness and have enjoyed it in the depths of their heart, cry with the divine Paul: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”

As we delve deeper within, we use different weapons to proceed. We began the battle by using our five senses, constantly redirecting them away from indulgence and towards the pure. We have fought for the stillness now achieved in our morals and behavior. We have quieted our bodies. The breath has stilled, and our senses no longer run out after any attraction or repulsion.

The danger is, we can get lost in either direction. Even turning inward can result in wrong understanding. The great Zen patriarch Hui-neng explains how this can happen:

The people of the world, lost in externals, get fixated on appearances; lost inwardly, they get fixated on emptiness. If you can be detached from appearances while in the midst of appearances, and be detached from emptiness while in the midst of emptiness, then you will not be lost inwardly or outwardly. If you realize this truth, your mind opens up in an instant; this is called opening up the knowledge and vision of buddhahood.

No longer are we fooled by the delusion that within ourselves we will find only emptiness. We have faced this battle and now forge on, using our will as the weapon of choice. With our will, we move our attention deeper inward towards the Heart.

Only by continual surrender can we keep moving deeper into our true nature. The irony is that in order to win the real war, we must surrender in this way. As we approach the Heart, we will know what Baba has described for us:

Keep observing carefully where the inner fivefold actions continue to arise and where they dissolve. Keep watching the petals of the heart lotus; observe how desire, greed, delusion, jealousy, enmity, arrogance, and envy form and dissolve in each petal. Where do they arise and subside? Why does this happen?  

If we persevere in the interior war, our outward manifestation will be increasingly informed by the Truth. We will cease to create conflict outside ourselves, because we will have resolved it at its true, inner root.

If you think….

 March 27, 2016

If you think meditation is just watching thoughts come and go, then you’re a couch potato in your head.

Angry at self….

 March 27, 2016

  Angry at self                                 Accepting 

Holding self accountable               Letting off the hook

How To Practice….

 March 20, 2016

Rohini explains the three levels of spiritual practice, and how to undertake the deepest, third level.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription.

The Real War To Be Fought, Part One….

 March 20, 2016

Be with your experience. Let everything that comes up from that experience come up. Function appropriately on the physical plane. Seems so simple, yet it is so difficult to practice. Simple, but not easy. This is the war to be fought.

Every worthy religious and even martial tradition speaks of this war. But because of our wrong vision and understanding, we do not walk onto the battlefield. We tend to believe that aliveness happens outside of us and the world within us is empty. With that understanding, we pursue the activities we should actually be avoiding. We will seek the excitement of violence and destruction rather than turn inward to true life and joy.

We live in a world that pursues violence and destruction in this way, consciously or unconsciously. As I. K. Taimni has said, “Even the excitement of war which brings so much pain and suffering is preferable to the intolerable monotony of every day life which results when we are deprived of excitement in our ordinary life. Absurd though it may sound I think a large number of people in their heart of hearts like war in a perverted way for its excitement, in spite of the terrible pain and suffering which it brings” (Glimpses into the Psychology of Yoga 130).

Even scripture can be misread as counseling us to turn outward and seek violence. By missing the inner fight, we misinterpret scripture as an encouragement or even an incitement to outward war. Psalm 18 reads, “He teacheth my hands to war, so that a bow of steel is broken by mine arms” (KJV). The verse could easily be read as a declaration of external power, but it is really telling us that if we arm ourselves by fighting the interior war, no external weapon can harm us.

With this in mind, we can see that discernment in external action is crucial. We truly should not think of acting externally without having first fought the internal war. When my sons were young, I taught them, “Do not shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.” They learned that in order to be ready to act they had to wait until they were completely clear, and then in many cases the appropriate action was something they hadn’t imagined. Sun Tzu is right: in order to be clear and safe, you have to know yourself, know the terrain, and know who you’re playing with.

This means knowing our own lurking motivations, so that we can master and transcend them. Once we have done this, our actions in the world will be clean and clear. “It may happen that myriad people suffer because of the evil of one man”, said the great swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. “In such a case, myriad people are saved by killing one man. Would this not be a true example of “the sword that kills is the sword that gives life?” (The Book of Five Rings, trans. Cleary, 96) We should always be checking our motives, which we can only assess by turning in and listening to our Hearts. Outward-turned people aren’t safe. Cowards are often outward-turned people who are sure they see clearly.

But Sun Tzu is also right that the greatest strategists and warriors are wise enough to win without fighting. As my Tai Chi Chuan teacher, T. R. Chung, used to say, the true master of martial arts will be two to ten miles away from a fight when it starts. If you are inwardly still—empty, no vibration—you can be present but not be there. When fraught with vibrations, we are not awake. We’re more interested in numbing our vibrations than in the alertness we need. This fourchotomy shows how the dynamic works:

Stressed (agitated, anxious, pressed upon)

Tranquil (at peace with self and world)

Vigilant / Challenged (awake and aware / encouraged to tap inner resources)

 Asleep / Numb (not paying attention inwardly and outwardly)

In a situation where we have to act, we need to understand how to de-escalate, neutralize, and not be there. This means being present, and de-escalating within ourselves. Only the inner war teaches us how to do these things.

The paradox is that in order to fight the war that has to be fought, acceptance and surrender are the greatest weapons. In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna had to surrender inwardly to God and accept his destiny before he was able to triumph. It was not about the outward battle; the inward battle was all that mattered, and then everything else was in its place.

Surrendered (having let go)

                        Resistant (pushing against)

Beaten (crushed, caved in, folded,demoralized, abject, need to be healed)

                         Resilient (bounces back)

Whether we are generals or street sweepers, our job is to fight the inner war. Then we can appropriately function on the physical plane.

In Matthew 15:10-20, Jesus makes absolutely clear where the true war is to be fought: “And he called the multitude, and said unto them, Hear, and understand: Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. Then came his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying? But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. Then answered Peter and said unto him, Declare unto us this parable. And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding? Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.” (KJV)

It is not what comes to us from without but what we bring forth from within ourselves that dictates our relationship with the world.

The irony is that….

 March 20, 2016

The irony is that we see asserting our will as freedom, and surrendering our will to God as limiting.

Caring….

 March 20, 2016

  Caring                        Mean 

  Coddling                    Honest  

How Unsafe Happens….

 March 13, 2016

“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). Jesus meant what he said here—not in the literal sense of hating, but in the sense of being completely nonattached. If we are not nonattached to all manifest things, we cannot fully love God. This does not mean we no longer talk to our parents or siblings; it means that we must adjust to centering our lives on God rather than on our personal narratives. Safety lies in God; our personal narratives are completely unsafe, both for us and for others.

Our idea of safety derives from our first caregivers: they are our baseline models of love and safety, because they are the baseline for normality and home. If we believe they were safe when they were not, then we will not recognize unsafe people—at least unsafe people of a certain kind. In order to wake up to this deluded notion of safety, we need community (no isolation), questioning, alternative models, and active testing and checking of our own relationships.

My mother died just before Thanksgiving. And though her death, like all deaths, brought a lot of stress, there was also relief for all of us. She was my first caregiver, and she did not care for anyone but herself. She never changed, and never knew me. She related only with what she projected onto others. Over time, I learned that I had to change my relationship with that relationship. That meant understanding and facing what I brought to the table. That is why I called her every day for over a decade—to get clear and clean and safe, even in her presence.

My mother operated by expecting everyone else to be safe for her narrative. Because she was so emphatic and played her part so thoroughly, most people acquiesced and played by her rules. They were injured in doing this. And when she met people—men—who took advantage of her narrative to control and abuse her, she refused to take care of herself, or even see what was going on.

Her choices provide a virtual checklist in how to be unsafe: clinging to her narrative, never questioning, remaining isolated, refusing to see or hear any alternative, and refusing to put her worldview to the test. She spent her life being numb and complicitous in her own and others’ degradation—and she called that being calm, clear, and worldly.

This is how every shrunken self operates. We want and expect everyone around us to make the world safe for our idea of ourselves. “If I am unsafe”, we say, “everyone else will take care of me”. This was my mother’s litany; she had learned it at an early age from her caregivers. She never allowed herself to be conscious of that narrative and her responsibility for it, so she repeated the same story over and over again to the end. No matter how many times the players changed, the plot was always the same.

Though my mother’s chosen environment was never truly safe, it was safe for her narrative and the part she played in it. Why? Because our personal narratives sustain themselves at our expense. They are unsafe, and land us in the same unsafe environments over and over again. This is what Christ was talking about. We have to hate our narrative in order to then transcend it and be free to experience and share Love—with our parents or anyone else.

To free ourselves, we must stop looking at what everyone else is doing and turn our attention to what we bring to the table. We have to be willing to see and experience where we are internally at any given moment. When we face ourselves head-on without defense attorneys, we are safe. If we lie to ourselves about where we are internally, then we are committed to maintaining our narrative.

Facing our experience honestly is not a thought experiment. Intellectual assent is not acceptance. Acceptance involves our whole being. We must be willing to experience and name truthfully every vibration that arises within us, and then disentangle from it and still it.

If we are not safe within ourselves in this way, we look outward for safety, and we “find” it in the wrong places—the places that suit our narrative. So often, we seek safety with people who encourage our delusional notion of care. True protection is not denying the other person the chance to see evil and danger, but preventing them from being harmed by it. As parents, we must therefore not insulate our children from danger; we must teach them how to be safe within themselves and handle danger without. To do this, we have to have seen and learned from someone offering true protection. For me, this was Baba. He raised me.

To free ourselves….

 March 13, 2016

To free ourselves, we must stop looking at what everyone else is doing and turn our attention to what we bring to the table.

Presumptuous….

 March 13, 2016

Presumptuous                        Respectful 

Bold                                      Obsequious  

Reading from Bonhoeffer….

 March 6, 2016

Rohini reads the section on folly from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s wartime reflection “After Ten Years”.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription.

Disentangling to Consciously Choose….

 March 6, 2016

Rohini describes the process of disentangling from a vibration and stilling it.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription.

Unidualism….

 March 6, 2016

Baba used to tell the story of a man who was walking into town after meeting a Guru. The Guru had told him the Truth that God is everywhere. So when the man left, he continued to repeat those words. As he walked down the road, a group of villagers came running toward him, screaming, “Run for your life! Run for your life! Mad elephant! Mad elephant!” The man disregarded the warning and kept walking, repeating, “God is everywhere”. Then another group of villagers ran toward him, saying, “Run for your life! Mad elephant!” The man walked on, saying, “God is everywhere, God is everywhere”. Soon enough, he crossed paths with the mad elephant. Enraged, it kicked him, picked him up, and threw him in a ditch before rampaging off. Once the elephant was gone, the villagers came back and found the mangled man in the ditch. They put him in a litter and took him back to the Guru. “Oh Guruji,” he moaned, “you said that God is everywhere”. The Guru replied, “What makes you think God was not in the villagers warning you to run away from the mad elephant?”

The unfortunate man didn’t heed the warnings because he was what I call a unidualist. He superimposed his idea of nonduality on relative reality. Big mistake.

In the words of the Zen Patriarch Hui-neng, “Though good and bad differ, the original nature is not dual”. The importance of this sutra-like comment cannot be overstated. Hui-neng is not saying that nonduality is everywhere for everyone; he is saying that relative reality contains both good and bad, and we must be able to distinguish between the two. The original nature—the Absolute—is nondual, but we cannot know this nonduality until we are our original nature. It is only by being nonduality that we know nonduality. This crucial truth is what unidualists fail to see.

Unidualism is one of the most pernicious narratives out there—and, unfortunately, all too common. Unidualists believe they are seeing the big picture, and that their big picture is the universal Truth. They come in two varieties: intellectual and sentimental. And both types are dissociative.

Many times I have met people who speak as if everything is gloriously good or horrendously bad. They themselves, they believe, have correct and clear understandings. As they assess the world through the lens of unidualism, either everything is all good and they then miss any of the warning signs, or everything is all bad and they cannot see the revelations and opportunities right in front of them.

The intellectual unidualists tend to see everything in the world as bad and tainted. These unidualists believe they are smarter than everyone else because they are capable of seeing the universe as it really is: meaningless and bad. They view anyone with a positive view of anything as intellectually inferior and ignorant. They are really nothing more than cynics, who conflate their hopelessness and despair with wisdom.

The sentimental unidualists see the world as unfailingly good and themselves as spiritual, positive thinkers. They have in fact completely misunderstood both reality and true spiritual teaching. Even if they belong to a developed religious tradition, they come under the heading of New Age spirituality, which tends to embrace the misconception of imposing an idea of Absolute reality on relative reality instead of understanding that relative reality itself is dualistic and only Absolute Reality is nondual. As a result, they whitewash their own experience and everyone else’s. This wrong imposition is the most common form of unidualism.

Anyone with any real spiritual understanding knows that the material world is dualistic. It is only experienced as Unity by liberated souls, jivanmuktas. If you project an idea of universal goodness or ill on the world, you have not grasped nonduality at all—you are a unidualist. The way to be truly nondual is to live in the awareness of Absolute Reality which is beyond good and evil.

What this means is that unidualism is a kind of no-man’s-land between the realities grasped by both dualism and nondualism. It is a spiritual desert, and wandering in that desert and not knowing it means you can never grow, never move forward.

Give up your commitment to unidualism and you will begin to see the world as it is. That is not always easy, but it is much better than missing the whole point and wasting away in your own desert. In other words, work to give up seeing the universe as all bad or all good. Stop being a unidualist.

Disentangling to Consciously Choose….

 March 6, 2016

Rohini describes the process of disentangling from a vibration and stilling it.

For more videos and lessons, sign up for a free or paid subscription.