Passivity is….

 December 31, 2017

Passivity is not surrender.

Reflective….

 December 31, 2017

  Reflective                          Outward turned 

Self-absorbed                     Conscious of others

Love of life                                               Despair

Too out there / lost in externals               Self-contained

When we look at this Foursquare painting of the fourchotomy “Love of life”, we can see that we have choice. Where we direct our will is always vital.

We all have despair, and we have to face it sooner or later. When we face it head on, the light of consciousness shines and dissolves our pain. People who want to remain unconscious of their despair believe the teacher is dragging them into conscious pain. But that is the only way to freedom and Love; we have to have the courage to willingly feel the despair into oblivion, and wake up to being self-contained.

If we conflate Love of life with “too out there”, we willingly flow out into the world and sense pleasure; we believe we are expressing our love of life when in fact we are lost in externals. Only when we turn inward toward the Heart and truly question ourselves can we discern what real Love of life is. This means redirecting our will.

The scriptures of every tradition reveal for us the path our will is to take. And the models within the scriptural stories show us where that path takes us. Those Great Beings free themselves from the despair of being lost in externals, and instead embrace true Love of life and self-containment.

We are to own each of the four qualities in the fourchotomy, and accept we have them so that we can then master them. Then we can transcend them all and be truly free.

We are celebrating the arrival of Love, peace, and freedom. We should celebrate by stilling the vibrations of each of these four qualities and resting in the Heart. Once we do that, Love will shine through our stillness.

Only when….

 December 24, 2017

Only when we turn inward toward the Heart and truly question ourselves can we discern what real Love of life is. This means redirecting our will.

Willing to play….

 December 24, 2017

Willing to play                          No fun 

Frivolous                                   Serious    

From Despair to Love….

 December 17, 2017

At this time of year we tend to put aside our differences and come together to celebrate the Joy of Life. We celebrate the triumph of God over the shrunken, alienated self. We celebrate the birth of a Great Being, the Incarnation of God. We feel God’s compassion and Love for all of us. We recall the triumph of Good over Evil in the story of Judah Maccabee. We are all God’s, and in Truth there is nothing but God.

Love of life

Despair

Too out there / lost in externals

Self-contained

But despite all the celebration, we have forgotten our true nature. We foolishly think we are steering the ship; instead, we are drowning, yet completely unaware. This is what Kierkegaard meant when he wrote in The Sickness unto Death that the specific characteristic of most despair is that it is unaware of being despair.

True self-containment requires awareness; when we despair, we work not to feel, and mistakenly call that self-containment. When we become aware, we move from despair to feeling, which will mean feeling the pain of our self-abandonment. It can show up as anxiety, upset, grief, anger, or weariness—but only by facing it can we move past it. Getting past the pain moves us to Love. To be proud in our despair is to choose to live in alienation.

We tend to distract ourselves with the world around us and believe this is loving life. But we are really “too out there”; we lose our subject in the object of the world. We abandon ourselves, and are therefore cut off from the source of life. Love comes from within; we cannot Love if we are outward-turned. In order to Love the world, we have to rest in the Heart and look out at the world simultaneously.

God will never forsake us. We forsake God. And we forsake ourselves, believing that we should please the outer world. We then fool ourselves into thinking we are giving when in truth we are abandoning ourselves, and that we are selfish when we are truly taking care of ourselves and others.

Forsaking self

Self-fulfilling

Giving

Selfish

When we have abandoned ourselves this way, we then hide, believing we are being careful and protecting ourselves. We hold everything close to the chest, even our Hearts, believing we are smart and that those who are generous are foolish.

Hiding

Open

Careful

Exposed

Stingy with their heart

Generous with their heart

Savvy / smart

Naïve / foolish

Clamping down, choking off, or shutting off feelings then seems to us exercising appropriate restraint. But it is really a form of stinginess. People who are stingy do not Love. For the stingy person, being in the Heart is losing.

Willing to play

No fun

Frivolous

Serious

Just let Heart sing

Stifle

No restraint

Restraint

Generous

Stingy

Too open

Measured

Generous of spirit

Mean-spirited

Extravagant

Contained

Nasruddin was a tax collector. One day he fell into an open pit of sewage. People would come along and try to help him out, saying, “Sir, give me your hand.” He would be rude and either insult or ignore them. This went on for hours. Nasruddin was stuck in the sewer and could not get out. Finally, someone who knew him came by. Seeing Nasruddin, the man understood just what to do. “Nasruddin, take my hand,” he said. And of course, Nasruddin did.

When we are stingy, we call ourselves measured, restrained, careful. But in truth we are takers and will not give. Our stinginess reveals our despair.

We despair only when we are wrongly identified, and miss God’s play, and see ourselves as important. When we are full of ideas about ourselves, whether positive or negative, we cut ourselves off from Love. Love is our true nature, and we are to be our Self. To fully manifest our nature is to Love life. When we truly Love life, we will never be “too out there”. That would be like saying, “There is too much Love, too much God”.

Despair is ephemeral, no matter how hard we cling to it. We are all destined to Love for all eternity. And we should celebrate accepting that destiny.

When we are stingy….

 December 17, 2017

When we are stingy, we call ourselves measured, restrained, careful. But in truth we are takers and will not give. Our stinginess reveals our despair.

Just let Heart sing….

 December 17, 2017

  Just let Heart sing                               Stifle 

 No restraint                                         Restraint  

The Two-Way Mirror….

 December 16, 2017

Rohini explains how the buddhi (the intellect) works like a two-way mirror, taking in the world outside and reflecting some of the subjectivity of the Self–which is how it forgets that it is itself an object and comes to think of itself as being the self.

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Baba’s Prasad….

 December 10, 2017

My Guru is Swami Muktananda. Baba left his physical body on October 2nd, 1982. At the time, I was seven months pregnant with my first son. Baba had been clear that I would have a boy. He had been clear that he wanted the child born in India. He had been clear that it would be an easy birth. And he had been clear about the time of conception.

Baba had instructed me to conceive at the time that the life breath was put back into the Nityananda murti in the temple. The statue had been sent out to be dipped in gold. Before its departure, there had been a ritual removing and storing the life force. When the statue returned, that life force had to once again infuse the murti.

So at this auspicious time my then husband and I proceeded to follow Baba’s instructions.

In May of 1982, Baba had named two successors, Malti and Subash. Baba had already named Subash, who had become Swami Nityananda. Malti took her vows that May before the installing of the successors, becoming Swami Chidvilasananda. The installation of successors was on Baba’s birthday.

For me, that time was not easy for many reasons. Baba is my Guru, I wanted to remain with him forever, and his naming successors made me aware that my time with him in embodied form might be winding down. Being pregnant in the heat of India was also not easy. At Baba’s birthday celebration, which was held at the yagna mandap, I wore a red silk sari. I felt drained and exhausted. But I was there.

During the ceremony, there was a ritual of washing Baba’s feet. The feet of a Great Being are revered. After the ceremony, people dispersed to their rooms at the ashram or back to Bombay. A close devotee of Baba’s, Yande Dada, asked me to come to his bungalow in the ashram. Baba had given him something for me.

Baba had reserved for me the water from the washing of his feet. This cherished gift was for the baby. I drank the water as if it were life itself. For me, it was.

Baba was always there for all of us. He gave all of us everything he had. The Shiva Sutras say, “The Guru is the means”. Nothing could be more true. In every tradition, the Guru is revered. The physical Guru is revered as the spiritual Father or Mother who directs the disciple toward the goal of Love. The physical Guru is always using the physical to guide us toward the Guru Principle. The embodied Guru knows that the Guru is not limited to the physical body. The Guru is therefore always guiding the disciple inward, toward the Guru Principle.

The Guru resides in everyone’s Heart, without exception. Our wrong understanding and identification keep us from this truth. The Guru’s job is to remove the darkness and bring us into the light.

Baba knew that having children was important for my sadhana. I resisted. Baba slowly and persistently prodded me until finally I assented. At last I was clear. He had waited patiently. Then he guided me through it all so that what was truly best would occur. The human form of the Guru was so accessible, and I loved relating with that form. It was that form that guided me toward the Guru Principle. The form and the formless are both to be valued.

Baba was so right. Every day I am thankful that I listened, because if I had not, I would not be sharing the journey with my sons Ian and Aaron. How foolish I was to resist. When I finally surrendered, I won the greatest gift: Love. All that Baba had wanted for each of us. And still does.

Until we take full responsibility….

 December 10, 2017

Until we take full responsibility for ourselves and for what we have done, we will never find resolution. Blame never brings resolution. A beginning step may be to say what other people did, but then we have to see what we did, what we brought to the table

Advocate for self….

 December 10, 2017

  Advocate for self                              Cave in 

  Defiant / boorish                              Assent / acquiesce  

Baba’s Prasad….

 December 9, 2017

Rohini recalls Muktananda’s gifts to her and everyone, and reflects on the Guru’s grace.

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Actively Passive….

 December 3, 2017

No matter what we may think, no matter how we appear, we always have agency. If we appear passive, we have chosen that. And we chose passivity for a reason: we believe that it is a viable strategy.

Passive

Active

No responsibility

Burdened with responsibility

Many years ago, I knew someone who was an abuser. And when he was called on his abusiveness, he would be silent and just stare. He was then passive—and his passivity was actually a form of aggression, allowing him not to take any responsibility for his actions. He used passivity to appear to be the victim of injustice, not the abuser. He could claim to be misunderstood.

Career victims are experts in active passivity. They see themselves as misunderstood; they will not see themselves as clouded in any way. For them, feeling misunderstood and persecuted is a badge of virtue. And the worst thing that could happen is for them to be viewed as they actually are, without any embellishment.

Misunderstood / persecuted

Seen clearly without embellishment

Completely clouded / insane

Understood and appreciated

As I wrote in a previous blog post, the career victim attracts people who see themselves as compassionate and caring. These people get entangled with career victims and become guiltily responsible for them. The guiltily responsible person becomes a “whisperer” to the career victim, who is in fact controlling the relationship. The guiltily responsible person—the victim whisperer—believes that she understands and sees the potential in the career victim. And the victim’s passivity encourages the whisperer to feel active, vigorous, and strong. The whisperer then takes full responsibility, and both people remain locked in their roles. This is how they are complicit in the game. Both are actively passive and passively active. The victim’s active passivity brings the victim whisperer onto the dance floor.

Victim whisperer

Nonattached

Caring / committed

Cold / unfeeling

Controlling

Laissez-faire / open

Structured / appropriate rules/boundaries

Chaotic / promiscuous / not nonattached

Ironically, what saves the whisperer from the victim is exactly the same thing that saves the victim from himself: a recognition and acceptance of their own agency. This does not come easily, because both the victim and the whisperer do not want to see themselves as having actively chosen the terms of the relationship. Until a career victim sees that she makes the choice to be passive, she cannot change. Until a whisperer sees that he makes the choice to be entangled, he cannot change.

There are four steps that both the whisperer and the victim need to take to free themselves:

1. Take care of yourself.

2. Don’t swallow the victim narrative.

3. Disentangle.

4. If you can’t be okay around the person, walk away.

Until one or both participants in the relationship acknowledge their agency and call the relationship what it actually is, none of those four steps can occur. The difficulty is, both the career victim and the victim whisperer hate all four steps. The thing that victimizes the career victim the most, the thing the career victim hates the most, is taking care of yourself. And the thing that most robs the victim whisperer of the feeling of strength and care is taking care of yourself.

Career victims are never themselves. Victim whisperers are never themselves. We have to accept that we are participants in this dance if we want to leave the dance floor. Once we accept that, we have demonstrated enough reflectiveness to actively pursue those four steps. From there, we can begin to see that we are not, and never were, the characters we have been playing for so long.

For career victims….

 December 3, 2017

For career victims, feeling misunderstood and persecuted is a badge of virtue. And the worst thing that could happen is for them to be viewed as they actually are, without any embellishment.

Misunderstood / persecuted….

 December 3, 2017

 Misunderstood / persecuted                       Seen clearly without embellishment

Completely clouded / insane                      Understood and appreciated

Thanksgiving….

 November 26, 2017

Two years ago, just before Thanksgiving, my mother spoke her final word: “No!” After that, her body relaxed, and the nurse thought she was resting. Actually, her body had ceased to be alive. When we first saw her body over twenty-four hours later, it looked as if she were resting. Her skin had color and was still supple. The only thing that indicated she was dead was that the body was so cold and devoid of breath. We could see, and feel, that she was still in the body, desperately trying to enliven it. She had refused to leave. I kissed her forehead and told her it was time for her to leave and go learn how to love and to be kind. At that point, she started to let go. Later, as her body was being cremated, Ian had a dream that she was very upset that her house had burned down. That was when she finally left.

After we made all the arrangements, we returned home to Maryland. Aaron had flown in from the UK to cook our Thanksgiving dinner, as we did not get home until Wednesday night. We were together for Thanksgiving, happy to share the meal while we were digesting reality.

Today, David and I shared our Thanksgiving meal quietly together. Ian is working in Europe, and Aaron is in the UK. Though we are not all together, we are thankful for the Love that connects us. We have also promised that, God willing, we will share Thanksgiving together next year.

I may have grown up in Boston, but for me Thanksgiving is not about the Pilgrims anymore. It is a meal we share with great Love and care, being thankful for all, rather than just a holiday gathering. We tend to be rigid in the menu, which has to be the same every year, no matter how many of us can be present. It is a sacrament, in a way.

So I want to share now what I am thankful for.

I am thankful for Baba’s Grace.

I am thankful that I received Baba’s Grace.

I am thankful that Baba still guides me.

I am thankful for my family.

I am thankful for all who share sadhana with me.

I am thankful for the enormously stressful challenges we had this year.

I am thankful for the strength we all shared in facing those challenges.

I am thankful for how we grew in all ways amid those challenges because of how we chose to face them.

I am thankful for the outreach work we now do.

I am thankful for the shakti, which is a purifying fire.

I am thankful that there is more of the shakti and less of me.

So I am thankful. I did not learn thankfulness from my mother, whose final word was a rejection. I learned to be thankful from Baba. Baba was always thankful for his Guru, and I am thankful for mine. I am thankful for life itself—that as I practice, life itself more and more becomes Love itself.

Competence builds….

 November 26, 2017

Competence builds confidence–not the other way around.

Guiltily responsible….

 November 26, 2017

  Guiltily responsible                     Knowing agent 

  True caregiver                             Career victim  

Freeing from Blame….

 November 25, 2017

Rohini explains the destructiveness of blame, and the destructiveness of avoiding accountability, and the true way to resolution.

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Knowing What We Bring to the Table….

 November 19, 2017

If we are going to undertake spiritual practice, then we have to know what we bring to the table. Until we are clear about our own systems, we can only go so far in sadhana. We are required to know what we bring to the table and discern how appropriate it is at any moment.

An important element that people speak about is care. What does it mean to truly care for someone or something? I have written before on what genuine care is; now I want to tease out some important distinctions that people all too often fail to see.

Guiltily responsible

Nonattached

Caring

Cold / unfeeling / uncaring

Many people conflate caring for a person, place, or thing with feeling guiltily responsible for that person, place, or thing. The guiltily responsible person believes he is “taking care of” whomever or whatever, when in truth he is trying to keep things in their place and quiet. There is no allowing for what is really going on; all discomfort is to be smoothed over. The guiltily responsible person takes responsibility for discomfort, and then sees himself as responsible for everything—responsible in a more or less guilty way. This vibration of guilty responsibility is what he calls “caring.”

A true caregiver always wants what is best for the person, place, or thing. This may include—actually, it often includes—discomfort so that resolution can occur. A true caregiver is honest, and does not encourage dependency.

A guiltily responsible person wants to soothe. He lulls the “cared for” person to sleep so that they do not feel what they refuse to face. A true caregiver helps the person to get beyond their discomfort by facing it. When you are guiltily responsible, you just step up to the plate without being asked; it is expected that you solve everything.

The qualities of a career victim resonate with those of a guiltily responsible person. Within the career victim, the qualities of the guiltily responsible also reside, and vice versa. The two types tend to seek each other out. The career victim uses their potential as bait for the guiltily responsible; the guiltily responsible wants to be the indispensable guide and support for the career victim. A guiltily responsible person is always attracting a predatory career victim, and a career victim is always attracting a guiltily responsible person—it is a kind of mutual predation.

The guiltily responsible therefore sees the career victim as occupying the top left corner of this fourchotomy:

Full of potential

Lost cause

Missing out

Nothing to lose

The true caregiver would be very cautious with a career victim. The true caregiver would know that if the person appreciated their potential they would be working to manifest it.

Just as the career victim will always find the guiltily responsible and reject the real caregiver, a person needing and appreciating real care will seek out a true caregiver. The true caregiver has the qualities of the person who seeks care appropriately, and attracts someone truly looking for care.

The fourchotomy below shows these four elements, which need to be separated out, seen clearly, and understood. As we grow, we learn to tell the differences among the four possibilities within this limited system.

Guiltily responsible

Knowing agent

True caregiver

Career victim

Now we can see how the true caregiver and the knowing agent actually work together for resolution, while the guiltily responsible and the career victim perpetuate a toxic system.

The true caregiver:
Nonattached
Wants what is best
Honest
Encourages agency
Promotes discipline
Does not distract
Keeps to purpose
Accomplishes
Takes responsibility for what is within control
Has good boundaries

The person seeking appropriate care (the knowing agent):
Responsible
Disciplined
Has work ethic
Has agency
Sees clearly
Proactive
Does not dump on caregiver
Does not blame inappropriately
Wants resolution
Learns
Appreciates
Knows limits of what to expect from caregiver

The guiltily responsible:
Dishonest
Enabling
No criticism
Lowers the bar
Indulges
Coddles
Affirms the other’s narrative
Does not push
No encouragement to change or grow
No encouragement to remove ignorance
No reality
Soothes
Promotes dependence
Encourages no agency in order to maintain power and control
Encourages magical thinking

The career victim:
Pathetic
Stupid
Weak
Inert
Passive
An object controlled by whatever
Failing
Broken-winged
A project
Lazy
Incompetent
Overwhelmed
Engages in magical thinking that will solve everything

Knowing what true care is and bringing that to the table is not easy. It cannot just be a decision we make; it is the fruit of a heart that has worked hard to purify itself. If we want Love, we must do that work, so that we can recognize and manifest true care.

The career victim uses….

 November 19, 2017

The career victim uses their own potential as bait for the guiltily responsible; the guiltily responsible wants to be the indispensable guide and support for the career victim.

Full of Potential….

 November 19, 2017

  Full of potential                          Lost cause 

  Missing out                                Nothing to lose  

Clarity and resolution….

 November 12, 2017

Clarity and resolution are always possible, but only if we are no longer indulging in positivity or negativity.

The Destructive Power of Positive Thinking….

 November 12, 2017

Positive thinking is so often seen as a good thing. We get messages all the time that we should look at life as full of possibilities that can all be fulfilled if we only believe. The tendency is that if we look at things realistically, we are told we are being negative and closing off possibilities.

The fact is, whether we are approaching life thinking positively or thinking negatively, we are closing off the truth. Clarity and resolution are always possible, but only if we are no longer indulging in positivity or negativity.

Positive thinking

Negative thinking

Pollyanna

Realistic

Until we achieve the clarity that comes with nonattachment, we will misread people and situations. We will believe we are being positive when we are really being pollyannas and causing injury through our blindness. Or we may feel we are being realistic when in truth we are viewing everything negatively.

In our culture, positive thinking is the more insidious threat, because it is so often considered a spiritual virtue. We then pursue it, and when we do, we refuse to accept things we regard as negative. In this way, we lie to ourselves and to others and make ourselves and others angry and miserable. We have no discernment.

One form of this positive thinking is refusing to see reality if it is not to our liking. In this scenario, positive thinking is really just denial.

Similarly, we may delude ourselves that we can set ourselves on course for liberation by thinking positive thoughts. In Swami Hariharananda’s translation, Yoga Sutras 2.33 says “When These Restraints And Observances Are Inhibited By Perverse Thoughts The Opposites Should Be Thought Of.” Many people misread this sutra as suggesting that if they have negative thoughts, they should counterbalance them with positive thoughts. That would go against the core meaning of the Yoga Sutras, which say above all that liberation lies in citta-vritti-nirodhah, the stilling of the modifications of the citta—which means the complete cessation of any thought forms or any other modifications of consciousness. When Patanjali says the opposites should be thought of, he means we must free ourselves from all sets of opposites.

Some people use positive thinking to avoid all personal accountability. They think good thoughts about themselves, and are therefore indisputably good. If they think negative thoughts at all, it has to be because other people are imposing those thoughts on them.

When these people create a problem or do others injury, they just hide or refuse to engage until everything blows over. If they feel bad at all, it is not because they have reflected on their choices and motives, but because other people are upset with them. Their own sense of righteousness and victimhood makes those other people the oppressors. They don’t see themselves as hiding but as protecting themselves from aggressors.

So they wait, assessing, until they decide the storm has passed. This is a sure way to miss the opportunity of a lifetime; by refusing to face accountability and take on the challenge of seeing reality rather than their projections, these people forsake the chance to learn and grow. In their guise of seeing everything positively, they miss the fact that these situations are there for their benefit, and are ultimately positive.

This whole arrangement is designed because positive thinkers don’t test their discernment with anyone. They know better than anyone else. They see clearly. It never occurs to them that someone else may have a different vision of what is positive.

When we think positively, we don’t see clearly. We superimpose our wrong understanding on reality. And ultimately, that reality is Reality—it is God. So when we decide what’s positive, we are trying to negate God.

The same goes for when we look at the world negatively. We believe we are seeing the truth. We believe we are not glorifying or sugarcoating reality. And we are not. We are still, however, cloaking reality in wrong understanding, and that makes resolution impossible.

Resolution is found, and is always available, in truth. It comes from neither positive nor negative thinking, but from nonattachment. It is only when we have our eyes clearly open and look at reality just as it is, with no embellishments and no detractions, that we actually see the way forward. Resolution is off the grid. And the only true positive is God’s way, not our idea of positive.

Controlling….

 November 12, 2017

 Controlling                                                                 Laissez faire / open

Structured / appropriate rules / boundaries                 Chaotic / promiscuous

Understanding Grace and Right Effort….

 November 5, 2017

Baba used to say that the bird of paradise has two wings, Grace and self-effort. First, we need the right self-effort to earn Grace. And then, if we fail to continue the right effort, we will squander that Grace.

Right effort ultimately means resting the will in the Heart. This may sound easy, but it is extremely difficult. The Heart is not the physical heart, so to rest in it we first have to find it. We have to give up our beautiful ideas about the Heart. These pleasant feelings, which arise in the first level of practice, keep us swimming in abstract notions. We must be willing to move to the second level of practice, which necessitates deep study, both of tradition and of ourselves. We have to know where we are actually going, not in a vague, abstract way but in a clear, direct awareness of the path we are navigating.

Rigor is critical. Study. Question. We have to know how to drive our intellectual vehicle. And we must also consciously surrender to the shakti. Both acquiring knowledge and surrendering will at first precipitate a tremendous amount of discomfort. We need to put in the effort to become experts. For that, we must have the expert guidance of the Guru.

But expertise can be hard to recognize. How can we tell the difference between a true expert and someone who is just presenting confidently?

Competent (comfortable in knowledge)

Unqualified

Know-it-all

Learner

Confident

Full of doubt

Blustering / pretentious

Candid / open book/ questioning

Expert (truly comfortable with subject) / masterful

Deficient / neophyte

Complacent / arrogant

Unpretentious / human

One mark of a true expert is that he is constantly learning and loves to expand his knowledge. This means not only encountering new things but also constantly deepening his understanding of what he has already imbibed. At each new step, he goes over what he has already studied. He challenges himself and welcomes appropriate challenges, because an unchallenged expert is not an expert.

To achieve the expertise we need to advance toward the third level of practice—again, resting in the Heart—we have to cultivate the following qualities:

1. We recognize that we have agency.

2. We don’t need others’ recognition.

3. We do what is truly right for us, and that is okay.

4. We do not project onto others or onto situations—instead, we face reality.

5. We are willing to face what we do not want to face.

6. We ask the next hard question of ourselves.

7. We are willing to listen to the answer to the hard question.

8. We know what we know, and know what we do not know.

9. We understand both the intellectual framework of sadhana and the workings of the shakti.

From there, we are able to pursue the gift of Grace at all costs. If we receive Grace in the moment and then intellectualize it, we will lose it; if we receive Grace in the moment and fail to study, we will also lose it. Grace is a spark or ember that has to be tended to become a lasting fire within us.

1. Receive Grace.

2. Know what Grace is.

3. Know who transmitted the Grace.

4. Choose to hold to that Grace without intellectualizing it.

5. Do the work to cherish and nurture that Grace.

Many of us are afraid we’ll be blindsided by something and realize we don’t know as much as we thought. The truth is, we all have that feeling. It does not mean we lack expertise; humility is a necessary condition of real expertise.

But if we haven’t done the work of studying both tradition and ourselves, we may believe we are experts when we are in fact far from it. We will certainly be blindsided with problems and unable to resolve them. We may even choose not to be aware of them until they cause us serious discomfort, and then choose to believe that by making the discomfort go away temporarily we have solved the problem. And when we injure others, we do not recognize what we have done and feel the appropriate discomfort unless someone else has voiced it. That someone is all too often the Guru.

But the Guru’s job is not crisis prevention or intervention. The Guru’s job is to get each of us to take ownership of ourselves by surrendering to being who we truly are, not who we think we are. Many people, though, see the Guru as a resource, not a human being to be cared for. One problem with this attitude is that the goal of sadhana is to become the Guru, and if we don’t care about the human form of the Guru, we are not going to be so eager to become the Guru.

I have seen people living close to a Guru, even living in his house, not get what was actually going on. If we only live on a shallow level and take things in from there, we will think that what we see is all there is to it. We will fail to recognize the Guru for who he is. We will believe we see it all, and yet see so little.

In keeping with the two wings of the bird of paradise, we must welcome and cherish Grace while studying tradition and ourselves with diligence. We have to know the difference, in ourselves and others, between mere potential and hard-earned expertise. We have to know the difference between a mere posturer and an expert. We have to know the difference between a guru and the Guru. And we have to know the difference between a teacher and the Guru in human form. A teacher disseminates information; the Guru infuses information with actual experience of the Reality behind the information. A teacher is just an opening act for a real Guru.

If we receive the Grace….

 November 5, 2017

If we receive the Grace in the moment and then intellectualize it, we will lose it; if we receive the Grace in the moment and fail to study, we will also lose it. Grace is a spark or ember that has to be tended to become a lasting fire within us.

Expert / masterful….

 November 5, 2017

 Expert (truly comfortable with subject) / masterful                  Deficient / neophyte

Complacent / arrogant                                                                Unpretentious / human

The Authoritarian Disciplinarian….

 October 29, 2017

It is a truism that what we don’t want to face in ourselves we will deny and instead attribute to other people. People in positions of authority bear the brunt of this projection, so the Guru in human form is a gigantic target for it. People see the Guru as an authoritarian, a disciplinarian, even a tyrant, who has to be fought against. How sad.

I appreciated that my Guru was an authority, and I trusted his discernment. It never failed me. Baba never failed me. He still guides me, and I always work to be a good disciple. But I find these days people don’t want to be disciples of anyone, and because of that they will not acknowledge any authority anywhere.

These people don’t want to be dependent—or to be seen as dependent—so they become passive-aggressive. They cut themselves off from community while calling themselves autonomous. They think of themselves as alive and interesting, but they are actually dangerous to themselves and others.

Autonomous

Dependent

Cut off

Included / connected

Passive-aggressive

Transparent/ straightforward

Maintaining autonomy

Powerless / no cards

Dangerous

Safe

Alive / exhilarating

Boring / dead

But in sadhana we have to be willing to be the authoritarian disciplinarian for ourselves. The only way out of our shrunken selves is, as the Yoga Sutras say, to persevere over a long period of time without interruption and with great devotion. This takes a disciplined will. And it requires us to interrogate ourselves rather than wait for the Guru to ask the necessary questions. The Guru wants us to achieve the Guru’s state, which means we have to accept our own agency and direct it toward God, which means we have to be willing to be authoritarian with ourselves.

Self-questioning

No internal checks

Self-conscious / self-absorbed

Free / spontaneous

We have to reflect, which means facing what we don’t want to face. Only then can we become conscious, and able to disentangle from what is not real, not us. Then, we can surrender completely to who we truly are, rather than our narrative. This is what is truly safe. Otherwise, we are always dangerous, which is why Baba said, “Love everyone, trust no one”.

It is so sad to watch some people try to force the Guru to be the authoritarian disciplinarian because they are not willing to question themselves. Stepping up to the plate means being willing to be present, participate, and take responsibility for our own sadhana.

Rebellious

Willing / team player

Independent

Lackey

The career victim is really a selfish rebel, a spoiled brat who rejects all discipline. The authority, cast in the role of authoritarian disciplinarian, is the victim’s victim. And when the victim finally gives up his power, he also sees how much he has made others his victim. He had never been willing to see his own ulterior motive.

Vain

Without pride

Knowing your place

Self-belittling

In many cases, the career victim’s goal is the avoidance of any and all discomfort; for her, the good life is a life of ease with no real consequences for her action or inaction. She therefore sees the role of the Guru as to prevent her from suffering discomfort. She believes that sadhana shouldn’t be uncomfortable, and that liberation means permanent liberation from discomfort.

Enabler

Holds accountable

Serves the situation

Electric fence

For these people, the Guru is there for crisis prevention, not for guidance on a path of discipline, self-interrogation, and Love. The Guru is then a service provider, and therefore a supporting player. When the Guru doesn’t relate with them as a service provider, he is seen as a tyrant. In this scenario, the only reason to relate with the Guru is to power trip. As long as these people think in this way, they will make no progress on the path, and the Guru will always disappoint them. They will see the Guru as an obstacle.

Tyrant

Lover

Firm and clear

Sentimentalist

If you approach the Guru in any way with an ulterior motive—avoiding discomfort, hiding, seeking power, seeking pleasure in the shakti, being unwilling to face what you would rather not face—the Guru will be displeased. If you approach the Guru with Love and willingness and understanding of the goal, the Guru will be there for you 100%.

In sadhana, you have to be willing to be a supporting player on all levels. You cannot be a disciple without having a Guru, and you cannot jump to being a Guru without being a disciple. That means the supporting player recognizes and supports not only the Guru but also his community. In reality, if you are not willing to be a supporting player, then you are an authoritarian who cannot be a healthy part of any community.

Supporting player

Authoritarian

Overlooked

Recognized

If we want to progress on the path of sadhana, we cannot insist on seeing the Guru as an authoritarian disciplinarian. Seeing the Guru that way merely reveals how distorted our vision is. Only when we recognize the Guru as the embodiment of Love can we learn to love ourselves. For the Guru has always been within us. And learning to Love requires discipline.

When a career victim temporarily….

 October 29, 2017

When a career victim temporarily gives up her narrative, if things go well she feels deprived and belittled because it wasn’t “her” that people affirmed or liked. So she scrambles to get back to her narrative, because she wants her idea of herself to be affirmed. Anything else is, to her, victimization.

Supporting player….

 October 29, 2017

Supporting player                              Authoritarian 

Overlooked                                        Recognized  

Humoring Our Humorlessness….

 October 22, 2017

Humor is so necessary for spiritual practice. In order to have humor—genuine humor, not caustic wit—we have to be disentangled. We have to be able to laugh at ourselves, not just in a superficial way but from the depths of our being. When we have no sense of humor, we demonstrate that we are attached to and identified with the very ideas we should be making fun of and laughing at.

People who take themselves seriously tend to be career victims. These people self-identify as victims and think of the world in those terms; they see only themselves, and expect others to acknowledge them. At the same time, they see themselves as having no agency, and therefore not being responsible for their actions. That is their narrative.

The career victim wants “who she is” to be soothed and affirmed. So when she temporarily gives up her narrative, if things go well she feels deprived and belittled because it wasn’t “her” that people affirmed or liked. So she scrambles to get back to her narrative, because she wants her idea of herself to be affirmed. Anything else is victimization.

So to career victims, others’ attention can take only two forms: either attacking them or soothing them. If someone says something without softening or sweetening it, they are attacking the victim; if someone says something in soothing tones, they are supporting the victim. The victim sees and responds to the outward affect only, not the truth or untruth of the utterance. The victim says she can “hear” things better when they are presented soothingly, when in reality her narrative is the only thing doing the hearing. “Hearing” is done only on the most superficial level.

A powerful tool in the hands of a career victim is silence. If she does not speak while performing actions and does not respond to overtures from others, then in her mind she has done nothing wrong. Many years ago, a man pulled a knife on my son and me without saying a word; to him, he did nothing wrong because he never verbalized the threat. He saw himself as the victim because he was accused of having threatened us. And his response to being confronted with what he had done was silence.

If a career victim sees himself as having no responsibility, no agency, then there is no reason to be proactive about anything. He therefore exalts laziness. Others are constantly required to pick up the slack, and the victim sees their efforts as his due. If they confront him about his inaction and irresponsibility and how hurtful he has been, he will see himself as being unfairly attacked. He may respond with silence, or he may whine about being wrongly accused.

People who refuse to accept their own agency shy away from responsibility for their spiritual growth and just like to be dragged up the path, transformed as if by magic. Whoever insists on being dragged crashes at some point. Sadhana is not magic; it has to be a choice we make every minute.

We therefore are to work toward the third level of practice, which uses the will. Rather than magic, what matters is our choice of attention: where we put it, and how consistently we focus it. And directing our will requires that we take ownership of our agency. There is no place for career victims in sadhana.

At the core, the career victim is vain. She sees everything and everyone through the lens of her humorless self-regard. She pays attention above all to her ideas about herself, which she takes far too seriously—the real definition of pride.

Only when career victims truly care about someone other than themselves can they begin the process of disentangling from their prideful refusal of accountability. Caring appropriately for others can break us out of the closed circle of our pride. And then the narrative we once took so seriously can become something we can laugh about.

People who refuse….

 October 22, 2017

People who refuse to accept their own agency shy away from responsibility for their spiritual growth and just like to be dragged up the path, transformed as if by magic.

Mirthful….

 October 22, 2017

Mirthful                Sullen  

Frivolous              Serious

Making the Choice….

 October 15, 2017

Each of us is a microcosm of the world as it is. Only when we recognize and accept this reality can we move forward in our practice. But we can’t just change; we have to be conscious and take responsibility for our transformation. Human beings have choice, and we do choose.

Over the past year, I have seen a divide—in the world and among my students—become clearer where it used to be fuzzy and foggy. This divide is between power and Love. Now that some people have consciously chosen Love, the divide may remain the same but a sense of real community has emerged. I would love to see the same emergence out in the larger world.

The point is to be Love driven, not power driven. If we are power driven, we just want “freedom”—we want what we want, when we want it. If we are Love driven, our will is directed differently, toward the Heart. The third level of spiritual practice uses the will, and power also uses the will. The question is where the will is directed: either the Heart or the head.

If we are turned outward into our heads, into our narrative, our choices will always be about power. We cannot love. We do power but call it love. The Heart does Love, and Love is the greatest power. In this context, the definition of Heart is pure foundational Consciousness.

Our system is all about pride, and it can only be done as a power trip. It is all about maintaining our separateness and specialness. People who do power don’t want to work. They want their discomfort solved in a flash of insight and magic, and for everyone else to be “happy” with whatever they do. They don’t want to be part of community—except on their terms. They especially don’t want to be part of their problem. So they often hide behind a visible public narrative in which they have done and can do no wrong. If I lie and deceive, they say, then so does everyone else.

To know whether someone is coming from a place of Love or a place of power, you can’t rely on surface appearances. Actions may superficially look the same. We are then surprised when the outcomes are not the same. That’s the difference between accomplishing the same action done from Love or power. The two may look similar on videotape, but the experiences are completely different for everyone involved.

How do we get people to shift from the desire for power to the desire for Love? They have to lose everything, just as we who Love had to lose everything. We had to lose everything we thought mattered. And when we gave it up, thinking we were sacrificing everything, we realized we had lost nothing that really mattered. Our pride deludes us into thinking that what we think, believe and identify with really matters. There is nothing better than to let go of your reputation. Losing everything undoes our pride.

So if you want to choose Love instead of power, you have to face yourself. You have to face what you don’t want to face. And this can’t be your system facing itself, because it will only call you names you like and indulge in, whether those names are positive or negative. Everyone faces troubles and conflicts; whether they learn from those challenges or not depends on how honestly they face themselves.

This isn’t the sort of self-examination we can find in therapy. The goal of therapy is to make Rohini okay with Rohini. The goal of sadhana is Love. Through Love and practice, Rohini learns that to be who she really is—which is Love—she must completely give up Rohini.

The shrunken self does not reflect….

 October 15, 2017

The shrunken self does not reflect. It always applies a double standard: if I do it, it’s okay, or at least understandable, and your reaction is your problem; if you do the same thing, it’s not okay, and it upsets me.

Hypocrite….

 October 15, 2017

  Hypocrite                       Consistent

  Adaptable                       Rigid  

On the 35th Anniversary of Muktananda’s Mahasamadhi….

 October 10, 2017

Rohini shares her devotion and love for her Guru, Swami Muktananda, to honor him on the 35th anniversary of his Mahasamadhi.

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Saint Symeon, from the Philokalia….

 October 10, 2017

Rohini reads aloud a passage from the Philokalia on the third level of prayer, which is resting in the Heart.

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If you think you’re in charge….

 October 8, 2017

If you think you’re in charge of your life, you’re really just at the mercy of your triggers.

On the 35th Anniversary of Muktananda’s Mahasamadhi….

 October 8, 2017

Only because of Muktananda do I exist.

Baba left his physical body, but I will not let him leave me. I am a stubborn child who demands he stay with me. He may want me to be independent, but I hold onto his feet and won’t let go. He must stay close so that I do not cause him any trouble. He must take care of me because he knows my weakness.

My love binds him. And out of his Love he stays and plays with me.

It so looks as though he is my slave, but I am his; willingly I have bound myself to his joy and Love. If I get close enough, I disappear and he is All once again. There is more of his play now, and less of mine.

And as I surrender to him, we are bound all the more, and there is no conflict as there is no difference between us.

I study and studied bheda to bhedabheda to abheda, but not until I gave up my differences could I see the world as it really is.

Baba, I wanted you to remain in your body and play with me. But out of Love for your disciples you left that physical body in order to push and encourage us to find you beyond the physical.

I pranam to my Guru, Swami Muktananda.

Sadgurunath Maharaj ki Jay.

Power-hungry….

 October 8, 2017

 Power-hungry               Equal / Collaborative

Aspiring                         Lazy

We must vacate our systems….

 October 1, 2017

We must vacate our systems in favor of stillness, which allows the solutions we need to arise into our consciousness from a level we may not understand.

Consciously Deeper….

 October 1, 2017

In this past Saturday’s Lessons and Questions, I read aloud a passage from Devatma Shakti by Swami Vishnu Tirtha in which he lays out two ways of using the mind when addressing a problem:

In the first case it grapples with a problem, sticks to it and follows the details by steps in logical sequence, and finds the conclusion, but in the second case it gathers all possible data necessary for the enquiry and instead of considering them logically step by step as in the previous case, relaxes itself to abstractedness. The steady abstractedness of mind for a time brings from within a flash of intuitive light supplying the required knowledge … In other words a person must first learn how to throw the mind into vacantness and keep it steady there in a continued vacant mood for sufficient length of time … When mind is compressed to concentration, on relaxation it tends to abstractedness, but the initial attent governs its motive power and the resultant line of motion … As a coiled up spring on relaxation shoots up with a force in the opposite direction, so a mind when relaxed after concentration springs up with a force in the direction of its initial attention. Therefore when mind is directed inward subjectively, it shoots up with the impetus gained through concentration to revert to its cause.

Swami Vishnu Tirtha says that the second form has more value. This is clear, because in the first way of operating we follow the “logical” steps we have always followed, so we come to the same unhelpful conclusions. With the second way of operating, we vacate our systems in favor of stillness, which allows the solution we need to arise into our consciousness from a level we may not understand.

This is very different from “going with our gut” or “operating on instinct” or even what most people call “intuition”, all of which can bring about impulsivity without any discernment; instead, it is a willingness to open inward consciously and let consciousness inform our manifestation. For many people, proceeding from here would not look rational or make any sense, but in truth the first way only uses the most elemental and distorted aspects of our intellect. The second way allows us to come up with solutions we never would have thought of. Even great mathematicians and scholars have used the second approach to solve challenging problems.

Some people can operate in the second manner but do it more or less unconsciously; it’s a gift, and they don’t understand or question it. It is far better to use the second approach consciously, so we are able to choose to use it in all we do.

What the passage from Devatma Shakti makes clear is how spirituality has nothing to do with our outward manifestations and everything to do with where we live within ourselves, and the extent to which we manifest from where we live. The deeper we come from within ourselves, the closer we are to the source and ground of All. I often compare this to wells: the deeper we go into an individual well, the closer we draw to the groundwater that links all wells. Then, when we meet other people or confront situations, we meet them from that groundwater, not from the superficial, weather-beaten wellhead that only separates and isolates.

In order to go deeper, we have to be willing to be with our experience, let whatever comes up from that experience come up, and function appropriately in the world. To use Swami Vishnu Tirtha’s metaphor, we must at every moment coil and tense the spring of our attention and direct it inward toward the source of our vibrations, so that when we let go it moves deeper and informs all that follows. That letting go also allows us to accept whatever vibrations come up. As we go inward, we move from tamas to rajas to sattva; our intellect then becomes more pure and able to discern without attachment, so we can function appropriately.

Passive / aggressive….

 October 1, 2017

 Passive / aggressive                       Transparent

Maintaining self-reliance               Powerless / no cards to play

What you leave out….

 September 24, 2017

What you leave out of a narrative is often more important than what’s there.

Fragile….

 September 24, 2017

  Fragile                Durable 

 Refined                Crude  

You can’t magically change….

 September 17, 2017

You can’t magically change a relationship if the other person is unwilling to change. But you can change your relationship with the relationship.

How To Know You’re Off Track….

 September 17, 2017

Baba always said to be vigilant, because we can go off track spiritually in a heartbeat. And we do. We so easily slip into habitual consciousness, which is really unconscious consciousness. There is no way to pursue spiritual practice without sometimes going off track; the challenge is being able to get back on track once we have wandered off.

To get back on track, we need to know why and how we were on track in the first place. We need to remember what the goal is: to be our true Self. So if we don’t remember that goal—not as an idea, not as a thought form, not as a concept, not as an abstraction, not as a rote memorization, but as a lived Reality—then we are off track.

We have to know what on track is, which means that at any given moment we have to be able to feel and absolutely know where we are through deep understanding, not through ideas. The problem is, we lose this insight when we go off track.

There are several clues that should let us know we have strayed from the path. Are we unwilling to feel whatever comes up? Are we lost in a back-and-forth conversation in our heads? Are we resentful of the teacher? Are we invested in complaining? Are feeling overwhelmed? Are we looking for distractions? Are we defensive when we meet with other people? Toward what activities are we gravitating? Which activities are we avoiding? Are we rationalizing? Are we unwilling to reflect? In the broadest sense, are we not taking care of ourselves?

We need to clarify for ourselves where we are locating our attention, and therefore our identity. We have to actively know the difference between the head and the Heart, and know the difference between “feeling” in the head and feeling in the Heart. Where are we locating our feelings? If they are in our heads, then we are off track. If we convince ourselves we can’t handle our feelings, we are off track. If we believe that gushing, being emphatic, or being “raw” is truly feeling, we are off track; we are using emoting as a shield against learning. If, on the other hand, we convince ourselves that everything is “fine” when it obviously isn’t, we are also off track.

We can intellectually understand the emotional meanings and lessons in a situation without emotionally understanding them. As I discussed in a recent blog, we can think our emotions. We can think how deeply we feel. Even understanding that “this is what I need to be learning now” can be a way of not feeling. And because it looks like nonattachment, it fools us into thinking we are deep, reflective, and willing to learn when we are actually off track.

False knowledge is as misleading as false feeling. If we “know” in our heads, then we are off track, and no amount of purely intellectual study will help us. If it’s in our heads, we don’t know. So if we studied the Yoga Sutras, or Kashmir Shaivism, or the Upanishads, or the Bible, or the Qur’an, or any scripture, and we understand it in an academic sense, we don’t understand. We have used our abstract thinking to keep ourselves off track while convincing ourselves of how much we “know”.

One of the worst, and easiest, mistakes to make is measuring our practice by the externals of our life. If we believe that if our lives are going the way we want them to, then we are on track, we have completely lost the plot. Our idea of okayness does not mean we are practicing. That would be like a cloud of one color or shape is better than one of a different color or shape; they are all just passing clouds. As I have often said, spiritual practice is not about making our problems go away; it is about aligning ourselves with God’s will and being our true nature.

Despite all the ways we can go off track, though, the shakti has a way of pulling us back on. The shakti is all-knowing, and it is the Guru. If we don’t want to learn, the shakti will make the lesson louder and louder until we do. The point is to learn at low volume.

Sweet….

 September 17, 2017

 Sweet                                         Bitter

Fake / disingenuous                    Clear / truthful

Willing To Feel….

 September 10, 2017

We cannot read a situation clearly unless we can feel. But we have to know what feeling actually is. If we are truly feeling, there are no thought forms. Otherwise we only think we are feeling. Then we can fool ourselves into thinking we are feeling people.

People mistake, by choice, what it means to be with their experience. They believe they only have two options: either sit in the mental skybox and look at their experience, or wallow and drown in their experience. They either stuff or splatter. They then either dissociate or emote, but they do not feel, and they cannot empathize or love.

If we register a feeling from our head, then translate it into words and work with the words, we have chosen not to feel but instead to think about feeling. The difference is gigantic. We have made our internal experience abstract. Abstracting allows for no feeling, no love, and no care; it only allows for doing it “my” way.

If we think our feelings, we are paying attention to a series of ideas that we want to keep – the preset narrative, our preferred story. So we position ourselves where we believe we should be in the story, and that’s it. Once we do this, everyone involved, including ourselves, becomes a character, a moving piece in that story. Everybody’s an object, including us.

If we are not feeling and don’t see feeling as the solution, then all we believe we need to do is change our behavior. Behavior modification has nothing to do with feeling. But behavior modification is just a band-aid that will fall off in time. Feeling is closer to our underlying motivation, so it will seep through our behavior modification, no matter how conscientiously we alter our outward behavior. At some point, we have to own and master our feelings, or they will continue to master us. So our solution can’t be “I’m just going to do the opposite of what I would habitually do”. Are you willing to be with your experience, whatever it is, let whatever comes up come up from that experience, and function appropriately?

Many people who know better than to trust in behavior modification believe that they can bypass their felt experience inwardly. They think that if they get underneath a vibration, they have handled it. But getting underneath a vibration does not mean it has gone away. You will still at some point have to face it, own it, be with it, master it, and transcend it. And you can’t really get underneath a vibration until you have owned it, anyway, so most of these people are fooling themselves from the start.

What these people are in fact doing is trying to evade feeling. But avoiding feeling means that we do not love ourselves enough to be with whatever experience comes up within us. We deny who we really are, see ourselves as having no intrinsic value, and look outside ourselves for justification for our existence. When we do this, our own feelings have no worth to us, and we would rather not acknowledge them. We instead take refuge in “positive” ideas.

As we go inward, we move from all too apparent, where our feelings are running us completely, to alternating, at which point there are times when we appear to have restraint and awareness. Only when we have attenuated our feelings can we show consistent restraint and appropriate expression. We have owned our feelings and are willing to use them as the situation requires. Eventually we achieve complete mastery of our feelings, which is referred to as dormancy. It is not that we do not feel, but that we feel cleanly and clearly without attachment.

This process of mastering our feelings takes guidance, time, effort, and courage. We need to rely on the Guru to guide us through the maze of our vibrations. It takes time and consistent effort to map the territory of our feelings. And we have to have courage to feel all that we have to feel.

Our models in this practice are the monk and the warrior. The monk and the warrior are very similar, and respect each other. Both have to face the enemy, and the first enemy is ourselves. If we don’t face ourselves, we will never be monks or warriors—or warrior monks, or monk warriors. There is no place here for timidity.

Wimp

Courageous / warrior

Cautious

Foolhardy

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu says that in order to be a successful strategist, you must know yourself, know the terrain, and know the enemy. Much of the struggle in our lives, indeed most of it, is with our own feelings. With courage, tenacity, and trust in the Guru, we can own, master, and transcend our inner vibrations and achieve the interior stillness in which Love arises.

It really doesn’t matter….

 September 10, 2017

It really doesn’t matter what your vibration is. They’re all just vibrations. Do not treat any of them as more or less real than any others.

Filthy….

 September 10, 2017

Filthy                           Pure

Earthy / alive               Disconnected / dead

Guest Blog By Jim Condron: Graced….

 September 3, 2017

In 2004, Rohini told me to accept an invitation to Amsterdam for an artist residency. I didn’t go, and it was the worst decision of my life. I would have had a studio and time and solitude to develop my own identity as an artist and person. But I didn’t want that. Instead I chose to move the personal items of the director of my MFA program, hoping that if I did her a favor, she would help me become famous.

I chose a false guru, even after living with a true guru for ten years at that point. Why? I didn’t want real independence, which was what Rohini offered. That independence I thought meant I would be alone and die. I wanted to be adored.

And it’s not as if I didn’t have countless opportunities to know that Rohini wanted the best for me. Nine years before, I had received shaktipat from Rohini. I had no idea what had happened to me or who Rohini really was, but my life had changed instantly. Because of her, I quit my job as an investment banker and began taking classes at an art school in New York City and I was truly happy for the first time in my life.

After my first year at art school, I earned a scholarship and thought I had learned everything I needed to learn, until, in a critique, a visiting artist told me he couldn’t see me in any of the works.   I was shocked and devastated and called Rohini, who asked if I would like to come live with her and her family full time to work on developing my authentic voice. I hesitated, as I thought I had to be in New York to become a significant artist, but eventually I said yes.

Before coming to live full time with Rohini, I had already been visiting her every two weeks. During those visits, she worked with me on my art, critiquing my drawings and teaching me composition.   I remember, under her guidance, carefully positioning plants in her teaching room until a subtle harmony was reached.   She was teaching me all the time, but I was too immature to understand and too ignorant to accept that she could know so much about art. I missed these lessons. I also missed that I had become part of her family. They included me in everything—meals, decisions, conflicts and resolutions. I was loved. Real love was entirely foreign to me and although part of me valued it, another part did not and I resisted and rejected it.

Once I moved in, I maintained this resistance as both a student and a family member despite Rohini’s constant efforts. Though it made no sense, I was determined to beat her. She continued to teach me painting skills—color, form, space, rhythm, composition—and worked to get me to let go of all ideas when I painted. She tried to get me to produce authentic art. When I listened and let go, I liked it, but then I rebelled almost instantaneously. Over and over again, I repeated the same pattern: resist, gradually surrender and work to follow Rohini’s instruction, let go, succeed and trash both what I had learned and Rohini. The same pattern held in relation to Rohini, to the family and to my girlfriend Stacey. Though I was treated as an equal, I kept myself separate and apart, thinking I was keeping my independence.

Choosing not to go to Amsterdam was an assertion of this independence. I thought I had made the right decision and was convinced that Rohini, by telling me to accept the residency, was depriving me of success as an artist, and sending me to my death. In a way, I was right. Had I gone, it would have been the death of the Jim Condron that has always been afraid to be alone. Going would have freed me. Instead I spent weeks of that summer with one of the loneliest and stingiest people I have ever known in hopes that I would gain her love and the art community’s adoration. What sense does this make? Which of the two teachers was really looking out for me? Why did I not ask these questions?

I’m now living alone and only beginning to feel the excruciating pain of the outcome of this decision and others like it in the thirteen years since. Though I am no longer living with her, Rohini has stuck with me throughout. Even living with a guru could not make me choose what was best for me. Even the threat of losing Stacey, the person I have loved more than anyone, was not enough to prevent me from choosing my idea of love and how life works. I am now alone as I feared despite all of Rohini’s efforts. And still Rohini works with me. I am not stupid enough to think that I would never make the same choice again given the right circumstances.

There is a difference between being alone and being independent. I have spent the majority of my life alone, whether by myself, with others, with Stacey or in the company of a true guru. I only know now that there is a choice, and that Rohini makes this choice clear to me all the time.

Lack of empathy….

 September 3, 2017

Lack of empathy always begins with the unwillingness to face your own vibrations.

Humiliated….

 September 3, 2017

Humiliated                             Affirmed / uplifted

Humbled / instructed             Spoiled / enabled

Emoting the Practice….

 August 27, 2017

In the world around us, we see people believing that whatever comes up within them is an expression of their true, authentic self, and that they need to act out on it. And they do act out on it, thinking their actions are appropriate. There is little or no restraint, discernment, or care. These people are run by their emotions. For them, impulse trumps discernment.

In sādhana, we practice being with our emotions without being run by them. However, many people misunderstand this practice as repressing their feelings and not expressing themselves truly. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In the fourchotomy below, we get to see how authenticity can be conflated with impulsivity, and restraint with inhibition. True sādhana is neither impulsive nor inhibited; it is off the grid.

Impulsive

Restrained / measured

Authentic / dynamic

Inhibited / tight

And yet, in our restraint we need to learn how to be truly authentic while experiencing the richness of the spectrum of emotions that come up within us. It is crucial to our practice that we feel—but we must feel without either stuffing those feelings or splattering them on everyone around us by emoting. Emoting is not feeling.

The mistake of judging our different emotions is what brings us to emoting the practice. We believe that gushing “positive” vibrations is spiritual, and expressing upset and “negative” vibrations is not being spiritual. The truth is, neither kind of vibration is intrinsically spiritual; they are just vibrations. What we do with them is where spirituality comes in.

On encountering someone, for instance, our honest answer might be “Ugh, I can’t stand that person”, or something more dramatic than that. We should allow that experience, allow those letters to come up. We should note the vibration that gave rise to those letters. We should feel it. But we should not act on that vibration. We must be with the vibration, and then discern what is actually the appropriate way going forward. But if we believe we should not have that vibration, we in fact will deny it and thereby guarantee that it will inform all we say and do.

We might also mishandle such a vibration by letting it overtake us as being the most important thing in the world, and therefore the most true thing in the world. We become hysterical, and call it being with our experience. But we are not with our experience; we are wallowing in it and spewing it everywhere. We do not even consider our action, our underlying intention, or even what we are communicating to those around us. As Albert Camus once said in a slightly different context, “There are certain kinds of sincerity that are worse than lies”.

Yet another way of emoting the practice is using our feelings as a barometer of our attainment at a given moment. We believe that whether we are having a pleasurable feeling or not tells us whether we are practicing or not. So if we happen to have unpleasant vibrations come up, we misinterpret them as a sign that we are off track; and if we have pleasurable vibrations come up, we take them as a sign that we are doing well spiritually. Neither is true. Our vibrations are not indicators for our practice. Our job is to be with whatever comes up.

These obstacles to our practice are all based on the fact that we don’t love ourselves as we are. If we love ourselves as we are, we should be willing to be with whatever comes up within ourselves. If we either deny what comes up, or misinterpret it, or splatter it all around us, we are not taking care of ourselves or anyone else. And then we are being cruel.

So, in a world increasingly full of people who do not reflect clearly and who are not willing to be with their vibrations and act appropriately, we have to be the ones who are not normal. We must choose to face the truth of our experience, so that rather than be cruel to ourselves and others and call it feeling and caring, we can truly care for and Love All.

It is crucial….

 August 27, 2017

It is crucial to our practice that we feel—but we must feel without either stuffing those feelings or splattering them on everyone around us by emoting. Emoting is not feeling.

Structured….

 August 27, 2017

Structured                       Loosey-goosey 

Rigid                               Fluid

Thinking the Practice….

 August 20, 2017

There is a difference between thinking and listening to the letters that arise from a vibration. This is true whether the vibration is yours or you are empathizing with someone else’s. Letting whatever comes up come up from your vibration does not mean imposing letters or images on that vibration.

This is a literal practice. The letters arise from the vibration. The images arise from the vibration. This takes a long time to get to. You have to first be willing to just be with the vibration and let the vibration be merely a pleasant or unpleasant vibration; let the vibration be what it is. Gradually, the letters and images will arise if you are steady in your practice.

Your honest answer can take two forms: the honest answer from your head, and one that arises from your vibration. When we decide what is right and good, we will tend to listen to the answer in our head and deny what comes from our vibrations. Doing this causes a great disconnect, and we never get free.

Depending on where we are listening, we may believe we are authentic when we are in our heads. In this case, we are actually listening to our system, and therefore may not be acting appropriately. At the very least, we will not feel authentic to others, though we believe we are.

What tends to happen is: we have a feeling. We don’t like it, we deny it. We stuff it. Instead of feeling, we think feeling thoughts. We impose letters that make a story that has nothing to do with what we actually feel. And because of the amazing system that we create with our letters, we determine the way to behave: the activity that looks appropriate in our system. We don’t want to give that story up. We think it’s normal. We think it’s real. And so we fight to sustain it.

Our thinking is what imprisons us. We don’t know this, and we actually believe we are practicing. Until we are willing to stop thinking the practice and begin to feel whatever we are feeling, true sādhana is not even an option. And feeling does not mean swimming in our emotions; it means being willing to be, and actually being, with our vibrations of the moment. When we are thinking the practice, we are imagining our lives, not living them.

As long as we remain within our fantasy story, everything will seem to make sense. But it only makes sense in our heads. If we see everything in terms of our fantasy story, we will never see anything clearly. When does any scripture say that imagining the life we prefer is going to free us? Never.

Part of that fantasy story is the manufacturing of self-esteem, which is really just the shrunken self’s idea of itself. Self-esteem is a thought construct that agrees with a group of thought constructs. Good self-esteem is a thought construct that we like, and low self-esteem is one we don’t like. We are still just thinking. So many people believe that spiritual practice is reaching good self-esteem, when in truth it is letting go of all the letters that go into self-esteem.

There is good reason why all traditions and scriptures tell us to let go of our thinking. And yet we do not listen. We believe our thinking is good thinking. Until we are willing to just be with our experience, whatever it is, moment to moment, and let whatever comes up from that experience come up, we will only be practicing an idea that keeps us in our heads. The scriptures exhort us to let go of our thoughts in order for Love to arise and inform our lives. We should heed that instruction.

Our thinking is….

 August 20, 2017

Our thinking is what imprisons us. We don’t know this, and we actually believe we are practicing. Until we are willing to stop thinking the practice and begin to feel whatever we are feeling, true sādhana is not even an option.

On eggshells….

 August 20, 2017

On eggshells                       Spontaneous / at ease

Attentive / cautious            Impulsive / reckless

Getting Back from Off Track….

 August 13, 2017

Rohini explains how to know you have gone off track spiritually, and how to get back on.

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Sticks and Stones….

 August 13, 2017

“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never harm me”. How many times did we use this phrase as children to stand up to someone saying mean things to us? I learned that phrase so well. And yet there was never any real comfort in it in the moment. Only before or long after the event did that declaration feel true and right. In the moment, it was a porous, weak shield that did not protect me from the swords or arrows of words I was being hit with. It is abstract, and abstraction cannot protect us from projections.

Projections are just that: projections. When someone name calls and says all kinds of hurtful things about us and at us, unless those things are based on objective facts they are wrong knowledge. And remember, wrong knowledge is seeing a snake in a rope. Projection is superimposing an untrue assessment, whether positive or negative, on a person, place, or thing.

This brings us to the kleshas. Ignorance is taking what is not Real to be Real, what is not Self to be Self, what is impure to be Pure. Once that occurs, we lose our Subject in the objects we have ignorantly identified as ourselves. From there, we are attracted to or repulsed by all sorts of things, no matter how subtle, based on our false identity, and we cling to this identity for dear life. So if we lose our subject in the object of the projection, and if we do not know who we truly are, we are then hurt by those words hurled at us.

“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never harm me” is therefore wishful thinking. It takes a lot of work for that phrase to be true. If I am only identified with my physical body, of course, then the saying holds true because names won’t break my bones. If “I” am the Self of All, the saying holds true because I am beyond all qualities. In both those cases, the sticks and stones will break my bones. If I am a human being with feelings, a work in progress, then it will take me a lot of dedicated time and effort to not be affected by those names. Yet my bones will still be broken by sticks and stones. The saying is true in the Absolute, but you have to be, at the very least, nonattached for names not to be harmful.

Being with your experience when facing projections is not easy. Sometimes, we may believe that not feeling seems easier—but when we choose not to feel, we are cruel to ourselves. To care, we have to be honest and feel, so as to function appropriately. Baba always said, “Do not hurt the human heart, for God dwells there”. This includes our own.

We have to feel so we do not use honesty as a weapon. Many people choose to be honest when their “honest” answer is more cruel than lying. These people are not willing to be with their experience, whatever it is, let whatever comes up from that experience come up, and then function appropriately on the physical plane.

Functioning appropriately means, again, both feeling and being honest, and this goes to our willingness to feel for ourselves and others. If we are unwilling to feel, then we can be cruel so easily, because we will just say we are speaking the truth. What we are really doing is speaking our honest answer of the moment, which may just be a projection.

Our problem is that, as children, we rote memorized the phrase, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never harm me”, but we never truly took it to Heart. When we understand the matrika-shakti, the power inherent in the letters no longer has control over us. At that point, no matter how powerful the projections, we are safe from their intended harm.

We have to feel….

 August 13, 2017

We have to feel so we do not use honesty as a weapon. Many people choose to be honest when their “honest” answer is more cruel than lying. These people are not willing to be with their experience, whatever it is, let whatever comes up from that experience come up, and then function appropriately on the physical plane.

Projecting….

 August 13, 2017

Projecting                      Discerning 

Imaginative                   Concrete

Love Is Not Pain….

 August 6, 2017

Rohini explains how, when what we seek is attention, we confuse Love and care with cruelty.

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Love Is Not Pain….

 August 6, 2017

Love is the bottom line of life. But we are capable of twisting Love into pain. Why do we do this? We do it through ignorance of what Love really is. In order to get to pain, we have to twist Love so much. Love grounds and encompasses everything; pain is so paltry in comparison. Love is Self-illuminating; pain cannot sustain itself. And yet, we manage to confuse the two.

We all like to think we know the difference between care and cruelty. The truth is, most of us have been fooled at some point in our lives.

If we are going to conflate Love with pain, care with cruelty, then cruelty has to have something within it that can fool us. What it has is attention. If attention is all you are looking for, then the difference between care and cruelty will not even occur to you. Attention is not dependent on feeling; without feeling, you can easily confuse cruelty and care. Someone is seeing you, talking to you, spending time with you. The focus is on you. You will see the attention, but not feel the intention.

Another component to confusing care and cruelty is that you have to lose yourself in the other person. This is something that can happen instantly, even in a casual encounter; it has to do with how you relate with others. Resonating—responding like a tuning fork when a vibration within you matches one within someone else—is one way of losing yourself. So, ironically, the quality of your attention to the other person allows them to be cruel to you.

Here is a fourchotomy that illustrates how we confuse cruelty with care and allow others to be cruel to us:

Willing hostage

Fighter for freedom

Understanding / adaptable / accommodating

Pointless rebel

It is so easy for some of us to think of ourselves as adaptable, understanding, and accommodating, when in truth we allow ourselves to be held hostage by someone who is injuring us. We might also see ourselves as fighting for our freedom when we are pointlessly rebelling against people who are truly caring.

In order to free ourselves and see clearly, we have to get off the grid completely. If we call ourselves “loving” and “caring” without deep reflection, we fool ourselves. We are then cruel to ourselves and others. We have to be off the grid in order to really Love. Love is not on any grid.

To remain on the grid, we have to not love ourselves. There has to be a level of not loving ourselves in order to allow ourselves to be treated cruelly. Once we accept that, we can then change.

If Love is the bottom line and we don’t Love ourselves, we are totally uprooted. There is no care, no feeling. We are lost in our idea of the other person and ourselves—lost in a series of ideas that calls whatever is occurring something it isn’t. If we don’t allow ourselves to feel the emptiness, the hurt, and the sadness of this situation, then we will continue to call it care and love. When Love is an idea, there is no Love. It is impossible to perpetuate Love if we don’t want to be in the Heart.

If we summon the courage to face the vibrations we have always had and feel them fully, we then will be able to discern the difference between cruelty and care. We will be headed toward the Heart, and therefore toward Love.

If Love is the bottom line….

 August 6, 2017

If Love is the bottom line and we don’t Love ourselves, we are totally uprooted. There is no care, no feeling. We are lost in our idea of the other person and ourselves—lost in a series of ideas that calls whatever is occurring something it isn’t.

Willing hostage….

 August 6, 2017

Willing hostage                                                        Fighter for freedom

Understanding / adaptable / accommodating           Pointless rebel

Caring….

 July 30, 2017

We all talk about being caring. And we usually refer to being caring for others. But if we haven’t learned how to truly care for ourselves, we will not be able to effectively care for others.

The problem is, we may well have learned what care is from people who didn’t know how to care for themselves, and so did not appropriately care for us. In my case, it was only from Baba that I learned what care truly is, and how to express it fully. I had to dismantle my understanding of care, which I had been carrying around with me up to that point.

What I learned is that care is paying attention to a person and wanting what is best for them and facilitating that—and this includes yourself. Care is manifesting Love. It is not a decision you make on the basis of your ideas. Care is not a zero-sum game, in which care given to one person means a withdrawal of care from someone else. Care is a bulb shining in all directions, not a spotlight. Everyone benefits.

One way to work with our understanding of care is to use a three-dimensional fourchotomy.

The first fourchotomy is just the quality of caring itself:

Caring

Indifferent / neglecting / abandoning

Lost in / codependent

Non-attached

The second fourchotomy is how we care for ourselves:

Am I caring for myself

Am I indifferent to myself /neglecting

Am I lost in myself / self-absorbed

Am I non-attached to my self

The third fourchotomy is how we care for others:

Am I caring for others

Am I indifferent to others

Am I lost in/codependent others

Am I non-attached with/to others

Finally, the last fourchotomy is how others care for us:

Are others caring to me

Are others indifferent with/to me

Are others codependent/lost in me

Are others non-attached with/to me

When we relate with people socially or professionally and we care both for ourselves and others, our interactions should be engaging, respectful, enjoyable, interesting, comfortable, voluntary, relaxed, and full of care.

Caring in action should look like this: listening, being honest, respecting others’ agency, and giving ourselves and others appropriate space. If we are resonating, forsaking ourselves, letting ourselves be receptacles for others’ outbursts, getting emotionally enmeshed, putting up with inappropriate things, or wanting to be fixers, then we are no longer caring but rather losing ourselves, which is no help to anyone.

When we are indifferent to others, we don’t listen, we don’t participate, we put up walls, we belittle, we fail to value, we allow ourselves to be distracted, and we remain rigid. When we are truly nonattached, however, we will be present, conscious, disentangled, listening, clear and non-reactive, easy, receptive, agile, and responsive.

If we actually take appropriate care of ourselves, then we can take appropriate care of everyone and everything around us. If we do not know how to take care of ourselves, we will not be able to discern real care in others, much less know how to care for them.

Depending on where we are internally, we relate with other people according to a spectrum of possibilities:

Isolation
Resonating
Sympathy
Caring
Empathy
Compassion
Love

When we are isolated, we do not relate on any level; we remain separate even in a crowd. Resonating is an immature form of care: instead of remaining grounded within ourselves, we vibrate like tuning forks with the vibrations of those around us. This fools us into thinking we are connecting with others, when in fact we are losing ourselves and being selfish at the same time, because we are really indulging in our own vibration.

Sympathy is seeing outside ourselves without selfishness. We feel for someone else’s situation. This makes caring possible, because we are focused unselfishly on someone else while remaining grounded inwardly. When we are completely nonattached and feel someone else’s vibration while knowing it is not ours, then we are truly empathetic, and can grasp and understand someone else’s experience. Only with nonattachment can we show pure compassion, which will then bring us to Love.

If you are honest with yourself….

 July 30, 2017

If you are honest with yourself, that will set you free. If you cling to a fantasy, you will get crushed.

Appeaser….

 July 30, 2017

Appeaser                         Stands up for self

Pacifist                            Aggressor/ defensive

Our Real Story Saves Us….

 July 23, 2017

Every moment of our lives is about having character and integrity; being truthful, honest. Being with our experience, whatever it is, means being honest with and about our experience, through and through. When we are honest about our experience, that constant honesty frees us. If we are honest about our stories, we can learn the right lessons from them. But if we keep a fantasy going, we are only going to get crushed.

Our responsibility is to be honest with ourselves and with each other. To be honest feels clean and clear, with no resonating, and no stickiness.

In sādhana, we speak of sat-cit-ananda. Sat is Absolute Truth. It’s not absolute fantasy, absolute lies. Absolute Truth-Consciousness-Bliss means honesty: being honest, clear, aware, awake, conscious, and loving. That’s to the best of our ability at any given moment. Be with your experience whatever it is, let whatever comes up come up, and function appropriately on the physical plane.

But what so many people want is for our real stories, our real experiences, just to go away. They want their fantasy to be their reality. And they believe that sādhana will make it so. Sādhana will remake their lives in the image they have always wanted. New story, new character, new everything. That’s not the way it works. But their thinking doesn’t understand this reality; it only understands its fantasy.

We already have everything we need to be sat-cit-ananda, and our idea is not going to get us there. In fact, it will take us completely off track and away from Love.

So part of not wanting the reality is not wanting God, because we are not willing to see that whatever God does, He does for good. And He does again, and again, and again, and again. Always.

If we are willing to surrender to reality and the actual situation we are working with, we can then whittle away at our desire for delusion. We learn to acknowledge things for what they really are, and call them what they really are. This is why we use fourchotomies and work to be with our experience, whatever it is.

By being the center of your life, the star of your narrative, you miss life itself. And in your fantasies, you’re always the star; you never play a supporting role. You decide what everyone else is saying, doing, feeling, and thinking—and you completely isolate yourself, even among people.

And in your fantasies, you are always good. But having good thought forms doesn’t make us good. We can delude ourselves with our good thought forms and maintain our cruel, uncaring actions.

If we insist on having it our way, according to our ideas of our story and of sādhana, we will find ourselves thinking we are independent spirits and learners when we are actually prideful, and subjugated by our own ideas.

Independent spirit / self-contained

Dependent / subjugated

Arrogant / prideful

Learner/ humble / committed

The answer lies not in fantasy but in the truth within our own stories. This is why I keep going over my life events, questioning them. Did I learn everything? Did I get everything? Why does this event feel similar to that event?

By constantly reflecting on our stories, we free ourselves from our wrong understanding of the events that have happened in our lives. We then do not have to amplify a vibration in a bigger and more painful situation in order to learn. We are content to accept our responsibility as actors because we have faced the reality of our stories’ purpose: to help us on the road to liberation.

If we are honest about our stories….

 July 23, 2017

If we are honest about our stories, we can learn the right lessons from them. But if we keep a fantasy going, we are only going to get crushed.

Independent spirit / self-contained

 July 23, 2017

 Independent spirit / self-contained                     Dependent / subjugated

Arrogant / prideful                                              Learner/ humble / committed

Care from the Heart….

 July 16, 2017

Rohini explains how real care begins in the Heart, which is not our emotions but the seat of the Witness consciousness within us.

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Teaching Stories Are Right in Front of Us….

 July 16, 2017

Our lives are teaching stories, for us and for others. They should first be teaching stories for us, but we tend to avoid that, so we provide wonderful lessons to be learned by those watching us.

Usually, we can see from someone else’s life what the lesson is, but it is more difficult for us to reflect and see the lessons within our own lives. We tend to decide on a very superficial lesson that focuses on what is outside of us instead of what we bring to the table. The truth is, if we knew what we brought to the table, we probably would be horrified. And hopefully we would change. But we would rather change the outside, which is our unfortunate focus, to be in harmony with our vibrations.

Not until we turn inward and look squarely at our character and its actions can anything change. That is where a teaching story truly illumines the resolution we are seeking.

The story of Ravidas is a great example of this. Baba told this story so many times. Ravidas was a great being. He took a vow to stay the night only at temples, so he never stayed at anybody’s house. But a very devout couple kept begging him to come stay with them. Ravidas kept saying no, but they were so persistent that eventually he relented and agreed to stay a night at their home. So he went to their house, and they fed him and showed him to the room where he would sleep. Shortly after Ravidas fell asleep, the wife came into the room and made advances at him. “Madam, you’re married,” he said. She left, but soon returned and again made advances at him. Ravidas fended her off, only for her to say, “But I’m not married. I killed my husband.” Ravidas then repelled her. She ran out of the house yelling “Rape! Murder! Rape! Murder!”

When the authorities came, Ravidas did not defend himself. They knew he was a great being, so instead of executing him they cut off his arms at the elbows as punishment. And he accepted that punishment and went on with his life, his sādhana. Eventually, he attained realization. And because he was such a great being, God granted him a boon. So he asked, “What did that incident mean?”

And God said, “There was a Brahmin sitting on a riverbank saying his prayers. A cow passed by. A little while later, a butcher came by and asked the Brahmin, ‘Did you see a cow?’ The Brahmin said ‘Yes’ and pointed toward where the cow had gone. The butcher then caught the cow and killed it. The woman was the cow. The butcher was the husband. And Ravidas was the Brahmin who pointed.”

Could this happen? Yes. It is an actual story involving a man, a woman, and another man—people. What are we supposed to learn from it? Our actions have consequences, and we must reap those consequences.

Could Ravidas have not reaped those karmic consequences outwardly, in the form of having his arms cut off at the elbows? Yes. If he had stuck to his vow, he would never have been at the couple’s house. So then how could he otherwise reap this? The vibrations and the karmic effects were resting deep within him. Through his sādhana, at some point he could have internally faced those vibrations in his meditation and burned them up without any external manifestations.

We also have those choices. If we are willing to know our lessons from early life events, we can restrain ourselves and choose not to walk into situations that make them manifest.

Everything that happens to us, around us, and within us is a lesson. We need to be willing to see it. So when it first shows up in our lives in a small way and people say, “Learn from this,” and we don’t want to learn from it, it only grows. You get another, more obvious chance to learn the lesson, and then an even more obvious opportunity whose ramifications are awful. The shakti is all-knowing, and it will keep making our life lessons louder and louder until we learn them.

The good news is that the shakti is more powerful than any of us, and eventually its instruction will sink in. The question is how long we want to put it off. Teaching stories will continue for each of us, as long as we have need of them.

Know the vibration….

 July 16, 2017

Know the vibration of each story from your past. You have to be able to recognize that vibration when it surfaces again, so you can keep learning rather than repeating.

Doubt

 July 16, 2017

Doubt                               Certitude 

Questioning                     Willful blindness

Teaching Stories Are God’s Treasure Hunt….

 July 9, 2017

Life is made up of our teaching stories.

There is a reason we continually go over teaching stories. Each time we do that we have an opportunity to learn something we have not learned before. These stories are about people and events in the world, or at least on the material plane; they are designed to reveal the lessons we must face in our own lives.

So when we go over our own stories again and again, we are giving ourselves the same opportunity to learn. But repeating stories is only of value if we want to peel the onion a little more. In our own lives we have created amazing teaching stories—if we have eyes to see them.

When I was fourteen, I was living with my mother and sister in Newton, Massachusetts. My mother was emotionally volatile and taking medication, mostly sedatives. She would go from extreme anger to extreme depression in a heartbeat. Around Thanksgiving, she kicked my sister out of the house. My sister called my aunt, and my aunt came over. I was in the living room with my aunt, telling her what had been going on with my mother. Meanwhile, my mother was in her bedroom.

When she came out, her face was swollen from crying. She looked at me with hatred. She knew I had been talking with my aunt. She then said, “Traitor, traitor.”

I looked at her and said, “Do you want me to side against myself in favor of you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I will never do that,” I said.

This story exemplifies my relationship with my mother. My task was to remain true to myself while working to feel no conflict with her. I was to find peace for myself without denying or trying to change her.

This has been my education. Each relationship, each situation, is a purposeful lesson designed to teach me to let go of my wrong understanding and grow closer to God.

What did God want me to learn from this? What did I bring to the table in this situation? These are questions I always ask myself.

As I often say, we are all on a treasure hunt. The treasure hunt is here to clean up the effects of something we once caused. The clues we encounter are guiding us to the next effect. They are moving us to freedom, to the stillness of the joy of the Self. The treasure is our true Self. The stilling of all our vibrations in the light of pure consciousness is the completion of our karma.

Our stories are our most important clues. Scripture models this. Embedded in it are the stories of saints; these not only show us how to move forward on the path but also teach us how to use our own stories to do that.

The problem is, all too often “scripture” is not living anymore. It has become an object to be worshipped, not a resource to be integrated into our practice and our lives. It’s only when we make the scripture alive again that we can see how everything in the scripture has been designed to teach us and bring us to God.

In the Bible, as in much scripture, clues are embedded in stories that revolve around fighting. Even the New Testament depicts a kind of battle; it’s just that the nature and outcome of the fight aren’t what you expect. All the characters have to make decisions and surrender and go forward in a particular way. In the Bhagavadgita, Arjuna has to make a decision whether or not to fight. In the Ramayana, Rama has to fight. If we look at our own stories, we all have battles to face.

What are all these stories showing? They reveal what we in fact have to do. But we have to live out what is revealed. And if we look at our lives with constant care, we’ll see that we have in fact been in an epic play, in a battle. Are we winning or losing? Are we going for God or not?

The story of Moses shows us how important it is to surrender completely to God’s will. Moses was a great prophet, but he did not always obey God’s commands. Because of his pride in his own sense of self, he was denied passage into the Promised Land. So often, we are like Moses: we want to do it God’s way, until we don’t. We pick and choose.

This is the problem. We read a teaching story and decide once and for all what it shows us, when we should be returning to it again and again and again. Baba used to tell the same stories over and over again, and every time I heard a story again a deeper meaning would be revealed. I got to the point where I looked forward to hearing each story again, so I could learn something new from it.

This is what we are all supposed to do with our own stories. We should revisit them again and again and again, and glean something new on each visit.

The whole purpose of teaching stories – the Bible, the Upanishads, the Bhagavadgita, the Ramayana, the Quran and Hadith, the stories of the saints of all traditions, any of them – is for us to learn and grow. To have us go forward to be with God. And each of our stories, if we really keep on looking at it without pride or resistance, will have the key for each of us to going Home.

We should remain willing to face teaching stories squarely, shine a light on them, and learn from them. We should respect them as ways in which God instructs us. If we resist the temptation to make stories rigid and static, we will then be more open to life, and to learning, and to God. The whole point is to live the scripture, live our teaching stories, and live our lives.

What did God want me….

 July 9, 2017

What did God want me to learn from this? What did I bring to the table in this situation? These are questions we should always ask ourselves. 

Wallowing in guilt….

 July 9, 2017

Wallowing in guilt                           Seeing clearly

Holding self accountable                 Above it all

Baba Taught Us to Care….

 July 8, 2017

Rohini shares the care she learned from Baba Muktananda with her students, and walks them through a 3D fourchotomy on care, explaining how we must first care for ourselves.

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Diving into Sādhana….

 July 2, 2017

Some people approach sādhana with a dualistic map. Some people approach with a nondualistic map. What is important is right effort—approaching with right effort. God created us and this world in Love; our misery is because of our wrong understanding. Our wrong identification with vehicles like our bodies, mind, emotions, thoughts. The more we differentiate in our identification, the further away we are from God.

God is everything and everywhere and all-powerful and all-Loving. But, as Bishop William Bernard Ullathorne wrote, “God is everywhere but not everywhere to us.” Our wrong understanding exiles us from the Self. To return home to God, we have to give up our separateness, our sense of individual power. We are the moon, not the sun. Our light comes from the sun, but we foolishly think we are self-illumined. When we do right effort, we remove our wrong understanding and align with God.

In his commentary on Śiva Sutras 1.5—“Effort is itself Bhairava [God]”—Baba writes about right effort:

Right effort is this: on attaining knowledge of the nature of the highest reality, one strives to remain constantly immersed in the awareness of the inner Self….Separative knowledge relying on words only produces dualities such as love and hate, and joy and sorrow. But the undifferentiated awareness of one’s true nature, which is the same as Bhairava (Shiva), releases pure bliss. To remain aware of the inner Self is right effort. To understand that all thoughts that spring from within and take verbal form are nothing but the pulsation of Parashakti, anchors one firmly in the Self.

The dichotomies of relative reality then dissolve. With right effort we develop discernment, because we move toward right alignment with God. Our attachment to our feelings and emotions dissolves, and we are in Love. Our emotions are then vibrations that color and enrich our lives but do not run them. We are bathing in Love rather than drowning in the world.

Many people believe that resonating like a tuning fork is connecting with others, being in tune with others. In reality, resonating is immature caring—not real care or empathy, but a form of self-absorption. It means forsaking our own Heart, losing ourselves in a pool of vibrations rather than connecting through Love. When we resonate, we drown with the other person. Connecting with others in truth, in the deepest sense, does not happen when we are attached to our bodies as ourselves. We truly connect with others and the world when we live in who we Are, not as an idea but as reality.

To live in the Self we have to purify our understanding. We first have to call what is what it is. That is why clarity of language and thought is so important. If I call losing myself in others and being codependent being caring, then I am out of alignment and cannot find harmony. I end up with wrong action and do not know why. So our first steps are to clean our actions and thoughts from wrong understanding.

Caring

Indifferent / negligent

Lost in / codependent

Nonattached

Along with that, we must clean our emotions and motivations. The willingness to be honest with ourselves is so important. We speak of good character; this is where we develop into people we honor. Our actions then manifest from pure intentions, not the idea of pure intentions. Once this shift occurs, we are then no longer fighting right action. Love informs our life on all levels. This is not an idea, so the fruition of this takes much hard work and continuous practice.

As we perform right action, we develop the awareness that we are not our bodies and we understand the scriptures in a way we were quite incapable of before. We mature into light and right understanding. It is a consciousness that has nothing to do with drowning and being lost. When we dive into sādhana, we then have the scales removed from our eyes and Grace guides us. Our right effort has taught us to swim in harmony with Grace.

Resonating then reveals itself as empty and immature. Our connecting has a depth that goes beyond the body, mind, and emotions. Our connecting is at a level we had no idea existed. And at that moment we are thankful for all the trials and tribulations we have gone through in order to arrive at Truth, Consciousness, and Bliss.

Many people believe….

 July 2, 2017

Many people believe that resonating like a tuning fork is connecting with others, being in tune with others. In reality, resonating is immature caring—not real care or empathy, but a form of self-absorption.

Comforting….

 July 2, 2017

Comforting                                         Damaging / agitating

Soothing / coddling / placating          Honest support

Diving Into Practice….

 June 25, 2017

Rohini explains how to free ourselves from wrong understanding and practice right effort. She then leads a brief meditation.

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Guest Blog by Ian Ralby: No Room at the Inn….

 June 25, 2017

Years ago, relatives of mine, upon learning that I was moving to their neck of the woods, made the offer: “If you ever need anything at all, don’t hesitate to call us.” As it turned out, I ran into some trouble during the move. Not only did my tire need to be replaced after hitting something in the road, but my new apartment was not habitable on arrival. With all my belongings in two cars, one of which was in the garage getting fixed, I and the two friends who had generously helped me with the move found ourselves desperate for a place to stay overnight.

So I took up these relatives on their offer. It quickly became clear that they either hadn’t really meant it, or a phone call was the extent of the offer. The house wasn’t “in shape to have guests,” they said. I offered that we would be happy to sleep on the floor. They were emphatic that guests were not an option for them—even a guest in desperate need of a place to stay. Even family. That experience more than a decade ago is one of many I have reexamined countless times. The implications of that story on the significance of words, the meaning of care, and the definition of family continue to be relevant to my life more than a decade later.

Words matter. This is a cliché that gets repeated often, and from the standpoint of relative reality, it may or may not be true. While we learn that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” the significance of words evolves as we develop the wherewithal to both perceive and control the motivation beneath them. I will never forget realizing as a young boy that the actual words—the combination of letters—only comprised half the meaning of any sentence. My paternal grandmother used to say “How are you?” with such a sinister, inquisitorial and derogatory tone that the respondent often became enraged or defensive when answering. She would follow such responses with condemnation in the form of: “Well, I just asked how you were.” On the surface, the words were fine. But in the space between the letters, one could not miss the cruelty and hate from which those words were constructed.

In studying linguistics, I began to understand this power of words, and that led me to work with my mother on understanding the Matrika Shakti. In December 2000, I wrote the following for a linguistics class I was taking at the time: “Matrika, which in Sanskrit literally means ‘unknown or un-understood Mother,’ is the power inherent in the letters. The job of the mother is creation, and the letters create the universe by differentiating. As soon as something is named, it has been limited. In this way, apples are not confused with monkeys, or even with pears, for that matter.” This articulation, simple as it is, still holds true. But my understanding of how that process of creation occurs has evolved considerably.

When I was an undergrad, the president of my university used to quote the unattributed maxim: “Watch your thoughts. They become words. Watch your words. They become deeds. Watch your deeds. They become habits. Watch your habits. They become character. Character is everything.” But that maxim starts too late in the process. It should start “Watch your heart. Everything comes from the heart.” As I continue to learn personally, professionally and spiritually, the motivation beneath words matters more than the words themselves.

So why did those relatives say “if you need anything, don’t hesitate to call”? Was it merely formulaic? Linguists have established that there is a huge body of ritualistic communication, and culturally derived notions of politeness which transcend honesty or sincerity. If I say “Hi, how are you?” the normal response is “Fine, thanks. You?” And even if neither of us is fine, we are still likely to engage in that ritual before showing that we are genuinely interested by asking a second time: “You doing okay?” And the response to that second question will indicate the willingness to discuss more honestly or not. But in the case of these relatives, I don’t think it was just a formula. It was providing them an opportunity to show how they care and welcome me into their family.

The notion of caring is by no means universal. Increasingly, I have experienced that, for many people, caring is something reserved for those who are unable to care for themselves. It is tied to pity, and woundedness. In a culture where it is becoming unusual not to be on medication for some psychological reason or another, we have come to celebrate wounds and victimhood. We care for the wounded, so in pursuit of care, many people look for ways to declare their own woundedness. And those who are not wounded and unwilling to be victims, even when they are hurt or injured, are often ignored or even punished for that unwillingness.

My mother taught me that care is an expression of love. But it seems that these relatives who turned me away see care as separate from love; it is okay to love someone, but you can only care for them if they are wounded. While I was once heading towards embracing victimhood as my identity, my mother taught me to stand up and live my life. Most people who know me know that I can handle life’s challenges, whatever they are. But for some—these relatives included—that deserves a cold shoulder. I am not a victim, therefore, I do not deserve their care, even in challenging times. I often hear, “It will work out.” Few things enrage me more. No, “it” will not work out, I will sort things out. I have agency. But for these relatives and many others, if someone has agency they are undeserving of care. Which leads to the question: then what does it even mean to be family?

For me, the meaning of family is grounded in love; not some idea of love, but authentic, absolute love, demonstrated in a variety of ways, not least of all through care. I have quite a few blood relatives whom I do not consider family. Their lack of love, demonstrated consistently and convincingly over a long period, eroded any familiar bond which may have been established by the blood relation. On the other hand, some people to whom I have no genetic connection have become part of my family by virtue of the love (and thus care) they have offered over the years. The relatives who turned me away seem to have a different definition of family. For them, family may also mean love, but love means not caring. That offer of assistance afforded them the opportunity to welcome me into their family by showing their love by not caring. Twisted and irrational as that sounds, I am increasingly convinced that a lot of people operate that way.

It is almost laughable that these relatives had “no room at the inn” for weary travelers in need of a place to stay. All the more ironic given that one of them is actually an ordained minister. But if that was how they saw fit to welcome me into their family and show me their brand of love, I’m afraid I am compelled to reciprocate: there is no room in my life for them, and I don’t think I should waste my time showing them any degree of care. Life is too short to yield precious energy to people who are only committed to a caring-wounded dynamic.

Think of the central square….

 June 25, 2017

Think of the central square from which a whole city radiates. Then imagine that you believe some point on the outskirts of that city is the center. Your mental map will be hopelessly skewed. This is what happens when you stray from your own center without realizing it.

Caring….

 June 25, 2017

 Caring                                 Indifferent / neglectful

Lost in / codependent          Nonattached

Watching your thoughts….

 June 18, 2017

Watching your thoughts is not going inward. You’re just watching the same old reruns.

Sādhana Is Not Magic….

 June 18, 2017

Sādhana is magical; it is not magic. This cannot be emphasized enough.

In the course of spiritual practice, extraordinary experiences can be everyday events. I have seen this in my own life as well as others’. In my time with Baba, his śakti imbued everything, making everything miraculous. But there was and is no magic in this. What people want from magic is power—in the words of Evelyn Underhill, “enlarging the sphere on which the human will can work” (Mysticism 152). That is antithetical to spiritual practice.

Baba wanted us to realize who we truly are; through that desire, he gave śaktipat, the infusion of the Guru’s grace. After śaktipat, the śakti begins unfolding. In Baba’s presence, it was easy, and difficult: easy for the śakti to manifest, and difficult for the individual to comprehend. People tried to make sense of it, and for every individual there could be a different sense. But the greatness of being with Baba was that he was guiding each of our sādhanas, and it happened spontaneously around him.

Baba’s ashrams were magical, not magic. It was all just the unfolding of the śakti. Our responsibility was and is to practice.

Only through intense hard work at nonattachment (vairagya), discernment (viveka), and surrender to what is Real can we establish ourselves in sāt-cit-ananda (Absolute Truth, Consciousness, and Bliss).

The test for all of us who were with Baba came when he left his physical form. Then, we were forced to either practice what Baba had taught us or decide it had all been just a kind of magic spell that hung over the ashram and around Baba.

Luckily for me, by the time I met Baba I had already had a catalog of śakti experiences through intense practice of Tai Chi Chuan. I was aware enough to know that such experiences are not the goal. I was looking for the bottom line of life. So when I met Baba and had experiences, they did not distract me or sidetrack me from the revelation Baba gave me at the retreat in Arcata where I encountered the Truth.

Baba knew what I wanted and gave it to me unstintingly. From that moment in Arcata, everything in my life “magically” unfolded to bring me nearer to what I sought and seek. Working so closely with Baba in his physical form, I grew used to the śakti; Baba was showing me what was truly important. Everything was heightened around him, and everything was also mundane.

When Baba left his body, I at first thought all was lost. I was half-baked and believed I needed Baba in his physical form to guide me. But Baba had given me all I needed. First, he had given me the internal practice without any external trappings, and there was nothing ambiguous about practicing. Second, Baba was never limited to his physical form, and to this day he has been continuing to guide me.

I knew some people who believed it was all magic, and when Baba left his body the magic disappeared. Despite having received śaktipat, they returned to the misery of their lives before Baba.

Our responsibility has always been to clean and still anything that keeps us from the Self of All. That task is not magic. Everything is simultaneously mundane and divine. Every moment, no matter how seemingly ordinary, is an opportunity to see God everywhere. As we proceed in our sādhana, the experiences we first took to be magic, or at least magical, become just part of God’s mundane realm.

Impulsive….

 June 18, 2017

Impulsive                     Restrained / measured

Self-expressive            Inhibited

Impulsivity and Restraint….

 June 13, 2017

Rohini walks her students through two fourchotomies related to the impulsivity that dominates the world today.

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The Self Is Not the Point, Part Two….

 June 11, 2017

In my previous blog, I spoke of how the shrunken self we believe ourselves to be is really just a bundle of thought constructs, or vikalpas. In order to free ourselves from that bundle, we have to turn inward, reflect, and be able to know and name our vibrations accurately.

If we want to move forward in our sādhana, we have to be able to know where we are residing inwardly at every moment—what vibration is occurring. And we have to know that none of the vibrations we get lost in is better than any of the others—in fact, they’re all the same shrunken self.

The seed of who we truly are is there even in the shrunken self. And so, when asked “Who are you,” we will always say, “Me.” But how much of that true Consciousness is embedded in and enlivening any of the vibrations and subsequent vikalpas that we call “me”? The “me” that we are so sure is who we are is just an ever-shifting core of ideas. The “me” that thinks of itself as the conscious witness is actually not that at all; it is just a vikalpa.

Any vibration or vikalpa or vehicle is a container that limits consciousness. The goal is to no longer be identified with any container, not to hold onto any container. Whatever container we attach to, that becomes our limiting body of the moment.

If we are operating from a false sense of self, we are lost in whatever we are experiencing. We are our experiences. Or we are lost in our idea of being the experiencer. We have now diminished ourselves in a container. We have to know our containers and we are in them. Most people are in containers but do not know it. Being centered in an idea of self is not being centered. It is not being in the Heart.

A big clue to knowing where we are is that we have to disentangle out of a vibration in order to go into another vibration. If we have to withdraw in this way, then we are not inwardly directed toward the Heart. The whole point is not to go into any vibration/container.

Our job is to be with our experience, whatever it is, at whatever level of inwardness we can accomplish at any given moment. Unless we are far along the path, we are not resting in the Heart. By being with our experience, letting whatever comes up from that experience come up, and functioning appropriately, we can work our way inward toward the Heart, very gradually. Over time, this will allow us not to get enmeshed in any container.

I am working hard to have no identification with a container, no matter how subtle, but rather function through those containers. I have to use them consciously and not be attached to any of them. Baba had no attachment to any containers; I would watch him enliven his vehicles so that he could speak to me.

Every time we go into a container, we are fodder for death. When we are no longer attached to any container, there is no death. To live as though already dead—something warriors and monks have in common—is to be free of any containers. When we no longer are attached to any container, we know who we are, because who we are arises.

Every time we go into a container….

 June 11, 2017

Every time we go into a container, we are fodder for death. When we are no longer attached to any container, there is no death. To live as though already dead—something warriors and monks have in common—is to be free of any containers. When we no longer are attached to any container, we know who we are, because who we are arises.

Peacemaker….

 June 11, 2017

 Peacemaker                   Terrorist

Stifles creativity            Change agent

The Self Is Not the Point, Part One….

 June 4, 2017

In the Yoga Sūtras, ignorance means taking the non-Self to be the Self. Once we have done that, we lose our Subject in object. From there, we are attracted to certain things and repulsed by others based on the object we are now identified with. And finally, we cling to the life of that object, believing it to be who we are.

From there, we continue to lose ourselves in objects of all kinds. Our life consists of chasing shiny objects, no matter how subtle, and being unaware that we even have a core. Even a supersensuous experience is an object, a container or vibration that people love to identify with. It makes them “special”, but they are still objects. They lose their subject in the vibration “I am special”. If I believe who I am is “I am special”, then anything I think, say, or do is attributed to this idea of specialness.

From the standpoint of the Śiva Sūtras, that “I am special” container or vibration is actually a shrunken self. “I am special” is just a thought construct (vikalpa); you can replace it with any vikalpa you want and come up with a shrunken self. The nature of the shrunken self is unconscious consciousness. It is enlivened by the Self of All.

After śaktipāt, Grace gradually backs off, requiring us to consciously do the work of re-cognizing the Self. But the shrunken self is deluded into thinking that the drop of consciousness from Truth that it contains is all the consciousness there is. So we believe we can expand that drop of consciousness through vikalpas, fooling ourselves all the more.

The individual shrunken self (anu) is a point; it has borders and boundaries. The anu operates as a “conscious individual in its own right”; it feels no need to consult anyone because it is all the consciousness there is. When the anu believes it is doing sādhana and expanding, it believes that its borders expand. The problem is, this is false expansion. Vikalpas create borders. The anu doing its idea of sādhana pushes out its boundaries and takes in other anus; it loses its idea of subject in more objects.

As individuals, then, we create no-boundary zones on the most superficial planes. In order to make the anu appear to be the Self, we have to shrink the universe to the smallest possible scale. So we think we’re a bigger deal when in fact we’re enmeshed and indulging in no-boundary zones. True expansion of consciousness means the dissolving of the anu into the All, just as a grain of salt is dissolved in water. Then it is no longer a point and there are no borders because there is only the Self of All. If you think your individual consciousness is expanding, you are deluding yourself. None of our containers could ever hold the ocean.

This is why true sādhana is about grinding down the shrunken self and revealing our wrong identification, which is just a bundle of vikalpas.

It’s difficult to know the difference between being lost in our character—in any one of our favorite vibrations—and being with our experience consciously. We tend to avoid being conscious by resonating, wallowing, and denying.

Resonating in particular is how we fool ourselves about connecting with ourselves and the world. In our wrong understanding, we resonate with others’ vibrations, believing we are connecting with those people. In fact, we are losing ourselves further in more and more objects.

To truly connect with ourselves and others, we must turn inward, toward the Heart. We must know the difference between vibrations and vehicles on the one hand and who we truly are on the other.

Resonating in particular….

 June 4, 2017

Resonating in particular is how we fool ourselves about connecting with ourselves and the world. In our wrong understanding, we resonate with others’ vibrations, believing we are connecting with those people. In fact, we are losing ourselves further in more and more objects.

Resonating….

 June 4, 2017

    Resonating                           Empathy 

    Fitting in                             Seen as cold  

Who Ya Talkin’ To….

 June 3, 2017

Rohini cautions how we have to be careful when we’re listening to our sure voice while meditating.

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Baba’s Lessons Keep Teaching, Part Two….

 May 28, 2017

Baba always spoke of not hurting a human heart. This was and is the crucial guide by which to assess our motivations and actions. True sādhana bruises the ego, but it never injures the heart. If you are hurting someone’s heart, you should question your actions and motives.

In the last few weeks I have come to see why Baba had me knock on those doors and walk in those rooms, feeling like the downer that most people took me to be. Of course, he was doing this to benefit everyone—me, and also the people who opened the doors I knocked on.

Baba created situations that allowed me to feel the vibration of being excluded and therefore hurt, and the vibration of not fitting in. He allowed for a series of cliques to form, so that everyone had a chance to face whatever they had going on internally. If someone was included in one place, they were usually excluded from somewhere else. The only place I wanted was with Baba. That was it. So I ended up working and playing with all sorts and never being “accepted” by anyone. Even when I did puja for Baba with others, the other women would say, “I don’t understand why he picked you”.

Baba wanted me to be free, to be free of that vibration that went all the way back to before I was born. Baba did not want me attached to any vibration, outfit, institution, or job. He loved me so much that he kept at it until one day I was able to walk away and free myself from that vibration of exclusion. Knowing what I had done, he called me to his room and gave me the Guru stone, saying, “Now you have the Real Guru”.

But I still had work to do, so much work to do. And Baba has been always with me, guiding me.

When he was in his body, people thought that Baba was more “real” in his house than outside, more “truthful” there than in public. They were imagining a no-boundary zone that didn’t exist. Baba allowed people to imagine all kinds of things, and that idea was meant to bring out a delusion people were supposed to see and then let go. But if we are not facing the truth of our vibrations, we are destined to repeat them until we finally have to confront them.

The truth is, I never wanted, nor could I be accepted, in a no-boundary zone. And now, with Baba’s help, I can honestly say I tried, but I know in my Heart that it was not good for me and it is not good for anyone. No-boundary zones only create secrets and injury.

Secret and dirty

Transparent / pure/ clean

Intimate / alive / lively

No relationships

The lesson I learned is for me to walk away from no-boundary zones. The day Baba gave me the Guru stone, I walked away from a person who excluded and hurt people while calling her activity “teaching them lessons”. This was not building community, and I saw that. A community is permeable, a clique is not.

I finally saw through the veil of words. Baba rewarded me and showed me the correct action for me. But we are to be tested in our lessons again and again. It then took so long to apply what Baba had taught me. I thought I could be okay in a hurtful environment. If I got strong enough, I thought, I would not get hurt. That was not what Baba was teaching me. That was not “my” lesson. That was my wrong understanding of practice. That was how I could remain within the confines of my shrunken self. I was instead to acknowledge being hurt and walk away. I tend to be too patient. Too much time passes before I walk away.

Consider how we go about healing a physical injury. Healing an injury does not mean pushing through the pain. There is a difference between pushing through the discomfort of necessary work and aggravating an injury by continuing to irritate it. We care for an injury by not continuing to inflame it. We remove the cause of the inflammation. We walk away. If we work to the best of our ability to change what we bring to the table and still the injury is there, then we walk away. The lesson is then to leave the environment. It may be that we can return because we heal and get stronger, but it may be that we really should not return, even in full health.

Baba wanted us to be healthy on all planes. He wanted us to be who we are, and have all our action be informed by who we are. He wanted us each to learn our lessons. One vital lesson is that walking away is not necessarily excluding anyone or anything; it is freeing ourselves from hurtful environments. For me, walking away meant walking away from the vibration that brought me to the hurtful environment, and toward Love.

Baba always spoke….

 May 28, 2017

Baba always spoke of not hurting a human heart. This was and is the crucial guide by which to assess our motivations and actions. True sādhana bruises the ego, but it never injures the heart. If you are hurting someone’s heart, you should question your actions and motives.

Criminal….

 May 28, 2017

Criminal                                       Respecting the law

Looking out for yourself             Unquestioning / sheep

Reflection Helps Us To Surrender….

 May 27, 2017

Rohini explains the real nature of reflecting and surrender, as opposed to processing.

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Baba’s Lessons Keep Teaching, Part One….

 May 21, 2017

Baba loved me in ways I do not yet know. I say this because as I unmask me and continue down the path that Baba has shown me, what emerges is how much he has revealed to me the Truth, and how much I needed to give up my wrong understanding.

As a child and before I went to Baba, I was not good in what I call no-boundary zones. These are places where it is not safe. These are places where people “socialize”. I was not a player.

Player

Transparent

Savvy

Played

When telling lies I would burst out laughing, it was so awkward for me. And when others lied I would stare at them, incredulous that they were trying to put this over on anyone. Discomfort was a common experience for me in most social situations, because somewhere inside I knew everyone, including me, was trying to present a false narrative, a fake me, that everyone agrees to relate with.

And it got more awkward as I grew because I would be in situations where everyone wanted to play and I wanted people to be honest. I was the downer for everyone else. What was wrong with being how we were, openly? College brought me to testing the different zones. Was it sour grapes that I could not fit in, or were these venues just not for me? My experiences as president of my sorority pledge class, varsity cheerleader and cheerleader for the St Louis Cardinals were great laboratories. Along with Vietnam War protesting, I checked it all out.

Alas, I ended up back where I found refuge as a child: the dance studio. Not an easy retreat, but I preferred the confrontation with reality I had always found there to the unsafe environment of the no-boundary zone. In a dance studio there is reality testing. In a no-boundary zone there is no reality testing; everyone supports each other’s delusion.

No boundary zone/ In crowd

Excluded

Betray yourself

Own person

The Dance studios of Washington University in St Louis and later Mills College were continuous places to confront reality and grow. Then came Tai Chi Ch’uan, which brought an even deeper kind of confrontation and growth.

Finally, gracefully, Baba entered my life. There was such relief in the knowledge that finally there was someone directing my life who actually knew the Truth. Being in Baba’s presence showed me that there was so much for me to learn. There was so much that I knew I had to let go, and so much more to be let go that I was not aware of. I knew that there was someone who could and would guide me to Love, the Self, God.

Baba had me be head of security. He also had me spy on people. It was never that I would go out and look for infractions in the ashram dharma or people who were escaping or avoiding. Baba knew everything that went on in his ashram, even when people were so “sure” that he did not. Baba would tell me exactly where to go and what to look for.

Doing this always felt uncomfortable. And I knew people thought I was rigid and dangerous to the freedom and fun so many people wanted. Baba used me to break up no-boundary zones—places that were unconscious, undisciplined, tamasic and, from ashram standards, licentious. In reality, no one was committing heinous crimes, but the vibrations that motivated their behavior were hurting them and the ashram as a whole. The outward activities were really nothing from a worldly standpoint, but the underlying motivation, the vibration, was unhealthy for everyone.

The vibration of no-boundary zones, no matter how intense, can only produce activity within the level of restraint surrounding the zones. In the ashram we had intense restraint and restraints, so again, infractions were apparently minor, but Baba understood how those underlying vibrations, if left unchecked, could cause havoc for the person and anyone in close proximity.

When we are blind, we do not see how much or even whom we hurt. We do not realize that the vibration, not the action, is what usually causes the injury. Baba always wanted us to Love, but there is no Love in a no-boundary zone, no matter how innocent the actions we perform are. Whether we like it or not, we are all in community, so facing and stilling our vibrations is never just our own selfish project. The world community is really just us.

When we are blind….

 May 21, 2017

When we are blind, we do not see how much or even whom we hurt. We do not realize that the vibration, not the action, is what usually causes the injury. Baba always wanted us to Love, but there is no Love in a no-boundary zone, no matter how innocent the actions we perform are. Whether we like it or not, we are all in community, so facing and stilling our vibrations is never just our own selfish project. The world community is really just us.

Independent spirit….

 May 21, 2017

 Independent spirit                                     Dependent / unweaned / no voice

Ill-equipped / unequipped / feral               Restrained / disciplined / educated

Mother’s Day 2017….

 May 17, 2017

Rohini draws on her Mother’s Day blog post to explain what we should ask ourselves and reflect about in relation to our mothers.

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Happy Mother’s Day….

 May 14, 2017

A person tells me that they love me the way they loved their mother. Their mother didn’t like it, but put up with it. I don’t have to put up with it. This person is just superimposing on me what they brought to the table with their mother.

How often are you projecting, or being projected onto? I am not loving you based on your ideas. Thank God. Have you examined your ideas? Have you ever asked yourself some basic questions about your relationship with your mother?

Did you respect your mother?
Did you believe your mother?
Did you obey your mother?
Did you value and cherish your mother?
Did you compete with your mother?
Did you win with your mother?
Did you love or power your mother?
Did you model yourself after your mother?

What did you bring to the table around your mother? How was it received? Did it get you the love you wanted?

So much of Mother’s Day is really about the child, not the mother. The mother we each had was a person, and an idea we projected on them, and an ideal/abstraction we also projected on them, and who they really were. We tend to conflate person, ideal, and projection, without ever seeing who our mother really is. As children, we loved our mother as best we knew. The question is always who it is that we loved. As adults, will we cling to our idealizing and the resulting deep disappointment, or can we see our mothers as our first teachers, who were unique for each of us?

As teachers they brought the lessons we were to learn from life. They presented these lessons in so many ways, and yet, true to where we were, most of us did not understand them. We misread and therefore took in or rebelled against the lesson, and so ended up in the center of a play where the scenes changed, the characters changed, and the lines and outcome remained the same. We were the stars of a boring drama.

Our mothers wanted us to be happy; the question is what that meant and what it now means.

So again:

Did you learn from your mother?
Was your mother happy?
Did she love?
Did she pleasure?
Did she power?
Did you imbibe the lessons she presented and become the spitting image?
Did you rebel and therefore ironically become the spitting image?
How much did you really look at what you brought to the table, or were you so lost in your mother that all you cared about was what she brought to the table?
What did she bring to the table?
What did you call what she brought to the table?
What did you call what you brought to the table?

Are we now ready to learn our lessons and free our mothers from the box we put them in? What a great Mother’s Day it would be to free both our mothers and ourselves from the rigid misunderstanding of the words “mother” and “child”.

To honor our mother means for us to grow up into who we each were meant to be, truly ourselves, and to manifest so we are true reflections of God. Isn’t that really what God wants for us? Isn’t that really why God gave us each the mother we needed to fulfill our true destiny? We can either remain small and trapped in our boring drama, or we can give up our smallness and play in the most magnificent theatre.

As adults….

 May 14, 2017

As adults, will we cling to our idealizing and the resulting deep disappointment, or can we see our mothers as our first teachers, who were unique for each of us?

Willfully blind….

 May 14, 2017

  Willfully blind                       Eyes wide open 

Untroubled                              Troublemaker  

Torture for the Shrunken Self….

 May 7, 2017

I recently heard that someone said spiritual practice was self-torture, and that I am a composite of negativity. It is and I am. For a lot of people that is the truth. So much of sadhana is uncovering the truth; the truth that lies under a giant fortress of lies. The delusion that who we are is the one that thinks is what keeps us locked in a fight against the truth. The thought form of torture manifests when we resist learning.

To resolve this, or anything else for that matter, is torturous and removes the pleasure we so pursue. If someone wants to keep the pain and misery of something secret and unresolved, then I am a torturer. Ganesh is the remover of obstacles; remember, that is what Baba used to call me. That is a function I perform. So someone who is wed to a secret and calls it all kinds of adjectives except the true one is going to not feel comfortable around me.

If who you think you are is who you think you will be at the end of sadhana, then you are in the fight of “your” life. Sadhana will be self-torture, because you are going completely in the wrong direction.

If you know that you are a prisoner of who you think you are, then sadhana is a jailbreak to the light of day.

Until that awakening, the shrunken self is a criminal who holds you hostage. You pay ransom and are never freed. You enable and indulge the shrunken self, and it only gets stronger.

We have to starve the shrunken self, and redirect our attention away from it, in order for who we really are to be revealed by grace. The shrunken self will feel that this is only self-torture until we no longer identify with it. Until then, the one who is complicit and the criminal are one and the same: the shrunken self that powers rather than loves.

The irony is that when you are committed to power, you are the criminal, not who you really are. And you are the torturer.

Grace is experiencing that you are not who you thought you were; it is the experience of “knowing”, not thinking an idea. Changing your idea of who you think you are is not the same thing as being who you are. It is a beginning, and will help you see that thoughts are just thoughts. We then have to let go of those thoughts, even the good ones, to get to the emotions and then more subtle vibrations until we are at stillness. From the stillness, we arise.

As long as we believe the one who is thinking is us, we are in prison. A great delusion is that somehow we are instinctual animals that do not need to be trained, that everyone will learn the same functioning and life skills through osmosis and time. This cannot be further from the truth.

Christ makes it clear that the choice is either the prison of the shrunken self or the daylight and freedom of Love. “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14: 26-7, NRSV).

This speaks to the fact that as long as we are wed to our family system we cannot go to God. The first step is to hate our family system; then we disentangle from the system until we see it for what it is. Finally, we are free to be with family again but with the Love of God within. We know that it was not our family that ruined our life; it was following the map of the family system and thinking it was taking us back to God. It never could. We tortured ourselves with our own resistance to God. Now we can see that sadhana and the Guru take us to our true nature: Love.

We have to starve….

 May 7, 2017

We have to starve the shrunken self, and redirect our attention away from it, in order for who we really are to be revealed by grace. The shrunken self will feel that this is only self-torture until we no longer identify with it. Until then, the one who is complicit and the criminal are one and the same: the shrunken self that powers rather than loves.

User….

 May 7, 2017

  User                                    Generous-spirited 

Handles the world                Used  

Maya and the Five Kanchukas….

 April 30, 2017

Nondualism can be a dangerous practice because it can encourage people not to take responsibility for their actions. But then when we turn to a dualistic sense purusha (individual self) and prakriti (matter), we separate ourselves from prakriti and see matter either as an enemy or as some horrible lesson to be learned. Prakriti then has nothing to do with us, and in that sense, again, we may not take responsibility for our perceptions and actions; prakriti is separate from us.

When we approach a nondualistic system, we are forced to see that prakriti comes out of purusha; therefore, we are the cause of our prakriti, of our environment. Though both systems are true renderings of manifestation and teach us appropriately, we can delude ourselves any way we want. In truth, the individual is responsible in both systems. In nondualism, all purushas have their own prakriti, which is not different from dualism. As we evolve back to God, prakriti is always here for our education and liberation.

In Kashmir Shaivism there is the understanding of unmesha, an upsurge of God, that arises when we are not cloaked by Maya and the five kanchukas. This upsurge is Bliss itself. But for people who have not purified themselves through intense sadhana an impulsive feeling or upsurge can be misinterpreted as God speaking. If everything is God, then in truth that impulse is from God, but not in the way our shrunken, deluded selves think.

Remember, Christ said “everything comes out of the Heart.” “When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, ‘Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?’ (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, ‘It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person’”.

So everything is God. But until we are willing to unmask the truth of any vibration we have by practicing being with our experience whatever it is, letting whatever comes up from that vibration come up and simultaneously functioning appropriately on the material plane, we will delude ourselves as to what that upsurge really is. Every enthusiastic upsurge, every impulsive impulse to solve something, thinking it is an unmesha, is really what Ian said: “It is an enmesha.” We enmesh ourselves and miss the point.

How do we do that? By thinking our view of Prakriti is the way the world really is. By thinking “my wants and desires are the mission that needs to be fulfilled.” But when there is no core, then everything is arbitrary. Everything is “equal”, and we have no discernment. According to Jaideva Singh, this is how Maya and the five kanchukas cloak: “Maya draws a veil on the Self owing to which he forgets his real nature, and the Maya generates a sense of difference. The products of Maya are the five kanchukas or coverings.” Singh goes on to list them.

Kalā: reduces universal authorship, brings about limited agency
Vidyā: reduces the omniscience, brings about limitation in respect of knowledge
Rāga: reduces all-satisfaction, brings about desire for particular things
Kāla: reduces eternity, brings about limitation in respect to time
Niyati: reduces freedom and pervasiveness, brings about limitation in respect to cause, space and form

And so we are contracted into the individual that thinks so highly of himself and yet is so small. We are deluded by the cloaking and then find ourselves perceiving a rope as a snake and conjuring a thief in a tree.

To return home, we must unveil Maya and the five kanchukas for who they really are, and then unveil ourselves, so that our true nature will arise and we will not prevent Love from coming forth.

So everything is God….

 April 30, 2017

So everything is God. But until we are willing to unmask the truth of any vibration we have by practicing being with our experience whatever it is, letting whatever comes up from that vibration come up and simultaneously functioning appropriately on the material plane, we will delude ourselves as to what that upsurge really is.

Secret and dirty….

 April 30, 2017

Secret and dirty                  Clean and transparent

Intimate                              No relationship

L&Q(4-29-17) There’s No Love in Hell….

 April 30, 2017

Drawing on Dante and other texts, Rohini explains how Hell is where the shrunken self is in a closed circle without company, Purgatory is a place of sharing and working together, and Paradise is a place of pure Love. She works through some fourchotomies linked to the journey beyond separateness to Love.

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When I was a child, my parents worked in our yard. We lived in Waban, Massachusetts. Lots of rock. We had rock walls and rock gardens, with a very hilly, up-and-down-and-up terrain. Behind us was an aqueduct, and on the other side of that a swamp. Woods were everywhere. So there was cultivated and wild land. I wasn’t involved in the cultivating part of my world; I watched.

In 1976, when I first went to Ganeshpuri, I encountered an amazing garden: seventy-five acres of ashram with cultivated gardens amidst the jungle. As Kipling said, the jungle could come in so quickly. The world was teeming with life and it needed to be disciplined. Baba walked the gardens most days. My first job was to maintain security, so I walked the ashram gardens daily. The perimeter was important. I always had to check for the influx of the jungle one way or another—not that it could be completely kept out. The jungle and the people had a working relationship.

Most ashramites worked in the garden as their guruseva (service). They learned to weed, dig, compost and plant. It meant steady, everyday effort. A dear friend, Mark, was in charge of the garden. Venkapa, whom I loved dearly, was in charge of the physical plant. Baba directed everything, even at one time directing Mark to plant roses. All this was for our benefit; we learned how to take care of the world.

In the 1990s, I lived in a church rectory on church grounds. My two sons were young, and my then husband was the priest. He had been in Ganeshpuri and had worked in the garden. He wanted a garden for the church, so he built a garden that had a Japanese flavor. There were many beautiful specimens and a pond made from rock. It was lovely. But no one worked in the garden. No one tended the garden. And the garden was rather rigid and formal. It was not very inviting, and the parishioners did not venture in unless something specific was happening there. No one volunteered to keep it up. Decay and weeds intermingled very quickly. From the beginning, my children and I were forced labor in this garden. It was never our garden.

Many years after we had left and the priest had been defrocked, we returned to find that, though the parish was still there, the jungle had moved in. No one had felt it was the church’s garden. Now, English ivy had smothered the variety of plantings. No one would have known what had once been there.

When my sons and I moved to our present home seventeen years ago, the yard was without trees or even worms. Clay was the essential element of the property. Gradually, we planted a garden; I always kept Baba in mind, the upper garden where I had walked both on my own and gratefully with Baba on his daily walks.

In 2005, we started our visits to Cambridge in the UK. There the gardens are tended with great care and love. They reminded me of Baba’s ashram. We feel the welcoming and the expanse and the harmony. There is no struggle, no fight. Nature, though perfectly cultivated and controlled, is not tight, rigid and unwelcoming.

Over the years, I have directed our own garden’s expansion, so that now there is very little grass left. We can walk on paths in the shade of the trees we planted years ago, and enjoy the different layers of growth. Like Baba’s gardens, it is a place for quiet and reflection.

This weekend we will be working in the garden spreading mulch. We have done this every year since the garden began. Why should we take this trouble? Why do this? In Baba’s ashram we worked every day, internally and externally. Both complemented each other. If we only work internally, we become self-absorbed and lost in our my-ness. If we only work outside we become superficial and lost in the material plane without any understanding of its cause. But when we are with our experience, let whatever comes up come up from that vibration, and then function appropriately because we are now discerning from within, we are able to truly practice and weed out what is not true.

Many spiritual and literary traditions use tending a garden as a metaphor for the work of life. Here, the garden is truly a metaphor for sadhana. Our job is to work over a long time without interruption and with great devotion. The garden receives steady care, and the weeds disappear and remain, for the most part, gone. Love is the ground of the garden.

A garden is truly….

 April 23, 2017

A garden is truly a metaphor for sadhana. Our job is to work over a long time without interruption and with great devotion.

Annoying….

 April 23, 2017

  Annoying                              Lets be

  Interested                              Rejecting  

Misreading Power As Love….

 April 16, 2017

Baba used to say that Christ was the incarnation of Love. Christ showed us what Love is. He Loved without qualification; there was no arbitrariness in His Love for all. Even on Calvary, He Loved.

For me, Baba modeled that same Love, always. In every moment, he taught me what Love is.

We all tend to think we know what love is; the problem is, we only know what we have been taught, and what we have concluded on the basis of our very limited experience. We do not willingly put our ideas of love to the test. If we did, their limitations and distortions would be exposed.

For many, what they call love is really about power. Whether they realize it or not, they see life in terms of the exercise of power. Accordingly, they see everything in light of hierarchies and roles, and love is just a function of how people use what power they have. This usually translates into a resentment of people whom they see as outranking them; whoever is an authority figure is automatically perceived as a loveless oppressor. Love, then, is being in a position to oppress and choosing not to. It is the benevolent exercise of power.

Benevolent

Undiscriminating

Condescending

Equal

As the above fourchotomy reveals, this wrong understanding of Love means that we relate to others only in terms of their apparent position relative to us in a perceived hierarchy. What we call “love” only happens from higher to lower. When we see others getting along well with people above them in a hierarchy, we cannot see this as a good thing, as the recognition of an underlying equality; we can only see it as flattery or politicking on one side and favoritism on the other. We can only love those beneath us in some way. And if the only people we can love are beneath us, the truth is we are not loving—we are powering.

Great beings Love equally. Love precedes whatever hierarchies we inhabit in relative reality; to Love we must come from a place of Unity and equality, and only then operate appropriately within the hierarchies of relative reality.

When we confuse Love with the exercise of power, we are also thinking in a very limited way about safety and security. If we see life in terms of power relations, we will only “love” when we do not feel threatened in any way. This means either that we have to have power over those we “love” or that they agree completely with our conception of love and are willing to take the subordinate role. We will only feel safe in a relationship when the other person submits to us.

Another way in which we conflate Love and the exercise of power is through woundedness. Many of us as children only received what we knew as “love” when we were wounded or unhealthy or miserable. This encouraged in us the habit of identifying with the wounds we see ourselves as having received—and of seeing “love” as inseparable from woundedness. The fourchotomy that results from this thinking reveals how delusional this is.

Wounded

Unloving

In pain

Resilient

We then equate love with a vibration of woundedness and want to share it with others. If others reject our wounded vibration, they are rejecting our “love” and therefore have no love. In our minds, we will work to get others to “love” by being magnificently wounded or wounding them. At its extreme, this delusion may even lead us to mortally wound ourselves so as to wound everyone else into loving us.

People misinterpret Christ as wounded. He is seen as the suffering servant, and for our part we are to share solidarity in suffering. That is not Love. That is not what Christ wanted for us. That is not what God wants for us. Love has nothing to do with power or woundedness. Love always leads to resolution for everyone, at all times, in all places. And that resolution is our birthright. Love leads us to Love.

We seek to recreate….

 April 16, 2017

We seek to recreate in all our relationships whatever vibration we came to associate with “love” as children. To unmask the truth of the vibration, practice being with your experience whatever it is, letting whatever comes up from that vibration come up, and simultaneously functioning appropriately on the material plane.

Glib / cynical….

 April 16, 2017

Glib / cynical                                      Full of wonder / appreciative

Clever / seeing clearly                        Sappy / sentimental

The Guru Is Not Your Enemy….

 April 9, 2017

The Guru is not out to get you. The shakti is not out to crush you. There may be times when you are convinced that they are out to ruin you, but it is never true.

The Guru, shakti and God want what is best for us, in every sense of the word. And when we obey the Guru and the shakti, lo and behold, we find ourselves moving to a better place, closer to God.

Once the shakti is awakened, it is moving toward Home. Shaktipat can be exhilarating, and we at first may be excited by this newfound experience and dimension in our lives. We feel blessed, and acknowledge the shakti as a beneficial and extraordinary gift. But as we proceed to practice sadhana and confront the reality of what must be sacrificed for the process to reach fruition, we move from excitement to dread and fear and resistance.

Though we may deny it, this is when we see the Guru as an enemy—as the antagonist we must fight against to preserve our sense of self, our integrity, our narrative. We see that the directives the Guru gives us go against our beliefs about ourselves, so we conclude that the Guru must be trying to crush us, and we refuse to obey. We believe that rejecting the Guru’s guidance will get us out of harm’s way.

In short, the shrunken self sees the Guru as a demon: risky, reckless, tyrannical, harmful, and humorless. The Guru crushes students. This is why, in tantric traditions, deities have terrifying forms such as Bhairava or Durga: God and Guru seem horrifying to the shrunken self. This is appropriate, because they will bring about the shrunken self’s dissolution.

So why, then, do people who see the Guru this way stay on? Because they feel better when they see the Guru crushing someone other than them. In many cases, this feels like their family lives; watching a sibling get crushed always meant being in the clear. A more common reason people who demonize the Guru choose to stay is that while they reject the guidance of the Guru, they like the experience of the shakti. Being near the Guru means being beside a source of power. They can’t see that the true enemy of the Guru is ignorance. And they can’t see that what the Guru wants them to have is not power but Love.

If we trap ourselves in that kind of delusion, then rather than heed the Guru we will choose to listen to all our friends and people we consider knowledgeable about the world. But every time we disobey the Guru and do things the way we are sure they should be done, we will find ourselves in a greater mess. In truth, the Guru’s knowledge of the spiritual realm leads to the deepest understanding of worldly affairs.

If we do not get the lesson, then the results of our actions will take us further and further away from God. We will become rigid, isolated, sure voices stuck in the mud of hell. But we cannot see the way out of our alienation, for we refuse to see that we had and still have choice.

If we are willing to surrender and learn, though, we will move from clue to clue in the treasure hunt of life. We will continue solving the riddle and finding our way back Home.

The spiritual path is dangerous for anyone unwilling to have a guide. Our goal is to dissolve our separateness in Love; the shrunken self’s sense of direction will never get us there. As the mystical poet Al-Niffari wrote, “If a man regards himself as existing through God, that which is of God in him predominates over the phenomenal element and makes it pass away, so that he sees nothing but God. If, on the contrary, he regards himself as having an independent existence, his unreal egoism is displayed to him and the reality of God becomes hidden from him” (in Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, 60-61).

The self….

 April 9, 2017

The self you are protecting is just a narrative you have collected.

Timid….

 April 9, 2017

  Timid                                  Bold 

  Self-protecting                   Aggressive  

Playing the Field….

 April 2, 2017

When we start on the path of sadhana, though we may understand that there is something greater than who we think we are, we tend to operate as if sadhana is just stretching and making bigger who we think we are. In that light, we believe that there is only one playing field, and that to be spiritually enlightened is to be a magnificent player on that one playing field.

It follows that we believe we already know the rules of the game, and what a winner looks like.

This in turn means that we inevitably see ourselves as being in competition with the Guru. What the Guru teaches appears to us as just a different way to play than what we know is right for us. We are already moving in the same direction as the Guru, but the Guru is failing to see that our way of playing is the appropriate one for us, and will get us to the same destination.

What we are failing to see is that we are living in a limited vision of reality. We have desperately worked to shrink the Guru to our size. But the Guru is the grace-bestowing power of God, and there is no shrinking God. Our attempt to shrink the Guru is based on a set of premises that are wrong.

The first premise is that there is only one playing field and all games go to the same conclusion.

The next premise is that everyone comes to that playing field with the game they learned as a child.

The third premise is that the Guru also comes to that playing field with the game she learned as a child.

Inevitably, then, we will see the Guru as imposing her game on us. And we will resist that perceived imposition. Within the logic of this delusion, that is the right thing to do. But the point is to free ourselves from delusion.

If we believe that, then we are convinced that if we play our game well, we will reach the same goal the Guru wants for us, but on our terms. And when we see the Guru, we are actually then judging the Guru’s game on that field.

Another form this delusion takes operates from slightly divergent premises.

The first and second premises—that there is only one playing field and everyone comes to that field with the game they learned as children—remain the same. But then a different kind of judgment enters in.

The third premise here is that we believe our game is the only one that gets life right as a worldview or bottom line. We then know how to bring the game to a winning conclusion. Everyone else—except the Guru—plays the same game we do, with varying degrees of skill.

It follows that the Guru must not be playing, or teaching, the right game. We then have to resist her teaching—not because it’s not right for us, but because it’s not right for anyone.

When we see the Guru this way, she becomes something like the best player on a losing side; we reject her game but want to pick up from the Guru the skills that we can use to improve our own game and win at life.

In other words, we want to remain within our system and extract from the Guru whatever it is that will help us play our game to its fullest, on the only field there is. This is how we use seeing the Guru as a way to support our own system.

Here is a fourchotomy that captures this delusion:

Exploitive / user

Nurturing

Savvy

Pathetic

We think of ourselves as savvy players in the one game on the one field, and see the Guru as nurturing but ultimately pathetic, not savvy enough to win in the real world. In reality, we are only trying to exploit the Guru to win a child’s game.

The truth is, we have chosen to remain blind to the reality that there is more than one playing field. Because of this delusion we cannot see how the Guru is actually operating and what she is encouraging. The Guru may appear on our field, but she is actually playing a categorically different game on a completely different field. It is our delusion that she is, like us, playing a game she learned as a child; she is playing the game she learned from her Guru, just as her Guru learned it from his Guru.

We will never progress on the spiritual path until we see and accept that we have to give up our cherished game and all its rules, and enter as beginners into the Great Game of the Guru, the only game that takes us to Love.

What does the Guru do?….

 April 2, 2017

What does the Guru do? The Guru takes away our death–even though we hold on for dear death.

Exploitive / user….

 April 2, 2017

  Exploitive / user                             Nurturing 

 Savvy                                              Pathetic

Feeling This Loss….

 March 26, 2017

Community is so important for all of us. We are a family made up of people who are wanting Love. This path we have all chosen is not always easy. But the truth is, the alternative is worse. We have to remember that we are in Purgatory, living out our past actions, and as we move forward consciously, we find ourselves lighter and clearer and more willing to surrender what does not serve us in the best sense of the word.

So we all need to support each other and understand that, though our goal is the same, each of us has the choice to proceed in the way we see fit.

As many of you know, I do not always agree with how people choose. Many have waded through long periods of depression, anger and pride. It is always a joy to see the sun come out again and watch you enjoying your lives.

I share with great sadness that this past week someone chose to leave our company forever. We will never be able to laugh and cry with them in the form we knew them. We do not know what led her to make this decision, but clearly it was thought out and seen as the only choice. How sad for her, and for us. Tyla will be missed by all of us. We mourn, and pray that she found what she was looking for. I am so sorry she could not find it here among us.

Life is not easy….

 March 26, 2017

Life is not easy, but we need to embrace it with everything we have. If we hold on we will find that Love is under it all.

Grieving….

 March 26, 2017

Grieving                             Celebrating 

Facing                                Imagining  

Family Recipes….

 March 19, 2017

“Life will be easier if I don’t practice.” Why will it be easier? If we practice we will have to face what we have. But we don’t want to face reality. We are driving a 1950 Buick, thinking we are at the wheel of a Porsche.

Accepting reality begins with accepting our environment and our vehicles for what they actually are, not what we would like them to be. We refuse to see the dysfunction in ourselves and our families. If we are not happy, we believe that is because we are not operating correctly within our system—we conclude that we are not doing it right when we should be questioning the system itself. We therefore believe that if we simply work harder at our system, success and happiness will follow. The problem is we never look at the actual vehicle we are driving to see what its capabilities are and where it is headed. The Buick can never go from zero to 60 in under ten seconds.

Many years ago, I had a conversation in which someone insisted that his first-level practice (using the senses and rituals) would take him to the same place as my third-level practice (reorienting the will). I told him that spiritual practice is not a track meet; the various means are not parallel and equal lanes that arrive at the same destination. In truth, one level of practice will lead into a deeper one; only the deepest practice takes us to the final destination. We may continue observing first- or second-level practices even after we are practicing at the third level, but at this point the deepest level will be informing all the others.

To put it another way, we do not get to decide for ourselves the recipe for spiritual practice. Whoever blindly believes that their habitual way of living is the correct recipe will never get anywhere on the spiritual path. They are simply transposing their family system onto spirituality. They might as well believe that they can come up with a blog post by literally following a pancake recipe. For different undertakings, we have to follow completely different recipes with categorically different ingredients.

People who are committed to their “family recipe” believe that Rohini is just following her family recipe, which she learned as a child, and pushing it on them. They conclude that if they follow what they see as Rohini’s recipe, they will just be at best derivative and at worst obsequious. They will say, “I was raised differently.” What they don’t get is that it is not Rohini’s recipe. It’s the same recipe that has been used for thousands of years in the lineages of many religions. Their recipe will not take them or anyone else where the authentic recipe for spiritual practice leads.

The whole point of seeking a Guru is to uncover, dismantle, and let go of your family recipe as the formula for happiness, and to surrender to the one true recipe for returning Home. This is what I did, and do, with Baba. The recipe I share I learned from him, as he learned it from Nityananda.

Your honest answer….

 March 19, 2017

Your honest answer is not the Truth; it is just your “sure” answer.

Grandiose gestures….

 March 19, 2017

  Grandiose gestures Constant care Pay attention when it is important Insignificant  

How To Use a Fourchotomy….

 March 12, 2017

To work with a fourchotomy, you have to begin by being honest with yourself. This means being willing to hear your honest, unfiltered answer in the moment; if you pause to think it over, you will be answering from the wrong place entirely. It takes practice to hear your honest answer and not fall prey to your mental chatter.

Assertive                              is the opposite of                   Passive

is the positive of                                                              is the negative of

Aggressive                           is the opposite of                  Gracious

Be aware that our tendency is to spin things, especially definitions. As a result, we conflate different terms in a fourchotomy. For instance, in the fourchotomy above, you may very well conflate the definition of “aggressive” with the word “assertive”, and the definition of “passive” with the word “gracious”. You may see someone who is actually assertive as aggressive, and someone who is gracious as merely passive.

Once you are clear on your definitions so that you are no longer conflating the terms of the fourchotomy, you are ready to work with it. Taking the example of Assertive, you should start by asking yourself, “Am I assertive?” In that moment, without hesitation, you will have an internal yes-or-no answer—but you must be willing to hear it without spinning it, and without judging it. It may feel like a vibration arising from within you. If you allow yourself to feel the vibration, the answer will take shape from the vibration and you will “hear” it. Then you ask, “Am I okay with that?” Again, simply hear your honest answer as it arises from within. Continue to ask those questions for each component of the fourchotomy.

You’ll find that your answers change from moment to moment; this shifting around is part of the process. Gradually you will start to free yourself from being attached to any of those qualities. You will know that when more yeses turn up consistently in your answers. This may take some time, depending on how attached you are. Eventually, you should reach a point when your honest answer to all eight questions of a fourchotomy is “Yes,” ten out of ten times, on a regular basis. This means that you are no longer trapped by your attachment to any of those qualities. At least for now. This process of reaching eight yeses ten out of ten times has to be reiterated over an extended period of time. We need to check back and see if we are remaining “off the grid” of that fourchotomy.

In order to be able to use this tool fully, you will have to be able to create your own fourchotomy. A good starting point would be to think of a person you struggle to get along with. That person will display qualities that bother you. Remember that if you see a quality in others, you have it in you. If you deny it, then you unwittingly manifest it without realizing it. So to begin, choose one quality in that person that really annoys you; then you can start filling out the fourchotomy. For instance, if you find that person controlling, you can form a grid and put the word “controlling” in the top left.

Controlling

Then, since “controlling” is clearly negative for you, find the positive opposite. It might be “relaxed”.

Controlling                         Relaxed

Now you must find the positive of “controlling” and the negative of “relaxed”. The former might be “disciplined”, the latter “careless”.

Controlling                                 Relaxed

Disciplined                                Careless

Now you start asking the questions and listening to the answers that arise from within, in the moment.

As you keep working with fourchotomies, you will find that it is just as important to free yourself from attachment to qualities you consider positive as it is to work through your attachment to negative ones. The goal is to continue working to be off the grid, so that in every situation you encounter and every relationship you have, you will see clearly and act spontaneously, freely, and appropriately.

Know the difference….

 March 12, 2017

Know the difference between being obedient and throwing yourself under the bus.

Alone….

 March 12, 2017

  Alone                                Smothered 

  Isolated / lonely              Together  

What Is a Fourchotomy….

 March 5, 2017

The world appears to us as we choose to see it. Most of us see the world in binary terms, framing our experience in pairs of opposites. These pairs of opposites define and limit our perception by shrinking the world into a kind of template; that template in turn limits our choices and actions. Recognizing and dismantling this template is the key to seeing things as they truly are, which frees us to live fully.

Our templates are made of qualities—words for which we form our own definitions, often unconsciously. Essentially, qualities are labels that define and limit. On a preverbal level, qualities begin as vibrations within us. Those vibrations form words, which then dictate how we label ourselves and all we encounter—how we interact with the world. Our minds sort our experience of those vibrations into dichotomies, seeing everything in terms of two opposing choices.

But the process doesn’t stop there. In reality, the mind works in what I call fourchotomies. Our dichotomies are more complex than they at first seem; each quality exists in relation with three other components, not just one alternative. In every dichotomy, the negative quality has a positive component, and the positive quality has a negative component. Depending on whether we start from a quality we consider positive or negative, a fourchotomy will take one of these two forms:

Negative Quality                                            Positive Opposing Quality

Positive Form of Negative Quality                Negative Form of Positive Quality

Positive Quality                                              Negative Opposing Quality

Negative Form of Positive Quality                  Positive Form of Negative Quality

For example, the quality of impulsivity is usually seen as negative. If we look for its positive opposite, we may well choose the quality of being careful. But impulsivity has a positive element: spontaneity. And carefulness has a negative element: uptightness. So our fourchotomy might look like this:

Impulsive                           is the opposite of                       Careful

is the negative of                                                                  is the positive of

Spontaneous                       is the opposite of                      Uptight

If our starting quality is one we consider positive—say, assertiveness—the fourchotomy maps out differently:

Assertive                             is the opposite of                     Passive

is the positive of                                                                 is the negative of

Aggressive                           is the opposite of                   Gracious

The real problems arise when we fail to discern between the positive and negative components of one side of a dichotomy. We then conflate the positive and the negative—for instance, calling ourselves spontaneous when we are really impulsive, or careful when we are really uptight. We might also call ourselves uptight when we are really just being careful. We will conflate vibrations, words, and meanings to maintain our worldview. And once we conflate the terms of a fourchotomy, we lose our discernment. In order to see clearly, we need to acknowledge all four components and arrive at a point where we are attached to none of them.

Even our notions of “positive” and “negative” can be conflated in a fourchotomy The qualities that are positive to us are those with which we are identified; even a trait we think of as “negative” can be positive in this way. If we think of ourselves as selfish, manipulative, pathetic, and cruel, then we believe those qualities are actually who we are. We cling to these qualities precisely because we have come to believe they are essential to our being, and that giving them up would mean ceasing to exist.

If we want to tear down this prison of words, we must recognize, understand, and accept the entire grid. Only when we achieve this will we free ourselves from seeing the world through the blinders of our wrong identifications.

Accordingly, we have to accept within ourselves every quality in a fourchotomy. Transcending them requires owning them completely. “Owning” means not merely accepting the qualities in principle, but recognizing how they color every aspect of our lives. It is not enough to own three out of four qualities; the remaining term we haven’t accepted is enough to, if triggered, reopen all of them.

There is no quality we can ever regard as not applying to us. If we recognize it in our world, then it is within us; if we don’t recognize it, it is still within us, because we are human. The point is to be fully human. When we are fully human, Love informs all our words and actions; then we are we free to manifest all qualities appropriately.

Stop looking at others….

 March 5, 2017

Stop looking at others and blaming them for your actions. You have choice. Look at what you bring to the table. If it is inappropriate then change your behavior.

Sacrifice yourself….

 March 5, 2017

  Sacrifice yourself                                            Preserve yourself 

Serve the situation                                             Impose yourself on others  

The One True Sacrifice….

 February 26, 2017

The last blog established how “sacrifice” can be a destructive force. From this point of view, sacrifice is a negation; it implies scapegoating, discarding, abandoning. It is not sacrifice, though, that is the problem. It is what we sacrifice, and to whom, that determine whether our offering leads to good or ill.

Sacrifice                                          Hoard / grasp

Scapegoat / abandon / discard         Cherish / keep

Sacrifice yourself                           Preserve yourself

Serve the situation                          Impose yourself on others

I have heard people actually say, “If you were spiritual, you wouldn’t mind being the scapegoat.” No. We are not to abandon or discard ourselves; our work is to sacrifice all that separates us from God.

The Passion is such an example. People tend to misread Christ’s sacrifice. They want to see it as a scapegoating in which Christ suffered for our sins and was murdered as a threat to the so-called purity and order of the time. They speak of how much He suffered. In doing this, they belittle who Christ was and what He accomplished. They miss the purpose of retelling the story.

The truth is that we suffer only because we cling to our shrunken selves. This clinging is the essence of sin, because it is our effort to displace God and be the center of the world—it is what separates us from God.

Christ didn’t allow Himself to be scapegoated; He gave up His separate will. At Gethsemane, He sacrificed everything no one should want. The rest was just the completion of the rite. He modeled the correct sacrifice by saying, “Not my will, but Thine be done”.

Because He had sacrificed His separate will, Christ was never reactive. Unfortunately, the rest of us, with our at best partially surrendered wills, are highly reactive: we blame others, or circumstances, when we are the agents of our own behavior. Christ did not trade in blame; He always knew what was going to happen and what was needful.

Patañjali explains this in Yoga Sūtras 4.3 (transl. Hariharānanda): “Causes do not put the nature in motion, only the removal of obstacles takes place through them. This is like a farmer breaking down the barrier to let the water flow (the hindrances being removed by the causes, the nature impenetrates by itself)”.

In Walking Home with Baba, I explain the sutra in this way: “An incidental cause does not create a change in nature; it merely creates an opening for an existing tendency to express itself, just as a farmer irrigates a field by moving obstacles out of the water’s way. We assume that what happens to us or around us causes us to act in certain ways, when in truth those incidental causes merely provide an opportunity for us to manifest an inner tendency. Because we don’t always respond in the same way to similar situations, we know that the situations aren’t really causing our reactions” (139).

It is never the farmer; it is our tendency to irrigate the field that is the problem. The farmer may appear to be the cause, but when we dig deeper we find that the real cause is always our willingness to irrigate the field when the opportunity arises. That is what we bring to the table. People wait for an opportunity to irrigate. When the environment is perfect we “can’t help ourselves”.

The truth is that we can help ourselves, by sacrificing our shrunken selves to God rather than sacrificing ourselves and others to whatever farmer comes along. At any moment when we discard ourselves that way, we throw away our lives. When we understand that it is we who willingly sacrifice ourselves to someone else’s wishes, we realize that we always had choice. Our practice is to work not to irrigate as we have always done. We do not sacrifice others, and we sacrifice ourselves only to God.

We all are then willing to sacrifice what should be sacrificed: that which does not encourage Love.

People throw away….

 February 26, 2017

People throw away their lives by throwing away every moment.

Sacrifice….

 February 26, 2017

 Sacrifice                                          Hoard / grasp

Scapegoat / abandon / discard         Cherish / keep

If you have any kind of attachment….

 February 19, 2017

If you have any kind of attachment, you will protect the one who is attached. You will be dishonest.

What We Are Willing To Sacrifice….

 February 19, 2017

We all live by rules, assumed rules. We live by unconscious rules that are so embedded in us that we believe they are universal. But when we reflect, we see that these rules are not only not universal but in many cases harmful and counter to Love. These rules have been developed in environments that promoted the shrunken self, and therefore encouraged selfishness in the name of “family”, “normal”, and even “good” and “right”.

In many families there is a strong sense of hierarchy. Though words like “love” and “care” are used, underneath there is no sense of real Love and care. If we scratch the surface we will see that at any given moment, there are only two choices: either we sacrifice ourselves, or we sacrifice everyone else to our desires. There is no third option.

In this kind of inhuman environment, it is sacrifice or be sacrificed. Someone has to be immolated in every interaction. There is never a situation in which all family members win. Love is win/win. Here, there is no Love. Because what we have is familiar, we call it normal, and normal is more important than Love.

Many years ago I asked a person I was with, “Why can’t we both be powerful, good cooks, artistic, smart, spiritual?” His answer was “No. Only one of us can be that.” His response revealed that in his mind, he was clearly the only one allowed to have those skills. There was no win/win. I was left to quietly accept the situation. There was no compromise that would have allowed us each to move in from an absolute position and share. In order to keep the peace, sacrifice was what was called for, and sacrifice is not compromise. It’s giving in and discarding one’s self.

What we are to learn from that story is that people sacrifice others to maintain their idea of themselves. It is about power and control. If we want power and control, we will not sacrifice ourselves; we will sacrifice others to the demands of our system, and expect those others to be willing and happy to be sacrificed.

The one who sacrifices herself to another’s demands deludes herself, calling it “doing the right thing”. In this delusion, if we are willing to be sacrificed, we are “good”. If we are not willing to be sacrificed, we are “bad”. People who aren’t willing to be sacrificed are bad because they make the demanding person’s life more difficult.

Until we ourselves are willing to be sacrificed, we will only sacrifice others to our demands. We will expect them to go along, and will be baffled and angry when others aren’t happy to be sacrificed this way.

When we willingly go to the sacrifice rather than sacrifice others, we have started on the path towards humility; if we continue in that direction, it will bring us to humanity. We are, however, to sacrifice neither others nor ourselves. In Truth, we as ourselves are others—family in the best sense of the word.

In a real family there is human-to-human interaction. Everyone feels supported and there is truly a win/win outcome. Everyone is encouraged to be themselves and work to the best of their ability. There is no sacrificing of our or others’ authentic voices or actions. There is only one real rule, and it is to Love.

Executioner….

 February 19, 2017

  Executioner                               Life saver 

Just / decisive                              Sentimentalist

Speak the Truth and Don’t Get Angry Part Two….

 February 12, 2017

“What we bring to the table” is a phrase I use often. It means what and how we feel, think, express, and act in any given situation. In The Art of War, Sun Tzu instructs us to:

Know yourself. Know the terrain. Know your opponent.

But most of us only know and can speak to the terrain and the opponent. We will know the ins and outs of what our opponent brings to the table, but we will not know what we ourselves actually bring to the table. We will, however, label ourselves in most cases as the one not causing any trouble. We can call ourselves victim, sensitive, right, good, true, even wretched, but we will seldom call ourselves the cause or instigator. We are just looking out at the world. We have forgotten and have missed ourselves.

Just after the Second World War, Albert Camus wrote about the danger of not knowing what we bring to the table: “[W]hile there are many people nowadays who condemn violence and murder in their heart of hearts, there aren’t many willing to recognize that this obliges them to reconsider the way they think and act.” It is all too easy to stake out a high-principled position without recognizing your piece in it.

As I have learned from experience, living in unsafe environments doesn’t necessarily cause us to choose the safest course of action. It’s not automatic that we will choose safely; we have to know what we bring to the table and discern whether it is truly safe or not.

When I was in such an environment, I had to look at what I did, what happened for me, what I brought to the table. And what I brought to the table many times was fear, cringing, bracing for the blow. Also anger. Bringing these things to the table never brought safety. I had to learn to still what I brought to the table.

Most unsafe environments revolve around someone who must not be displeased. That person becomes a dark backdrop to everything in the environment. Displeasing the unsafe person is not an option. We have to find safe people if we want to express our feelings. But our feelings themselves can be unsafe. We end up calling our unsafeness our truth.

As a result, we take out our feelings on a safe person like a child beating a pillow. But beating a pillow is not what we need to be doing; though it may provide momentary relief, it actually perpetuates and even escalates the unsafeness we think we are resolving.

What we need to be doing is minding our own business—not in an isolationist sense, but by minding God’s business, which should be our own. That would require us to know what we bring to the table and be able to adjust it. If we are minding God’s business, we will do what is appropriate. We will speak the truth and not get angry.

When we are nonattached enough to speak the truth and not get angry, we will find that openings appear that allow us to bypass the unsafe person we are facing. We have to withdraw our energy from them; they cannot be our focus. This is what Patañjali means when he refers to indifference to vice. If we do not know what we bring to the table, we cannot achieve this nonattachment, and we remain accomplices.

A great example of speaking the truth and not getting angry is Joseph Welch, the Chief Counsel to the U.S. Army during the McCarthy hearings. It was his measured, nonattached question—“Have you no decency?”—that removed the scales from so many people’s eyes, reminding them of their own decency and revealing Joe McCarthy for the malevolent force he was. Had Welch spoken in rage, no one would have been able to hear him, and McCarthy could have exploited that rage to make himself look judicious. Welch knew himself, the terrain, and his opponent, and he won the battle in one blow.

What we need….

 February 12, 2017

What we need to be doing is minding our own business—not in an isolationist sense, but by minding God’s business, which should be our own.

Flatterer….

 February 12, 2017

  Flatterer                      Independent / stands up for self 

Appreciative                 Thankless / dismissive  

Getting Free of Fear….

 February 9, 2017

Rohini explains how to let fear dissolve so that we can be free from it, and takes some students through the process.

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Speak the Truth, Don’t Get Angry, Part One….

 February 5, 2017

Baba used to tell the story of Dronacharya and Yudhisthira. Dronacharya was the teacher to the Pandavas. One day, Dronacharya told his students, “Speak the truth, don’t get angry. I want you to go home, learn this, and come back.”

The next day, everyone came back, and each one could recite the statement except for Yudhisthira, who said, “I understand the first part, ‘speak the truth’; I don’t have the second part.”

Dronacharya repeated, “Speak the truth, don’t get angry. Now go home and learn it.”

This went on for days, until finally, after Yudhisthira said yet again, “I can’t get the second part,” Dronacharya took a stick and hit him. At that moment, Yudhisthira said, “I got it! Speak the truth, don’t get angry.”

“How is it that you understand it now?” said Dronacharya.

Yudisthira replied, “I got the first part, ‘speak the truth,” but until I was tested, I didn’t know about the second part, ‘don’t get angry.’”

Baba used to tell this story over and over again, and every time I heard it I’d understand it a bit differently, a little more deeply. Even now, my understanding continues to deepen.

When we are dispassionate, free of attachment, we have the ability to speak the truth and not get angry. If I have any kind of attachment, I will protect the one who is attached and not speak the truth, and I will get angry. I will be selfish, and not serve the situation.

This does not mean we don’t use anger. Baba expressed anger. But it was always clear that under his anger there was nonattachment, because everything came from Love.

Baba used to yell at me. He yelled at me a lot. He yelled at me in front of thousands of people, and he yelled at me with only a couple of people in the room. It was always for my good. He always spoke the truth and didn’t get angry.

When we are attached and get angry, we are that anger; our truth is clouded by anger, so it really isn’t truth. Our sureness that we see clearly is itself clouded. If we are nonattached, we will not be attached to our sureness—we will serve the situation. When Baba expressed anger, he was always serving the situation. He was using anger; anger wasn’t using or clouding him.

A parent who loves her children will use anger as a way of teaching and directing them. How many times these days, when so many parents want their children’s approval, do they fail to love their children appropriately by expressing anger when it is called for?

Not speaking the truth and not getting angry is selfish. In order to speak the truth, we have to be willing to be with our experience, let whatever comes up come up from that experience, and function appropriately. The more deeply we are able to be with our experience, the closer the truth is to the Truth. We can only move toward resolution, toward God, if we speak the truth and don’t get angry.

In today’s climate, anger is everywhere, but truth is in short supply. Everyone is speaking out, but almost exclusively from a place of attachment—which means their anger is using them, not the other way around. And part of the problem is that when we speak in rage, what we are saying can’t get through. If we speak the truth and don’t get angry, there’s a chance that we will be heard.

But the prevailing belief is that anger is the only way to have agency. In this mindset, to give up hate is to give up agency. People who are nonattached find themselves accused of being apathetic, and people who are enmeshed and clouded are applauded as engaged.

Nonattached

Enmeshed

Apathetic

Appropriately engaged

There’s a difference between nonattached and passive. To be passive is to evade responsibility by choosing inaction; to be nonattached is to act always from a place of Love, so that we act appropriately in any situation—even when non-action is called for.

When you speak and act in anger, you remain trapped in the problem you are trying to address. If you speak the truth and don’t be angry, you free yourself and others.

There’s a difference….

 February 5, 2017

There’s a difference between nonattached and passive. To be passive is to evade responsibility by choosing inaction; to be nonattached is to act always from a place of Love, so that we act appropriately in any situation—even when non-action is called for.

Nonattached….

 February 5, 2017

  Nonattached                        Enmeshed 

 Apathetic                            Appropriately engaged  

We mistreat….

 January 29, 2017

We mistreat the people who are patient when we displease them again and again. We cater to the people who will turn away if we displease them once….

Guest Blog by Clara Marin: The Choice….

 January 29, 2017

For years, I avoided the one requirement of spiritual practice: being willing to give up myself. Evidence that my way of being wasn’t working was everywhere: two failed marriages, unsatisfying work and a deep discomfort in my own skin. I might have wondered what was wrong, but my investment in how I viewed myself—gracious, good Clara—was too great. Rohini delivered the truth the only way I could receive it.

Deconstruction began a year and a half ago. For months on end, in every contact with Rohini, I was unmasked to reveal the cruelty, indifference and hate lurking behind my goodness. Rohini would say, “You are cold and cruel,” to which I felt nothing, thus proving her point. The resentment I felt toward her grew, and I desperately looked for any sign that would make it okay, make me okay. My intellectual understanding was useless. I was the victim. Everything I did—from my “Hello” as I walked into class to the ripple of hate I exuded at a garage sale—was unmercifully exposed as inauthentic, hurtful or judgmental. I felt isolated from everyone and it seemed that no one spoke to or even looked at me. Then, I made a choice.

I decided to stop coming to group classes, the main source of my discomfort. As I saw it, no one wanted me there and my absence would free everyone to move on. What I didn’t count on was Rohini’s reply: she would no longer see me privately until I felt ready to rejoin the group. And: I shouldn’t think I was doing anyone a favor by staying away. Her response was as devastating as it was enlightening. Here I was, again, trying to be good while slapping Rohini and my fellow students for being mean to me. Rohini left the door open, and I had to choose whether to enter.

After a few days’ respite from facing anyone or myself, I returned to the cauldron. It was Friday night meditation. No one said anything to me while I sat and burned. Then, as I looked around, it dawned on me that everyone was actually minding their own business. My being there wasn’t the big deal I thought it was. They were simply showing me what I needed to do: focus on my own experience and start owning my practice. Until then, witnessing my experience had never been part of my act.

More months passed before I could crack the shell of who I thought I was. Rohini wasn’t seeing me privately but still guided me. She periodically asked how I felt when my younger sister Andrea was murdered at age 22. A few weeks before her death, Andrea had asked me to intercede with our parents to pay her fare from Oregon to Baltimore for my wedding. My half-hearted attempt went nowhere and she didn’t come. The call announcing her death came a week later. I remember lying in bed, fists clenched, for hours. In the ensuing months, there wasn’t a moment I wasn’t enveloped by the finality of her death. My only escape was dreams in which I would run into her in the street and feel overjoyed that she was alive. Then, for the next 30 years: nothing. Now it all came rushing back, the depth of my indifference playing out before me. I had been too self-consumed to notice her slipping into a life of drugs and crime. I hadn’t seen that, behind her bravado, she was in over her head. I had to accept how easily I had decided that her life had nothing to do with mine, how I could have helped her but chose to do nothing.

I reflected on my father. In his medical career and interests, he valued intellect above all. His relationship with his three children depended on whether we aspired to his ideals: we were within his magic circle or banished from it. I felt special to be his only audience. I recalled a conversation with one of my parents’ caregivers in the days after his funeral. My father enjoyed drives around the town where he and my mother spent their last years. On this particular day, my mother, long bedridden by dementia, had been breathing strangely all morning. Still, my father was anxious to go, insisting that her main caregiver accompany him. Shortly after, they got the call that she had died. My father had chosen to let my mother die without him rather than face his emotions. There had been no love in what he offered me, yet that was the model I chose to follow.

Gradually, the story I had made up about myself loosened its grip. New feelings surprised me. One Sunday after our monthly meditation, Rohini yelled at a student for not taking care of herself in a relationship. I felt such compassion in her angry words, and pain at how complacent and complicit the student was in her own misery. When Rohini had done the same for me, I had felt only harshness. Now I could appreciate her dedication to helping all of us, by whatever means necessary, break out of what makes us miserable and begin to Love.

My practice has just begun. I still rely on habits like abstracting to bypass my experience. But it’s now clear that it is always a choice. Every hour, every second, I can choose to practice what Rohini shares—be with my experience, let whatever comes up come up and function appropriately from the Heart—or not. I can choose to face the truth of what I have called “good” or “me”, or avoid it.

Rohini often voices the phrase from the Shiva Sutras about how the deepest level of spiritual practice occurs “by the mere orientation of the will.” Although I’m far from living in that state, that phrase has a new reality for me. Rohini has given me the gift of realizing that letting go of what isn’t me and resting in the Heart is possible at any moment, if I choose it.

Vindictive / has to have enemies….

 January 29, 2017

  Vindictive / has to have enemies                  Lets things go 

Holds others accountable                               Doormat  

We are all in this together….

 January 22, 2017

We are all in this together; no one is alone here. We all have to join together in appropriate action, and that is only possible from a place of freedom and Love.

Where We Are Today….

 January 22, 2017

For many people, what’s happening now in our country seems unusual. It is not so unusual in my life. I lived for years with someone who had no core, so he was always craving to be the center of attention. Though he didn’t realize it, this person believed his existence depended on the gaze of others. So he put people into three categories:

1. people that adored him and were loyal

2. people that hated him, whom he desired to destroy

3. people that did not count, who did not energize him

The only solution was to bypass and ignore him. He accommodated no one, and no one could say no to him without paying for it. If someone had the temerity to say no, he came back with a vengeance.

I was deluded on so many levels. My first approach was to serve the situation—to allow him to do as he wished as long as he was not crossing any lines that caused pain to anyone. But this arrangement could not last; it became clear that serving the situation had turned into a process of enabling him. My belief that he wanted to learn and grow in the same way I did was completely wrong. Modeling behavior for him only encouraged his feeling of entitlement; he believed he was always appropriate, so he was unteachable and didn’t respond to modeling.

I was foolish because I could not believe he did not want what was best for everyone. He did believe that what he wanted was best for everyone, but in his mind what was right for everyone was what gratified him, so he did and decided for others on that basis.

What snookered me more than any other action were his occasional moments of sanity. I loved those moments and thought he did, too. I encouraged them and praised them, only to find he did not like them because he did not feel like he was in charge at those times.

Needless to say, I left this relationship. Once out, I knew I needed to own his traits in order to be free, and neither create another such person in my life nor become that person myself.

We all now live in an environment dominated by a similar personality. Accordingly, we should all own the fourchotomies below as a way to free ourselves, get off the grid, and function appropriately. Reacting, or fighting in certain ways, only feeds that kind of person. In my case, I learned to look like a nobody that did not interest him, so he left me alone and I was able to act in my own interest and the interest of others. We are all in this together; no one is alone here. We all have to join together in appropriate action, and that is only possible from a place of freedom and Love.

No core

Inwardly grounded