Threshold to the Divine: Speedy Sutra 3.25

Video Below: Yoga for first half hour, Philosophy and meditation beings at 29:00

Shoshoni has an incredible Torii outside of its main temple, a huge threshold you walk through marking a transition from the mundane to the celestial. We walk through many thresholds in our daily life, and even though they might not have a temple on the other side, we can still use these transition points to make the room we enter more sacred within ourselves.

When we walk through a doorway, we are usually caught up in the anticipation of the joy we expect to find on the other side of it, finding little bits of fleeting satisfaction in the many rooms of our life, but rarely enough to fulfill us. Meditation is the practice of opening the door to our heart without losing ourself in any particular object. This practice allows us to expand our heart’s threshold in a very natural yet profound way, until the joy that we’re used to chasing after seems to comes to us. 

This is because the greatest joy in life is that of an open heart. As Sri Shambhavananda teaches, “Happiness is something that shouldn’t be dependent on external things. It should be an experience of your true nature…Having that realization you become free. Free to enjoy the world fully, free to be a part of many things, but never to lose yourself in any of them.” It is the search for inner joy that frees us from our outer suffering, which is why Shiva Sutra 3.25 also teaches that “Karma can only be overcome if it is enjoyed, it cannot be cast aside or abandoned,” meaning the real work of overcoming our karma isn’t in accepting or rejecting the objects of our life, but in keeping our hearts open as we encounter those objects. 

So the next time you are passing through a threshold towards your object of joy, be it a refrigerator door or an office door— try slowing down your gait, exhale to surrender the object your approaching and inhale to drink a little bit of the present you are walking within. Because this door of the present, which opens in your heart, is the only threshold we must pass through to find our joy. And if you’re lucky enough, you might look back and see someone you can hold that door of the present open for, allowing them the opportunity to open their heart as well.