Absolute Sincerity: Shiva Sutra 3.14

We all know the value of sincerity in our daily lives. When a friend sincerely thanks you, or someone sincerely enjoys your cooking, for example, you can feel it in your heart. This kind of sincerity is also a cornerstone of our practice, as it is required for our work to truly penetrate the obscurations that limit our experience of our true nature. When we practice with sincerity we can move mountains of tension, without sincerity those mountains don’t move anywhere. In Sanskrit the term is called “akrita”, unartificial, and is described as the combination of natural effort and intense desire, what a powerful force! In the practice of ShambhavAnanda Yoga, we interact with this notion as “the wish to grow”, and seek it in everything we do with an ‘open heart’. Let’s jump in and begin our exploration of sincere, unartificial practice from the heart, and find out why it’s so important, and how we can find more of it!

3.14: “yathā tatra tathānyatra // This [absolute independence] is the same in the external world as it was in samādhi.”

This sutra says that the Siddha’s experience of life is the same on and off the cushion. For those of us who are not yet at this level of mastery, how can we benefit and interpret this? 

I think we could safely say that this Sutra is teaching that those seeking a ‘spiritual life’ should not limit their experience of spirituality to the cushion, but should seek it in every facet of their reality. In fact, this sutra teaches that a sign of attainment is the very fact that you have the same experience of reality whether you are meditating in your cave or eating dinner with your in-laws. 

As the Sutra tells us: “He is always independent. He is independent here, he is independent there, he is independent everywhere. (Svacchanda Tantra 7.260)” 

Sounds amazing, but how do we reach such a mountain top? To put it simply, this Sutra implies that If we want to have a spiritual life then we have to bring the same level of effort we use on our cushion into our external life. Of course this doesn’t mean closing your eyes and doing mantra during a board meeting, but it might mean doing some mantra in your own office before a big meeting, and being skillful with your practice during it to stay clear, present and open. 

As Mahadev recently said in his Marco Polo post, he has found new reminders during his day to re-set his inner connection, specifically the time he leaves a patient’s room and is disinfecting his hands. Many of you may have those built in reminders throughout your day, because as ShambhavAnanda Yogi’s we are all very keen to the idea that we must strive to use our practice in our life, as it is the true arena, and litmus test, for our practice and growth. 

Because the inner proclamation of ‘I am going to do more practice today’ doesn’t necessarily yield the results we seek— we’ve all said that at breakfast only to vaguely recall it by dinner. That’s why Lakshmanjoo calls these proclamations “artificial”, like a flavor made in a lab that lacks any real content. You can say “I am Shiva”, but there is an inner degree of surrender that has to occur to make that statement mean something. As we know, we need the container, the practice itself, but we can’t stop there, we have to practice like we mean it. 

As the Sutra writes: “That reality of the self, where unartificial universal independence will shine, should be sought with great reverence. (Spanda Kārikā 1.7)”

In my sadhana, I first understood the idea of “unartificial” practice through Rudi’s ‘Wish to Grow’. In describing it, Rudi tells us to repeat the phrase “I deeply wish to grow”, and to listen for the artificial quality in our voice. He says that the first 100 times we say it we can hear that we don’t ‘mean it’. So we say it again and again and again, each time reaching for more sincerity. This is how we reach the unartifical level of our practice— not by deciding to be less artificial, but by practicing until we are less artificial. It is only through our practice that we can merge with Shiva, not through our minds or through any external manipulation. That’s what make real spiritual practice so rare, and the independence it yields so powerful (as we saw in the last sutra). 

In Sutra 2.3 we saw Lakshmanjoo described this kind of rare effort when he said, “your effort must not be artificial (akṛita). It must be absolutely natural, filled with intense desire and fervent longing, and originating from the center of your heart.” From the perspective of our mind it is almost impossible to imagine something as both ‘absolutely natural’ and ‘filled with intense desire’. When we try to be ‘natural’, our mind’s drift. When we try to be ‘intense’ our mind is filled with doership. We can only discover such a rare state of being through practice.

Let’s do a little wish to grow practice, and see how we approach this in ourselves. Afterwards we can share a little insight into our personal work towards unartificial independence.