We are surrounded by words most of our day, and senses all of our day. These powerful tools help us navigate and interact with our reality, but as the Sutras tell us, they can all be that which pulls us away from our true reality, the heart. This can be seen and felt in interpersonal relationships, where the practice can help us be of greater support for others, and ourself, not by reaching out, through our words and actions, but by reaching in, for true centered insight. We find that when we can hold our awareness in our heart and slip through the Eight-Fold Lassos of the mind and senses, new levels of nourishment, freedom and support become available. Ultimately, we will see, that this is possible because our reality is not separate from our heart, but rather, springs from it, and we can too with a little practice.

“kavargādiṣu māheśvaryādyāḥ paśumātaraḥ //

In the world of letters, words and sentences, the eight energies of the Lord, who are the mothers of beasts (take control and hold him).”
The words of our mind and experiences of our senses are like lassos that are constantly ensnaring us. As Paul Reps once quoted of the Upanishads, “who is that effulgent one directing eye to form and ear to sound?” That effulgent one is us, but the world of words and senses have pulled our awareness away from that effulgence. Through our practice we find that we can rise above these lassos of the mind and senses by connecting to our heart— to use our practice to reconnect with our true nature as we speak, listen and live, and by doing so we find that not only do our words become clearer, but our hearts become open, and a new level of nourishment and growth is able to flow.

Levels of Awareness
1. Teaching from the heart is an expression common to our tradition. This implies the ability to put words together in a coherent way, listen to a teacher, or perform a task, while simultaneously keeping one’s awarensss in the heart.
2. Initially this sound like our heart and our lives are in two separate places, and that we are trying to be in two places at once when we practice, but according to the science of yoga this is not the case.
3. Our heart is the source of our reality, it’s where Shiva and Shakti begin to manifest as our reality.
  1. In the yogic chart of manifestation, we see this as Iccha Shakti, the first manifested tattva, which is described as an urge, not a thought or word yet.
  2. This urge is Shiva and Shakti, manifesting themself in the world, as the Sutra tells us:
    1. “When Lord Śiva desires to manifest themself in this world, then svātantrya śakti is transformed into the energy of will (icchā śakti). ”
  3. We experience this everyday, in literally every action or thought of our lives— there is always an urge which spurs the thought or action, an urge that we might say we ‘feel” before we think and act.
4. In the Science of Mantra, and language, the heart is the source of our words power, the Paśyanti level of awareness. From the heart, this urge rises up in us to the throat, the Madhyama level of awareness, where we know what we will say, but have not yet formed the words to say it.
  1. In the tattvas, the next level of manifestation is knowledge, jnana shakti. When our words are in our throat, for example, we know what we will say but have not said it yet.
  2. Take a moment to swallow, and feel this area in yourself. Try to hold your awareness there, you’ll find that it requires focus and surrender, as our awareness is usually held in our head.
5. And from the throat, words seem to escape our mouths instantaneously, like a slide. It’s as if there is an exponential factor at play, where the slope from the heart to the throat is very slight, but from the throat to the mouth becomes steeper, and from the mouth to the rest of differentiation it’s practically a cliff. This is the Vaikhari Level of awareness, and is the space from which we usually interact with our reality.
  1. From the perspective of the tattvas, this is the level of action, kriya shakti, and represents the moment before Shiva and Shakti are fully teased apart.
  2. When the words leave our mouth, all of manifestation begins to take form, and we can quickly lose our center and begin to suffer from it.
6. We see in this sutra that words and senses are like lassos that are constantly ensnaring us, pulling us away from our center.
  1. “In the center of brahmarandhra is situated the supreme energy of Lord Śiva, the Divine Mother, surrounded by the eight divine mothers of beasts. In their hands, they hold the lassos (brahma pāśa) which entangle and bind one with limitation, keeping one from the unlimited state. These supreme terrible (mahāghorā) śaktis, create disturbance and ignorance again and again, and are very difficult to conquer.”
  2. We are told that as we interact with our daily life we are surrounded by 8 Deities: 3 dieties of the mind, the Manas, Ahamkara and Buddhi, and 5 more deities of the Senses. Whether we are simply looking out our window, eating a meal, talking with friends, or weed whacking, these lassos are constantly being tossed at us in the form of tag lines, colors, sounds, etc.
  3. Being caught by them means that our energy starts to flow out, instead of in, and when that occurs we are ‘played’ by our mind and senses, like a puppet on a string, and forget our effulgent nature:
    1. “words and sentences pierce their minds and make them weep, make than smile, make them laugh, make them joyous, make them happy and make them sad...By the penetration of the sounds of letters, words and sentences, they are oppressed with the delusion (moha) created by those who rule limited beings (paśus). This is the essence of this sūtra.”
Working with it
1. The Sutra describes two methods of working with this situation, one way that ensnares us and another that liberates us.
2. The ensnaring method occurs when we identify personally with the words and senses we are presented with. This is called the Savikalpa method.
3. The liberating method occurs when we don’t identify with the senses and mind while interacting with them, this is called the nirvikalpa method.
  1. The ‘vikalpa’ part of these two words means “thoughts", that is, how much do the words and senses that surround you stir your mind?
    1. Can you interact with your world with minimal thought? Is this possible? Does it make you dysfunctional or heroic?
  2. We learned in the Sutras describing the workings of our mind, that the mind needs to identify itself personally with our surroundings in order to categorize it and understand it, there is no avoiding that. We aren’t here to reject our reality, that’s far from ShambhavAnanda Yoga.
  3. There is a necessary percentage of focus that it takes to navigate our reality, as Rudi told us in his magic ratio— which has been interpreted as giving our outer life anywhere from a mere 5% of our awareness to 30-40% of our awareness— but no matter which interpretation, the ration clearly indicates that the outer world of words and senses only require a minority portion of your awareness.
  4. Because problems arise, when we invest too much awareness into the horizontal world, and word. We become ensnared by our mind and senses, dragged around by the news, for example, or even being deeply hurt by a casual, but maybe thoughtless, comment made by someone who loves you, like a friend or family member.
4. The Nirvikalpa method of observing our mind and senses has to do with surrendering the words and senses while we interact with them, in order that we can stay connected to our heart, their true source. This is the calm at the eye of the storm, the deep centering before the martial arts showdown, or more yogically speaking, the perfectly balanced Shiva Nataraj at the center of the ring of fire.
  1. As always, the mind has a hard time with this concept. How can we surrender what is being said to us without missing it completely? Doesn’t surrender mean to let go of? What if I surrender my hammer while I hammer, does that mean it flies across the room?
    1. Though these are honest questions, which can never be solved by the mind, they are incredibly easy questions solved by practice with even the most minimal effort.
    2. As Babaji teaches: “When I become totally present there is no Baba. There is no past. There is no future. I am totally present. When I was walking every morning in Hawaii I would go to this big soccer field where Faith and I would walk for an hour. There was no past and there was no future. Yet, I was walking. I wasn’t thinking about me or what I was doing or where I was, but simultaneously I was aware of all those things, even though they had absolutely no hold on me. I observed them from a distance and I functioned. I didn’t trip over anything or fall down or bump around. That is what it is like. It is exhausting to be in your ego. You have to spend so much energy to support its misinterpretations of reality. The ego is a necessary part of living in the world, but I don’t take it seriously.”
      1. So, No, your hammer doesn’t go flying, you don’t trip and fall, etcetera— what you do is actually feel present and part of what’s happening.
    3. In the tattvas we see that the mind sits below the level of the heart, it is in the 14th tattva, where as the level of awareness we are describing is the third, fourth and fifth tattva. This practice requires that you work from a place that is more expansive than the mind. If you rely solely on your mind and senses, you can’t get there, you gotta start relating to a part of yourself that is beyond those tools.
    4. The path there, according to our teachers and the Sutras, is the heart. We breathe into our hearts while we interact with our mind and senses, and this keeps us moving up the tattvas towards our true nature.
      1. Sounds so obvious, but it’s really that true and simple. That’s because the path itself is very straightforward, but the experience of walking the path is where all the teachings unfold.
Rudi’s QUote
1. Though the teachers of our lineage have supplied us with a myriad of ways in which to undertake this particular effort, I found a satsang from Rudi that felt really helpful. He begins by telling us that our life is more than a business exchange, that even in business, we need to know that the other person cares about our well being.
2. We all need to know that the other person supports us on an energetic level, a level below the words. It’s not enough just to listen, but we have to listen from our hearts. It’s not enough just to speak, we have to speak from our hearts. It’s not enough to do the dishes, we have to scrub them from our hearts. This is where we find a level of nourishment that makes life worth living, and life livable at all.
  1. He gives the example of babies who were orphaned after World War II. It was not enough to simply have them in a crib, with enough food and water, they needed to be held, to feel someone wishing them into existence.
  2. He gives the analogy of feeding a baby as the daily exchange we might have with each other, and how even when you do this, you can’t stop there, you have to burp the baby. I’ll admit, this sounds funny, but don’t let yourself get pinned down to the physical metaphor, this is about our practice of course.
  3. This burping process represents the ‘surrender’ required to digest our daily life interactions. We give and take, give and take, but we must take time to surrender, to let the air bubbles out, and allow ourselves to sink back to the source of our reality in the heart.
  4. You aren’t burping anyone, you are using your practice to allow yourself to be burped. This is the little bit of surrender you can bring to a meeting, and throughout a meeting, that makes all the difference not only for yourself but everyone in the room. It’s not constant, it’s like a baby— you feed, then you burp. It’s along the way, and it keeps everything moving.
  5. This does not have to occur with people exclusively, for example, ShambhavAnanda once said in satsang that to really enjoy a hike, don’t spend all o your time taking pictures, or talking about how beautiful it is— take time to relax and connect to nature in your heart and navel, and harmonize with it.
  6. So we see that the greatest gift you can give someone, and yourself, is not the gift of our words or our senses, but to be connected to our hearts while giving/receiving those words and senses. This is just another way to understand the work of surrender that our practice revolves around, but it’s a way that probably comes up for you everyday, and a way that can help you support your fellow sangha members, and yourself, from within.

Conversing Consciously: Shiva Sutra 3.19

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