Primary Essay
Shine, Refine, Refresh
Growing a Garden of Inner Awareness
Anyone who has farmed or gardened knows that its a lot of work. Sure, anyone can go down to the grocery store for their ‘daily bread’, but very few people can sustain the rich soil it takes to grow such nourishment on their own. Buying a bag of soil and seeds can get you through one harvest, but what does it take to grow a sustainable garden that can not only support you, but those around you? That level of growth requires not only technique but also commitment, and that’s what this training is here to give you— tools and technique, as well as time for those methods to take root. We might not be growing actual carrots and bell peppers, but we definitely are growing consciousness and open hearts.
2,000 years ago, Patanjali set forth 3 simple guidelines to support the heart shaped farms of his fellow yogis. “The active practices of yoga can be simplified under three headings: discipline, self-enquiry, and surrender. These practices diminish the mental turmoil that causes pain, and make it easier to focus on the goal of enlightenment” (Yoga Sutras, Shambhavananda Translation, 2.1-2.2) These ‘active practices of yoga’ make your experience of life not only free of suffering, but one filled with growth. Because farming might be a lot of work, but its good work— it makes you happy and healthy along the way— and the same goes for meditation.
Shine Your Awareness through Tapasya
The most essential ingredient in any garden is light, which is a great way to understand the meaning of the word Tapasya. The first way to understand the ‘active practice of Tapasya’ is to look at Tapasya’s literal definition— a light, heat or flame. This definition refers to the light of our awareness that burns brightly in our hearts and illuminates the world around us. As the Shiva Sutras describe it, “The word heart (hṛidaye) does not mean our own physical heart. Rather, the word “heart” means the light of consciousness (cit prakāśa) which is the background, the basis, of the existence of the whole universe.” (Swami Lakshmanjoo commentary to Shiva Sutra 1.15). We commonly use this light of our hearts and awareness to navigate our external lives, solving problems at work, seeking out entertaining activities, etc, but when we begin to redirect this light source to the soil of our hearts, joy starts to grow right in our own backyards, so to speak. The joy that we once thought was outside of us starts to bubble up from within us. This is the beginning of all spiritual practice, according to lineage teacher Swami Muktananda, which brings us to the second half of the term Tapasya.
Turning your awareness to your heart isn’t easy— there are constant distractions and crises outside of us that require our awareness, and even if we close our eyes and ears, there are perhaps even more distractions within us in the form of thoughts. That’s why Tapasya is not only defined as light, but also as regularity and discipline. Meditating for a day can give you a spiritual experience, but meditating everyday can give you a spiritual life. Which is why Patanjali wrote nearly 2,000 years ago, “[Only] Regular, whole-hearted application over time [can] create a foundation whereby the practice is firmly integrated” (YS,1.14). Similar to a garden, it is regularity that grows the greatest harvest, nothing can replace it. This was also echoed by Swami Rudrananda just 40 years ago when he taught, “Effort over time equals growth,” effort is the light, and time is the regularity of that light.
You might say that regularity itself is the greatest asset of any aspirant. Nothing can replace it, and when in place it seems to solve all of our problems, as Sri ShambhavAnanda teaches:
“…These are the wild swings of the mind. The antidote for that condition is to establish a regular practice. The mind is much like a horse that has never had a saddle on it. It needs to be disciplined. If you create a structured, disciplined practice and work at it every day, whether you feel at one with the universe or tiny and insignificant, you will obtain results.You will develop the ability to ride the waves of the mind, so to speak. Being ecstatic one day and a skeptic the next are just fluctuations in your mind. Meditation will begin to smooth all that out for you. The fluctuations you are experiencing are not unusual” (Spontaneous Recognition, 23).
Shambhavananda Yoga recommends meditating twice daily, once in the morning before you start your day and once in the evening after the challenges and successes of your day. Eventually you will ideally sit for 30 minutes each session, but for many that is a number that takes effort over time to achieve. In the beginning it is only essential to establish a regular amount of time that works for you and then stick with it— regularity is more effective than any single amount of time you would meditate.
Free Write: What activities do you do every day? Why do you do them everyday? What’s the benefit? How much time can you commit to your practice on a daily basis? What benefits do you foresee from that?
Once we have a practice established on our cushion, the next level of Tapasya occurs when we bring that practice into our lives. Because as every gardener knows, when that light of awareness starts to shine, it doesn’t just grow what you planted, it also grows those old patterns sprinkled everywhere in our soil— weeds. Weeding a wandering mind ensures that the energy we gain from meditation goes to the plants we want to grow, and doesn’t just get sucked up by our old patterns. Imagine growing a garden, but not weeding it?! That’s why we bring our practice into our life, its as essential as the practice itself.
Question: There seems to be such a multitude of opportunities available in this world. I have so many interests that I get bogged down in deciding what I should do when.
Babaji: I would choose meditation and yoga as a priority. There is such a smorgasbord of issues to put our interest and our energy into. Some are fun, some are hard, and some are easy. I believe taking care of your own inner condition should be a top priority. This doesn’t mean you have to reject the things of the physical world. I am an amateur ham radio operator, and I love dealing with technology, so that is one thing I do for fun. I work out, and I do water aerobics. Those things are productive. However, while I am doing them, I also am doing my practice. My practice allows me to be more focused on Morse code. My practice allows me to get more out of the time I spend exercising. I am not exercising and thinking about what’s for dinner and where am I going next. Many people put on headphones or watch TV and zone out. They are not focused at all on what they are doing.
It is okay to do things that interest you; it’s how you do them that makes a difference. If something is so strong that it pulls you away from your center, then you have to reevaluate what you are doing because it means you found something that is so stimulating to you mentally that it is draining you. This doesn’t mean you don’t do it. Those things that challenge us the most also hold the greatest potential for our development. You can do whatever you like. I can’t decide for you.
After a certain point in my life I just threw it all up in the air and kept working and life began to resolve itself. I didn’t have to make any decisions except to surrender or not. Life is meant to be enjoyed. You are not here to punish yourself or to suffer. If you are suffering, then meditation is the vehicle to help you deal with it.
People want their problems to magically go away. They want to be saved from themselves. However, as individuals, we must be consciously engaged in the process every day for it to work. Your ongoing consciousness will have a cumulative effect. It is similar to putting a percentage of your income into a bank or savings account. Your income builds—it’s amazing how it builds. Often people think, “Oh, I can’t save anything.” Then they squander their money on Subway sandwiches and lattes.
Energetically you must become very, very, very conscious of what’s draining you and what’s pulling you out of yourself. Then the job is not to reject it but to figure out how to not let that happen. You will then become a very functional human being, something we need more of.
Free Write: How can you bring your practice into your hobbies, or health routines? What activities pull you from center, or drain you? How can you bring your practice more effectively into those circumstances?
Refine Your Effort with Surrender
Tapasya is about regularity over time, quantity, but the second active practice is more about quality. Ishwara Pranidhana translates roughly to Surrender, and describes the way in which our practice works and feels. We aren’t pushing or pulling our patterns towards or away from us, we are letting them go, consciously. This is the inner attitude that the gardener brings to their work, the way in which they work.
“Pay attention to your attitude. You can build tension by practicing with the wrong attitude. To develop a strong and powerful practice, you should emphasize quality, not quantity. You don’t need to meditate three extra hours a day or tackle some new and complicated practice. Having a regular practice over time equals growth. But, sometimes students have a strong need for more. They are seeking freedom and wanting to find relief from the tensions that are overwhelming them. When you are going through a difficult cycle in your practice, an opportunity is created for you to deeply release your tensions. At such times a little more focus and effort may be helpful, but you shouldn’t just decide to make ten times more effort. You will become extremely out of balance as a result. You will work extremely hard, then you will collapse, and then you can’t do anything for a while. Regularity is the key.” (SP, 24)
Our inner attitude, and the way that we practice, plays a huge role in our practice overall. Practicing with surrender means that we are applying effort to our practice, but without building tension— A balance that constantly evolves as we practice. In the beginning, though, it is important to understand that our work on the cushion should have a quality of gentleness. For example, if you want to pull a weed out by its roots, you can’t just yank on it, or it will break in your hand. You have to feel the weed as you pull, and work with it sensitively in order to fully release it from the soil. That is how surrender works in us, it is effortful, yet sensitive. As the Shiva Sutras describe it, it is simultaneously intense yet completely natural—
“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. By that force, this great yogī directs their mind to that point of supreme God consciousness” (Shiva Sutras, Swami Lakshmanjoo translation, 2.2).
The idea that our practice can be both intense and natural might seem like an impossible balance, but in reality these opposites actually support each other and are essential. If our effort isn’t natural and from the heart, it is impossible to grow it to new levels. A major league pitcher, for example, can only throw 98 mph if their form is completely natural and without strain, otherwise they will wear out or injure themselves instantly. Patanjali taught that the seat we use for meditation should radiate the qualities of effortless effort, perseverance without tension— more descriptions that seem like opposites. Yet what we find when trying to sit still for meditation is that Oonly a relaxed posture can be sustained over time. We can’t force ourself into stillness, we can only arrive there by letting go of this or that itch with surrender. Similarly, a mantra repeated with willfulness is just more mental agitation. Everywhere we look in meditation we see that the practice of surrender is essential for quantity to become quality.
Free Write: In what spheres of your life do you work with surrender, or ‘effortless effort’? Think about aspects of your job, relationships, exercise routines, etc. that require skillful means to be effective.
Refresh your Soil through Svadyaya, Self-Reflection.
Your daily meditation practice, Tapasya, and the way in which you practice, Surrender, are by far the most essential ingredients in growing a fruitful garden. If we had to put it into a ratio, you could say that Shining and Refining comprise 85% of your work as a meditation teacher, and the last 15% is Refreshing the soil.
Just like in life, fertilizer is a supplement, not the thing itself. In our current analogy, fertilizer represents the reflective aspects of a being a meditation teacher, ie. reading sacred texts, keeping a journal, and discussing your practice with sangha. All of these require that you have a meditation practice in place and that you are using that practice on and off the cushion. In this way fertilizing comes after the fact, but nonetheless, as we all know, when used correctly fertilizer can take a garden from so-so, to so-amazing!
Fertilizing takes many forms. In this course we will be using the Yoga Sutras, Shiva Sutras, and Lineage satsang texts to supplement our practice. These texts are concentrated and full of life; you don’t need to read a whole book to be inspired, you can just read a few pages or paragraphs and watch as your garden of awareness comes to life. Let yourself encounter these texts in a new and different way than a normal textbook. Sit and get quiet inside before you read and allow their rich vitamins to float down into your heart. Read Sutras and satsangs like poetry, or a haiku — as if they were not ‘thoughts’ but reflections on nature itself, ie. your true nature, the Self.
It’s also important to realize that working with sacred texts often requires a unique kind of discipline. Sacred texts and teachings in the Yogic tradition are known as Śastras. The root “Śasa” means ‘discipline.’ Understanding a teaching, a Śastra, is therefore said to require discipline. You can’t just read it once and understand it; it takes effort over time. You have to live it to understand it.
As Jai Deva Singh, foremost translator of the Shiva Sutras, writes, “Śastras expounded the fundamental principles of reality but at the same time laid down certain rules, certain norms of conduct, which had to be observed by those who studied the particular Śastra. A Śastra was not simply a way of thought, but also a way of life” (Shiva Sutras, Jai Deva Singh translation, Introduction) So in order for us to understand a sacred text, or satsang text, we have to be willing to live that teaching as a ‘rule’ or ‘norm of conduct’ for a period of time. As Patanjali says in his opening line of the Yoga Sutras, “The following is guidebook for the study of Yoga,” a guidebook directs you on a journey, like a map. They are meant to be used in conjunction with your personal effort. Śastras are not just read, but lived.
This unique kind of learning allows understanding to happen gradually, without the influence of the mind. We find that the teachings arrive in us, like fruit arrives on a tree, not all at once, but gradually, silently over time. And just like a tree, it takes a lot of energy to produce this fruit. Lineage teacher Swami Rudrananda said that spiritual work costed him “tremendously,” meaning it took much personal effort to achieve the teachings he was given. As they said in the Marvel movie Doctor Strange, “That kind of reward comes at a great price, but we’re not talking about money here.” The price of understanding in the Yogic tradition is paid with your personal effort in your actual life — what does it really take for you to do more mantra during your day? What does it really take for you to surrender when they’re wrong and you’re right? It takes everything you’ve got, it costs a lot! But of course, we are rewarded a thousand fold, and what we are letting go of is nothing more than the shackles we have grown accustomed to wearing. So it’s a very worthwhile investment.
Free Write
When in life have you combined learning with real life practice?
Another form of fertilizer comes from the compost you have in your kitchen, the food scraps of your meditation meals. This is the time you take for journaling your personal reflections after practicing. Like the compost in your kitchen, it should be compiled from your actual practice, the work that is taking place within you, as opposed to spending your time producing thought waves about how meditation is defined by another, or how to solve problems that aren’t even your own. Journaling about meditation is a slippery slope, as most of our journaling in life is based on the mind, our likes and dislikes. Meditation journaling tends to be simpler in that it is a way for you to process the work you are doing, not create more thoughts to surrender. This doesn’t mean you can’t let yourself go; free writing is an incredible resource. It just means it is even more productive when you can free write while staying connected to the inner state of awareness you are seeking to freely write about. Not only is it possible, it’s the Shambhava Uppaya, the Shambhava Path: the practice of keeping your awareness inside while interacting with the world around you.
Free Write
Take a moment to write a haiku (5-7-5) about the room you are in right now. This shows you you the power of free writing in the present.
And finally, composting also occurs naturally through spirited discussion among practitioners, which we hope to facilitate in this class. It’s important to recognize that having a discussion about meditation with someone who doesn’t actively meditate can often times be an energy drain, or a confusing experience. This is because the work of meditation is not known by the mind, but by the heart. Meditation discussion is an art that requires internal awareness while we communicate externally. That’s why it’s important to keep discussions about meditation simple, and to talk about your direct experience, rather than abstract concepts, whenever possible. We hope to show you by example how to discuss meditation productively, allowing the exchange to lead to not only more understanding, but deeper practice overall. Because meditation discussions are a great fertilizer, but make sure the scraps you are composting come directly from your own plate.
Free Write
Try to stay present for the next minute. What practice did you use? What obstacles did you encounter? How would you describe your experience? These are ways of talking directly about your experience.