Text Resources
Text Resources
From the Shambhavananda Yoga Ashram Text, “SACRED JOURNEY”
Heart Meditation - Sacred Journey
“The heart is the hub of all holy places. Go there and roam in it.”
- Bhagavan Nityananda
“Inside of you is a state of being that is totally pure and clear and at peace. While your attention is caught in the movie of the world, that state exists in you. The heart meditation will help you experience this state. It is from that state of clarity that all creativity flows.” - S. Shambhavananda
This meditation practice involves bringing your focus to the en- ergy center located in the center of your chest, next to the physi- cal heart. This center is called anahata chakra and it can serve as a powerful entryway to higher realms of awareness. The spiritual heart is the seat of consciousness.
The Practice
First, watch your breathing without any judgment. Notice each time you inhale and exhale. Pay special attention to your heart area, right in the center of your chest. As you inhale, expand in the heart area as much as you can. Allow the breath to be natural, not forced. It isn’t necessary to take very deep breaths in order to focus on your heart. Visualize and feel your heart opening like a flower opening. This expansion is not bound by the limits of the physical body, but can continue endlessly.
As you exhale, relax in the heart area. Notice any feelings of peacefulness and quiet. Each time you inhale, feel expansion. Each time you exhale feel the peace and relaxation. As you watch your breathing, begin to release all thoughts, emotions and mental activity. Feel them dissolve and melt away. Continue to follow your breath into your heart. Bring the sense of self that you carry in your mind down to your heart by shifting attention from your mind to your heart. Breathe into your heart center and let go of your desire, definition, and philosophy and simply feel your heart center expand. Hold your attention in your heart as you slowly release your breath.
As the stresses of everyday life swirl around you, it is helpful to take time to center yourself in your heart. When you do this practice, you will begin to experience the nature of your heart center. As you become more and more aware of your spiritual heart, it will become easier for you to let go of your thoughts, emotions, and obscurations. You will begin to experience a state of peace and clarity that you can carry with you in all situations or circumstances.
FROM Babaji’s Book, “SPIRITUAL PRACTICE”
Babaji, what do you mean when you talk about digesting your tensions?
Digesting means that you use the breath to break up the tension. Perhaps you are focused on the thought, “I don’t have something that I really need or want and I never seem to get it.” You keep going over and over it in your mind. “I want it. I don’t have it. I need it. I want it.” What you should do is use the breath to break your obsession with the problem. In doing that you are breaking the barrier that stands between you and what’s next in your life.
If you open up to spiritual growth and to what is possible, then you will be able to bring about change. I have that happen to me thou- sands and thousands of times. I reach an impasse, and I am stuck. Nothing is working and everything sucks. I have been in very dra- matic situations over the years. Over time I have learned to use my breath to bring my awareness inside and not to use my energy to feed what I have perceived to be an obscuration or obstacle. That’s how you break the cycles. People get into cycles of depression and fear. They have irrational cycles where they believe they have to have this or they are not going to be happy. People get crazy about many things.
You can break these negative cycles in your life by learning how to meditate. Meditation is an art form. It’s like learning to play music.
You can’t just sit down and play the piano. You have to learn the notes. To meditate you have to learn how to use the breath. You have to learn the mantra, and you have to practice. At first you are awk- ward and clumsy, and you forget and you get lost. But it’s a process, and if you make a commitment to that process, believe me, it will change your life. You will find a level of internal freedom that can’t be purchased in any other way. No drug, no experience, no place, and no Hawaiian beach is going to bring you that kind of experience and that kind of freedom.
The world is what it is and you can thoroughly enjoy it. You don’t need to reject it. You need to understand your mind, to learn how to work with it and how to work with your tensions. When you can dissolve an obstacle that seems enormous and has defined a terrible point in your life, you free up a quantity of energy that has the poten- tial to bring you a richer, fuller, and more creative life. But when you are buried under the obscurations of fear and of anxiety and you feed these feelings over and over and over again that’s called getting old. When you get old enough you think, “Oh my god, what have I been doing? I don’t have anything thing I want.” I remember when there were yuppies. I don’t think they exist anymore, but they said, “Those who die with the most toys win.” And I think to myself, “Right, what do you win?” Another round!
Sometimes I wonder why my spiritual work is not making me happier.
There are many things outside in the world that will make us very happy, but the roots for lasting happiness are found inside ourselves. It is not that life is totally a bitch for everyone or that you will never find happiness. It is just that pursuing happiness on a horizontal level and trying to manipulate the world around you horizontally to attain what you want will not bring you anything permanent. It will bring you a temporary, “Ah, that was wonderful.” Then you may spend your time and energy trying to get it again.
It is inner peace that you are working for. It is inner awareness and the ability to break everything down into a flow of energy. This process breaks your karma down. The best practices to accomplish that are very intense pranayama or mantra practice. It is the ability to untangle your mind, emotions, and karmic bond from your negative tensions that allows you to surrender. When you are able to do that, you can win a lot of battles that you could never win with your will, desire or anger. Sometimes you become very angry and you want to smack somebody or attack life in some way. Or maybe you want to run away from it. But you can’t run away, no matter where you go or what you do. Ultimately, when you stop working to grow and evolve, you are no longer able to sustain your spiritual growth. I have often seen students who attain a fairly high level of growth, only to suc- cumb to some very mundane unresolved issue.
In contrast you can go through hell physically, mentally, and emo- tionally and feel very good because you know you are growing. You begin to understand in a deeper way that genuine freedom, bliss,
and happiness come from inside. Some students will use what I just talked about to reject the world, to reject relationships, or to reject jobs. That is not what I am saying at all. If you find yourself in a par- ticular arena of life, in this or that situation, that is where your karma has taken you, and you have to work it out. If you just run away from it all the time and don’t deal with it, then you have to come back again. So you might as well confront your issues now. Then you can avoid wasting about twenty years to get focused enough to begin to meditate again.
I have been feeling very challenged by many issues in my life. How can I deal with this? p.77
I can honestly say my most annoying, biggest challenges usually brought me the most growth. What does that mean? It means I had to work very hard to get above some of the people and things in my life that at the time seemed unjust, uncalled for, and unnecessary. That hard work helped me to jump light years ahead of where I was, whereas when things were going the way I wanted them to, I put less energy into my growth process.
Rudi referred to the challenges of life as fuel--fuel to burn, fuel to heat up this inner purification that takes place when you begin a spiritual practice. He said our tensions create natural resources. We have mountains of fuel inside to use and the way one burns these tensions (this fuel) is through the process of surrender. Surrender means not rejecting, but releasing, our tensions, and this process cre- ates a chemistry. We sometimes experience changes in our psychic systems that feel like heat literally starting to burn up our tensions. We don’t even have to know what they are. We are able to create such a tremendous flow and heat that we are performing a massive purification. There were times that physically I was so hot in winter weather that I would wear a tee shirt because I was burning up so much stuff from deep inside. The difficult things in our lives hold the greatest potential because they symbolize a big chunk of locked up energy in our bodies and nervous systems. We don’t have to go look- ing for trouble. Trouble usually finds us, but we have to know how to handle it when it shows up.
What should I do about feeling lonely when I meditate? I do better when I am meditating with others. p. 36
Loneliness? If you are a great meditator, you aren’t alone. We often have the need for support. We have the need for interaction because it helps us hold onto who we are. It helps us reinforce the definition that we have both of ourselves and the world that we live in. Medita- tion is not about applying a definition to ourselves or to the world, but discovering who we really are and how to be at peace with that consciousness--that state of being that exists within us. Certainly we all like company. There is no doubt about that. As a species we like being together, even though we run away and hide in our little holes, burrows, and apartments. Right?
I understand the feeling, but whenever I feel a little disconnected, I always go inside, and I feel perfectly content. If we become de- pendent and overly attached to a person, place, or thing, then that becomes an obscuration that prevents us from discovering our true nature. Going inward and having a spiritual sensitivity and a spiritual connectedness makes us feel more connected to everyone, whether they are physically with us or not. Even when I am alone I never feel alone--even when I want to be alone. That is the other end of the spectrum!
We live in and we experience life in a very dualistic way. We want. We don’t want. We need. We don’t need. We have it. Then we don’t want it. We don’t have it. Then we want it. We go back and forth be- tween two poles. Meditation is stepping off that treadmill. Certainly I enjoy being with everyone. But I also enjoy just being with a tree.
Happiness is something that shouldn’t be dependent on external things. It should be an experience of your true nature. In the yogic tradition, that Self is defined as sat-chit-ananda. Ananda is great transcendental bliss and chit is pure consciousness. Sat is the truth of being. Sat-chit-ananda is a state of being that transcends all material or physical things. It is not a rejection of the world. It is truly under- standing your mind and the nature of the world that we live in. Hav- ing 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. Becoming lost in the movie, or drama, of your life draws you into an unconscious state. It seems to be fun until you don’t like the movie. Then you want to get away from it. You want a new movie.
We are very attached to our definitions. We defend them rigorously. You can tell the maturity of people by how vehemently they op- pose someone who is challenging their illusions. Once you find that point of balance, that state of being inside of you, you don’t worry about defending your definitions so much. You know you are pretty happy and you know your place in the world that you live in. You know what you need to do and what you don’t need to do. No one is telling you what and who and how you should be. Nobody! Not me, not television or the news--none of those things. You attain the state of being. It is a very good state. It is very rewarding. You feel very connected and free. Then you still live life the way you always have. People try to act spiritual instead of be spiritual. There is a big differ- ence. Me, I just pretend to be normal. It’s a lot of fun.
What advice do you have for me in terms of getting settled into a good job and obtaining the things that I want and need for a good life?
Most of the time we never get the things that we really want. It has been my experience that we project fulfillment and contentment and happiness onto things that do not possess those qualities. We put in- tense energy into attaining some object as a source of our fulfillment and happiness. But, if we are lucky enough to get it, we will be aston- ished at how temporary that happiness is. For example, when you get a new car and drive it off the lot, it immediately becomes a used car. Also, things break, someone smashes them, and you start looking for some other things to obtain happiness and fulfillment.
But once you realize that happiness and fulfillment only take place on the inside, then everything gets better on the outside. As things come and go, you open to them, you enjoy them, and you love life. You have a very creative and functional life, but you understand hap- piness is not in the things. It is not in fame or fortune. Certainly, it is not wrong to have a dream or a wish for something. But I understand that part of the process of getting there is that you begin to see the illusory nature of what you are seeking. This doesn’t mean that you give up. It means you understand that living life should be a process of gaining wisdom, not of accumulating things. Things are transitory. Wisdom is permanent.
Babaji, will you talk about how to have a big heart and not to feed the small self? p.184
The small self thinks, “Yeah, well, what about me? Where’s mine? That’s not my job.” It thinks of very self-centered trivial types of things that sound remarkably like teenagers. Some people never get beyond that. To have a big heart first has to do with you develop- ing some positive inner energy and feelings. Then you will be able to open the heart and find love and gratitude. You do not decide to have love and gratitude because you got something you wanted, or because you are hoping to get something you want to have.
You should find a good place inside, and you have to take care of
that place. Students frequently find some good feelings or something special inside. Then they run out like somebody who just got two hundred dollars. They spend it on some external kind of silliness that is even more temporary. I see some people who fall in love, and their lives are only about their relationship. They don’t let anyone else into their lives. These relationships rarely last. You need to cultivate an expansiveness to include more people in your life. The relationships that last occur when the couple love and support each other and also have a big life. They are expansive in the things that they do. They don’t just live for themselves, but live for something bigger than that. Those are the ones that make it.
Kids will usually do that for you, especially for the mom if she does it right, because moms can’t get out of it. You want the kid and you think, “Oh I am so happy.” Then you get the little monster and you spend the next 20 years trying to get over what a jerk the kid is, but that’s how you get a big heart—by loving people who are jerks. It doesn’t mean you go up and hug them all the time; it means you don’t allow anyone to close you down. People think love is going around emoting and slobbering all over everybody. That’s not love, that’s sex. We all know what that is.
Love is this very special feeling that you experience in your heart. Sometimes when you meet somebody you actually get a glimpse of that love, but the funny thing is that it’s there all the time. When you feel love for another person, that person has acted as a catalyst to open you up. If there is a response, then the two people feel the love. If they really are in that place, the vibration of that love spreads out all around them. They include a lot of people in their lives--their kids, their family and their sangha.
People think that if they grab on and hold onto love tightly, they will find happiness. In reality they are doing nothing but driving love and happiness away. True happiness and freedom create a state of being that you can obtain no matter what is going on in your life.
When you have had a regular practice over time, you are able to use it not to freak out or get angry. You use your practice to transcend the tensions of your life or a situation. You become strong and more open. You get more expansive, and you aren’t as easily knocked off your feet. As people get older they withdraw into their own little world. These people don’t live long. They worry about dying. They worry about their health, and they obsess about it. If they would do the exact opposite they would live longer and have more love in their lives. They would have a much more expansive existence.
Rudi said life gives you the roughage (he called it fiber) that helps you digest your tensions. You should think of it as getting your daily dose of fiber when you have to deal with the tensions of your world. That is the way your heart becomes big. Life is like that. If you can learn how to process these tensions that everyone experiences, you will grow like crazy. But if you are always trying to run for the hills and always trying to get away from your karma and be a little narrow person somewhere, then you won’t grow.
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