Your #TrueInnerSelfie

When you hold up your phone to take a selfie, which image of your self are you focusing on? The ‘little self’ on the screen, or the ‘big self’ holding the phone?

A practical examination of Shiva Sutra 3.2

A 1,000 years before monitors ever existed, the Pratybhijnahridayam described the Universe as 'projected onto a screen’— as Swami Muktananda translates, “By the power of her own will alone, she unfolds the universe upon her own screen” (Nothing Exists that is Not Shiva, Ch. 2) Screens are an aspect of reality, but the yogic tradition tells us that they aren’t the whole of reality. As yogis, our work is to learn how to interact with this Universal Screen while maintaining an awareness of the source of it’s projection, our state of being. In this way, we can have our little selfie, and our Big Selfie too. 

We interact with this Universal screen through our minds. To understand this, you can think of your mind like the camera on your phone. It has sensors that perceive the world around it called the Manas— which picks up information from the five senses— always on, always gathering data, endlessly. And when you point your attention at a portion of  the senses,  like  pointing your finger to a spot on your phone’s  screen, your mind, like a camera, pulls it’s focus to a single aspect of the scene. This is done by a higher faculty of the mind called the Ahamkara. From there we make the decision to ‘capture’ or  ‘record’ the image, as well as organize those images into albums to be used later as reference, yet an even higher function of the mind called the Buddhi. 

The images that are stored on your mind’s camera roll not only represent how you see the world, but also how you see yourself. Think about it— the images in  your instagram gallery don’t just represent what you’ve seen, they also represent you, right? This is because in order for us to capture an  image, to see the world around us, our minds must also intimately relate to those images. As the book “Intro to Kashmir Shaivism” tells us, in order to perceive something we must  “endow it  with something of  ourself,” we must “identify” with it in order to identify it. So you could say that every image in our mind’s camera roll is actually a selfie—  a picture of our world with our own experience of that world pasted on top.

So screens aren’t the problem, selfies aren’t the problem, they’re just a part of our mind’s software— the problem is when we try to squeeze the vast inner experience of our reality onto the 4” screen of our mind— that’s when the suffering begins. As Babaji says in his book “Spiritual Practice,”The ego is a necessary part of living in the world, but I don’t take it seriously” (82). And similarly, Christoper Wallace writes in Tantra Illuminated, “The ego should be a fluid entity but instead becomes a static prison.” 

How  do these selfies of our mind become a prison? It’s an all too familiar process. When you see a beautiful sunset, for example, it’s almost unthinkable not to take a picture of it, right? But what always happens next? It just doesn’t look as good on the small screen as it does on the Big screen of your experience— so you take another one, and another one, and you get quietly tense about it and all but miss the experience of the sunset in your efforts to capture it. All of those little images accumulate in your mind, along with the tension that glued them together, and create a pattern of behavior, known as a samskara, which repeats itself over and over again. So now every sunset has you reaching for your phone more and more, trying to squeeze that expansive experience tighter and tighter.  And eventually, as Jai Deva Singh writes in his commentary on Sutra 3.2, “when all the ideas of the individual are derived from sensori-motor perceptions, their images, and thought-constructs, he becomes a play-thing of the Matrka-cakra…he builds a prison for himself in which he takes the utmost delight to live.” This means that we are no longer living in the experience of our true  nature, but in the cell block patterns of our mind. 

So how do we break out of this prison? Throwing away your phone won’t help, because they didn’t even have phones to throw away when the Shiva Sutras came out. We break out of this prison through a shift in awareness called meditation. As Jai Deva Singh writes in the Intro to the Shiva Sutras, “It is only through dissolution of vikalpa (thoughts) that the screen that hides the essential Reality, the essential Divine Self, from ourselves is removed, and we have a view of that Reality which has always been scintillating within in all its glory” (Intro to Shiva Sutras, Jai Deva Singh, xl).

We keep shifting our awareness from the small screen of our mind to the big screen of our experience, over and over and over again. Because no matter how thick the energetic walls of our samskaras might be,”You are not far from the state of pure Truth, pure consciousness, and pure bliss that you are seeking,” Babaji tells us, “Even when you are in your darkest hour,” or your 18th selfie, “it’s very close to you.”

Let’s try it. Take out your phone, open the camera app and flip the camera to selfie— also set the 10 second timer. Hold your phone up and take a moment to see your small self on the screen. That’s the limited perspective of your mind, not good or bad, just smaller than your experience right? Now expand your awareness a little bit and see the frame of the phone, and your hand holding the frame. See the room that surrounds it, and ‘feel’ or ‘sense’ your body in that room. Notice that you can still see yourself on the screen while also seeing the room and feeling your body— this is re-focusing our awareness towards  the ‘witness’, the key to experience we are seeking. This is how you can have your little selfie, and big Selfie too. Now press the capture button, and while it counts down to zero, close your eyes and feel the breath pulsating around the heart.

You just took your first #True Inner Selfie. Try it again, but without your phone— widen your vision, see the edges of the room while you read this, or as you walk around your house. Or perhaps during your next sunset, take a few conscious breaths inside before taking out your camera and see if you can stay connected to that bigger experience while interacting with the smaller one on the screen. 

And don’t forget to tag and share your next #TrueInnerSelfie !