Continuing to Grow

Posted on June 22, 2016 by admin

The awakening process is fascinating, to say the least. Never what we might have imagined. Way too complex for that, and the infinite is beyond even imagination. But if there is a constant lesson, it is that awakening requires continuous growth, on as many levels as possible. These include emotionally, spiritually and in the field of expertise used by your soul to contribute to the evolution of the the planet. Another word for growth is integration where new skills and insights continue to feed a deepening complexity in our abilities to sense and respond to our world, as individuals, as communities, and as the human species discovering its place in the great stream of life.

Emotional Awakening

It would be easy argument to say that emotional growth is the most important of them all, as it is the realm of emotional confusion and dysfunction that creates all of the damage and destruction we witness daily here on Mother Earth. And it is easy to do a spiritual bypass where you throw your self so completely into your spiritual practice that you avoid or deny the shadow side of your unconscious. These emotionally traumatized parts of yourself that desperately need to be healed, but are so painful that denial seems a better option, contribute to create suffering for self and others. Communities as well as individuals can suffer from the spiritual by-pass syndrome. All the asana or meditation in the world is not going to help grow the emotional body the way therapy and a relational-field-based inter-personal spiritual exploration will.

“The internalization of our spiritual practice and the embodiment of a higher consciousness is not expressed in the experimental bubble of retreat centers, but in challenging life situations, in the marketplace, when deployed in areas of crisis, and in the confrontation with poverty, illness and conflicts.” ~ Thomas Hübl

Thomas Hübl is a contemporary spiritual teacher who deeply engages the emotional-relational aspect of ourselves while grounding this in the “Infinite Absolute” of spirit. He brings a mystical fire to his teachings that stems from his own continuous growth and practice in developing a collective planetary and cosmic consciousness. Thomas lives at the ‘field’ level of consciousness, where in his teachings, he connects his students to the ‘relational fields’ and the ‘collective field of information’ ever available to us if we can learn how to access it. He also uses sound in the form of solo or group ‘toning’ to generate sonic fields of coherence and healing. If you want to travel in the fast lane of growth and awakening, hitch your wagon to Thomas.

Spiritual Awakening

Spiritual awakening is the ‘realization’ that my fundamental essence, the ‘I am’, is ‘Infinite-Absolute-Stillness’, the ‘drashtuh svarupe’ of Yoga Sutra I-3. Spiritual growth is learning to rest in, and gradually stabilizing your presence here, (avasthanam), independent of whatever may be happening at any of the levels of the world of form. In the previous post the term ‘turiya’ was introduced by my dream guru, Robert Moss, to describe this universal presence. His quote was taken from the Spanda Karikas, a sacred text of Kashmiri Shavism and here I would like to present the root source of ‘turiya’, the Mandukya Upanishad. This is the shortest of the Upanishads, the Vedic texts that, along with the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma Sutras, constitute the basis of Vedanta philosophy. In the twelve verses of the Mandukya Upanishad, unique in the Upanishads for having no imagery, dialogue, rituals or tangible forms of worship, the individual and universal expressions of ‘Infinite-Absolute-Stillness’, Atman and Brahman are presented and equated. They are one in the same. Atman is turiya is Brahman, tat tvam asi.

The four states of consciousness, waking, dreaming, deep sleep and turiya (which is not a state, but the root source of the other three!), are related to OM, or AUM as it is spelled out in Sanskrit. A is the waking state, U the dreaming, M the deep sleep, and the silence as M dissolves is turiya. Thus the mantra OM designates both Atman and Brahman. Yoga Sutras I-27 – I-29 also discuss this.

Soul Awakening

What is ‘Soul? In a series of previous blogs beginning here I wrote about aspects of soulness. Here we will use soul to describe the unique history, creative gifts and challenges we bring to this incarnation. As such, awakening and growing the soul requires the ability to ask deep questions about our choices in life. Following someone else’s script or living someone else’s life does not nourish the soul. So the first question asked by the soul is this. “Have I given away my power to a leader, or group who claim authority?” It is easier, on a simple level, to let others have the responsibility, especially when there is a large group buying into the scene and enjoying the power. However, in the long run the soul suffers and the collective stagnates at best. A group that stifles individual creative expression cannot grow in any meaningful way. This is true in the corporate world, the artistic world and in spiritual and religious communities.

The next question the soul asks is ” can I let go of what I know, and especially what I think I know, and rest in ‘not-knowing’? Suzuki Roshi’s classic, “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” addresses this question head on. His opening line states:

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”
First, you cannot hold onto the ‘Truth’, but you can rest in it, if you let go, (see Yoga Sutras I-23 – I-29). Secondly, you will find that letting go of stuff doesn’t mean it goes away. It just floats there, and if you need it you can pick it up and use it, and if you realize it no longer serves you, than you leave it be. This is challenging for those with years of experience in a subject. The history of science is filled with examples of major breakthroughs and insights that were ridiculed and rejected by ‘establishment scientists that were stuck on their own limited vision. Beginner’s mind was not included in their curriculum.

My own yoga practice has continuously been overhauled, sometimes painfully so, by insights previously un-imagined, and discovered outside the ‘yoga world’. That which is of value returns again and again, so it is not a matter of re-inventing the wheel, but of expanding our view, our horizon, the magnitude of our vision. The collective vision is extraordinarily rich, but we have to step outside of our comfort zone to see with new eyes. My own understanding of Iyengar’s practice and depth of knowledge of yoga, which is fundamentally my own soul path, has been greatly enhanced by the creative insights of explorers in other realms of somatics and spiritual practices.

Of course, the egoic structures of the mind do not like change, insecurity, not knowing, being a beginner, so stirring the soul is not always pleasant. This is why new resources of support can be very helpful. As we gain more ground in the shamanic realms and other levels of non local reality, we discover a support system used by shamans and dream travelers for millenia. As a collective, we humans are total beginners here, but our historical moment is primed for a rapid expansion of sensitivity, insight and integration, if we can summon up the patience and courage to plunge into this infinite mystery. The world we are creating begins here, and right now collective unconscious fears are driving the agendas of the political and economic powers. We can change this, now. To re-quote Thomas Hubl,

Cosmic Yoga

Posted on September 2, 2015 by admin

I decided to call my Ojai classes “Cosmic Yoga”. I’d rather call them just ‘yoga’, but there are so many variations of yoga out there, some truly horrifying, that the term ‘yoga’ can be very misleading. And I figured I might get the right people’s attention with the word ‘Cosmic’. We’ll see how it goes!

What is Cosmic Yoga ? My cosmic origins go back 13.7 billion years or so, but my cosmic teaching actually began when I met Thomas Berry and his protégé Brian Swimme back in the early 1980’s. They provided a context for my life and teaching that was unlike anything I had ever experienced or even imagined.

Bea Briggs, a yoga teacher from Chicago, told me about Brian, an astro-physicist by training, who lived in the Bay Area and suggested I contact him. I did and he mentioned he was just about to begin teaching a course at Holy Names College in Oakland, a few miles from my home, and suggested I take the course. The material covered the core of Thomas Berry’s work and became the basis for Brian’s ‘Canticle to the Cosmos’ video/cd set, which I highly recommend for anyone with cosmic aspirations. Through Brian I met Thomas and my life changed dramatically. (Brian, also featured in the Science section of this site with the “Powers of the Universe’ also has played a huge role in my own unfolding.)

Thomas became a major mentor to me also, and I was blessed to spend time with him on many occasions over the years, the highlight being the week Bea Briggs, Thomas and I spent at Feathered Pipe Ranch in Montana, somewhere back in the mid 1980’s, co-teaching “Yoga and the Cosmic Creation Story”. We were a little ahead of our time, but it was a fascinating week.

Thomas was a Catholic priest, amazingly enough, but primarily a scholar of human culture. Widely read in European history, Thomas also was deeply impressed with the East and wrote books on Buddhism and the Religions of India. And most of all, Thomas was an awakened Visionary. I am still in awe at how clearly and succinctly he assessed the modern era, saw how as a species we arrived at our historical moment, and chartered a very detailed path to restore harmony and balance to the planet. He fully embodied ‘the awakening process’ in a totally unique and profound way. He was a Taoist, a cosmologist and a spiritual teacher, but he always referred to himself as a ‘geologian’, a student of the earth.

The core of the cosmic teaching revolves around what Thomas called the ‘Twelve Principles for Understanding the Universe and the Role of the Human in the Universe Process’. What follows are the 12 principles, and then my own commentary and translation for yoga people.

‘Twelve Principles for Understanding the Universe and the Role of the Human in the Universe Process’, by Thomas Berry.

1. The Universe, the solar system, and the planet earth, in themselves, and in their evolutionary emergence, constitute for the human community the primary revelation of that ultimate mystery whence all things emerge into being.

2. The universe is a unity, an interacting and genetically related community of beings bound together in an inseparable relationship in space and time. The unity of planet earth is especially clear; each being of the planet is profoundly implicated in the existence and functioning of every other being of the planet.

3. From its beginning, the universe is a psychic as well as a physical reality.

4. The three basic laws of the universe at all levels of reality are differentiation, subjectivity and communion. These laws identify the reality, the values and the directions in which the universe is proceeding.

5. The universe has a violent as well as a harmonious aspect, but is consistently creative in the larger arc of its development.

6. The human is that being in whom the universe activates, reflects upon and celebrates itself in conscious self awareness.

7. The earth, within the solar system, is a self-emergent, self-propagating, self-nourishing, self-governing, self-healing , self-fulfilling community. All particular life systems, in their being, their sexuality, their nourishment, their education, their governing, their healing and their fulfillment, must integrate their functioning within this larger complex of mutually dependent earth systems.

8. The genetic coding process is the process through which the world of the living articulates itself in its being and its activities. The great wonder is the creative interaction of the multiple codings among themselves.

9. At the human level genetic coding mandates a trans-genetic cultural coding by which specifically human qualities find self expression. Cultural coding is carried on by educational processes.

10. The emergent process of the universe is irreversible and non-repeatable in the existing world order. The movement from non-life to life on the planet earth is a one time event. So to the movement from life to the human from of consciousness. So also the transition from the earlier to the later forms of human culture.

11. The historical sequence of cultural periods can be defined as the tribal-shamanic period, the neolithic settlement period, the classical civilization period, the scientific-technological period and the emerging ecological period.

12. The main task of the human in the immediate future is to assist in activating the inter-communion of all the living and non-living components of the earth community in what can be considered the emerging ecological period of earth development.

My notes: (watch the ‘Canticle to the Cosmos’ series if you really want to go more deeply into this.)

1.Revelation: Thomas was deeply immersed in the religious practices of India, as well as those of the Native Americans, and both were very clear that creation was sacred. This has been lost in the Judeo-Christian-Scientific West where spirit and matter were somehow cleaved apart. Heaven, and God, were ‘out there’ somewhere, and the degradation of the Earth was the result of this belief. Thomas wanted the return of the feminine perspective that creation is Divine and the primary source for Revelation, not the Bible, or written scripture.

2. Oneness: Thomas was an advaita Vedantan. That the infinite and the finite were one, not two, was implicitly obvious to him. That every aspect of creation was intertwined is also seen in the image of Indra’s Net, or Web, the Indian metaphor for wholeness.

3. A recapitulation that Creation is not ‘just material’, but has layers of reality not easily seen. This ‘esoteric’ aspect in known in Shamanic cultures as well as those who hold Creation as Divine.

4. That these are the fundamental driving forces in the universe is one of Thomas’ fascinating insights. Amazingly enough, remove any one of these three and the Universe collapses. Brian unfolds this quite beautifully in lesson 4 of the Canticle. For yoga students and yoga teachers, the question becomes “are you allowing all three of these to manifest as deeply as possible?”

Differentiation refers to uniqueness. Every iota of creation is unique, never before existing, never to appear again in the exact same way. Like snow flakes, we all have total cosmic permission to be totally unique. Your body/mind, your life, is yours alone, unique and special. We all imitate in the beginning to get started. That is why we have mirror neurons. But ultimately, trust your own individuality. As teachers, this is even more important. Can you give permission for each student to be unique while still honoring the integrity of the pose? Fundamentalist communities have serious problems with this because they control people by limiting/stifling their individuality.

Subjectivity states that every iota of creation has Cosmic depth. Each of us, from atoms to galaxies, and all beings, speak from the Infinite Depths of Mystery. Atman is Brahman. Tat vam asi. In any posture, in any and every moment, feel the infinite presence, drashtuh svarupe. Nurture this!

Communion reflects wholeness and the inextricable intertwining of all forms across space and time. Wholeness, or Oneness is not just a good idea! To dive into this one is mind boggling. Awakening allows you to draw upon many traditions and teachers where awakening is emerging. The Whole Universe is Awakening. You just have to wake up and pay attention. Cosmic clues are everywhere!

5. The explosion of a star gave birth to our solar system. The churning and shattering of volcanoes, earthquakes and typhoons actually helps replenish and refresh the life conditions, even as destruction is also needed. Kali serves this purpose on many levels.

6. Awe is the primary expression of awakening, and then celebration. To Quote Mary Oliver: “Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be Astonished. Tell about it.”

7. This begins Thomas’ instructions of how societies and cultures self organize and begins to lay out a blueprint for large scale social changes.

8. Biology is a major means for the Cosmos to carry forth learning and experience in time. Humans can see because 2 billion years ago, a cell learned how to convert solar energy to food. The chlorophyll molecule begat the retinol molecule and vision was born.

9. Culture is another means to carry forth wisdom and experience through time. Story telling, drawing, music, dance and writing are all means to convey information to future generations. And now we have ‘the cloud’.

10. The arrow of time travels in one direction in our world. For many generations humans believed that life unfolded in ever repeating cycles. Not so in the cosmos. Cycles may repeat, but they are never the same. This puts a lot more urgency in dealing with the present conditions.

11. Thomas was a cultural historian who saw history in geological terms. He described our historical moment as the termination of the Cenozoic era and the beginning of something new. The direction we go as a planet is being determined by choices humans make today.

12: What is the destiny of the human? To be determined.

Patanjali on the Mat

Posted on August 18, 2015 by admin

An embodied yoga practice allows the possibility of decoding the Sanskrit lessons imparted in the Yoga Sutras without too many trips to the dictionary, because yoga is ultimately experiential and not a collection of ideas.

There are two great discoveries offered by Patanjali. First, we are always in direct connection with the infinite Ground of Being, known in the Yoga Sutras as Purusha, or drashtuh, the Seer. In Vedanta, this discovery is known as atma-jnanam, knowledge of the true nature of the Self. However, as humans, we tend to forget this reality, stop feeling whole and at peace, and become spiritually confused.

Therefore, Patanjali’s second great revelation is that there are many psychological, emotional and spiritual practices or disciplines available to us to help dissolve this confusion and help us return to feeling whole. These skillful means or upayas are cultivated by tapping into the wisdom of life itself, awakening the innate intelligence, aka buddhi, and discovering that embodiment of the Divine, whether as a galaxy, a star, or a human being, always involves a balance of complementary forces and energies, known as yin and yang, or the dvandvas. (II-48, tato dvandva anabhigatah)

Patanjali does not spend many sutras on atma-jnanam. He mentions it at the beginning in I-3, as drashtuh svarupe avasthanam, returns to it in the very last sutra, IV-34, and that’s about it. (The Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita offer very rich and metaphorical descriptions of embodying Self Knowledge, so perhaps Patanjali did not feel the need to replicate those.) But he does an amazing job of offering maps and models of the mind states that create problems, and practices to heal the ones that are dysfunctional. Our on the mat practice will be samyama in asana.

The most important sutras come right at the beginning, I-2 through 1-4. We will change the order slightly, (as this is how we actually experience them), and then expand upon them a bit to give us a basic overview before we get into practice. (Please refer to the Yoga Sutras Study Section for the more literal translation and additional commentary to these and other sutras.)

I-4 vrtti sarupya itaratra: Being human is not easy. Our thinking mind complicates the world unnecessarily and this leads to what the Buddha referred to as the state of suffering, or dukkha, where we forget our own infinite spiritual nature. Identification of the self with dysfunctional beliefs and thoughts is the source of this suffering, or to use Patanjali’s terminology, of not being “in Yoga”. This creates a self sense that is inadequate, constantly needing to either add or subtract something in order to find inner peace. This is of course an impossible pursuit and shows up in the body/mind as tension, fear, anxiety, stress and trauma.

I-2 citta vrtti nirodha: This dysfunctional mind activity can be transformed by resolving the energies of these activities back into the flow of aliveness. This harmonious, elegant movement rooted in the eternal is known as the Tao in Chinese and is described in the Tao Te Ching, the famous treatise attributed to Lao Tzu. Patanjali offers many skills and practices that can be called upon to alleviate the distress and shift the self identity and we will focus on one today, samyama, described in Patanjali’s third chapter, the Vibhuti Pada. We are becoming more and more clear about the neuro-science and biology of fear, anxiety and trauma, the roots of suffering, including how they arise and how they can be healed, and we will use this to inform our practice.

I-3 tada drashtuh svarupe avasthanam: When the dysfunctional activity ceases, the Infinite Ground of Being shines forth, the “I AM”, the sense of self, dissolves into this, and remains stable there . There is an ‘Awakening’ to the fact that ‘I am wholeness’ that is both unimaginable and indisputable. In the Zen tradition, this glimpse into one’s true nature is called Kensho or Satori. The Japanese character for satori is depicted on the left.

However, the identification process, a specific type of mind activity, (ahamkara) often eventually reverts back to its habit of feeling separate and lacking. Thus the ‘Awakening’ is often unstable in the beginning. It may last minutes, hours, or even days, but can’t quite stick. Thus Patanjali requires the stabilizing of the awakening to be considered “being in Yoga” by using the term ‘avasthanam’. In sutra IV-27 and IV -28, Patanjali returns to the process of stabilizing the awakening.

The spiritual irony of this is that we are always connected to The Ground of Being, because that is all there is, there is only wholeness. We forget, get distracted, and before we know it, are totally lost in delusion (avidya). This is the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the “Fall from Grace” as depicted here on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Our practice on the mat is to re-solve the dysfunctional mental patterns that manifest as thoughts and beliefs that have an immediate affect on the cells, tissues and organs. If we carry the water image further, we are dissolving, like salt into water, these patterns of mind activity (citta vrttis) into the feeling of Oneness. It is tangible, visceral opening that emerges when the organism feels totally safe and very awake. Usually our being awake carries fear or anxiety of danger, as this is the biological priming of our nervous systems. Danger lurks, and you will survive if you are on alert. And feeling safe by itself usually doesn’t take us into the spiritual breakthrough. There has to be an openness, alertness, curiosity and intention to stay present to whatever is arising known as mindfulness. Mindfulness, a mind state that gets stronger through practice, will allow us to sustain our practice through the moments when we do not feel totally safe and will allow the samyama in the postures to also strengthen.

Our first exploration on the mat will be finding the balance of weight and lightness.
(Follow the link!) From the perspective of the organism, the first question of safety is ‘where am I’. The first orientation, where to bring attention (dharana), is to the felt sense of weight. Find the felt sense of weight. Stay there. Live there. Patanjali calls this embodied state of being grounded ‘sthira‘ and is deepening our connection to Mother Earth, at all levels of reality.

The second orientation is to the space around me. I need to feel safe in my environment. I find this in movement, and through the felt sense of lightness or levity which allows me to float in grounded-ness, like a fish in water. I become 3 dimensional in perception and action. Patanjali calls this ‘sukha‘. Thus, to be fully embodied is to be both sthira and sukham, as Patanjali describes in II-46. Staying in this dynamic state of balance, of weight and lightness, roots and wings, with action, perception and intelligence flowing as an single stream, begins the samyama.

Take this awareness into the standing poses (follow the link), and we will add one more clue from Patanjali to integrate into the samyama. The first two practices Patanjali introduces, even before samadhi, are abhyassa and vairagya. On the mat these are related to how we use energy in the poses. Abhyassa is the disciplined and conscious direction of your energy towards healing. In asana, it means to deepen the stability of the samyama by bringing more cells, organs and tissues into the conscious flow. It is a choice to bring your attention to a highly refined state. Vairagyam is the complementary practice. It involves withdrawing of energies away from patterns that are hyper-tonic (excess rajas) or hypo-tonic (excess tamas). Where in my body/mind am I overworking? Too aggressive? Overly contracted? Where in my body/mind am I dull, unconscious, asleep? Take from here, add to there, all the while monitoring action and perception to feel how the changes are actually manifesting.

And all the while feeling the ever-present Divinity radiating with more and more brightness from your heart out into the world.