Category: Shiva Process Self-inquiry

The Essence of Yoga Is Consciousness

The Essence of Yoga Is Consciousness

My yoga practice began in 1975 when I received shaktipat, the awakening of spiritual (kundalini) energy.

It is often referred to as Guru’s grace and is a transmission from Guru to seeker. Since then I have practiced yoga in order to nurture and sustain that energy.

After shaktipat I learned yoga asanas, pranayama and mudras from my mentor at the time, the late Swami Girijananda. She had studied with the great siddha (a perfect yogi), Baba Muktananda, and the Hatha yogi, Hari Dass Baba. Yoga cannot be understood fully without the awakening from a siddha. I have been fortunate to spend my life with two great beings, Baba Muktananda and Swami Shankarananda.

According to some scholars the original schools of Yoga were formed by siddhas, mostly belonging to the nath tradition. Myth says that the postures were revealed to these siddhas after receiving shaktipat, and then revealed as a means of awakening the kundalini energy. Their schools were defined by the teachings of kundalini yoga and the practices have been handed down from teacher to student for eons.

The earliest texts on yoga say that its true goal is to awaken the kundalini energy that lays dormant within every person.

Kundalini is the sleeping giant of cosmic awareness. Shaktipat leads to deep meditation and knowledge of the inner Self. The student then mediates under the Guru’s instruction. This eventually leads to moksha, liberation from suffering.

Even though asanas, bandhas, physical purification and other yogic methods may be taught, realization, an unbreakable connection with the Self takes precedence over mastering them.

Now there are many schools of yoga each with different emphasis.

  • Some schools teach that yoga to stay fit and healthy.
  • Some say that it is to attain psychic or magical powers.
  • Some say it is to purify the body.
  • Some say it is to learn to renounce the world.
  • Some say it is to gain mastery over the senses.
  • Some say it is to purify the mind.
  • Some say is to gain control over the breath.

These are all worthy endeavors and can perhaps lead a seeker from the physical to the subtle, from the mundane to the sublime.

However, yoga’s original intent has been overshadowed by the fitness craze and many yoga teachers are not familiar with its true purpose.

Practitioners used to study with adepts of yoga in order to achieve inner and outer peace and become the master of themselves. I believe that more yoga teachers need to reclaim its original purpose. Even though most yoga students want to stay healthy and fit, it is the meditation and relaxation at the end of a class when they experience the joy.

I was fortunate to discover Siddha Yoga in 1974, and this is the yoga I still practice. Shaktipat taught me how to live comfortably with myself, to discipline my mind, my emotions, my thoughts and my feelings, my fears and desires.

With many years of practice, I have learned to use the simple natural powers that we all share yet overlook—thinking, feeling and doing.

It is the areas of life associated with them that we need to work on—health and well-being, relationship—professional and personal, career and money, and spirituality. Our thinking, feeling and doing affects every aspect of living and it is crucial we come to understand their true purpose, to conduct the experience of the Self.

Once the inner energy is awakened it points the practitioner toward practices that provide support for the goal of yoga—to know the Self and become free.

The practices listed below, as well as asanas, support our spiritual well-being and our life:

Without knowing that shaktipat was the greatest blessing I could be given, I found myself on the path of Consciousness and I became a disciple.

Becoming a disciple meant that I committed myself to the teachings of my lineage, meditated regularly, did asanas, and served the larger community. But most importantly, I put aside my thoughts and feelings that were full of self-concern, so I could learn what the Self wanted from me.

I could do this because I had found a path that explained the mystery of the world in a way that made sense to me. It addressed the physical world, the individual soul and the Divine. It also brought to light the unbreakable connection between my inner world and the outer world. I learned to understand the relationship between them. I began to see that I was the source of everything that arose in my mind, in my awareness. It catalysed the incredible play of my own Consciousness, the dynamic energy that is within me.

Our Consciousness is the most malleable thing in the universe.

It changes and adapts to every situation, every event, every relationship and every moment. It is inspirational, imaginative, and productive. It creates and destroys, uplifts and contracts, expands and shrinks, according to how we react to inner and outer stimulus.

Consciousness absorbs everything into itself. It merges with the world, digests what it sees and experiences, assimilates it, transforms it or regurgitates it. It is constantly observing, watching, weighing, analyzing, feeling, sensing, intuiting, experiencing, rejecting and accepting, digesting and vomiting.

Some impressions are easily digested and some not so easily. Some flow away by instant recognition but others are glued into memory. Some stay hidden for years but are triggered by painful moments. Some float on the edges of Consciousness as a knowing but disperse without effort. Unprocessed impressions create negative emotion and we become victims of our own inner world.

Swami Shankarananda has developed a meditative technique that he calls the Shiva Process Self-inquiry, that unites the inner world with the outer when the feeling of separation arises. It teaches us how not to be victimised by our own thought and feeling. We learn to use our our natural powers by thoroughly exploring and investigating the inner discomfort. We learn to ask appropriate questions and listen carefully to the answers that arise within.

Swamiji writes:

Through the process of inquiry, we recognise the dynamism running through us. We become liberated from doubt and concern when we no longer try to hold the universe at bay, but surrender to it, and welcome it. Our actions become effective and powerful, because they are aligned with this great impersonal process. And we have the delightful experience of playing our part in a larger drama.

Swami Shankarananda

He often talks about the Gurdjieffian concept of three forces: first force–creating or wanting something; second force–the obstacles to achieving what we want; and third force–the means of dissolving the obstacles. When these three forces unite to create a positive flow of energy then we succeed in accomplishing our spiritual and life goals.

Self-inquiry seeks to unblock all areas of life: health, career, relationship and spirituality.

Swamiji has developed 3 steps that begin this inquiry.

1stStep is Investigation—What is going on here?

We become acutely conscious of stress and tension. Most of the time we move away from it. We avoid it. We drown it out. How do we not drown in it? We turn toward it with the aim to recognise and disarm blocks.

We notice inner tension. We learn to ask the right questions. Inquiry—is asking empowered questions not question that lead to more confusion and self-doubt.

  • Some disempowering questions are questions like:
  • Why do bad things always happen to me?
  • Does this mean I am a loser?
  • Why am I always forgotten?
  • Some good questions are:
  • What am I feeling?
  • Am I mad, sad, glad or scared?
  • When did this feeling happen?
  • How can I change this feeling from contraction to expansion?

2ndStep is Recognition—What is this feeling?

We work with what he calls an A-Statement, an accurate statement of present feeling. We experiment with language and ask the inner world good questions. A true A-Statement creates an upward shift of energy that releases the block.

  • Could this tension hold frustration, disappointment, or anxiety
  • We make an A-Statement—I feel or I am–disappointed, frustrated, or anxious.
  • Could I be holding anger within?
  • Could I be holding fear within?
  • Could I be holding sadness?

For yogis we could say: desire is arising within me, or fear is arising, or sadness is arising. Without recognition of feeling reactions, responses and impressions remain undigested.

  • We remain ignorant of my feeling state.
  • We stay angry, afraid or depressed.
  • We become separate and cannot relate properly to others.
  • Our meditation is disturbed.
  • Our energy is blocked.

3rdStep is Upliftment

Once we understand the feeling we are carrying then we can uplift. We then make B-Statements—personally uplifting statements like:

  • I accept myself.
  • Love is within me.
  • Everything will be okay.
  • I am loveable.
  • I am worthy.

Then we can contemplate what Swamiji calls G-Statements or  God Statements. These are statements the great yogic scriptures and texts tell us like:

  • I am the Self;
  • I am Consciousness;
  • All this is me;
  • I am Shiva;
  • I am Shakti;
  • Thou art That

Self-inquiry unblocks creativity, illumines our next step and brings illumination and insight.

Self-inquiry: the Personal and the Impersonal

Self-inquiry: the Personal and the Impersonal

What follows is an excerpt from Part I: Personal Inquiry in Swami Shankarananda’s book “Self-inquiry: Using your awareness to unblock your life. His method of Self-inquiry bridges the gap between the inner and outer worlds. Swamiji teaches that when our lives are blocked or confusing we can investigate, recognise and uplift the tension and stress that shows up in four chakras. If practiced with the intention to become free of negative emotion, there will be a return to peace and harmony. 

All paths end in inquiry. Why not pursue inquiry from the beginning?
Sri Ramana Maharshi

Real inquiry marries the head and heart. Thought, which has been wandering in its own bloodless world, feeding on itself, is connected to feeling. And like two wires touched together, a spark of energy occurs. Inquiry is also the conjunction of the personal and impersonal. The ancient yogic paths emphasised the impersonal. They insisted that this world does not exist and you are not a separate person.

IMG_1965
Swamiji speaking at a program.

In Indian culture, you are expected to fit into your particular role in life, your caste, your stage of life. You are to do your duty and any deviation is tantamount to insanity. The single social option to the non-conformist is the possibility of renouncing the world and heading off to the Himalayas to be a wandering monk.

In the West, on the contrary, we hear everywhere the cry, ‘What about me?’ We are obsessed with our individuality and our individual expression. The West is totally focused on the person. In India, the yoga is impersonal, connected to the highest truth, caring little for the person. One must maintain an appropriate silence about personal problems and simply do sadhana and one’s duty.

Yoga says that within each person, in the subtle body, are seven yogic centres, seven chakras, which have to do with different aspects of life. The three lower chakras govern the physical life; the heart chakra is the locus of emotional life; the fifth chakra, in the throat,has to do with communication; the third eye, the sixth chakra, is the place of intellect and higher wisdom. Here we have insights and visions but we are still within the personal realm. When you go beyond the sixth chakra to the seventh, at the crown of the head, you contact a different aspect of yourself. It is transpersonal; the dimension of the impersonal Self.

Western psychology was traditionally unaware of this dimension. In the past 30 years, however, a ‘transpersonal psychology’ has developed, acknowledging that divine, impersonal aspect. Jung knew of it but Freud did not. It exists within all of us, represented by the seventh chakra. What should we make of this knowledge of a higher reality? The first impulse is to try to override the person with the impersonal. A noble goal, but significantly difficult to attain. I tried to achieve it: I threw myself on the altar of impersonality again and again. Each time, the person returned. That the higher power does exist is beyond doubt, but the mystical play between the personal and impersonal has to be discovered.

My Guru seemed to me to be a man who was in cosmic awareness. He was always connected to the Self, and never unconnected. Yet, he was also very much a person. He wasn’t like some of the mind-borne ‘holy men’: ‘Hello my son, at last you have come . . .’ He wasn’t like that at all. He was completely vibrant and immediate and totally himself—to an alarming degree, in fact. He was a unique combination of the personal and the impersonal. He was a force of nature, all right. Like a stone rolling down a hill, and loving it.

Self-inquiry connects the personal with the impersonal. It respects the person. It doesn’t try to kill the person, but it also acknowledges the transpersonal. It seeks connectedness so that the person flowers within the impersonal and discovers the impersonal within. A life without the impersonal is dry and empty. You want the universe to flow towards your personal advantage, but, alas, the universe is indifferent. What chance does the poor little person have? The whole universe is arranged to frustrate or be indifferent to your desires. There is no joy in being merely a person.

You are so blinded by what is personal,
that you do not see the universal.
The blindness will not end by itself—
it must be undone skillfully and deliberately.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Sometimes we feel a part of something bigger than ourselves. It might be a political movement, or even a crowd cheering for a team at a football game. It is a rewarding and liberating feeling. Our individuality dissolves in the group, and, at the same time, participates actively. But when the event is over or we leave the group for some reason, we feel a kind of loss—we’ve returned to the merely personal. Such an experience is only temporary, but it is a taste of something real and intrinsic to our true Self. We are actually part of something greater, and when we live in harmony with it, our stress and fear fade away.

Through the process of inquiry, we recognise the dynamism running through us. We become liberated from doubt and concern when we no longer try to hold the universe at bay, but surrender to it, and welcome it. Our actions become effective and powerful, because they are aligned with this great impersonal process. And we have the delightful experience of playing our part in a larger drama.

Self-inquiry seeks to unblock all areas of life: health, career, relationship and spirituality.

Some more thoughts on Self-inquiry:

  • Blocks are tensions in our inner world.
  • Desire and fear create blocks.
  • There is one subject and many objects.
  • First force initiates, second force resists, third force enables.
  • Second force as blocked inner feeling is the main focus of inquiry.
  • Right method increases third force.
  • Self-inquiry harmonises our thinking, feeling and doing.
  • Wisdom power is where thought and feeling merge.
  • Everything undergoes five processes: creation, sustainment, dissolution, concealment and grace.
  • Concealment is the universal principle of separation.
  • Grace is the universal principle of oneness.
  • Our encounters in life are marked by emotion.
  • Our negative reactions are stored inside and may reappear later.
  • A yogi burns negative reactions to sameness with Consciousness.
  • Truth has a feeling of harmony and peace.
  • Self-inquiry is the main instrument in the wisdom path, yet it includes devotion.
  • Shiva Process Self-inquiry focuses on the higher Self.
  • Emotions are starting points for inquiry.