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Renewals and choices in time of transition – how to turn adversity to opportunity

Renewals and choices in time of transition – how to turn adversity to opportunity

A satsang webinar 04/12/2020

Introduction

Happy Easter! On this meaningful day symbolizing renewal,  awakening and eternal life, we are being reminded of our infinite potential, infinite inner resources and perfect love which always wins. This holiday celebrates the meaning of life and this is the time for us to remember the beauty and sacredness of our lives. Swami Sivananda said that the true goal of life is to get back to the source from which we came. Just as rivers flow restlessly till they join the ocean, the ultimate source from which they got their supply of water, so too, we would be restless here till we become one with the Peace in the True Self deep within.

In this constant flowing journey of life towards Self realization, there are transitions and challenges that we need to face graciously, taking these as opportunities for growth.

So we will be talking about:

1.how life is constant transition

2. how life has a positive direction, going in and up (and not going out and down).

3. In this journey, we are struggling but we are always progressing. The more the struggle, the stronger we become.

4. We have the power of choice, we are not victims to circumstances. In any given circumstances we still have the choice to move forward in life. We need to exercise our power of choice.

5. Seven stages of conscious self transformation and renewal. How to renew yourself consciously.

6. When our egos are rigid, we have difficulty making choices and making decisions, paralyzed by fears and anxieties. We can learn to make our life easier for ourselves by learning faith, trust and detachment. Mistakes are only stepping stones to success for a person who is aware and working on himself.

7. Adversity is a perception. You can return to your untouched self. You are the master of your destiny. The Self is supreme. Nobody did this to you. Learn to become strong and accept the game of life. You and your experience are one. “There is no world out there besides you”.

8. Everything is an opportunity for practice.

We are constantly in transition

Life is a journey. There is a direction to life. We are always in transition, between stages of life. There is a lesson to be learned at every step. Try to not get lost in the appearances and illusions of life. Our destination is to realize our inner peace that always has been here.

Different times of transition:

  • Between life times (this life is only a chapter in the book of your life. Everything is not permanent.). Step back from your life and recognize the theme of this life.
  • Between stages of life. According to our age and our maturity, we move through 4 stages of life, we learn our duties at different stages: student stage, householder stage, retirement stage, renunciation stage. Our struggles often reflect the lessons we need to learn at every stage. We also learn that our psychology and needs evolve with each stage of life.
  • Between occupations: Our ideal occupation is the one reflecting our inner state of being, from being unconscious with no self awareness, instinctive living, survival thinking  and living only for enjoyment, to the idea of a self centered self, making the best out of separated life, to being more responsible of our fellow beings and our actions, and  last, to becoming  selfless, understanding our oneness and acting out of the vision of oneness.
  • Between gunas, moving from tamas (darkness), to rajas (activity) , to sattwa ( purity, balance, wisdom) . Our journey is the journey of purification where we unveil ourselves from our own veils and recognize the light and knowledge within.
  • Between periods of our karmas . Our lessons are learnt in time and following sequences. According to vedic astrology, our lives revolve from one karmic expression to another, from dasha period to another where we have to learn : self confidence (sun); psychology and emotions (moon), action and energy (mars) , intelligence and reasoning (mercury) , righteousness and wisdom (Jupiter) , devotion and enjoyment  (venus) ,

Self discipline and forbearance (Saturn), desires and compulsion (rahu) , detachment and renunciation (ketu). Everything is set up by heavenly energies for us to learn. The lesson of enjoyment is 20 years, the lesson of self discipline is 19 years, the lesson about desires  is 18 years, the lesson of intelligence is (16 years) , the lesson of wisdom is 16 years, the lesson about the mind and emotions is 10 years , of energy and action is 7 years, detachment is 7 years, ego self is 6 years.

  • Between seasons and weathers: Like the season revolving, winter gives rise to spring, spring to summer, summer to fall and return to winter. Life is cyclical. We just have to step back and enjoy the seasons changing and revolving. The changes of temperatures and weathers affect the moods, and our health. This contemplation helps us to accept change.
  • Between hours of the day: the changes we feel might reflect not only the changes of seasons, but also the changes of energies between periods of the day, the sunrises, sunsets, the middays. Doing things in the right timing would influence the outcomes.
  • Between waking, dreaming, deep sleep. Our daily landscape also keeps revolving between our different states of consciousness, the waking, the dreaming and the deep sleep state. The idea is to learn to become the observer, the witness to all these changing phenomena inside and outside of us.

In fact, we are always transitioning and we indeed never stay still. We renew ourselves constantly. According to Master Sivananda, “Life is a school, in which every sorrow, every pain, every heart break brings a precious lesson. The world is your best teacher, there is lesson in each experience. The world is the best training ground.” Learn to be in the world and be untouched by the world like the lotus flower growing out of mud.

The journey of life is going in and up,not out and down

“In” means inwards towards our peace within and “out” means loosing ourselves in external concerns. “Up” means feeling light and content, “down” means feeling restless and dissatisfied. Recognize your path and renew yourself!

– from impurity to purity:  learning to accept challenges and pains as growing pains, we are cleansing ourselves from our impurities , allowing the light and peace to shine from within when we learn better behavior .

from hatred to cosmic love: learn to hate less and love more every day then we will be moving in the right direction.

– from death to immortality: If we think that we are the mortal body, we will be gripped by the fear of death. By changing consciousness and by going deeper within ourselves through Yoga and meditation, we become more detached from the body and can feel the freedom and lightness coming from our eternal spirit.

– from imperfection to perfection: we might be disappointed at ourselves for not being perfect or judging other people to be less then perfect. Eventually, we mature and know that perfection can not be attained in this world. We do the best we can in this relative life, and at the same time realize a level of ourselves and of life that is perfect. Ultimately, we realize that all is at all times perfect. We stop to try to make a better past, and live solidly in the present where perfection can be found.

from slavery to freedom: we might think that we are victim and that we are bound in our lives to do things we do not like. We might have a wrong sense of what is true freedom. Swami Sivananda said that freedom does not mean eating anywhere you like, going anywhere you like, speaking anything you like …it is found in self discipline. We are in fact slave to our desires and senses. Yoga helps to slowly turn our bad habits to positive habits and realize our true inner freedom.

– from diversity to unity: wegrow when we learn to see the unity in the apparent differences. Example: seeing the suffering of the whole humanity and not just one nation over the other. The test we are going through now as a global community brings us closer together. We are moving from the sense of separation to the sense of interdependence. Open our minds and hearts to accept differences. Become less judgmental.

– from ignorance to eternal wisdom: we are learning to control our mind and emotions and become wise amidst chaos and controversies. We learn to see the bigger picture of our life and learn to avoid to repeat the same mistake and to create new karma.

– from pain to eternal bliss: we learn from our pains and know that we have somehow have forgotten ourselves looking for happiness in a wrong place. We eventually learned that happiness is within and the answer lies within. We breathe, relax, reconcile and forgive ourselves and others in order to be free from our pains.

from weaknesses to infinite strength: Due to our weaknesses, we have fears and attachments, and we create pain to ourselves and others. Life journey teaches us to be stronger and stronger to face more and more demanding challenges. Everything is a test of your strength and faith.

We have the Power of choice

We need to exercise wisely our conscious intelligence over our instincts and emotions

In that journey towards more awareness, we exercise our intellect but often times we are being pulled in the opposite direction by our habitual lower mind. We want to learn and to grow but we are caught in our habits and attachments.  Our emotions pulled us to the past and to the future but resist the guidance of our intellect. We forget ourselves in the past and the future unable to live fully the present. We find ourselves unfulfilled and stuck because we wanted to return to the secure past and have difficulty to venture into the unknown. We are missing out our present which is the key to our freedom.

We need help to make changes. People with higher mind, who have been where we have been can support us in our journey. Our conscious choice can be backed up by our higher mind or the higher mind of somebody.

The seven steps of conscious change

Seven steps to transform our impressions in the mind. How to renew ourselves. How to work with our mind’s tendency to repeat itself. When we leave an old pattern for a new one, we enter the transitional ground that can be unsettling. We often resist new patterns for fear of losing identities we have carefully constructed. It is like a more evolved version of the old self, eventually leading to our true nature. We keep refining and purifying our mind patterns into healthier designs.  It will become easier and easier.

1. -set intention

2.- commitment to “work” on the unhelpful habit. Conscious will to resist falling back on old habits, in crease in awareness, bringing inner wisdom and light.

3.- slowing down to observe the mind, allowing greater reflection and insight. Yoga practice helps you to slow down.

4.- awareness of unseen force that can hold us captive in old samskara.

5.- fearlessness: tolerate unpleasant sensation – like grief or fear of loneliness.

6. – envision new pattern. Visualize the new discovered self when you do Yoga practice, when the mind slows down and relaxes.

7.- Practice. Understand what can trigger a relapse.

Difficulty to make decisions and to make choices come from fears

Mistakes are stepping stones to success.

When our egos are rigid, and when we have inner conflicts, we have difficulty making choices and making decisions, paralyzed by fears and anxieties. We can learn to make our life easier for ourselves by learning faith, trust and detachment. Mistakes are only stepping stones to success for a person who is aware and working on himself. There is no such thing as mistake for a seeker, there is only lesson.

Adversity is a perception

Return to your untouched self. There is no others. There is no world besides you. You are the master. It is easier to say then done. In this time of adversity for many, it would be difficult to resort to wisdom of the Self and try to see the “rope” instead of the scary “snake” – to use the famous vedantic analogy. However, equip with this spiritual strength, knowing that all is well in reality, we can find courage to face the snake, face the worst imaginary outcome. Adversity can be a good trainer. 

we need to train ourselves to be strong, no matter what.  In adversity, we need to get mentally ready for what’s coming. We are not catastrophizing, only facing hardships in order to do the right thing and not running away in fears.

By negative visualization, we can mentally prepare for the hardships in life.

We must face the hardship by imagining the worst outcome. Seeing the worst doesn’t mean you are resigning your fate to it. In fact, it is the opposite. By seeing the worst, you won’t bury your head in the sand and run from it in fear.  So visualize the details of the possible negative scenario: Imagine you lose your mother, or your son. Imagine, you lose your job or your business is bankrupt. Let’s face the bad news and let’s come up with the positive way to think about them. Let’s get ready “there is no way out, there is only through”.

  • Confinement: This is the time to turn inwards. Do inner practice. Meditate, become aware of your thoughts that you have neglected when busy.
  • Overwhelm: Tasks changed, parenting duties are overwhelming when schools closed. This is the time to get to know your kids better. And be creative in terms of tutoring them and keeping them structured.
  • Life plans changed: Events cancelled or postponed. It is OK. We will appreciate the event better when the time comes. It is not the worst thing.
  • Sickness and disease: I might get sick. I might even die. It is OK. Death is not the end of life anyway. But if Karma is the reason why I am in this body, I am not sure that I have completed my karma I am in now, so I ask myself, am I ready to die or not? The prospect of death will give meaning to this life. Death is not the only problem, there is death when I am sedated with the ventilator machine that will take away my capacity to be aware and to pray. And I know the last thought determine the next birth. I rather be conscious, breathe the yogic way, light and slow and deep as much as I can and die ready with the mantras and prayers on my lips. If I survive, I might have to face being sick for weeks. It is OK. There must be meaning for me being alive. I will fulfill my mission sooner or later.

People around me will get sick and may be will die. Estimates are 40-60% of americans will be sick and the US will have more than a million death. It is OK, it is not my will, it is God’s will.

  • There will be riots when people get desperate. It will happen but, it will not be that common so I do not need to worry about it now. More often we will see people coming out of their comfort zone to help. This is the opportunity for me to help others.
  • There will be scarcity of commodities as there will be disruption in the supply chain. It will be short term shortage. We will be fine with simple living. In Yoga and Ayurveda, you can live very simple of kitcheree (rice and mung bean) and some vegetables. We have had too much food, too much variety that come from all over the world. We can return to the garden. Our health and appreciation of life will increase.
  • Economy will enter a recession. Consumer spending habits will fundamentally change. It is OK. We do not need more stuff and this situation makes that very clear. We do not have to consume and consume.
  • Borders will close. We will not be able to travel the way we did. It is OK, by turning inwards and controlling our desire and imagination we learn to be content with ourselves, with nature and people around us. We can connect to people around the world more than ever by Internet.
  • There will be tension between countries. It is OK , the nations will work their alliance with each other out. It is a game that changes all the time

Everything is an opportunity for practice

to follow the flow of life as said earlier.

There are many types of practice:

  • practice of cultivation of virtues:

flexibility, adaptation, strength, courage, fortitude, empathy, patience, relaxation, detachment, calmness, forgiveness, tolerance, selflessness, compassion and love.

  • practice of eradication of vices: 

anger, blaming, judgmental attitude, rigidity , procrastination, blaming, lack of will, intolerance, lack of self control , failures in turning the mind and senses inwards, lack of self awareness , practice of being here and now, practice of doing little by little .

CONCLUSION

Keep flowing with life with faith and fortitude. If you practice acceptance, awareness and detachment, you will enjoy life for what it is: a school and a play.  You will become better and better at it. You can lose everything, but the main thing is you are not losing yourself! Swami Sivananda said : “Any amount of zeroes have no value, unless you add the 1 before them”.

Stress Relief Counseling – from darkness to light

Stress Relief Counseling – from darkness to light

Satsang on line by Swami Sitaramananda April 8, 2020

Introduction

Today’s topic is a very appropriate topic. It’s about stress relief counseling. The International Sivananda Yoga Centers are offering a service of stress relief counseling for all, in 12 languages. So if you see the announcement, please share with as many people as possible. Because the situation of suffering and stress due to the epidemic is a global situation. So we want people to be able to access the counselors who may be able to support them through this period of stress.

You can imagine the situation. There are all kinds of situations but you can summarize everything under the name of stress. From the person that is a frontline worker in the hospital, trying to save people’s lives; to a person caught up in their apartment living with a few people, with their children and unable to move; to a person who worries about the future, about their livelihood; to a person that is sick and struggling, that is doubting himself and in fear of death; to a person that is separated from the family member, because that family member is in isolation. So many difficult situations that the world is going through. A very very stressful situation that the world is going through.

So we’d like to have more and more people understand stress so that you can help yourself and you can help others as well. Because if you don’t understand the stress phenomenon then you might aggravate your situation through a wrong kind of stress response. The problem is also that you have adapted to stress. This means that your body and your mind may take that as the real thing and lead to chronic stress. And if you are in that stressful situation you don’t really know how to get out of it. The body, the mind will adapt to that kind of stressful situation and response that is physiological, neurological, and that also affects your immunity. At that time, it is just a matter of time that the wrong stress response will perpetuate. Because we are not just talking about now only, but we are talking about the mind. When the mind learns something, it would keep keep repeating the patterns.

The topic is so relevant because it is not just addressing the problems now, but can also help prevent  problems that could occur in the future. When the stress has become numbing, and is not something that you can balance out, it can become a mental health issues. As you know in yoga, we want people to become balanced and clear, because that is how they connect with themselves.

Most of the reason for doctor’s visits are caused by stress. Even before the health crisis was here, more and more people are suffering from stress. We can trace many of our diseases back to stress. Our immune system is weakened by stress. So we are more susceptible to diseases and viruses of different kinds, and we have less capacity to fight them.

Often we are not eating properly. Either we are eating too much or not eating at all or eating anything. We are not aware of our eating and diet. We are not sleeping properly. So many people suffer from insomnia or from nightmares or even agitated sleep. We are not breathing properly. Either we hold our breath in tension, or we are trying to gasp air. The reason is that we have become fixated on the idea that disease causes breathing difficulty. It is said that if we gasp  for air, it’s because we don’t know how to breathe or how to use our diaphragm to breathe deeply, calmly, slowly and in a relaxed way. Thus we aggravate our problems. Let’s say you feel panicky because you feel that you have some kind of disease and you start to breathe wrongly. At that time it’s very important for you to get in touch with a yoga teacher who can teach you how to breathe through the diaphragm and breathe slowly and deeply in order for you to relax. We are stressed and we want to relax. However, we breathe wrongly, so it makes us experience even more stress.

The situation of stress causes us to have difficulties in relationships with people., resulting in all the symptoms, including fear, anxiety, if we can recognize them, also irritability, grief, sadness or even depression. We have talked about this before, so please refer back to some of the teachings in the blog that talk about fear, anxiety and another one that talks about yoga of relationships, and how we can take the opportunity of this time to improve our relationships. We need this help so that we know how to deal with stress and how to help others.

The other point in this talk is about learning how to observe ourselves and the environment and have a strategy to know how to lift ourselves up and to change the environment for the better. That means how to move from darkness to light. We have to understand the theories about the three Gunas- the very fundamental theory of yoga philosophy. How to move from darkness to light then eventually to a place of transcendence or understanding. You cannot really understand anything if you are in darkness. That is the topic of today.

What is stress?

First we will talk very briefly about stress, What is stress? Our stress response is something that is built-in. It’s in our system. In our psychology, nervous system, and in our immune system. All these are all connected together. It’s a mechanism that responds to the perceived threat to our survival. So the stress response is there so that we can protect ourselves in some way. Later on we will talk about a little more how we can protect ourselves and what the cause of stress really is.

  • The mind and the body is very tightly connected. Whatever that we perceive in our mind will affect our body and the body organs and  their functions. So we can develop so-called psychosomatic disease due to stress.
  • There are three different types of stress response, fight, flight and freeze. It depends on the personality. Fight, flight or freeze, but it’s all the same. It depends on the temperament of the person. Some people may have more tendencies to fight when they feel stressed or to control. Some people might have the tendencies to escape the problems. And the other person might have the tendency to try to disappear so that nobody notice. They freeze, become paralyzed, becoming smaller and smaller.These are the three typical types of response to stressful situations depending upon your constitution and personality.
  • You can say that according to ayurveda there are three kinds of personality, the fiery personality (pita), the airy personality (vata), and the more water and earth personality (kapha). So you can say the fight response is for the pitta, the fiery nature. The flight response is more for the vata kind of nature, namely running away. The kapha people will have the tendencies to become inert. it’s just a very rough explanation.
  • If the stress response is prolonged then it will lead to chronic stress and eventually to disease and break-down. Normally we have the relaxation response built into our system. It’s alternate. You can be stressed and you relax. Stressed and relaxed. Sometimes it is impaired, because sometimes you are stressed, stressed, stressed, keep holding the stress and responding to stress and you can never relax. So very important that you learn to relax.
  • The most important thing to understand about stress is that stress is subjective. Something that might stress somebody else might not stress you, or vice versa. It’s subjective, it depends on your mind. An objective stressor, is something that causes your stress, but your personal reaction is due to the habitual thoughts and emotions in your mind depending on your perceptions. It’s your personal way and habitual way.

So the teaching of yoga will help you change your perception. People think wrongly that your ego self is always the same. That is denying the  fundamental essence of life, that we are constantly evolving and constantly changing. Every challenge is an opportunity for us to evolve a little. That means to let go the preconceived ideas about ourselves and about others and to get ourselves out to the light a little more.

  • The more we are rigid the more stressed we are. The more we are open and flexible, the less we are stressed. The general guideline is to try to be open and to be more relaxed. Most people believe it’s an external stressful situation that causes stress. But you can see now you are in quarantine, some people think it’s very stressful because they cannot do what they like. But some people will be welcoming it because they have time to do what they like and to do what they need to do. Because normally they can not. We think that everyone will be reacting in the same way as us but it’s not true. Everyone reacts differently. The outside environment is the same but the reaction is different.

How we perceive an event place a significant role in whether the stressor triggers our stress response or not.

5 causes of stress and how yoga helps:

1. Lack of prana (vital energy) from nature:

People are more stressed when they don’t have prana to deal with the challenge. To think or to understand we need prana, the vital energy. But when the lifestyle is too artificial we tend to spend prana. We are in the economy of debt, so that we all the time spend but we don’t take time to recharge. At that time we won’t be able to deal with stress or challenges because we are already in debt. At that time we might go into bankruptcy. We might feel sick when a thought comes. Like I’ve said, it’s a perceived threat. A thought just comes and suddenly you collapse, because you do not have enough prana due to your lifestyle from before. So the pressure builds up and we cannot handle it, our immune system is compromised. We can imagine that our modern world is very much so. It’s making us more in debt. It doesn’t enrich us. We live in high-rise buildings. We are all the time in the car or in the traffic. We are subject all the time to noise, to pollution and our mind is also very much full of thoughts and desires, so we call it the rajastic lifestyle. We overuse the computer, the cellphone. We don’t eat food properly, we don’t take time to eat, we eat out and we eat frozen food. Of course in the situation that we are now in, we can’t really find our proper supply and that can also add to the question of prana. We have to do the best we can in the current situation. Try to understand that we can supply our prana in certain different ways. From foods and also from our proper thinking. The idea is you need to live in alignment with nature to have more prana, so be in the sun and eat the food that is closer to the sun. We don’t go too much into this part about prana because we have a separate talk about that. Just know that when you counsel people about stress or when you feel stressful you can recognize right away that you are lacking prana. So you are not responding correctly, and you will have to build up prana. There are many different ways to build up the prana according to yoga.

2. Negative emotions create stress:

There are some negative emotions within you or within the person that you counsel or people that are around you that are stressful. You can tell right away there are some negative emotions.
Any unhealthy relationships and expectations will create stress. We have a lot stress due to relationships. Our relationships are not necessary healthy or loving, so we have to understand or help people to understand the emotions and the antidote of the emotions. There is some training possible we can learn and other people can learn. So don’t take the emotions as yourself. The first thing is recognizing and developing the awareness of our emotions. The awareness itself helps. The moment that you know that I’m angry, because I feel let down I don’t get what I want. The moment you know that and automatically by being aware of that, you do not become attached to that thinking or that scenario, and can be yourself. Awareness allows detachment. That awareness already helps to alleviate the problems, so when you are counseling people, you help people to be aware. You don’t have to solve their problems, but just because they become aware of it, automatically, their mind will think correctly and the problems will be solved by themselves. Negative emotions will also drain the prana. So that’s why people go down and down. The negative emotions can also be how people think they are. Because they have been building the personality for a very long time. Like I said, different stress responses vary according to different personalities. A person may be very fiery or might be all the time controlling. The person might be all the time not facing situations and not facing themselves. They distract themselves. They escape. A person might be acting as if they don’t know and not doing anything, because they are used to being fearful and stressed. Sometimes you can live in an abusive family relationship, for example, that makes you feel all the time, since your childhood, maybe unworthy, victimized and powerless. It’s not that simple to help a person to get out of stressful situations. Because the roots can be very deep in the psyche of a person. Yoga helps you to open the heart so then you can become more in touch with the love within you. Everyone has love, but the habitual negative emotions might be veiling you from the love that is true and within you. Yoga makes us open our heart and withhold our judgement of others. We are very quick to judge others and close our heart. But by practicing yoga, we can keep our heart open. Yoga also helps you deal with your emotions by reminding you of your true Self that is untouched and unhurt; that is fulfilled; that is perfect; that is independent; that is transcendent; that is free and joyous; that is non-competitive; that is one without a second. Beautifully said. One without a second. That means when you don’t feel separated from the others, at that time you can go to the essence of yourself that is one. And automatically all your negative emotions vanish. Of course it’s easy to say but it’s something we have to keep working on. We need to identify the negative emotions and use yoga techniques to take care of them.

3. Adaptation problem:

The third cause of stress, which is very relevant now is the adaptability question. We said already, the more you are open and flexible the less stress you will experience. The more you are rigid the more stress you will have. We need to adapt. We need to let go of ownership. Ownership means you identify very much with something, either objects or accomplishments. You have difficulties to adapt because you falsely identify with something that is impermanent. It’s a very big thing. Swami Sivananda says, ”Adapt, adjust, accommodate. Bear insult, bear injury, highest yoga.” That’s how Swami Sivananda talks. We need to step back. When you feel something is difficult, you need to step back. Practice detachment. Stepping back from whom? From our own selves. Our own ideas and identification about whatever we feel, whatever we identify with as the problems, or whatever we identify to be the cause of our miseries. So we need to detach. Step back. Stress happens when there’s a failure of adaptation. When we fail to adapt, it’s because we are attached. Instead of detachment, we attach to something. We attach to who and what we think we are. We attach to our problems or how things should be in relation to who you think you are. The attachment problem is the misidentification. We think or experience something and we might be attached to it. We attach to our past. We attach to our stories. We attach to our dramas. That creates stress. Or when things change we become stressed. You see nowadays things change so quickly, and we are stressed. That’s everybody. Unless you are really trained for a very long time, and you have to be really flexible. When things change we become stressed. When we cannot adapt to new situations and when we are constantly expecting things to be in conformity to our expectations, we are not able to adapt ourselves to them. So yoga says, “ A flexible spine, a flexible mind. “ All the time we are training ourselves to be more flexible in our body and also in the mind.

4. Uncertainty and existential anxiety:

How Yoga helps to alleviate stress by giving us flexibility in outlook about Self and others:
The common problem for our time that causes stress, and the reason why so many people are stressed now, is the idea of uncertainty. Uncertainty and existential anxiety resulting from the fact that you see many people dying around and the disease may come to your door at any time by any body, and in that it’s invisible. At that time you have anxiety. It comes from the fear of death and from disease. When you are there and your life depends on the government that decides if you can move or go back to work or so on, that creates stress. Then we face something we call uncertainty. That creates stress. When you study yoga you have to go deeper. It’s not only about yoga exercise, but you have to go deeper into the philosophy of yoga. Because it helps you to alleviate the stress and give you flexibility of outlook about ourselves and others. Uncertainty has always been there, it’s not a new situation. We don’t really know what can happen. We don’t know when we are going to die. We don’t know. Anything can happen. Earthquakes can happen. Tsunamis can happen. Accidents can happen. So nobody really can predict or control life. We have an illusion that we can control until something happens and we realize that we are not at all in control. So we need to learn how to live this life which is constantly changing. Changing day by day. Even the body is constantly changing. My white hair did not come overnight. It came little by little. The body is constantly changing and we are facing the transition. That creates a lot of anxiety. Because we see people dying and we see more and more which reminds us how fragile life is. We can be taken very very quickly. We turn around and somebody can be taken very quickly. You look at the statistic today, so many people are dying. It’s not like before people didn’t die but now it becomes very clear. So we have to think more about it. Existential anxiety exists all the time, and we have to resort to some kind of deep realization, deep understanding or deep thinking, in order for us to be able to be stable in ourselves.

We have to learn to see the absolute. The level of ourselves which is untouched. At the same time we have to be able to live in this world of relativity, at the same time remembering a level of ourselves is immortal and untouched. The yogi develops the capacity to be flexible and to be able to change perspective about him or herself, and to avoid obsession and stubbornness. To try to depersonalize things. Don’t think it only happened to you and dramatize it, but try to understand the reason, that can be quite involved, for any kind of stressful situation. We can very quickly deal with our existential anxiety if we have some kind of faith. You know in a correct manner it’s not blind faith but faith in a correct manner, faith in your true Self and in the supreme intelligence. The more we have faith the more we can deal with our existential anxiety and our uncertainty. Because we don’t know, and we cannot control. But everything is always happening for the best. So you can relax. We know we are supported at all time by the invisible hands of the divine. That is also something we can train ourselves into thinking. The practice of yoga helps to connect to the Divine. And if you remember there’s that level of the soul that is sat-cit-ananda, the Atman. That is free, that is not hurt, and is untouched by anybody and that whatever people think about you, you are perfect. So there’s that level of ourselves that we need to get in touch with.  Otherwise we will be very anxious and fearful. You see there’s already many reasons why we are stressed and we can’t escape it. We have to think about it. The challenging situation is that we have to think about it more. Now we say okay when we have time we will think about it, when everything comes back to normal we can think about philosophy. But that’s not correct. It’s in the challenging time that you need to take the opportunity for wisdom.

5. How Yoga helps redeeming karma:

It’s more or less the same idea that nothing happens for nothing. Something happens always for us to have the opportunity to learn something. What we are experiencing now is the results of our past actions. And what we need to do now to redeem our karma is to see it, accept it and redeem it and not repeat the same wrong thinking again. It is said that we are born to experience the results of our past karma, past thoughts, past desires and these are our lessons. So this is why to some level, our problems and our challenges are inevitable. What does that mean, inevitable for us? That means that whatever happens to us is specific for us. We need to learn our lessons and cannot escape from it. You can blame people and try to deny it. But unless you do some soul searching, and see your own weakness and your repetitive patterns, you would not be able to learn that karmic lessons. It’s said that we are born and our life is set up. It’s all set up. So that we can experience it. And sometimes we think think that somebody set that up. You look at the recent events and you can see. Some people get stuck in some countries they cannot move they cannot go, suddenly they cannot. You see all these are all karma. You step back and see why is it so. You step back and see this is why you need to accept. It’s not that you are fatalistic about it, but you need to face it and make the best out of it. Because it has in it something, a lesson about ourselves. Not the neighbor not the others not our family members but exactly something we need to learn. The same situations and a group of people will experience things differently, will react differently. Because of their patterns. And they need to learn from their patterns. That is called the deep level of karma. That’s why it’s very annoying. When something that we think should not be there is there again, right in front of us, and we think it’s very stressful. So the deeper level of stress is that situation. Everyone has to go through their karma. The karma can be collective karma as well. So we are all together on the planet of earth in this time. So whatever we do to the environment whatever we think it’s civilization and we develop dependency towards technology and our life changes quickly. It’s karma. I myself don’t want to deal with any of these. The cellphone, the internet. But now I found myself on the internet, have meetings on the internet and all these things you know. I studied it’s difficult for the eyes burn your eyes and it drains your prana. I remember the first time I talked in the meeting on the internet or something I feel very drained. Because my world was different I didn’t know the internet I didn’t want to use the internet before. I never used these things. But the whole community the whole life everything the whole world is moving towards that level. And now I have got used to it. So now it’s not so draining. Because somehow we develop a different kind of nervous system. So the whole world is evolving very quickly and who knows what the situation now is preparing us for. We go back to the question of karma and stress. We can share together the collective situation and bear together the results of our collective actions.

So to summarize, stress is an indicator and a teacher that we need to think about a given situation to rethink who we are, about our expectations and our motivation and to remember this is not the real Self. We need to try to lift our consciousness through teaching, through training so that we go to the root cause of the stress. So as a yoga teacher you have to be humble, knowing that you do not know and surrender your will to God’s will. And Yoga life teaches you the different practices that combine the four paths of yoga to destroy the root of karma that comes from wrong thinking and wrong doing, and to give us the positive and sattvic life, that’s the teaching of the Sivananda system, “ Serve, love, give, purify, meditate, realize. “ the four paths of yoga. That’s the first part of the talk today about stress and the cause of stress. So that you can counsel yourself and counsel the people around you.

The 3 Gunas ( 3 qualities of nature)

Another theory that comes from the yoga philosophy that will help you is the theory of the three gunas. Now we are talking about the theory of the three gunas as the guideline for us to move from darkness to light or to help people move from darkness to light. Regarding the  the topic of stress, there are three types of reaction, depending on the gunas. The gunas are  tamas, rajas and sattva. These are the Sanskrit terms that explain how the whole universe and nature can be seen and characterized through all these qualities. There is the  quality of darkness, tamas; the quality of action and movement is rajas; and the quality of purity and balance is sattva. If you yourself can try to recognize within yourself the qualities and try to recognize the qualities in the person that you counsel as well, if you can really master the way of seeing then you will know how to do, how to counsel a person. The guideline is that people will respond to stress depending on the gunas, so they can have a tamasic response to stress, a rajasic response to stress and a sattvic response to stress. The counselor yourself has to help the other person to move from tamas to rajas and to sattva.That is the key, the main guideline to whatever problems we find in ourselves or we find in others. You will have to break through the tamas, the darkness; calm down the rajas, the agitation and the projection. You would have to cultivate the sattva which is nourishing the quality of balance harmony nourish and balance. That is the main guideline.

But before that we can just try to see a little bit the concrete manners how a tamasic stress response can look like.

Tamasic stress response:

When a person is lazy, slothful, they don’t care. They don’t take baths and even throw the clothings all over, and the room, the house is completely disorganized. They don’t clean and they don’t organize, that is called the tamasic response. That can also come as a stress response. “I don’t see anything, I don’t find a way out, I don’t understand anything anyway, so I don’t care.” So you fall into that idea that ”I don’t care”. And then you become indulgent in food, eating anything. “Why do I care about my life and health, it can be taken away anytime anyway so I don’t care.” You indulge in too much eating, too much sleeping, and being passive. You spend too much time watching movies or watching news. You become passive and no longer participate actively or become aware in your life anymore. You give up your life and you go into watching movies and news. You cannot grasp reality anymore. When people are so much in virtual reality, then they can become depressed. That’s also an expression of tamas. You become depressed and you become fearful. Fear and anxiety is an expression of tamas which make you lose yourself.Then you can become complacent, therefore, you hide and go into denial. You feel you cannot do anything, you deny your happiness as well as your abilities and you live in darkness.

You also notice the tamas when people complain about others. They know something has to be done but they don’t do it.“Why don’t you wash the dishes?” But they themselves don’t wash the dishes.They complain that people around me are this and that. That is the tamastic attitude. The victim attitude means always somebody is doing something to me. So I’m not responsible for what is happening to me.

Living in the past is also an expression of tamas. All the time you talk about the past, you know, living in the past, so that’s is the tamasic attitude. Some people cannot stick to any routine, any schedule. For example now they have to create their own schedule and routine but they cannot do it. They cannot discipline themselves or turn inwards. It’s impossible for them to do yoga or to do meditation, because they cannot follow any kind of routine. They can be suicidal. They can be escape into drugs, these are all tamasic experiences. They think taking marijuana can solve their problems. They become relaxed and think that there is no problem. So it’s also a tamasic attitude. I also see nowadays people drinking bleach. They are afraid of the virus and so they drink bleach to prevent the virus and they kill themselves. These are the tamasic stress responses. You want something quick and you don’t work on yourself but want something external.

Rajasic stress response : 

The idea is the ego is very strong when you are rajasic. When you are the victim of the rajasic view then you separate yourself from the rest of the world. So you become angry because the way things go is not the way you want. So you can become angry. Anger is the rajasic response. If a person is depressed and they are not moving or not doing anything, ie. no eating no anything, then it’s better that you encourage them to be stronger in their opinion about things so they can become angry. But somehow it’s better and afterwards they can calm down. So the idea is to get away from the tamas and calm down the rajas. The rajas is somehow easier because you can calm them down through yoga.

The rajasic expression is they can become angry, and people can become violent. When the situation stays the same and there’s no change, people may start to become angry with the government; become angry with the neighbor and they can even become violent. So that’s the rajasic response of the stress. I learned something that is very disheartening, that many shops are closed in LA but the gun shops are open. They are allowed to open. This is quite disheartening, it means people feel insecure and uncertain. We will talk about insecurity and uncertainty. How they are going to make themselves safe and secure is by buying guns to protect themselves from the neighbors. This is the rajasic response to stress.

There is also the blaming attitude. The blaming attitude is rajasic. You never really look at yourself and always blame somebody that creates the problem to you. Accusing, pointing fingers.

The hoarding tendency is also the rajasic expression. You want more and more. The greediness, the hoarding of the material stuff. You think it gives you more security.

Also you see that there are some people that don’t hesitate to break rules. They don’t like the rules.

The me and mine attitude. Anything that is about me and mine can cause the rajasic attitude. Try to temper down the rajasic. Any selfish kind of idea, that I enjoy myself and I get what I want. The rest of the world can suffer but I don’t care. This is the rajasic attitude.

Regarding disease, some people may try different kind of medicine that is called the rajasic way. They will try this and that and they will get a cocktail of medicine. The more medicine they get the better it is for the disease. They don’t look into the holistic natural healing that comes from themselves, but for something external.

Now regarding the social distancing. Many don’t think a lot of the whole, which means they only think about themselves. Some people still go and party on the beach while people are struggling in the hospitals. Rajasic means like you cannot refrain from movement and excitement, sensual pleasures and egoism. That’s the rajasic attitude. And constantly you are just enjoying your life with the senses.

Spreading misinformation is also a rajasic way to try to solve about the problem. You blame, and you create a whole theory about the problem, or you try to control completely control. You try to make money when other people suffer. For example you try to boost the price of masks when other people are suffering. You boost the price very high so then you can sell this. You try to take advantage of others to gain name and fame and wealth. This is the rajasic attitude. So try to temper this down.

Sattvic stress response :

This is what we like to cultivate in ourselves and in others. This life in peace, in harmony, in health that would remove us from fear, from reaction so that immediately we gain peace is the sattvic response. So the sattvic response is that we are seeing the bigger picture. Not only seeing the picture that you feel yourself but seeing the bigger picture that everyone is going through. To have clarity and to have knowledge because it’s based on openness of the heart, and so you need to be able to be selfless, to be able to be helpful to the situation. Be charitable. I see that in Las Vegas people are sleeping in a small square that is painted on the ground. They are doing social distancing by staying in their square. It’s shocking to the eyes to see that. At the sametime you know in Las Vegas right now, there must be thousands and thousands of empty rooms in the hotels right now and at the same time you see people sleeping in the parking lot in their little square. So that is called rajasic, it’s not sattvic, it’s not charitable. So we also hear some news of some landlords completely forgiving people for their rent at this time. So these are charitable understanding kinds of attitude, we call it sattvic attitudes, we need to cultivate. So whatever we have we need to share. You might have to sacrifice today not to eat your favorite food, so that you can share in the suffering of so many people. And then you stay at  home instead of not caring and going out to buy your specific favourite food. If you don’t care about consequences this is called the rajasic, tamasic attitude and not a sattvic attitude. In the sattvic attitude, you are charitable and you see the bigger picture. You are prayerful because you recognize there is something that is bigger than anybody and you pray to that. This is sattvic. You are forgiving. People make mistakes and you know it’s because they don’t know or they are stressed. So you forgive them. You surrender to God’s will to see the big picture and accept it. You practice yoga. You practice deep breathing. You practice relaxation. You practice mindfulness, awareness. You practice meditation. You try to get information from authorized sources and not to seeing different kind of news that is going on that can excite your mind. These are all examples of the sattvic attitude. You keep in general a positive attitude about things. You accept that there are events that you cannot control. You exercise regularly. You eat balanced meals, these are all part of sattva. You learn to manage your time more effectively. You set limits and learn to say no to the requests that would create excessive stress. You have to learn to say yes when you can, and that is the balanced attitude. You make time for your relaxation and for your hobbies. Now you can learn to do yantra painting. You can learn how to sew some masks for other people so you can give out for free. You do something helpful and useful. You use your hobby to balance yourself. You can be assertive, it’s sattvic, but not aggressive. Aggressive is rajasic. Assertive, being yourself is sattvic. You assert your feelings, your opinions and your belief, but not becoming angry, offensive, and passive, for example, not saying anything but turning everything inside and getting angry. Everything in this universe is operating through the three gunas. We need to start to see things this way. The gunas operates in the physical and the mental and the emotional level and obscure our true nature. So beyond our true nature, beyond the gunas, beyond the things happening, there is a consciousness of the reality that is beyond denial, beyond the darkness, beyond actions and beyond even the harmony of the balance, which is completely pure, which is ideal. But right now what we want is to nurture at least the sattva. Because in that sattva, in that harmony, we‘re be able to perceive the light within. The consciousness or what we call the Atman is always there. We seeing things as if through crystal. Like the crystal, when you put it by the colors it will take all the colors. It looks like the Self is lost in what is happening, but we need to be able to distinguish that the Self is always there. It can never be lost. The mind is colored by the darkness and by passion so that we cannot see or recognize ourselves.

That is the ultimate counseling for yourself and the others how to recognize the Self. Yoga teaches that you are not the body, you are not the mind because it’s changing, you cannot depend on it. Even our body you cannot depend on. Ultimately, if you can talk to yourself or talk to others the higher level of philosophy, then it’s great. But at least you can move people from tamas to rajas to sattva. From darkness to some level of harmony. Have them have a little bit detachment towards their thoughts and feelings. Because know that thoughts and feelings are always veiling. Like today,the sun is there but the clouds are veiling, so you cannot see the sun.You get a little depressed and think that the sun is not there, The sun is the Self. The sun is always there.

Tamas is the resistance to change, Tamas is the veiling. Rajas is the forceful change. it’s external-oriented and ego-driven. It’s extreme control. It makes us attached. When we attach,  we become fearful. Then at that time you know that you need to calm down. Tamas, you need to move it, shake it up, get out of it. Rajas, you need to calm down. And sattva, you need to nurture. So that’s always the key. You need to do it. Often rajas and tamas are together. When you see fear is there, you become more attached. Fear, is tamasic you won’t be able to see that your Self is there, and you become more attached to things. You think that if I have this thing I will be secure myself. So tamas and rajas go together. From fear comes attachment and from that come defensiveness and then stress. Because the more you have that “me and mine attitude” the more stressed you are. The more relaxed you are the more you are resting in your own Self, and the more you won’t be subject to stress and will not become fearful because of the change. People are also attached to the actions thinking that this is my way. People say, “My way, or the highway. “ If you become dutiful, there’s a different story. Sometimes you know there’s a rigid action, that’s rajas. So we need to calm down. It’s not like you can become a saint or liberated or become free from any of these. But you need to calm down. If you feel that the rajas is going on in your relationship and so on, you need to calm down. Relax is the key. Relax. And if you feel like you are hiding away or getting out of this, you need to do some action, get out of it. You take a walk, you take a shower, you do something. That’s the guideline. I hope so far now you get the guideline. How to deal with tamas, how to deal with rajas, and how to constantly nurture the sattva. The sattva is the wisdom the acceptance. The acceptance in whatever you cannot change and change whatever you can change. Do whatever you can do and accept what you cannot change. That is the sattva. The sattva allows you to be peaceful. Whatever has happened, you can be peaceful in any circumstances and you can make wise choices. And then you become selfless. You carry on becoming devotional. Some people lose their faith because of rajas. Some people who don’t have faith at all, that is tamas. Then some are rajasic. They say that God is doing this doing that and then they are very happy when it happens. But when something changes they blame God. Why did you did this why did you do that. You see that is because they are rajasic, they are attached to their own view of God or what God can do. We use the word God but really, we don’t know. Our ego cannot know God. So if we surrender ourselves we would be able to see the bigger picture. So that’s why the cultivating the sattvic faith is important. Because we cannot control all that we know. There is something that is taking care of things. Keeping the devotion, keeping the discipline to control the mind. Keeping meditation and detachment. Keeping the self inquiry. If you do self inquiry you will never be bored, it will keep you busy and get you out of your habitual way of thinking.

Summary

Our journey is to transform ourselves from negative to positive; from restlessness to peace; from darkness to light. Peace of mind is happiness, but peace is difficult to attain, because our mind is always changing. We have to be steady, regular. We always go and look for the happiness outside. Remember the story of the lady looking for her needle outside when she dropped the needle inside. So the remembrance of the tendencies is sattva. We always look for happiness outside, and blame others for our problems. It’s been our tendency for a very long time. So we have to keep remembering ourselves, keep practising. (Abhyasa Yoga) Know that the truth lies within, so turn inwards.

There’s a quote from Swami Sivananda, “Fear not. Grieve not. Worry not. Your essential nature is peace. Thou art an embodiment of peace. Know this. Feel this. Realize this.”

You will know your own tendencies and know how to guide others and bring a different perspective.

Self Enquiry: a meditation method to make you feel stronger in time of COVID 19

Self Enquiry: a meditation method to make you feel stronger in time of COVID 19

An on line satsang with Swami Sitaramananda 03/30/2020

Introduction:

Today we will introduce you to a new way of thinking that will help you to feel strong in the time of fears and anxieties due to epidemic Covid 19.  We are facing an unknown “enemy” and our daily life is being put to a halt. We feel that our health and wellbeing are being threatened.

We are faced with uncertainty. Existential questions long time not dealt with, come to a surface. Now is a great opportunity to think deeply and find peace and strength through a new understanding of “who am I”. This new understanding of ourselves and our environment shed light to our problems of fears and anxieties and makes us feel stronger.

The practice of Self enquiry:

Asking the question “Who am I?” and breaking the habit to be yourself.

Vedanta philosophy is a powerful philosophy coming from the ancient Vedas. It gives us new insights and solutions to our problems.

  • It says that we need to solve our problems from a different level of consciousness than the one we are familiar with.
  • It is about seeing our own self and our environment differently.
  • To do so, we need to think deeply and endeavor to distinguish between what is unchanging and what is changing.
  • Something unchanging is real. Something changing is illusory.
  • To get to the unchanging, we need to question what we believe about ourselves and our perception of the universe we see around us to be true.
  • The whole meditation exercise is about asking ourselves “who am I?”
  • And breakdown the false identifications- You do not know who you are, but you know who you are not.
  • What remain is the “I”
  • By doing so we recover the Self and feel stronger and happier.
  • We free ourselves from sufferings and fears resulting from our attachment to the false Self.
  • We realize it is a habit we carry for a long time
  • Therefore the meditation needs to continue over time
  • We become more and more detached
  • It takes strength and sharp intellect to do so.

Our habitual mind keeps reproducing the past illusions

Things are not the way we think them to be. The reality we see is the reality of our mind projections. The classical story of “snake and rope” illustrates well our situation. In the darkness , this person saw a snake and jump in fright. Someone who is not afraid of snake brought the light to shine upon the snake. Under the light, It turns out that it is a simple and innocent rope. The rope looks like the snake but is not the snake. The rope did not become a snake, and the snake did not become a rope. All what is happening is in the mind. The mind has already the fears of snakes, therefore projected “snake”. One’s thought and memory is being superimposed upon the truth. In the same manner, in the darkness of our spiritual ignorance, We keep seeing scary and stressful things. And reacted in fears.

When we dare to enquire, the knowledge sets us free. As we see things as they are and not what we imagine it to be.

Why do we keep seeing the same thing?

In order to really be free,
we have to revisit the past illusions
Personal and collective
In order to wake up.
Revisiting our scares and fears
And see them for what they are.
Not real,
In our mind.
Become familiar with our mind patterns
Help us to recognize them.
We keep seeing the snake
But also become stronger with time
As the memory of rope becomes more and more
established
and we can transcend the vision of “snake”
to see the “rope”
Our fears resulting from our weakness become more and more
Known
And we become more and more stronger.
Self enquiry helps us to do so.

How to unveil the Self and be free of the habit to be ourselves?

First, you are not the body:
Upon asking the first question “Who am I”
The first answer is  I am the body
The body is made of the 5 gross elements
Earth, water , fire, air and ether.
It is made of food
We are born with our constitution There are 3 types according to Ayurveda, the ancient science of medicine
You can be solid , earthy , supportive and steady , made of Earth and water
You can be fiery , sharp , active , inquisitive, made of Fire
You can be quick, sensitive and moving like air in space
The body constitution gives the predisposition
To think and be this way or that.
We are not seeing the same thing.
As our constitution veils us.

However whatever constitution or body type we are,
The body is born, grows, decays and dies
At due time
It is not meant to be forever,
It is not ourselves
As it keeps changing.
If we line up different photos of ourselves
At different times of our lives,
From being a baby toddler to an adolescent, a grown up, an adult, and photos of ourselves in our thirties, fourties, sixties
The body looks totally different in size, shape, weight
And yet we pointed out to each photo and recognized the same “me” exclaiming  “ this is me!” , “this is me” !
Think about this, there is a “me” that is not the body .
The body is our instrument
In our journey,
Not ourselves.
Mistaken identity with the body gives fears and anxieties
Specially the fear of death.
The body journey is a chapter in the book of our lives
Not the whole story.

I am not my gender, male nor female
I am not my race, black, white, yellow
I am not my age, young, old, older
I am not my physical beauty or appearance
I am the driver of this body vehicle.
I am not the color or shape of the vehicle
I am not my muscles, my bones, my lungs, my heart
My arms and legs
My nose, tongue, eyes, skin, ears
I am the driver of this body vehicle
And these organs and limbs are my instruments
I am the subject and these are the objects.
I am consciousness and not the sum of body parts.
Detachment towards the body
Not overly worry about it as yourself
But as the caretaker of the instrument
Gives you strength and health.
Free you from the fear of death
Which is paralyzing
In this time of virus threat.

The second identification is with the prana – life force

The prana energizes the body and gives it life
Prana is changing, sometimes low, sometimes high
Balanced and unbalanced
Prana comes with the air we breathe
The earth, water, fire, and etheric space.
We can identify with what we feel,
Energetic or tired
Strong or sick
Blocked or flowing
Acting and enjoying
Moving here and there
Or staying still and shelter in place
But we are not our prana, life force.
So be aware, take care of your prana
Do pranayama to purify and regulate
your prana and emotions,
but we are not the prana.
Therefore stay detached from it.

The third identification is with our mind and emotions.

Who am I?
I am worried, angry, fearful, joyful, sad, grieving.
Our states of mind and emotions
Kidnapped our identity
We lose ourselves in our emotions.
And become what we feel.
The senses are connected to what we feel
And keep us revolving between pleasures and pains
They set the stage for the mind and emotions to play
Its comedies or dramas
But comedy turns to drama and drama turns to comedy
Snake turns to rope and rope turns to snake
Nevertheless, the sense of I is lost, drown in the emotions
Of all our relationships
Which make us feel ups and downs,
Happy and unhappy
Loved and separated
Stay still, turn within,
Happiness is within
Love is already there
Calm down, detach
I am not the mind and the emotions.

Fourth, I am not my ego and intellect:

I can tell the story of my life
Over and over again
To one person, hundreds people, thousands
To my children, grandchildren,
Yet I am not my story
Even though I might be attached to it.
My story even well rehearsed
From life times to life times
Generations to generations
Keeps changing
As my lessons keep changing.
I keep acting out what I think myself to be.
My level of consciousness
My level of self awareness
My level of being the silent witness
To myself.
My understanding of who am I 
Separated or connected
Isolated or together
Alone or involved
Unstable or stable
Worthy or unworthy
Proud of accomplishments
Better or worst

Achiever, intelligent or a failure,
My level of self knowledge is changing
Therefore it is not me, the unchanging.
Truly, there is something beyond the ego stories
That can not be described
This is who I am, the background of things,
The movie screen
On which the movies, stories play
And yet unaffected
Detached Witness I am .
The calming of the mind and the ego,
The realization of the silent witness
The observer of my thoughts
The consciousness awareness itself
Makes I feel strong
I found myself and not losing myself
When I detach myself from my stories
And stop justifying
Myself.
I am not my ego.

My fifth level of identification is more subtle

As it speaks about my purpose.
As my question becomes deeper,
I realize that I have been there, done that
For a long long time.
The purpose of this birth
And its lessons
Is revealed.
As far as the “I” is
Conditioned, attached
My sense of purpose is distorted.
Now I realize the purpose of this birth
My journey is
From karma to dharma
And I am blissful and happy
No more fear
No more separation
No more doubt
No more agenda
I am consciousness and bliss.
I am free

Meditation is thinning out the veils:

Seeing through the illusions of self and others.
Turn within and solve our problems from
A different level of consciousness.
It can only get better
We are not loosing anything
Only gaining in strength and courage
To face our lives
By being ourselves.
This meditation and Self enquiry are forced upon ourselves
In this time of crisis when all established habits are being questioned,
And reinvented.
The more the veils are thin,
The happier and steadier we become.
The more this world will come to peace
As we understand that myself and yourself are one.
Unity in diversity.
Celebrate our interdependence
And let go of our fears
Clinging to the past
Projecting in the future

There is only one Truth

There is not your truth and my truth
Because both are only reflections.
There is only one sun
Reflected in many surfaces
Reflected in rock surface, the light shines little
Reflected on water, it becomes distorted with the waves
Reflected on wood surface, the light is dim and stable
Reflected on shiny mirror, the light is bright and the image sharp.
There is only one consciousness
The same in all beings
Whether mineral, animal , human , superhuman,
We are one
The differences are external
But the essence is one.

We do not know the truth and act out of ignorance

Forgetting the big picture,
Forgetting to do self enquiry
Forgetting the search of truth
Forgetting our purpose
We become greedy, senseless, abusive towards animals, nature
Not thinking, not respecting
Constantly Creating pains to others
For our own pleasures.
This time is the time,
We need to wake up and turn inwards,
Question our ways
Cease to blame,
But taking responsibility
Stop the killing
Of innocent animals
Their abuse and torture
Become vegetarian
Stop the wasting of resources
And the appropriation
Of planet earth
Stay still and Meditate
Everything you want is right
Here and now.

There is only one truth

We are waves of the same ocean
We are clay becoming different ugly pots and beautiful vases
We are gold turning into different shapes and forms of ornaments
We are spirit and consciousness in the guise of different classes of man
Corona virus is equalizer
Can affect rich, poor, statesman and beggar the same,
What ever you are and where ever you are.
Start our self enquiry
Listen to the teachings of the scriptures
And the wise of all times
Even if you can not understand completely
Try
This is the time for us to practice this meditation
wake up and Learn what you can
To Remember ourselves
Stay away from past and future
Be in the moment present
See the essence and not the manifestations
Respect the differences as it is in essence one.
Come back to unconditional love
Of Self and Others
The Love and the Truth will set you free!

Om tat sat
Swami Sitaramananda
03/29/2020

Yoga of Relationships in the time of COVID 19 crisis

Yoga of Relationships in the time of COVID 19 crisis

Satsang on line – March 25, 2020

How to be with yourself and be happy

In this webinar, we will address the question of how to be with ourselves and be happy no matter the outside interpersonal conditions and collective conditions (social distancing, be in isolation or working with groups, living with families and community, in intimate relationship, being alone or in search of close relationships). We will discuss strategies how to transform our negative emotional patterns into selfless love through the practice of Yoga applied in daily life. We will also discuss the Yogic way of how to uplift and spiritualize our relationships.

Why we need to practice Yoga of Relationships?

In all our relationships, we aspire to be loved and to love all the time and 100% but we fail to feel the 100% all the time. We suffer from needs unmet, separation, losses, anxiety, disappointments, inner and outer conflicts, difficulty in communications, lack of empathy and compassion, resentments and anger, attraction– repulsion, emotional swings and also suffer from the paradox of wanting to lose oneself in love and yet wanting to be in control. The problem is between Self and Others and how to find ourselves through relationships?

What is Love?

Swami Sivananda said that “Love is the goal of life.  Love is the law of life.  God is Love and Love is God. To love is to fulfill the law.  We live so that we may learn to love in the eternal”.

My teacher, Swami Vishnudevananda said about love:  “Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Arabs, white and black–we can live together. Educated people, uneducated people, contractors and businessmen, ordinary Swamis and Yogis–we can all live together, eat together, and speak together. We can live our life in a very universal way. This is love, universal love.”

Peace of mind leads to Love.

Happiness comes from love.  However true happiness is not temporary and emotional and is not the satisfaction of desire but the fulfillment of our soul longing to be united with the Supreme. We need to have peace of mind and have Self Knowledge in order to experience love. By finding Peace within ourselves, we find Love. Yoga is the science to find peace.

Love is oneness, union, unity, yoga.

All humanitarians in all countries talk about our shared humanity. In time of crisis, we united in our efforts and prayers. In these times, we looked at the World Health Organization statistics and we cringed, no matter from which country we are from, infected or not. ( to-date 413,467 people infected from Corona virus, spread in 197 countries, with a death toll of 18,433 ). Someone said” The virus reminds us that we are all connected, that something that affects one person has an effect on another, that our false borders can not stop the virus that doesn’t need a passport”. This is the situation demonstrated by Swami Vishnudevananda in his boundary breaking peace missions, long ago. We are one, regardless of our culture, religion, occupation and financial situation.

Our human condition is separation. We suffer from separation in all different levels, in our interpersonal relationships and globally, between nation and nation. And we all long for union. We need each other and yet we constantly have conflicts with each other either in our families or in our trade laws and national identities and borders.  

Yoga teaches us that we are far more than our ego and we are happier when we can get out of our egoism. We all know that great feeling when we are one with somebody or a group, when we can let go of our individuality and feel oneness and not separateness. Separateness leads to a feeling of isolation, of not being supported or loved. Our suffering is based on the mistake to think that this separate personality is the one to be loved but we forget that to get love we have to offer love, and to love is to cease to be a separate personality.

Our personal stories of love and split and our collective history of war and peace represent the ever-present drama of our Karmic lessons unfolding, experienced as an individual or as a group. Karmic lessons mean learning from our mistakes and slowly coming closer to the Truth of who we are. Nothing is by accident.  People we encounter or circumstances that we find ourselves in are only opportunities for us to serve and to love. We receive the same lesson, either from the point of view of the individual or from the point of view of a nation. We all evolve and come closer to the Truth of who we are. Vedanta philosophy teaches unity of consciousness, how to realize that we are like waves of the ocean but the waves are not different from one another and the waves and the ocean are one. Yoga philosophy helps to free us from the suffering coming from this apparent duality and this split we feel between Self and Others.

Selfless love is to be learned

Our relationships are opportunities to learn selfless love.  Selfless love means to see the Self in others and see divinity in others as well as in one’s self.  It means not seeing the differences, but seeing the essence, the commonness that is One, realizing Unity in Diversity. It is our belief in our separateness and individuality that makes us function in a selfish manner. We believe in a separate life and our idea of freedom in doing actions only out of our own will. We believe that our perception of who we are based on our personality is real and we believe that the characteristics of our ego is our real value.

Unconditionnal love is selfless.

To achieve peace and unity, to heal ourselves and our humanity, we all need to learn that level of Love that is selfless and unconditional.  We need to cease to identify with our ego-self which can only leads us to conditional love, egoistic, selfish relationships. We need to learn to transform our emotions to pure love. Emotions come from our lower mind and our subconscious mind which carries impressions of habitual limited love of the past.  Yoga teaches us to purify the lower mind and to activate our higher mind. Yoga methods teach how to transform our emotions into devotion or pure love

Emotion is not love

Love is at the root of every emotion. If we have a lot of emotions, we find that it is difficult to express and at the same time to repress. People of emotional nature, would need to do more Bhakti Yoga to transform emotions. Transformation of emotions is not what commonly being taught. We are taught either to express or to repress. Both lead to emotional problems. Yoga says that we need to develop our higher mind, our self aware mind in order to guide our lower emotions and to pay attention to justification using our intelligence to justify our basic desires and emotions.

Emotions are a form of love but distorted.  Conditioned love and egoistic love lead to negative emotions instead of bliss.

Let’s recognize our common negative emotions experienced in relationships. Let us bear witness to the spiritual darkness and the egoism and abuse seen time and time again, in families, couples, races, cultural, religious groups and nations. 

Negative emotions need to be converted to positive emotions and from there to pure love. Let’s go to the root of the negative emotions and learn ways how to be free from the sufferings come from them. Apply this to your personal situation as well as to your relationship with a group or a nation.

Anger comes from unfulfilled expectation or desire.

Antidote:

  • Let go of expectation
  • Be grateful of what you have
  • Surrender and accept our differences
  • Let go of control
  • Practice patience towards self and others.
  • Mitigate, calm down, slow down our desire
  • Remember the Self that is fulfilled and content.

Fear:

Fear come from attachment and can be paralyzing in our forgetfulness of Self.  
Forms of fear: Fear of death, fear of being alone, fear of public criticism, fear of loosing, fear of pass trauma and pain, fear of separation….

Antidote:

  • Courage to face our fears and be free of them.
  • Faith in oneself and in the universal intelligence and the universal love and protection
  • Detachment (opposite of attachment) and remaining in oneself.
  • Self-Enquiry to remove habitual false identification and past wrong impressions
  • Self-confidence based on inner strength not on ego
  • Self-reliance – be able to count on oneself and live self sufficiently with oneself

Attachment

True love is not attached but detached. Attachment comes with fears and anxieties. Attachment comes with identification with some external traits of oneself which we recognized in our friends and loved ones. Attachment makes us falsely feel stronger in our relationships. People can be attached with each other and nations can have alliances with each other. Attachment separates and fails to see unity. From attachment, comes our defensive mechanism and stress. Individually we are stressed and as nations, we are stressed. We defend our way of life, we defend our borders, we defend our space, our opinions. Attachment leads to suffering under the disguise of binding relationships.

True love is warm, free, liberating, selfless, and yet detached.  Detachment does not mean rejecting or not loving, or not being strong, not knowing oneself.  
It means learning to see the higher Truth about the Reality which encompasses Oneself and Others. We do not have to loose for someone to be happy. No-one has to loose for us to be successful. Individually, we need to open to this True Self and collectively we need to see Oneness. The reality of the pandemic teaches us our unavoidable interdependence.

Hatred

comes from love turning in the wrong direction.  It isthe opposite of love. Again the same logic applies, we hate what we think that is not ourselves and we limit ourselves to certain idea we have about ourselves. Yoga philosophy acknowledges the root causes of our afflictions, the fact that our minds swing from love to hate, from attractions to repulsions, all due to our lack of higher understanding. We tend to blame externally for our miseries and project our blames and hatred to someone or to a country different than ours. We tend to not look inwards, to realize the necessity to grow out of our limitations and intolerances.
Antidote: 

  • Practice compassion
  • See the self in others
  • Do Selfless service
  • Practice Love in action
  • Cease the blaming and the victim attitude.
  • Share responsibility for caring about our environment, either our home or planet.


This will open the knots of the heart based on egoism and prejudices that corrupt love into hatred.

Desires and passions as obstacles to love and unity.  

To find peace and love in our relationships and in the world, we need to control our desires and passions ingrained as our instinctive habits. In the current situation in the world, we witness groups of people pleading to others to observe social distancing and not to go out to parties, games, entertainments in order to save lives and help the health workers. What a perfect illustration of interdependence. We all have to control our desires and passions and we are forced to be calm, to go inwards and to find higher form of enjoyment within ourselves.

Antidote to desires

  • Devotion to the Divine seen in others.
  • Be aware of our passions stemming from reproductive instincts. Keep pure motives.
  • Identify less with the body and with the separate self. See yourself be part of a larger body.
  • Transform outward lustful instincts into selfless love for humanity and respect of all, men and women.
  • The virus doesn’t spare young or old, for young people, more restless and passionate, they need to practice Yoga daily to sublimate sexual energy and restlessness.  
  • Eat calm food to control desires, animal flesh will reinforce this passionate tendency
  • Lead a harmless life, respectful of all creatures.

Greed

Greed comes from our desire for safety and fulfillment twisted into insatiable illusory desire for material objects. Remove greed to find safety and fullness inside. Greed destroys compassion, generosity, charity, altruism and make us commit crimes against humanity. 

Antidote: 

  • Charity and giving
  • Contentment
  • Practice of gratitude
  • Renunciation
  • There is plenty for everyone’s needs but never enough for anyone’s greed.

Envy

Envy comes from lack of acceptance of our karma and what comes to us by God’s will. A person can envy the other and compete with the other, becoming unhappy when the other is happy. Such competition exists also in the level of a group or nation.

Antidote:

  • Acceptance, turning inward, not comparing.
  • Reminding yourself that everything is due to our own karma. All is perfect
  • Forbearance and humility and learn our own unique lessons
  • Remember that God’s love is abundant for all.

Jealousy

Jealousy comes from sense of entitlement, possession and exclusiveness in love relationship.  Jealousy is experienced when the beloved changes loyalty.

Antidote:

  • Evolve your relationship into a more inclusive relationship
  • Generosity, giving
  • Forgiveness
  • Remember passion and attachment is not love.

Healing emotions 

How to heal emotional wounds and free ourselves from negative mental patterns and suffering coming from past habits of conditional and selfish love?

Self Love

To heal from emotional scars and patterns we need to learn Self-love and Love of God.  Self-love brings acceptance and makes the mind turn inwards to find Happiness but not outwards towards somebody or an external condition.  Self-love or turning inwards to find one’s Self will make you stronger to be able to realize the love within that has always been there.

Self-love is not egoistic.  It is the lack of self-love and awareness that creates the patterns of need and dependency leading away from peace and love.  Self- love brings about self-respect and self- discipline.

Love of the Supreme seen in all

Devotion to the Supreme or to Humanity as Divine manifestation helps us to relax, to self-surrender, to become humble, to break through our egoistic limitations, our emotional patterns and our identifications.  It helps us to surrender the ego, to accept and heal our emotions. The current global crisis is a perfect opportunity for people and nations to become humble and to behave not individualistically but humanistic ally, globally.

Love is personal and starts from within

In ourfast paced, materialistic life, we need to learn to develop love and fulfillment. We need to practice love in all our affairs daily, in all our interactions. We can start with Love of our chosen ideal, our chosen Beloved, in the cave of our own heart. It brings back the presence of love in our heart which is blocked by our identifications with our separate self. Love of our chosen ideal is a most intimate sacred feeling and not a display or social conformity. Love of that chosen ideal transcends religious conventions and rituals.  It comes from within and cannot be imposed from the outside. It is our own inner aspiration and longing for union. Attachment to external form or religious symbols is just a help and not a goal in itself. Through practicing unconditional love towards our ideal form, we learn to self-surrender and to transcend the external forms and come closer to God or pure love itself.

Our chosen ideal of love is the quality we seek in ourselves:  

Our chosen ideal of love can have the quality we seek: purity, eternity, knowledge, true inner power, beauty, perfection, bliss, righteousness. One can choose the chosen ideal according to our own temperament or according to which aspect of the divine you feel the closest with. We all have the desire for Perfection.

Healing through respect and love of the Divine Mother in Nature

We can recognize the Divine manifestation in all names and forms, underlying life. We can see Humanity as Her form. We can see her everywhere as the energy of intelligence, of knowledge, creativity, wisdom. She is also the energy sustaining life and health, energy of peace, love, harmony, virtue, righteousness, beauty, prosperity, and wealth. In another form she is the core of your inner strength and fearlessness and will protect you from harm. This is the time to together pray for her grace.

Her forms are countless. Therefore, respect others ways to truth. Names are many but God is One.  Paths are many but truth is One.

Yoga of relationships is to be practiced daily with all

Learn to see God in our daily interactions and relationships and cultivate selfless love, thus growing in closeness to what we long for and growing in oneness to our ideal of pure love.

There is no other

All relationships are truly relationships with your own Self. There is no separation in reality. We are all learning love through being aware of mental habits. Ourmind reproduces impressions of past relationships and we carry with us patterns learned in childhood and past lives. These conditionings can be very deep and our relationship karma difficult to resolve.

Yogic teachings on karma say that we choose our father /mother and life circumstances to learn our relationship lessons. We are learning to see the One Self beyond our egos interacting with each other.

Discipline of mind and heart

We are all perfect inside but our minds need to be molded in order for us to be able to reflect the perfection and the love that is within us.

Self Enquiry and Self Love

We need to do self-inquiry to become free from past impressions and correct the pattern of reproducing past relationships. We need to find our core relationship with love itself beyond names and forms. Turn within and find ourselves and start with Self Love. At the same time, cultivate Divine love in relationships to free us and achieve lasting happiness.


Nine traditional ways to cultivate selfless love in daily life. Apply the the nine traditional ways to sublimate emotions into devotion and overcome egoism according to the teachings of Bhakti Yoga.

  1. Listen to inspiring Divine stories – Develop the capacity to listen to others without judgment.  Be honest in what you say about yourself.
  2. Sing God’s glory – Learn to praise others and look for their positive qualities and one’s own positive qualities.
  3. Remembrance of His name and presence in prayers – Learn to hold people you love in your heart in a prayerful mood, feel the sacredness of relationships by being detached and forgiving.  Be grateful for all people whom you interact with in your life.

4.  Service with humility –  Learn to actively serve    everyone as God whether you like them or not.

5. Worship – Learn to see God in your relationships, offer your time and presence and beautiful gifts as if they are being offered to God.

6. Prostrations – Learn to give the utmost respect to people you encounter or people surrounding you no matter who they are.

  • Cultivate the feeling of being a servant of God –  Learn to develop an attitude of self-sacrifice.
  • Cultivate feelings of friendship of God – Learn to open your heart equally to all, without ulterior motives and discriminating who is higher
    or lower than you.
  • Complete self-surrender – Learn to accept all things happening to you with equanimity and overcome your own expectations or judgment about anything done by yourself or others.

Conclusion:

May we endeavor to maintain our remembrance of our true purpose, which is to return to a place of no suffering through strength, wisdom, through trust and faith, in other words, a place of fulfillment without desires, of love without selfishness.

Through Selfless Service and Selfless Love may we liberate ourselves from desires and greed, and find our True Self. May we live in the spirit of Karma Yoga, doing our duty and yet learning the basic duty of finding Love of Self and Love of Others as One.

May we improve in all our relationships, taking this opportunity of turning inwards and rethinking our values and priorities. In our network of relationships, may we become all great father, mother, daughter, son, teacher, student, husband, wife, friend, lover, beloved, care taker, neighbor, boss, consumer, statesman, leaders, servants of humanity and of the planet!

All is at all times perfect

  • May the whole world attain Peace and Harmony!
  • Asato Ma Satgamaya Tamaso Ma Jyotir Gamaya – Mrityor Ma Amritam Gamaya
  • Om Purnam Adam, Purnam Idam Purnat, Purnamudachyate
  • Purnasya Purnamadaya Purnameva Vashishyate

Swami Sitaramananda

Acharya ISYVC

26/03/2020

Prana, Thoughts, Emotions and Immunity

Prana, Thoughts, Emotions and Immunity

March 23 2020 satsang on line. 

Happiness, Health and knowledge requires energy. Lack of prana brings depression, stress and darkness. In this time of pandemic , it is critical to know how to increase prana, how to not loose prana and to prevent infection and diseases and how to heal.

What is Prana?

Prana is life force, vital energy that allows you to be alive and function in this world.

When prana departs from the physical body, death comes.

Prana is necessary to live and to progress in life. It is prana that you are attracted to in a person. Everything is alive at different degrees. There is more prana in a real flower compared to a plastic flower. There is more prana in live food fresh food than in canned food or old food.

It is prana that makes you feel enjoyment and feel fulfilled. Your quality of life improves through improving the quality of  prana.

What is important to know is Prana is all-pervading in Nature.

So if prana is everywhere and abundant, then why at times, do you feel dead or deprived? why some people got disease and some did not ? People says that it is age, that some age group people are more subject to disease but may be it is the condition of their immunity and the level of their prana?

May be because they do not know how to plug-in to the universal source of prana and recharge. And may be because there are blockages in the flow of prana through thoughts and lifestyles.

5 things everyone needs to learn to do with prana:

  1. Increase
  2. Conserve
  3. Balance
  4. Channel
  5. purify

1 & 2  How to increase and conserve your prana.

You need to know that it is not sufficient to increase prana but also you need to conserve and limit the expenditure or wastage of prana to be healthy happy. It is the same as with money, you can make money but you spend it all and is always with no money or with debts.

Time to look at our lifestyle now more than ever, how do we use our senses and what do we do.

Learn that You can get prana from the senses or deplete prana from the senses .

You can get prana from your actions and deplete prana from your actions.

From the knowledge of Yoga and Ayurveda , please see the table showing the correlations between the elements of nature, the sense organs and their functions and the organs of action and their functions

Smell Nose EARTH Anus Elimination Taste Tongue WATER Genitals Reproduction Sight Eyes FIRE Feet Moving Touch Skin AIR Grasping Hands Hearing Ear ETHER Tongue Speaking

Increase prana through the earth element.

Do: Live in Nature, live in natural houses, respect nature, do gardening.

Walk on earth, touch earth, hug trees, look at mountains, forests.

Make sure that you eat prana food, fresh products from earth.

Limit: Spending too much time in cities, concrete buildings, sidewalks, cars, high rises, plastic materials,  environmentally harmful products, trash.

Action to avoid: too much eating . Make sure that you eliminate well. 

Increase prana through the water element.

Do: Drink clean pure water. Our body is made of 70% water. Our body is sensitive See research of Dr. Emoto. Eat sweet fruits, honey, pure milk. Avoid dry food.

Wash with clean water; Bathe in oceans, rivers, springs.

Limit: Beverages such as sodas, coffee, alcohol

Know that you spend prana in sexual activities.

Increase prana through the fire element.

Spend time daily outdoors in the sunshine. Open doors and windows to let sunlight in.
Drink warm water.
Eat warm food.
Good digestion requires the fire of digestion being strong.

Avoid cold food, being exposed to cold.

Avoid too much looking at computer screen and get artificial energy from eyes.

Avoid too much moving (quarantine and not travel is actually very good for health)

Increase prana through the air element.

Live in clean fresh air as much as you can.

Ventilate rooms, houses.

Stay away from pollutants like traffic smoke, cigarette smoke.

Breathe deep. Do pranayama breathing exercises daily.

Avoid artificial air like in airplanes, air conditioned rooms.

Touching baby to give prana to baby. Therapeutic touching is giving prana. Careful of sensual touching to conserve prana.

Avoid grasping, hoarding, shopping, as these depletes you from prana. In the contrary, giving gives you prana. 

Increase prana through the ether element.

This is the subtlest element and the most powerful .

Yoga taught that Prana is in our subtle body and is connected to thought.

Positive thinking gives prana, negative thinking or emotions drain your prana

Chant kirtan, repeat mantras, exercise positive thinking, indulge in prayers, search company of the wise, visit of temples, places of pilgrimage (of course now in quarantine you might  not be able to visit your church, temple, places of worship)

Avoid loud music, bars, clubs, crowds, undesirable company. (Amazing, many countries start first with closing unessential places like bars and clubs.)

Avoid negative thinking, selfish thoughts, base thoughts (try not to blame and have racists thougths in this time)

Pay attention to what you say. Try to say helpful words in writing or verbally.

Repeat mantras is the best action.

IMPORTANT to remember:

Prana deficiency seeks stimulation.

Beware of the spiral downward movement when you are lacking prana. Many diseases, addictions and bad habits start with prana deficiency

Prana debt brings stress.

Stress makes you reach out for instant gratification through self-medication or compensation which lead to Pains.

Stress is the cause of many diseases.

3. Prana needs to be balanced, not just increased

The main focus in Yoga practice either in asanas practice or breathing practice is  balance. We can also exercise balance through changing our attitude and our way of functioning. The goal is to attain a state of integration, called equanimity.

To be healthy and happy, we need to learn to balance our energies individually and also collectively. The world is imbalanced and stressed.

When we are imbalanced, it is like we see reality lopsided because we have a lopsided vision. The imbalance is often times between the emotions and the intellect, that means a person would be left brain dominant or right brain dominant. Our modern western dominant societies are left brain dominant.

What to do?

First we need to recognize that our unhappiness comes from our imbalanced state or split state and not coming from anyone else. Grief and blame come from our lack of recognition that this difficulty comes from our own outlook . Classical holistic Yoga practice gives you a little bit of reprieve because it balances the two hemispheres of the brain and awakens the Self Knowledge . Yoga practice by helping you to recognize your strength and weakness, by regulating your energy , acts as a pain  preventative measure and a self renewal tonic. Start to practice balance trying to reinforce your weakness .

  • Hatha is balance between Sun energy and Moon energy.
  •  Right brain functioning /Left brain functionning
  •  Yin energy/Yang energy
  •  Female energy/ Male energy
  • passive, receptive/active controlling side of our personality
  • emotional, intuitive feeling /intellectual rational thinking
  • Cooling (left nostril) / Heating (right nostril)
  • Para sympathetic nervous system and Sympathetic nervous system
  • Relaxation response and defensive Fight and flight response to stress
  • Decrease heart rate/ increase heart rate
  •  Imbalance of prana creates personality problems and stress.

4. Prana needs to be channeled.

In the same manner with your choice to waste money or investing money in order to  give you more money , You can gain more prana by using it wisely and you can also deplete yourself from prana by being fearful to use it or by wrong investment.  Right use : Use prana for meditation and Selfless service. The more you apply your energy correctly, the more prana you will get.

Wrong use: You waste energy through selfish endeavors, sensual pursuits and laziness. Gossips, blaming, back biting are waste of energy.

  • Prana needs to be purified.

Prana moves through the subtle channels (nadis) in the subtle energetic body.

Yoga science knows the art of purification of nadis to allow higher energy to flow and induces higher wavelengths of thought and feeling.

Proper diet and lifestyle purify nadis

To get prana and be able to retain it in the system, it is important, not only to keep pure thought and a pure environment, but also make sure to take proper food. Avoid substances like drugs, intoxicants which clog the nadis and create damage to the pranic system.

Conclusion: Now is the time to Re-charge your  battery.

When you spend time in retreat, limit your outgoing senses and your worldly activities, do regular Yoga practices, you recharge your battery.  You can re-charge your prana like re-charging a battery. Excess Prana is stored in the solar plexus of the body.

What to do:

  1. Join a Yoga class daily, if you can not go out, join a class online. Practice of Yoga Asanas unblocks harmful blocked energy and moves prana.

To do so, the sequence of the asanas needs to be respected and proper concentration, and relaxation in between postures be observed. www.yogafarm.org

2. Do daily Pranayama:

Pranayama is controlling prana through breathing exercises. There are many types of pranayama or control of prana through breathing exercises. You need to join a class with a teacher. It is better not to smoke and take drugs if you intend to do pranayama.

The regular pranayamas to be done daily recommended by the Sivananda organization are: Kapalabhati and Anuloma Viloma.

3. Concentration gathers prana and changes wavelength

A distracted mind is weak and has low prana. Practice of concentration of mind helps gather the dispersed prana and brings health, vitality and peace of mind. A concentrated mind feels stronger and is more effective and gives satisfaction and contentment. Keep yourself busy on doing positive things.

4. Meditation is merging your personal prana and universal prana

Meditation is like a pranic tonic, it recharges powerfully the whole system. A meditator is shining with new prana.  Join a satsang or a meditation course on line to know what to do.

5. Pranic Healing. Become a healer !

Yoga heals through holistic  practice integrating Mind-Body-Spirit and

includes the 5 points of health (asanas, breathing, relaxation, vegetarianism, positive thinking and meditation). It is the most important system of preventative medicine.

Many modalities such as therapeutic massage, acupressure, acupuncture, energy medicine are working on restoring the helpful flow of energy. However, Yogis go to the cause of disease and impart prana with their consciousness, thoughts and prayers. They connect to the Supreme Healer .

You can do it too, by recognizing that the primary cause of disease, according to ancient yogic and ayurvedic  scriptures, is the forgetting of our true nature as Spirit, thus bringing blockages of energy, mistakes in lifestyle choices, indulgences in the senses and feelings of being lost .

When a person regains their sense of purpose they feel stronger and the life force flows. When a person is forgetting one’s Self and when the ego propensities become uncontrollable, the disease process happens.

By remembering the Inner Healer, you will radiate helpful prana around and bringing comfort, joy, solace and peace to all. May you become great healers in this time and send your healing energy to the whole world.

“The laws of health are the laws of Nature”  Sivananda
Health is Wealth, Peace of Mind is Happiness, Yoga shows the way “ Swami Vishnudevananda.

Fear, Stress, Anxiety or Faith – How to Maintain Mental Health in Times of Epidemic

Fear, Stress, Anxiety or Faith – How to Maintain Mental Health in Times of Epidemic

In this talk, we will try to understand, in the context of the global epidemic, how fear and anxiety create havoc and take away your well-being and mental health, and how faith is so important in dispelling fear.

We will address the question step by step in 4 points keeping in mind the need for prevention of disease due to poor immune system impacted by negative emotions, and the need for healing emotionally in order to heal physically.

  1. First we need to understand all facets of FEAR, STRESS, and ANXIETY.
  2. What are the causes of fear?
  3. Some Yogic methods for dealing with fear.
  4. Cultivating faith to dispel fear and anxiety.

What is Fear?

Fear is a very strong primitive emotion, present in animals, as it serves a very basic purpose:  It helps us to survive.  It is at the base of our stress response:  fight, flight or freeze.

Things that appear unfamiliar to us, or situations beyond our immediate comprehension, cause us fear.  Fear creates imagination of darkness, of falling and distorts the mind.  Fear is therefore based in unreality.

When we are fearful, we become paralyzed and lose our faculties.  We freeze, unable to do anything to solve our problem.

Fear is of two kinds, normal fear and imaginary fear.

According to Swami Sivananda, the percentage of normal fear will only be five percent whereas imaginary fear will come to ninety-five percent. Normal fear is healthy.  It paves the way for one’s progress; it preserves life.  So in the context of the possible virus infection, we wash our hands, clean our handrails, stay put and avoid socializing, etc.

Imaginary fear causes diseases, as it depletes all energy and produces uneasiness, discomfort and disharmony, etc.  Examples of imaginary fear: You might be afraid that you will get infected and there is no cure, you might be afraid that your business will collapse and you will be destitute, that you will lose your job as the companies downsize themselves, that your kids will not be able to study, that your husband’s staying at home will lead to change of the relationship dynamic causing frustration and divorce, etc.

Some behaviors due to fear and panic:

  • hoarding,  
  • isolation, hatred of others, blameful attitude
  • shame and guilt
  • depression
  • constant tension, hyper vigilance
  • addictions, drink our sorrow away.
  • “ enjoy life while you still can”
  • “ I do not care! “

What is Stress?

Stress is the cause of many forms of diseases, especially chronic stress. We have a built-in stress response in our nervous system in the form of the fight or flight mechanism in response to situations of danger to our survival. However, our stress response might not be adequate.  Remember that Stress is subjective and can be changed once an understanding of the causes of our stress is obtained.

5 CAUSES OF STRESS:

  1. Low prana:  Refer to our previous talk about the relationship between low prana and negative thoughts.  We can alleviate our stress by increasing the prana through Yoga practice and positive lifestyle.
  2. Negative emotions:  Not only fear and anxiety, but also anger, which comes from expectations and desires unfulfilled, can create stress. Grief is another negative emotion creating stress.
  3.  Lack of adaptability:  If we develop flexibility in mind and behavior, it helps to tackle the cause of our stress.
  4. Existential anxiety:  The imminent danger of the virus epidemic might trigger our fundamental anxiety of existence which can be calmed down only by a broader picture about life and death and our sense of meaning.
  5. Karma:  We cannot help but ask the question why, and we have to accept our collective karma at this time.  The pandemic situation is not sparing any place on earth.  We need to ponder over our collective responsibilities. 

In short, to build stress resilience in this time we need to increase prana (next talk), spend less prana, convert negative emotions into positive ones, be ready to adapt to new situations, have more faith to deal with our existential anxiety and understand our collective and individual karma.

What is Anxiety?  

Disruption in life activity might create anxiety.  Anxiety is even worse than fear, because unlike fear, we cannot identify its source.  Anxiety is fear that has no name.  With anxiety, there is no creativity, no productivity, we are depressed and our minds lose the capacity to think clearly.  Anxiety is an emotion like fear is an emotion.  It is usually associated with autonomic hyperarousal and attentive hypervigilance, in which the internal and external environments are monitored intensely for information relevant to the sense of threat.

It is an expression of the life-preserving fight or flight response and is an essential biological mechanism for motivating the organism for action in response to danger.  It prepares us to deal with varied and challenging life situations.  It is the reaction to the perception of an external or internal danger.  Under the spell of anxiety, you might find it difficult to maintain normal day-to day activities and you keep feeling anxious in anticipation of calamity or disaster, which might afflict you sometime in the future.  Parents and spouses need to be aware that the children or spouses might be subject to tension, guilt, stress, anxiety, nervousness and worry.  They might be replaying the separation anxiety suffered in childhood.  In general, try to leave space, be available but less demanding and perfectionistic, stay calm and empathetic instead of responding with more tension and projected fear.  It is a cause for concern if this feeling affects your normal day-to-day activity.  Try to establish a routine in daily life and adapt to the situation.  Routine, schedule, normalcy as much as possible, daily discipline serve all to cope with stress. Know that what stresses you might not be what stresses your spouse or children.  Know that anxiety is difficult to pin down.  It may give rise to vague emotions of discomfort coming from diverse persistent thoughts combined together.  This feeling of discomfort creates an anxious mood, but no one knows the underlying cause.  Everyone is able to endure a certain threshold level of anxiety, but please take note that this threshold is different for each person. 

The impending sudden rise of the epidemic attack while your daily routine has changed, and the fabric of the society surrounding you changes drastically, makes people suffer from impaired concentration and with all the time now on their hands, people staying home might find it difficult to perform even simple routine tasks.

Anxiety may be non-specific and arise spontaneously with no apparent relationship to any obvious event. This type of anxiety becomes all pervading in the everyday life of the one suffering, which may result in both psychic and somatic symptoms.  This non-specific and excessive anxiety is pathological and needs to be helped with Yoga and relaxation techniques.

Look for symptoms of avoidance behavior.  Watch out for this avoidance behavior.  Also, become aware of the practice of sending warm reassuring words, explaining to family and friends the concept of “social distancing”, be sensitive to children perceiving this as rejection, and keep engaging family in positive community activities while in quarantine. 

Symptoms of Anxiety Disorder

Excessive anxiety or worry for long period of time can turn into anxiety disorder, involving worry about possible misfortune to one’s child (who is in no danger) and worry about finances (for no good reason).  In children and adolescents, this may take the form of anxiety and worry about academic, athletic and social performance.  When the person is anxious, there are many signs of motor tension, autonomic hyper-activity (muscle aches or soreness, restlessness and easy tiredness,  shortness of breath, palpitations, sweating, dry mouth, dizziness, nausea, diarrhea, flushes or chills and frequent urination).  Other signs are symptoms of vigilance or scanning including feeling on edge, exaggerated startle response, difficulty concentrating or mind going blank because of anxiety, trouble falling or staying asleep and irritability.

Symptoms of Panic Attacks

Symptoms last a few minutes.  Unexpected, intense terror, shortness of breath, dizziness or vertigo, shaky feeling, palpitations, sweating, abdominal distress, numbness, chest pain discomfort and fear of going mad can be triggered by situations of being outside of home alone, being in a crowd, standing in line or travelling in a vehicle.

Symptoms of Compulsive Obsessive Disorder

Obsessions are persistent ideas, thoughts, impulses or images that are experienced as intrusive, distressful and senseless.  Compulsions are repetitive, purposeful and intentional behaviors that are performed in response to or to relieve oneself from a tension.  Example:  handwashing, counting, checking and touching.

Causes of Fear

From the perspective of classical Yoga philosophy, the cause of fear is attachment, our grasping on to illusory things and beliefs.  Being attached means we are stuck or bogged down.  Fear is the opposite of letting go.

The first cause of fear is the attachment to the body and the ensuing fear of death.

The Nature of Our Illusions creates Fears.  There are two classical analogies to help us understand the nature of our illusions.  The first is called the “Snake and the Rope”.  A man is walking in the darkness and sees a snake in the path.  He is frightened and immediately runs and gets his friend who has a lamp.  When they shine the light on the snake it is seen for what it is, a rope.

When we react to situations with fear, we operate out of a limited consciousness.  We have forgotten that the sun is shining beyond the clouds.  Yet the clouds of fear obscure the light of the sun.  We must have faith to seek out the sun when the mind experiences darkness.  Whether we are dealing with specific fear or general anxiety, we need to cultivate the courage to face our illusions and be who we really are.  We need to have the courage to remove our wrong beliefs and identifications, our thinking that we are a certain thing, when really all those beliefs and identifications are simply attachments and not the one we really are, the eternal strong presence within.

Mechanism of Fear

Fear feeds on past experiences that have no independent reality in the present.  Through superimposition we are creating our reality.  We attach our meanings, ideas and conditions to people, situations and objects.  Our practice is to separate ourselves from these illusions and realize the true nature of REALITY, of our own SELF.  Fear and worry cause us to feel overwhelmed or limited.  As a result, we identify ourselves as a victim.  We have become powerless to express our potential.  Remember the POWER OF NOW.  In the Now we can experience the POWER of BEING.

Often times we grow attached to ideas about ourselves, other people and the world around us.  We get attached to things the way they were.

We need to introspect and think, because in so doing we come back to the present, feel strong in the present, become creative in the present.  This means we are letting go of our ideas how things should be, and we are ready for positive and creative changes:

  • Change of the way we make a living (class on line, work at home)
  • Change the way we eat (simpler food, cooking our own)
  • Change the way we socialize (read books instead of using the internet, relax in nature).
  • Change the way we do spiritual practices (more mantras, more prayers, more meditation)

Classical Yogic methods to deal with fears

  • Depends on your temperament, you can apply the following 4 classical methods, separately or together.  Try to see which one is fitting you more at the moment.

A. Karma Yoga methods (active practical temperament) : Think of how to be helpful for others in this situation. Avoid thinking only about yourself. This will open your heart and alleviate anxiety that comes from attachment.

B. Bhakti Yoga Methods (emotional temperament)Surrender to the Divine plan.  Trust that all will be well.  Learn to relax. Transform fear to faith.  We will talk about this more at the end.

C. Raja Yoga and Hatha Yoga methods (analytical temperament , people already having a practice of Hatha Yoga)

  1. Improve breath-body-awareness with rhythmical breathing exercises and pranayama.  Slow down, do restorative Yoga.
  2. Increase and balance the flow of prana for greater energy and stress resilience.  Balance the right- and left- brain activities.  This is the key.  Another class on prana is upcoming.
  3. Improve mental and emotional balance by the regulation of breath, movements and concentration of mind.  Awareness is important, not to force.
  4. Increase ojas, the energy of sustenance, of immunity, that comes from your deep heart.  Make sure to improve the quality food, not quantity (nervous eating).  Also you can increase your mental attitude of trust and devotion.  This subtle Ojas will increase your contentment, gratitude and relaxation.
  5. Increase calm, reduce fear:  Use props (blankets, pillows) when doing Yoga practice or when relaxing to create a sense of security, warmth, quiet and support so you and your family members or students will feel safe to let go of defences, to calm the senses and mind.  Do only comfortable postures.
  6. Experience physical, mental and emotional relaxation.  Increase the right attitude for life – detachment.
  7. Experience connection with one’s Self and others through deep relaxation, slow deep exhalation.  Detachment from body, mind and emotions.
  8. Teachers need to be gentle, encouraging and calming. The same as in trauma sensitive yoga guidelines.

D. Jnana Yoga methods (for intellectual philosophical temperament):  Remember the True Self, the Atman, the Soul untouched by diseases and separation. Assert your Healthy Self. Do Self-enquiry, you are not the body nor the mind.  Remove the veils of fear by exercising your thinking and discrimination and by detachment.

  1. REPLACING FEARS AND ANXIETIES WITH FAITH. WHAT IS FAITH ?

We need to cultivate faith, which will replace Knowledge and help us to be calm in the face of calamity or diseases.  We need to not only to rekindle our own faith, but also help others to develop faith.

WHAT TO DO: We need to nurture the 3 types of faith:

1.  Faith in OWN SELF (reconnect with ONE’S CORE SELF):  Self-reliance, which may be the same as faith in one’s Self, means we must rely on our own inner strength, dwelling within us as opposed to relying on an ego self. Fear exists when we don’t know the Truth about the Self (the Atman).  Until we have such knowledge of the Self from our own direct experience, we must rely on faith, in order to progress in our life.  Ultimately faith is replaced by direct experience of the Self.  Truth or Knowledge can be glimpsed intuitively, even if we do not have a name for it.  SO CALM DOWN AND TRUST YOURSELF.  One student approached me very worried because she had a cough and she just travelled back from England and wondered if she should go to the hospital and be tested.  I told her:  “Look within, ask yourself the question, “Am I going to die soon?  Am I healthy?“, to which she nodded.

I sent her to the hospital and the doctor said it is a common flu and she should just rest.  There is no COVID-19 test available anyway unless she is ready to travel to another city.  She did not go, but I believe that she regained confidence and overcame her fears by being asked to find the answer from within.

The Truth that will set us free from all fears, resides inside of us, but it is a long, hard journey to find it.  However, we must start to walk on that journey with humility and sincerity.  We lack experience in the beginning, as we do not really have a clue where to look when trying to look within.  In that journey faith keeps us going.

2.  Faith in NATURE and the SUPREME INTELLIGENCE  (i.e. cooperate with Natural Laws for healthy living and improve immunity).  Meditate, shift consciousness from the past to the present.  Try to see a bigger picture and channel the emotions into devotion and the courage to face our illusions. Faith in God springs from an inner feeling that there is something greater than you, a supreme being that indwells one’s essential spirit.  When one is enriched with abiding faith, one is able to recognize God’s grace operating in all things.  We are on a journey of self-discovery to uncover the truth of whom it is that we are, a journey guided by faith.  We can think of faith as the bridge that carries us from one experience of grace to the next.

3.  Faith in the teachings and the practices.  The sacred teachings say that you are like the Shining Sun untouched by fears and diseases.  There are days when clouds fill the sky and we can’t see the sun.  But you know the Sun is there.  To regain vision of the Inner sun, we must learn to clear away the impurities of the mind by theobservance of the Niyamas (1. ethical guidelines of conduct to purify:  Practice of asanas, pranayama, for example) 2. contentment (turning mind inwards)  3. austerity (renunciation, discipline, endurance, simple life) 4. self study (introspection) and 5. self-surrender. Self-surrender means accepting what is; letting go and letting God’s will prevail. Let it be. Bear the consequences of past actions coming in the present. Have faith that eventually everything will pass. We must also practice endurance and know that the journey is not going to happen overnight. The challenge of enduring past karma is learning not to react or retaliate. Forgive and forget.

GUIDANCE ON WHAT NOT TO DO:

1) Avoid negative company with those who believe in the wrong things. This is the surest way to kill your faith and increase your fear. Therefore, avoid negative people. This includes media as negative company, as well as internet gossip sites.

2) Following the Yamas: Practice patience with Self and others. Do not be angry or violent. Do not lie. Do not steal. Try to turn inward beyond the senses. Let go of our greedy tendency. Live a simple life; the more one depends on material objects the more fear one will have.

Everything is a test of faith: we have the choice to spiral down or spiral up. We need to learn how to overcome doubts and fears, how to renew our faith and not to lose faith, which makes us weak and move in the wrong direction.

Often disease brings doubt and guilt, feelings of rejection, of not having self-worth, or loss of faith.What we must keep in mind is that any kind of faith will make us feel strong, even when we have faith in the wrong thing. So we might have faith in the doctor or in the medicine, in the type of treatments we follow.

The opposite of faith is doubt. Doubt will make us feel weak. Doubt comes when we lose faith. We become doubtful in the underlying order of the Universe or of Nature.  This is because our expectations are not being met. When something happens that fails to meet our expectations, we lose faith in God, the Universal law and ourselves. But remember, our journey towards fearlessness implies renewing ourselves. Keep your mind and heart open. When temporarily losing faith, try to find out the cause of our doubt,which is always a certain aspect of our ego, and embrace again your truth in the form of faith. Company with those who have no doubt is very powerful in removing doubts.

DO SOME RESEARCH ABOUT THE BEHAVIOUR OF THE VIRUS AND GET OVER YOUR IMAGINED FEAR.  KNOWLEDGE WILL HELP YOU TO REGAIN CONFIDENCE AND FAITH IN THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE BODY AND OF NATURE. THERE IS AN INNER HEALER DOCTOR WITHIN YOU. CONSULT THAT DOCTOR.  MOTHER NATURE IS HEALING AND IS THE HEALER. SHE IS THE PROVIDER AND THE SUSTAINER OF YOUR LIFE. DO NOT MISTRUST HER BECAUSE OF THE VIRUS WHICH IS ALSO SENT BY HER. TAKE HEED OF HER ADVICE BY STARTING TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH (PHYSICAL, MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL) AND TRUST HER TO TAKE CARE OF THE REST.

May you all be Healthy, Happy and Strong!

Om shanti, peace

Swami Sitaramananda, Acharya ISYVC
Vedic Mantra for Healing & Protection