Yoga Sutras Week 3 - Resting in Love

 

1:3 Tada drashtuh svarupe avasthanam

The previous Sutra stated that yoga is the disidentification from the vrittis of the mind; the ability to fall back from what is happening in the container of you and contain it as love. In this Sutra Patanjali states: 

Then your true nature is revealed, abiding in its own splendour.

Tada = Then 

Drastuh = The seer

Svarupe = Own form/Essence/Splendour 

Avasthanam = Rests/Abides

As a result of falling back from what you’re not and creating space from the temporary fluctuations in your body, mind and emotional field, you discover what you are, have always been and always will be. 

You discover the essence of yourself, the truth of your being, the ground of your existence. What you are when you stop doing everything else. 

 

That you are love and innately peaceful at your core. 

You are joy, you are bliss and you are ever existing.  

You can never die, you were never born, you have existed as pure consciousness always. 

You are Life. 

This is all discovered by falling back from the identification with this passing play. It is important to remember, however, that we don’t achieve this falling back by cutting ourselves off; we simply allow ourselves to feel every experience without becoming identified with them. Therefore, we don’t have to wait until all the vrittis have subsided in order to know the truth of what we are. 

Whatever experience you are having is all allowed to go on within the field of your awareness. You can be having the worst day but you will be having that experience from a position of Sukha, knowing that it will come and go but you will remain just like you have always remained. 

How much have you seen come and go so far in this incredible unfolding of your life? Who is the one that watched all of that happen? The invitation of the third Sutra is to start sitting in the splendor of that one, the undisturbable Self. 

Unchanging

always serene

always present 

always emanating love 

Practice sitting in your own splendour. This means not identifying yourself with anything that is happening. Fall back into pure spaciousness and ease. Smile into yourself, problemless, open, naturally as love. Not putting any agenda on anything, simply holding the space. 

What are you bestowing when you exist in this space? What energy are you bringing to the space around you from here? How much permission are you giving for the situation to resolve itself when you are operating from this space? 

Then there is the pesky voice in the mind that says: “That is all very well, but who is going to do life while I am being this relaxed?” You know the answer - Life! Life is going to do Life through you. It will take you to work, it will raise your children, it will pay your bills, but it doesn’t require our worry, stress and doership. 

Happy exploring. 

 

Be the lamp that shines regardless

When your true nature becomes clear to you, then indeed the true nature of all things is revealed to you and you dwell in your own splendid magnificence. What an invitation! It is making clear that your conditions do not determine the brightness of your light. The light inside of you is always splendid, illustrious and magnificent. The soul is always shining in its glory, it never changes, it has always been self-existing in its own nature. You are goodness, beauty and light at your core. What a message!  

Then there are all the conditions in the body-mind structure that surround that core essence. These are always changing. What you are experiencing now is different to what you were experiencing when you woke up this morning and so it goes on. These fluctuations continue to go on but, the light is the light and it shines through all of that. All we have to do is focus on the light. 

Regardless of the condition of your lamp, it is lit. The key is not to focus so much on the lamp but to focus on the light and that which has lighted it. The alternative is to focus on our shortcomings and problems; to buy into the idea that we can’t shine because we are feeling this way or that way. The light doesn’t care how you feel; it simply shines regardless, so why not focus on that? All it takes is for us to say yes to it and boom, out it shines! 

For what it is worth, I have tested this theory out to the maximum degree in my own existence and I can absolutely vouch for it. If you rock up, regardless of how you feel and you open, the light is there and it will do what it needs to do in that particular situation regardless of your current predicament. 

Otherwise we would be continually polishing our lamp until we deemed it fit to shine. This is a trap. Thinking that you need to embellish your lamp and make it the best it can be until it is ready to shine, this is the activity of ego. This one says: “when I am good enough - when I’ve acquired enough qualifications etc.” That one will be waiting forever in the closet; you have to bring it out and shine no matter what. 

The shining itself polishes the lamp.

The fire, when it is allowed to burn bright, will purify the lamp more effectively than our attempts to polish it.  One is the way of surrender and the other is the activity of ego. This is what it means to sit in your own splendour. To sit in the light that loves all things. 

It is a choice. We can take these satsangs in as lovely soothing words but what will actually make it happen for us is the internal decision to make it our reality; to declare that it is so and to live in accordance with this truth. That is what changes a life. 

You will fail at it again and again, but you will also succeed, and those successes make it all worth it. Just shine regardless. 

One vow to take is to walk this path cheerfully. Not to put on a front and pretend that you haven’t got stuff going on inside, but to still find a cheerfulness even amongst all that stuff. It is not a vow that we take on as a heavy weight upon our shoulders, but one we take in the knowledge that we will fail and yet still persevere with. It is a vow that will test you to your very core and those are the ones worth taking. 

It is the same vow that the bodhisattvas in the Buddhist tradition take. Bodhisattvas are these mad beings that vow to not to take full enlightenment themselves so they can come back and serve all other beings. Only when every being is enlightened will they take theirs, and one of their vows is to do this cheerfully. 

It is incredible to be taking this ride. Once we have woken up, which you have, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this, life becomes awesome! Confess it; it is amazing to be existing and having this opportunity to live. Life has decided to live you for another day, what a remarkable thing that is. 

What is even more remarkable is that we are awake whilst that is happening. We aren’t just running around in the darkness trying to figure it out; we have stopped enough to see what is really happening. We have even acknowledged the divinity within ourselves. We have acknowledged that there is a lamp inside of us and it is lit. We have acknowledged that our nature is love. Stay close to this.