Yoga Sutras Week 5 - Give Everything – Demand Nothing.

 1:12 abhyasa-vairagyabhyam tan-nirodhah

You have to learn with Abhyāsa, to give yourself in totality to whatever is happening, and with Vairāgya, a detachment from the outcome of giving yourself in totality.
Give everything – demand nothing.
This alone will set you free.

It's only when we step out of a relationship that we become kind of ensnared and limited by our own egos.
Simply, we slip out of a relationship with life and then we're relating only with ourselves.

Life is relationship.
Turning your heart my way, giving me a morning smile — that means a lot.
Just simply because it connects us.

Simply learning to look people in the eye and meet them from a deeper place, and acknowledge that the same intelligence created me and you — wow.
And we happen to be here at the same time.

Wicked.
What should we do? Have a fight about it?
Should we fight about our differences right now — your politics, my politics?

Or should we meet in a more unified essence of which we've arisen?
This is what Namaste means.
I meet you there.

I don't meet you on the difference level.
I meet you on the unified level.

I know on the soul level, you have the same qualities as me.
You are love. You are truth.
You know nothing but kindness and goodness.

The rest of it is working itself out until it learns to surrender itself back into that reality and that truth.
That's the process.

But I love you, so I cut you loads of slack so that you can work it out.
And I'm doing that for you.
It would be nice if you did that for me too.
Because sometimes I'm an arse.

Sorry about that.
But it's not who I am.
It's just a little temporary activity of being an arse.

Yeah, sometimes, isn't it?
Let's get real.

Saints also, sometimes...
It's just — they drop it really quickly and don't get so identified with it.

---

And this is yoga:
To cease to get identified with what we're not.
To cease to get identified with that which is passing.
To cease to get locked into a cemented sense of, “this is who I am.”

And to keep shedding it and freeing ourselves up so that we can continue to expand into life.
Does it make sense?

You can get identified with absolutely anything.

You can get identified with the work you do.
You can get identified with your education.
You can get identified and really fixed in your role — whatever that might be.
You can get identified with the musical band that you like.
Far out.

You can get identified with the dog breed that you chose.

We have the capacity as human beings to become identified with just about anything — to the most minutest, irrelevant, trivial stuff.
We can get so locked into it that we become uptight with it.
And we will defend it at all costs.

You know what I mean?
“What did you say about my band?”
“What did you say about my dog?”
“What did you say about my body?”

If you think you're your body, you're in big trouble.
You're going to have to defend that at all costs.
And when somebody pokes around at it and says, “Oh Steve, your ears are big”
Oh — my whole world collapses.
If I'm the body, I'm in trouble.

If somebody argues with your politics — as long as you have something to defend, you're identified.
Check yourself out.

And release yourself of it.
Because it's liberating. It's free.

The spirit soars.
And we release ourselves from our own self-created misery.

yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ

Relinquish your identity.
What will happen?

Ta-da!

tadā draṣṭuḥ svarūpe’asthānam

You discover what you actually are — beneath those identities you added to yourself.

And you will see — it is pure splendour.

What will happen as a result of that?

ṛtambharā tatra prajñā

 You will innately connect to a wisdom.
An intelligence within yourself.

Simply because it's not bound — in time-bound, limited ideas that we need to defend.
So you become open to everything — which means you gain clarity.
To see everything, because you're not locked into your own thing.

How will you attain this?

abhyāsa-vairāgyābhyāṁ tan-nirodhaḥ

Abhyāsa — first condition is you're going to have to meet yourself in totality to do this.

And you will discover everything inside of yourself by trying this — that is going against this.

You will discover how in conflict with life you are by practising Abhyāsa.

Abhyāsa means: to fully engage with whatever you're doing.
And the part of you that is not willing to fully engage is the part of you that is divided from life currently.
And that is your misery-maker.

You don't have to curse it.
You just have to see it.

“Oh look at you — old ‘hold-backer’.
Resister.
Not-want-to-give-er.”

Abhyāsa says: you have a capacity inside yourself — that is the same as Life — that is running through you.
It knows nothing but to give itself in continuum.

If you enter into this continuum of giving for any amount of time, you will enter something called Samādhi — which means unity with life itself.
Because the only thing that is dividing us from this great unity with life is our own resistance to it.

This is it.

So you practise this.
That's what a living yogi does.
And it's a 24/7 job.
It's bloody everywhere. 

I'm doing the washing up.
Am I resisting this right now?
Sometimes.

Is that causing me misery?
Absolutely.

It might be somewhere on the scale of misery.
It might be moderate misery.
But it's still freaking misery.
Isn't it?

I could be happily washing up, you know —
if I choose I'm doing in fullness.

Because it's an art as well, washing up, isn't it?

You can do an absolutely crap job at washing up —
if you're not totally engaged,
if you're not involved in the activity.
You'll be rubbish at washing up.

And somebody will eat from that rubbish washing up.
And the energy of it.
And so it goes on.

And so essentially,
we give off from the activity that we're partaking in.
If you give it full attention, care, love, respect —
These things will ripple out from that activity.

It doesn't matter what it is.

I just chose that.

Being in a relationship with me right now —
with this satsang —
how involved I am,
how engaged I am,
how totally with me I am.

Or how much you are somewhere else.

This is what total involvement means.

It means — now, where have you gone off to hide?

And where do we go off most of all to hide? To the mind. You experience it — when somebody's gone off whilst you were mid-conversation with them? Bye……

We all know where we go. You have left reality.
Patanjali says –  “stop leaving reality so much”.
Just learn to fully engage with what you're doing.

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 Something else is also happening simultaneously to this.
Like the other side of the coin — the twin of this one.
And that is Vairāgya.

So as much as you give to it,
simultaneously you have to relinquish it and release it.

It's called detachment —
Vairāgya —
to renounce it.

To give everything to what you're doing
without demanding an outcome for yourself.
Without insisting it goes a particular way.

In other words —
we take ourselves out of the 50–50 deal.

This idea of relationships being 50/50 is such a bad idea. 

It is a contractual, conditional way to do life. 

To be in a 50/50 deal is to ask: ‘what am I going to get out of this?’  

This is anti-abhyasa.

 A true relationship is 100/100. If you want 100% from Life then you will have to give 100% to it and it will show you what it’s got. 

Because the 50–50 deal is half misery.
The me wants a return.
It's your inner Gollum.

Everybody's seen Gollum?
Can't get any better.
That is an absolutely perfect manifestation of a me, isn't it?

Vairagya is to give without condition.
There you have it.

Renounce your ownership over what you've done.
Renounce your ownership over Life itself —
which is the one that's actually giving through you.

All you did was get out of the way and stop resisting.
Did you know it?

You're not giving either, by the way.
“Oh — big giver!”
That can become…
Identified with my charitable nature.

Can't wait to tell everybody what you gave today.
You know that one?

"I built a temple — but as long as my name's over the top..."
As long as I get a plaque,
so everybody remembers Me”

This is how this limits us and binds us.

---

This is how the ego operates.
And also — what I need to do is:
we're taking the piss out of it, actually.
Because that's really helpful.

We’re not taking it seriously because that's another identification.
Because then you get a spiritual identity.

This is the most down-to-earth, natural thing to be doing:
to just want to be expansive.
To want to grow.
To want to open.
To want to become one with life.
To not want to be bound in the cell of our own identity.

That's natural.
It's just a bit of watching,
a bit of working,
a bit of figuring it out.

Loosen ourselves up.

So this is what Patanjali is pointing out —
He said, it's very, very simple - the spiritual path.

Not at all easy.
It will take you all the way to the deepest challenge of yourself, for sure.

But it's very, very simple.

You just keep learning to give,
give,
give,
give,
give of yourself.

Notice when you're resisting.
Relax the resistance.

If you don't want to be doing what you're doing —
go do something else.
Figure out a way to do something that you do want to be doing.

And then:
give,
give,
give,
give,
give.

That’s the treasure.

In the mornings at the moment, we are chanting Gāyatrī mantra — fast.
It is a practice in Abhyāsa.

Giving again,
and again,
and again.

And all the demons come up.

"I don't want to give."
"I don't like this mantra."
"I want to be somewhere else."

But we are there.
So we give.

It’s a fire.
You step into it.
You burn.

That’s practice.
That’s the path.

Abhyāsa is discipline.
Abhyāsa is devotion.
Abhyāsa is repetition.

It’s not glamorous.
It’s not a highlight reel.

It’s just the day-to-day, showing up.
Opening.
Letting go.

And remember —
you’re not even doing the giving.

You’re just removing the resistance.

Because life gives.

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Also notice — wherever you’re identified,
you’ll feel the need to defend.

Feel that contraction?

That’s your clue.
That’s your moment of practice.

When you feel triggered,
own it.

The trigger is in you — not out there.
That’s the shift.

And if you need to speak,
don’t do it from contraction.
Do it from clarity.

And finally — if you’re resisting what you’re doing —
ask:

Can I choose this?

If not,
make arrangements to change it.

Because the real commitment of the yogic path
is the willingness to change.

And when Abhyāsa and Vairāgya are moving together in you...

Transformation is guaranteed.