The Niyamas Integration - The Process of Purification

 Last week we looked at how the Yamas

can unlock us from our psychological grip
and allow Life to flow again.

Whenever our life seems to stop flowing,
it will be because
one of the five Yamas has come a little undone.

Maybe we’re not accepting something.
Maybe we’re not being fully honest.
Maybe we’re holding on to some idea of ourselves.
Or we’ve forgotten what we’re truly committed to.
Or we’ve just got a bit grippy —
“I can’t live without this!”

Those are the five Yamas, aren’t they?
When one of them slips, we contract.
We get stuck.
Life stops moving.

So we’re developing a capacity to liberate ourselves
from those subtle psychological bondages.

That’s what we looked at last week.

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Now, we can look at the Niyamas…

The first of the Niyamas is Shaucha —
Purity.

In the core of our being,
when we drop into Presence,
Presence is innately pure.

Totally untainted.
Nothing can scar it,
mark it,
or taint it in any way.

At your soul level,
your Presence level,
your God level,
You are clean sheets —
always fresh,
untarnished.

It’s your very nature.

But our psychophysiology —
the body–mind structure —
in its attempt to do Life,
instead of allowing God to do life through us,
has taken on wounds,
tensions,
contractions.

It’s overworked,
because it’s not designed
to do what it’s been trying to do.

So it’s become knotty and uptight.
We’ve identified with our own projection —
the idea of ourselves —
and that’s a very tense way to live.

The moment we project an image of ourselves,
and believe in it,
and want others to believe in it,
we have to defend it.

That’s our suffering.

We’re learning to drop the projection
and return to the projector —
to the source point from which the light emerges.

What if I simply stay open and easy,
and allow Life to move from me
without needing to be
the big doer or controller?

What if I just allow Life to happen?

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Now my old personality —
what we call the ego —
has a new job.

Instead of constantly trying to make things happen,
it begins to learn how to receive,
to serve the light.

What if I learn to live like that —
not grabbing the light,
but enjoying it?

What if our whole system
began to reorient around that Presence?

The yogis call this reorientation purification —
Shaucha.

Our system gets cleansed and released
from its over-effortful attempt to be God,
and instead, it bows down
to the God within
that is its very source.

It becomes devotional
to the greater power,
rather than to itself.

It becomes Life-centric,
God-centric,
rather than self-centric.

And as that happens,
all the things we would wish for in heaven
begin to pervade our being.

We get more joyful.
More easy.

The purification process isn’t always sweet —
it can be tough —
but there’s a new perfume to life,
a new Presence emerging within us,
replacing the old activity
of trying to be God.

Now God itself
starts to replace our attempt.

That’s Shaucha —
the process of purification.

It’s beautiful, no?

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It happens as a pulse.

One aspect of this deep cleansing
is the baptism that our whole system receives
each time we drop into the deep pool of Presence within ourselves.

You know that exhale —
when you really let go?
You drop it in there.

Dynamic stillness.
That’s the baptism bath.
Your whole structure gets bathed in pure goodness.

And you keep doing it.

Because most of you shower once in a while—
maybe daily.

We keep ourselves clean on the outer level.
The yogis say,
“Yes, and you must do the same on the inner.”

There’s an inner bath to take.

So you bathe yourself in Spirit,
and you get cleaned through.

Of course you feel different afterwards, don’t you?
Refreshed.
Renewed in Spirit.

Half of the work
is to keep dropping your system into that inner bath.

The other half —
you could call it the inhale —
is determining to bring ourselves out of that spirit-depth,
and to not contaminate ourselves again
With our mental fears, worries, or concerns.

In other words,
to express — without inhibition —
what we actually are in our authentic nature.

What we’ve discovered to be true inside
is absolutely free —
utterly unconditioned.

And then comes the question:
Can I live from that freedom?
Can I bring that conditionlessness
out into the world
through a body–mind
that’s not used to it?

As the upspring of that divine presence
rises through us,
it meets the old patterns.

It challenges and burns away
the impediments to itself —
the psychological grips,
the old identifications,
beliefs, traumas,
and God only knows what else we’ve stored.

All that stuff
that usually determines how we behave.

So yes — the deep clean has two parts.
One is the drop into stillness,
and the other is the emergence from it,
cherishing what we’ve touched
and daring to live from it.

And of course,
there’s friction on the way out.

We rub up against our old selves.
It’s fiery.
It’s rough.

We’re literally challenging everything
we’ve built up in our attempt to be God.

And that — pretty much —
is the spiritual path.

It’s rough,
tough,
rubbing,
a fiery furnace of an existence.

And we start to ask,
“Is anything I’ve imagined myself to be
actually true?”

Is what I’ve created through my own psychology
a real reflection of my divine nature?
Or just some knotty effect
of believing I was separate?

Our work, then,
is to make the psychophysiology transparent —
more of a mirror
more of a diamond
so that the light of our Self reflects out
and expresses itself in the world. 

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So then,
the Niyamas are in order.

And this purification —
this Shaucha —
happens as we reclaim
our divine nature inside.

Anchoring ourselves
in that calm,
that serene Presence — Santosha

and then bringing it
into the fiery furnace of our lives.

Letting it be challenged
by the world — Tapas
seeing how it all happens ,
and learning from that — Swadhyaya

“Ah, look how I got triggered there.”
“Ah, look how I reacted here.”

And you see —
it’s because some part of my identity
is still locked
in my personality structure.

I haven’t quite
surrendered back in yet — Ishvara Pranidhana

Thank you, Life,
for showing me that.

Alright,
I offer that.

God — that’s a bit of a burn.
I didn’t really want to see that.

But once you’ve seen it,
you can’t unsee it, can you?

So you just work through it.
You don’t justify it,
or blame,
or suppress it.

And that’s the purification.
That’s the learning.

We learn so much about ourselves don’t we?

Isn’t that what people mean
when they say,
“I’ve learned a lot”?

It means,
“I’ve seen many things
in the light of love within myself.”

“I’ve seen the habits
I’ve been doing for a very long time
that I don’t need anymore.”

The more we see into the darkness,
the more enlightened we become.
The more we’re willing to see,
the wiser we grow.

And that’s Swadhyaya.

Until every bit of us is surrendered.

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How do you know it’s happening?
You have less to defend.

You’re not so quick to guard your opinion.

Do you remember when you were young?

When I was a teenager,
I was politically engaged.

I liked to go to the pub —
a bit too young, really —
but I loved the talk,
the arguing,
the long debates.

We’d sit around a table all night,
rucking about politics,
philosophy,
the state of the world.

And I believed in my opinions.
Fiercely.

My point of view was so right.
And of course,
you find out other people
think something completely different.

So you have battles.
You try to convince them.

But you never do, do you?

People just dig in deeper.

Still — it was great fun.
I loved it.

But wow, could I be triggered.
Triggered into frustration,
even hatred.

“How can they believe that?
It’s so unjust!
So wrong!”

Sound familiar?

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In every enlightening being,
that starts to diminish.

It’s not that we don’t have opinions,
but the idea that yours are absolutely right
disappears.

We start to realise
our personal convictions often serve nothing
but conflict.

We begin to drop our stuff.

You can still do politics if you want.
Still have opinions.

But they hang loose now —
not like swords.

They can move,
they can change.

They’re free.
And that feels good, doesn’t it?

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So our whole condition
becomes painful —
and cemented in —
the more convicted we are about it.

The tighter we grip our truth,
the heavier it feels.

And the more bathe
That in the deep waters of Spirit,
the less convincing
our convictions become.

Until finally,
all we can be sure about
is that we are love.

That’s a nice conviction no? 

 Thanks for just hanging out
and having satsang this season. 

Namaste.