thepeoplesashram

Posts Tagged ‘trika yoga’

, , , , , ,

DRINKING FROM THE SOURCE

In Uncategorized on January 29, 2012 at 3:13 pm

Meditation fulfills its promise when it becomes effortless.

When you have invested your heart and soul to your daily meditation practice, the time will arrive when you will simply sit and enjoy.  What required effort for so long now proceeds automatically.  The body releases tension, the need for busy-ness in the mind ceases.

When surrender reaches its full potential effort is no longer required to experience the divinity of the temple of the body/mind.  You sit and you drink from the Source.

You begin to recognize that the Source is the substance of your living experience.  Actions come not from thought, but from the wholeness that is the Source.  The instrument of the body/mind may reflect upon choices available to you, but from the Source comes the choosing.

Traditions call this meditative experience variously, samadhi, contemplative absorption, etc.

Trika tradition calls this stage of evolution, abiding in the Heart.

For Trika tantra, all knowledge, will and actions arrive from the divine Agent, and all beings are that Agent.  One universal subjectivity exists as the temple of the Universe.

When we drink from the Source, when we abide in the Heart, we recognize the essential belongingness that characterizes Our Universal Being.  All that can be recognized belongs.

Drink from the Source and you will see, hear and feel–you will recognize all the world as your own body.  Your skin will not end at your fingertips.  Your sight will not cease with the disappearance of the sun, you will hear with the ears of the Universe.  All that is, belongs to You.

I am all that I am.

, , , , , ,

SIMPLE, NOT EASY

In Uncategorized on January 19, 2012 at 7:12 pm

The path to an extraordinary quality of life is simple.  Two words: Let Go.

Let go, let go and let go some more.

Of physical tension, emotional stress–well, just everything.

You are driving to work.  Try this little assessment exercise.  Tune in acutely to what happens to the temple of your body/mind while you drive.  You try to maneuver to the right lane.  The car behind you speeds up.  Tension in the body–feel it, be aware of it.  Tension in the mind.  The mind and body are NOT separate.  What occurs to one, also happens to the other.

You see the driver ahead of you talking on a cell phone.  Tension in the mind/body.  Traffic bunches up, you may be late for work if things don’t clear up.  Stress in the body/mind. 

You had a disagreement yesterday with the co-worker who sits across from you.  Tension in the body/mind.

Your son didn’t receive a single grade better than a C on his grade report.  Tension in the body/mind.  You look at the sky.  It might snow.  Your tires are not in great shape.  Tension in the body/mind.

Our days and nights are filled with hundreds of “microtensions.”

It is not just the big things that cause us to suffer.  It is all those little stresses that accumulate throughout the days, weeks, months and years. 

We learn to “numb” ourselves to the existence of constant physical and emotional tension.  We literally divorce our awareness from parts of our bodies where stress causes muscles to clinch.  We avoid thinking about so many things.  We live in denial.  There is so much pain!

So, Let go!

Yeah.  A simple dictum to understand but not so easy to accomplish.

Do you want to evolve as a person? As a human being?  Don’t wait for ineffable truths.  Don’t look for secret formulas.  Don’t rely on another human being–guru, teacher or otherwise.

Practice–that is the secret.  Not what you know or believe.

Surrender physical tension by initiating breathing exercises.  Before you get up in the morning.  When you lie in bed at night.  Lay flat on your back with your arms at your sides and practice long, deep breathing.

Practice breathing every chance you get.  Challenge yourself to extend your breath capacity over time.  Cultivating breath control will help you to begin to get in touch with the temple of your body/mind.  With greater awareness of the sensations of your body, of the content of your mind, comes the increased capacity to let go.  First you face, then you release.

Surrender mental and emotional tensions by performing simple chants.  Make up your own prayer.  Something simple.  Find a mantra you like, Om Namah Shivaye.  Om Tara tuttare…etc.  Here’s one that I made up for myself years ago: The One is the breath, the breath is the blood, the blood is the bone, the bone is the flesh, the flesh is the many, the many is the One.

A simpler mantra.  Yim-yeem-yame-yam-yahm-yum-yohm-yoom.  Eight syllables that have the power to displace negative thoughts, repetitious thoughts, persistent dialoguing, constant scripting, etc, etc.

You know as well as I do that 90% of the thoughts in your head, the images, the reinforcements, ad infinitum, are unnecessary.  Simple as that.  We don’t need ’em.  Evolve, my friends. Displace and replace.  Displace all that wasteful content.  Replace with your mantra.  In time, you will discover that the mantra will be replaced by silent stillness.  Quiet will reign where once a tempest roared.

And meditate.  Don’t wait for instruction.  Just set your alarm, get comfortable–but not too comfortable.  Put in some earplugs and learn who you are from the inside.  The sounds, the sensations.  Troublesome at first, perhaps, but in time, these sounds and sensations will become the gateway whereby the temple of the body/mind moves from stress to stillness, from tension to tranquility.

There is no sound in the universe more sacred and powerful than the inner OM that you will discover when your mind and body become quiet.  You thought that all that OM stuff was just some Hindu or Buddhist mythology?  You didn’t realize that there truly is an OM and when your body/mind are sufficiently still and silent, that you will hear that OM?  You saw the bumper stickers and thought, “another hippie yoga idiot.”

OM is real.  When you hear OM, you will never forget it.  When you focus your attention on OM you will descend into a quality of blissful stillness that, quite frankly, you are at this moment incapable of imagining.

For the path of Trika, there is a pyramid of evolution: the Sound, the Light and the Sensation.

The sound is OM.  The light is the recognition of the One Light that illumines all things everywhere–from the thoughts inside your head to the grass and trees and buildings.  The Sensation is Kundalini.  When you awaken to the sensations of your body/mind you awaken to the sensation of the universe and to that One Sensation that is the originating vibration of all things everywhere.

Meditate on the Sound, the Light and the Sensation.  Let go of everything that stands between your perception of Sound, Light and Sensation. 

You will arrive at that great lake of universal awareness–that lake of consciousness where no separation exists between the One and the many.  One consciousness: one will, one knowledge, one action.  There is no transcendence, nor immanence.  No witnesser or witnessed.  There is the constant experience of the dynamic identity of the one with the many.

Practice, discipline, arrives at the experience of truth.

Truth will never be one stop shopping.  There won’t ever be an absolute undeniable “truth” that all persons will perceive equally and alike.  There’s only the truth of experience.  And when you let go of thoughts, beliefs, opinions, prejudices–when you surrender all the tension in the temple of the body/mind–when nothing that you see, hear or feel separates you from the living experience that only One Identity exists, you will be free to enjoy and perform on the stage of life free of strife.  No pain, no suffering.  Period.

, , , , , , ,

Trika yoga & the Goddess Kundalini

In Uncategorized on November 1, 2011 at 12:54 am

Shakti is the mother of the universe.  She is responsible for everything that we experience, from light and color to sound and smell.  She is also responsible for there being an “us” in the first place.

Mother Shakti, according to Trika yoga, is the author of all creation.  She created the temples of our body/minds to make us the perfect beings for our world.  There is nothing in our universe but what is, in one way or another, available for our experience–directly or sometimes indirectly.  We belong to our world and our world belongs to us.

The first verse of the Shiva Sutras states,

“Universal consciousness is one’s own nature.”

The second verse continues,

“Knowing the individual consciousness as one’s own nature and not knowing the Universal Consciousness as one’s own nature, is bondage. (Or in other words, the origin and cause of suffering)

Verse fifteen of the Shiva Sutras goes on to say,

“By establishing one’s mind in the heart-the Universal Consciousness-the whole world of perception appears as one’s own nature.”

(From the Aphorisms of Lord Shiva, trans. by Swami Lakshmanjoo)

The Goddess Shakti, Mother of the immanent universe, commanded her handmaiden, the Goddess Kundalini, to move among human beings searching for the truth of their own eternal nature and to assist them in discovering their true identity.

Mother Shakti said, “teach those who will listen, who have the patience and passion, how to experience the world as their own body.”

Then the Goddess Shakti created a seat for Kundalini in the base of the spine of human beings.  Shakti commanded her handmaiden, Kundalini, to teach humans to recognize the living sensation of their own universal personhood.

“Teach any with ears to hear and eyes to see,” the Universal Mother said, “to recognize that at the Heart of all things, no matter their size or variety, is the luminous, abiding bliss that is Shiva, the God whose Light animates all existence.”

The word, “kundalini” has come into popular use both in the Western world as well as in the East.

Allow me to suggest that wherever spiritual energy assists individuals in discovering truth, peace and compassion, the Goddess Kundalini, handmaiden of Mother Shakti, is at work.  The power of spiritual energies to effect personal change and enlightenment exists beyond the artificial barriers that humans erect between this or that religion or tradition.

For Trika Yoga, however, the mission of Kundalini is very specific.  She is the goddess who exists to take the aspirant by the hand and lead him or her to the Heart of one’s Universal Self.

In practical terms, this means that the mission of Kundalini is to teach the seeker how to recognize that everything she perceives, everything the senses apprehend, is his OWN NATURE.

She begins by asking us to believe, to have faith, that everything that we experience with our senses is real and divine, but if we learn to see beyond the surface, if we learn to surrender our conviction that what we see is all that can be perceived, then we can begin to journey into the Heart of all that is real and experience the One Energy that is the author of the universe of energy.

The Goddess Kundalini asks us to listen with our eyes, to see with our ears and to feel from the inside of our skin.

Mother Kundalini knows that when stress and tension is released, when the maelstrom of the mind is calmed, the seeker can begin to see, hear and feel anew.  The aspirant is able to perceive more subtle qualities of his/her energetic existence.  She can begin to feel the existence of the chakras that begin at the base of her spine and continue on up and beyond the crown of her head.  He can begin to sense the subtle friction caused by the movement of the serpent Goddess Kundalini throughout his body, directing his attention here or there, helping him to know where he must concentrate and intensify the energy to unseat pockets of pain and knots of stress.

Steadily and certainly, the aspirant evolves.  With the ascension of Kundalini, comes an ever greater capacity to perceive and experience the world on subtler levels.  An existence ruled by the tyranny of an ego protecting itself by any and all means necessary ceases.  As one embraces a life not ruled by emotions, or in fact, any kinds of thoughts at all, one experiences finer qualities of quiet joy and peace that owe their origin and existence to nothing more than the marvelous fact of being alive now, in this moment.

If we are willing, Kundalini will lead us to the recognition that our perceived, “individuality” is in fact, only possible because the Goddess Shakti, who indeed we all are, is the goddess of will, of knowledge and of action.  We are creative beings because we are that Goddess whose existence is the creation, maintenance and eventual destruction of all things.  We will recognize that we are in truth, not delimited by our bodies at all.  Our body is but a loving expression of our Universal Self.  The privilege to perceive, to recognize, to see, hear and feel–to exist at all–is possible because our eyes and ears and hearts beat with the Light that is the Source and Substance of One Being.  We all are the universal nature that animates us each as the individuals for whom Life is that singular Stage upon which we all perform.

We look at the trees and see our own limbs.  The crickets chirping are our own thoughts.  Behind the eyes of another person exists the Light that we recognize as the one and only Light that animates all the infinite expressions of our Universal Personality.

All of this and more is possible by allowing the Goddess Kundalini to take us by the hand and lead us along  the path of purification and wisdom.

And it all begins with the sensation of our own bodies.

, , , , ,

The Peoples Ashram, Madhyanandi & Trika Yoga

In Uncategorized on October 13, 2011 at 12:42 am

THE PEOPLE’S ASHRAM is new to Asheville.  Presently, classes are being held at Madhyanandi’s home studio.  In this way, we are able to share our spiritual practice on a purely donation basis.  In time, we hope to relocate to a permanent facility where the Ashram can offer a non-denominational meditation sanctuary,  classes in yoga and meditation, as well as instruction in the Trika philosophy of Pratyabijna, or Self-recognition.

Trika yoga is a path to freedom and enlightenment.  Madhyanandi’s teachings are based on her more than twenty years of yoga and meditation practice.  Here’s her story:

“One evening in 1994, following several years of intense yoga practice and personal transformation, I was sitting in meditation.  Suddenly, as if from the center of the earth, an energy burst through the base of my spine, rushed upwards through my body and burst again through the top of my head.  I was filled with indescribable peace and joy.  I no longer perceived myself as different from the world around me.  No longer was anything foreign to me.  I experienced the fluid connection that yokes all things together as a single, elegant Being.

From that event to the present, Mother Kundalini has led me, taught me and, at times, chastened me.  I have spent thousands of wonderful hours in meditation and devotion.  I have followed the path of  the awakened Kundalini shakti through the journey of the chakras.  I can tell you that the chakras and the subtle energies that link our microcosmic body/minds with the macrocosmic Self are real and tangible.  They are not the creations or property of the marketplace, popular culture, or spiritual self help publications.  The path of awakening Kundalini and following Her leadership from root to crown, from the evolution of ecstasies gross to subtle, is an immeasurable treasure.  My friends, I know what it is like to experience a whole new character and quality of life.  This is the gift that the divine Mother continues to bestow upon me.

My journey has not been an easy one.  Regardless of what anyone may claim, the path to utter and complete joy and contentment is not easy–simple, in many respects–but not easy.

If you surrender EVERYTHING that you believe you are–from the thoughts in your head to the sensations that comprise your bodily awareness, what you have surrendered will be returned to you a thousand fold.  You will discover a life that exists entirely in the Present Moment.  Your heart, mind and body will be liberated with the recognition that all you see and experience is your own Self–and that the Self that you recognize is the joyfully, eternal NOW.  For, the simple truth of enlightenment is that nothing exists that is not the Present Moment.  YOU ARE NOW.  Literally.  Entirely.  Joyously.

Trika yoga is a millenia-old tantric tradition originating from the Kashmir region of India.  This is an oral tradition.  The potency of this yoga is in the relationship between yourself, God (Shiva/Shakti) & the guidance of one who is awakened.  That is what I offer.  I beg the goddess, Mother Kundalini, to bless me with the compassion, wisdom and Realization that may assist you–whoever you are–in discovering that you are, as I am, that God Shiva/Shakti that is the source and substance of this Universal Now.”

INTERESTED STUDENTS:  Please come for a session and we will work a little and meditate a little.  There is no fee.  There is only one way to discover whether this or that teacher or teachings may be right for you–the direct exchange of spiritual energy.  If what you read here speaks to you at all, let’s talk about it together.

, , , , ,

Living Liberation

In Uncategorized on October 9, 2011 at 1:01 pm

Happy Sunday Morning all.

Freedom is a living blessing.  It may take some time and effort to arrive there, but I am nearly lost for words trying to describe how fabulous it feels.

So, I’m at work yesterday, cooking away.  The chef I work with has some–well, bad habits.  He doesn’t clean as he goes.  He uses a big pot for whatever he’s preparing and when he’s done he doesn’t rinse or prewash, he just sets it aside.  For me, more often than not.

He has other less productive habits.  But I like and care about him and he’s a good chef, creative and knowledgeable.

Here’s what I know.  Yesterday, I was perturbed about certain workplace trends–mainly about how I was having to do a bunch more work than I ought to be doing–mostly due to my partner’s less productive work habits.

He noticed that I was quieter than usual.  Finally he said something.  I joined him outside for a break and we talked.

Therein lies the dilemma.

You can talk till you are blue in the face but you won’t get through.  Allow me to clarify.

My partner’s mind, like most persons, is so cluttered and obfuscated and keeps him so trapped inside his head that he is truly incapable of allowing almost anything in from the “outside” world.  In other words, his experience of personal selfhood is so powerful and overwhelming that he literally cannot see beyond the prison bars of his mental and physical selfhood to actually listen to another human being.  Much less is he prepared to suffer any kind of criticism–no matter how diplomatically presented. He cannot see, hear or speak for being overwhelmed by so much mental and emotional energy.  Thoughts, emotions are moving rapidly.  The body is clenched, in a constant state of tension.  Oxygen is trapped in breathing patterns that are alternately too short and too long and then clenched and held by the stress that has accumulated in his stomach and particularly, the diaphragm.

He is in great pain.  That is the saddest thing of all, is it not?  That is what is so tragic–to see another person’s pain at the mercy of his/her own mind/body.

What is freedom if not the liberty to live in a world where mental and physical tension has so decreased that it becomes impossible NOT to live fully and entirely in the living Present, the Sacred NOW.

When the temple of your body/mind is free from nearly constant states of storm warning activity, when you discover the sensation of peace that can be experienced in the eye of the storm, then you will–like me–praise whatever Grace may be for this extraordinary gift.

You can be free.  It requires discipline, devotion and effective practices.  It won’t take forever, I promise you.  If you donate 10% of your 24 hour day to meditation and yoga, if you practice effective breathing patterns throughout your day, if you chant whenever you are able to help disperse the established habits of mental activity that continue to imprison you, you will find peace.  Not quickly, but not ten years down the road, either.

The single most important practice that you can perform–along with the above disciplines–is to walk in the world and recognize that everything that you see and experience, “inside” or “outside” of your limited self, is your own body.  The trees, leaves, grass–this is your body.  The thoughts in another person’s head?  Your body. All is energy.  Brooks and streams and rivers of energy.  See through the trees of vibrant energy to perceive the forest that is your true self- a self not contained within a head or a body at all.  A self that is coextensive and coinclusive with the living Universe that is our true body, mind and Self.