Following your heart means opening your heart, being vulnerable, and letting your guard down. To do that, you have to be willing to trust in something bigger. Śraddhā, (pronounced Shraddha) is the Sanskrit word for faith. It means choosing to place your heart where you believe you will have the most fulfillment and do the most good. When you place your heart in something bigger, when you have Śraddhā, you have the courage to hold to your vision when life gets tough.
Like most of us on the path of the heart, my heart has been shattered many times. By shattered, I mean when the tectonic plates of my life shifted and my life was transformed. In my twenties, I attended a 10-day yoga retreat at an ashram, and stayed for 13 years! It took faith for me to make that leap and change my life. But since I was so convinced through my direct experience that yoga was the direction I wanted to go, I was able to flow with it.
Then in my forties, my heart was shattered again with the the guru scandal and fall of the Kripalu Ashram as I knew it. Again, everything I had built was shattered and I had to regroup. Doing this took intense courage and faith … faith that ultimately, yoga works. Yoga is true.
Not really knowing what it was, I continued to practice Śraddhā, placing my heart in the direction I wanted to go that would give me the most fulfillment and joy. I devoted the next 15 years, to the Anusara Yoga community, which ended in another scandal. Do I have bad luck or what? No, I don’t have bad luck. This is how life unfolds.
I always tell my students that although our entire past is imprinted in our cells as samskaras, it is not these specific experiences that stay with us.
What stays is the meaning we make of what happens to us.
Often, we assign a negative or shameful meaning about what happened to us. We often tell ourselves, “I don’t have what it takes. I’m not enough. I’m flawed. I’m a failure.” But in the Tantric view, everything in life is for our awakening. Instead of asking the question, “What did I do wrong?” we might ask, “How is this experience for my awakening?”
Of all of the practices and techniques I used to heal my heart from the traumas of my past, asking myself the question, “How is this for my awakening?” has been the most empowering. Just by asking that question during a challenging time, shifts the focus from what did I do wrong, to what can I learn from this experience. This shift of focus, while seemingly quite simple, is no less than the shift from victim consciousness to victory consciousness. It reflects a quantum leap of evolutionary freedom.
Having been torn apart three times and putting myself back together three times, I finally created my own path of yoga in 2012 – Ashaya: The Abode of the Heart. I owe this outcome to the practice of Śraddhā which helped me tap into my heart’s deepest desire, open to a bigger energy, and move me forward to where I am today. I’m grateful for my journey and for all of the beings who supported me.
Each time my life changed, I had a choice to flow with it or resist it. I always chose to flow with it. You might ask why? And how?
Why? Because I believe in the journey of the soul and that this life is about learning, growing, and awakening to our divine potential of freedom and bliss. Who we are is not set in stone. We can shift and change and flow. This allows us to move through the seasons of our life more easily. Fate is what’s given to us. It’s the material we have to work with. Destiny is what we do with it. Destiny is agency. We have the ability to intervene with grace and change the direction of our life, to turn it more in the direction of our heart’s deepest-most desire. For that to happen, we need Śraddhā, faith in something bigger. My life is always better when I lean into Śraddhā.
How? The question here is really about following my heart. To follow my heart, I have to open my heart. To open my heart, I have to open to something bigger - an energy bigger than myself. Opening in this way takes the great strength of vulnerability and the belief and trust that life has my back, that life is not ganging up on me, that if I can just take a breath and let go, I’ll discover that the universe does have my back. This support often comes through other beings but most importantly, it comes from my very own self as I learn how to stand in and for myself.
And, what is that “something bigger,” really? The bigger energy is synonymous with life itself: everything that exists, seen and unseen, physical and non-physical. It’s what you understand and what you don’t understand. It’s the totality of all that is, ever was, and all that will be. To trust that this totality exists requires Śraddhā, and Śraddhā is an exercise of personal choice. You choose to place your heart in a good place – in success, in hope, in love, in happiness, in peace – in the belief that grace abounds, that life has your back, and that life is intrinsically good.
Faith, then, is not a passive experience; it’s an active choice.
True faith comes from believing because you want to believe. This is different from blind faith. In her book Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience, meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg defines three different kinds of faith: blind faith, verifiable faith, and wisdom.
1. Blind faith is acceptance without knowing why, without examination and without understanding. Because the hunger for approval or the need to be liked may drive blind faith, this type of unquestioning belief lays you wide open to manipulation by others.
2. Verifiable faith is faith that has been tested. You know something is true because you’ve experienced it. You understand the reason and you have evidence from trusted sources, but most importantly, your own experience dispels all doubt. You don’t have to take someone’s word for it. You felt it. You know it.
3. Wisdom is faith that is so ingrained in you that it is undeniable. You might say that wisdom is verifiable faith that has been time-tested. Over years of listening to your heart, experiencing how life works, and seeing your faith in action, you now have the deepest level of faith; you have wisdom that no one can shake. You have Śraddhā.
To get to that place of wisdom, you have to first make a choice. You must choose faith over doubt, one of the faces of fear. Doubt diminishes faith and if left unchecked, will kill it.
Making the choice to believe – in yourself, in positive outcomes – kicks off a chain reaction; faith leads to more faith.
Like a muscle, faith can be strengthened, and it gets stronger with practice. Just as a strong-willed individual doesn’t give up easily, “strong-faithed” people don’t allow doubt to sabotage what they know in their heart to be true.
So, my prayer for you this holiday season is that you practice Śraddhā! Where do you want to place your heart? There’s no wrong decision, never any mistakes, only learning, only growing, only evolution that’s guided by the longing which comes from the deepest desire of your heart! Trust yourself. Trust your heart. Then let go and leap! When you do, the universe will swoop down and support you to flourish!
Have a wonderful holiday season and I look forward to seeing you on the mat soon!
Namaste,
Todd
Thank you so much for this beautiful message. I've really been feeling this lately. This is the journey; a trust fall into the heart. Haha