One of the benefits of practicing yoga and meditation is living a greater life, a life of fulfillment, freedom, happiness, love, and connection; a life that allows the unboundedness of source consciousness to penetrate the boundary of our body, mind, and heart.
In a way, it’s about making our life sacred. What does that mean? Sacredness is a vantage point, a perspective, that is awakened through deep states of consciousness, vulnerability, and sensitivity. Yoga and meditation are wonderful practices that can take us beyond the mind, beyond the ordinary limitations of consciousness into the vastness of all that is.
Our practices enable us to become aware of the opportunity to be different in life, to pause, to cultivate stillness and presence, to really feel, experience, and know the light of a bigger energy, a spiritual energy, of grace, the inner workings of the flow of life.
Ultimately, yoga offers the way and means of cultivating a sacred relationship with source consciousness that dwells within. It’s a way to fall in love with ourselves more fully, to be in a state of ecstatic stillness that permits the experience of dwelling in an open heart.
Ashaya and Tantra welcome the full spectrum of who we are – shadow and light.
Many yoga paths embrace only the light and the spirit. They negate, bury, or ignore the shadow. But we know that the shadow is full of value, gifts, creativity, and wisdom. As Deepak Chopra said, “If you think you don’t have a shadow, you must not be standing in the light.” Shadow comes with the package of life.
Sometimes we spend a lot of energy trying to get rid of our shadow, when in reality, the shadow is here to stay. It’s here to help us. The only issue is that we can easily get entangled in it. It takes a high level of discernment and consciousness to not get stuck in it.
How do we find the sacredness of the shadow?
I like to apply the 3 A’s of Ashaya as a tool: Awareness, Acceptance, Action.
A1. Awareness. First, we must come to recognize that we all have a shadow. We come out of denial about it and be aware. The shadow represents our younger, lesser evolved part of ourself, our wounded self, usually from childhood. We carry the wounds and scars from our childhood, and past lives as samskaras, for the duration of life. Instead of trying to get rid of the shadow, how can we embrace it? And not just embrace it but allow it to thrive?
For this we need A2. Acceptance. In acceptance we don’t just offer a superficial blanket of acceptance. We offer deep acceptance.
In acceptance of the shadow, we need to first discern and then dissolve our judgment, resistance, and any need to get rid of the shadow. Often, we think that the shadow is wrong and bad. But it’s not.
To do this is challenging because who wants to allow the shadow to hang around? I do! What I mean by that is that the shadow has value. In Tantra, everything belongs. It’s just a matter of where you place it. Dirt inside the house is dirt. Outside the house it’s soil and that’s where it belongs.
So, give yourself permission to let the shadow stay. Let it occupy space. But keep it in check.
Remember, Shiva Nataraja, the Dancing Lord, stands on the back of the “imp of forgetfulness” the ego, but permits it to live, to be there, within the circle of the dance of life. In fact, the ego becomes Shiva’s dancefloor and forms the foundation of the entire creation. Without the ego, our shadow, our imperfections, our forgetfulness, we would never have the joy of remembering. Everything belongs.
When the shadow is embraced and held, loved, it no longer poses a threat. It softens and offers its gifts. I want to keep my shadow in place as a reminder of what I want to change or how I want to act. The shadow is a placeholder for consciousness and shows me what I need. Allowing it to stay enables me to receive its powerful creativity, energy, and wisdom. It serves as a reminder for me to choose well.
The shadow has something of value to offer us, otherwise it wouldn’t be there. Once we can shift our relationship with our shadow, we begin to see the sacredness of what it has to offer. Then all of life becomes sacred because we’re not excluding parts of ourself that we need.
Once you come out of denial that you have a shadow, and you’re okay with it, you’ve accepted it, then it’s time for A3, Action. The action that is necessary is subtle. It releases your entanglement with the shadow. This action puts the shadow in its place, moves it out of the way of your heart’s deepest intention so that you are free of its negative effects. Otherwise, without A3, we tend to hold the shadow as a burden rather than a gift.
We are all meant to have the shadow parts we have, not as a prison sentence of limitation, but as a call to remember our vulnerabilities, our imperfections, our humanness.
Our limitations keep us humble. When we can embrace our light and shadow wholeheartedly, we become whole. We’re already whole and complete as we are. But we are unaware of this at a deeper level. Yoga helps to bring about a deeper awareness of the sacredness of all of life.
The highest purpose of our practice is to awaken the recognition that we are the embodiment of the flow of grace.
It’s the movement of the unboundedness into the boundary of body, mind, and heart that makes this happen. This is sacred. This is living in a sacred relationship to life and all that is.
When that happens, then what we have seen as ordinary becomes extraordinary. What we’ve seen as mundane, suddenly becomes miraculous. It’s seeing with the eyes of grace and allowing the vastness of all that is to penetrate and remove the walls of contraction, of limited consciousness.
This awareness never hit me harder than when I recently taught a day-long workshop in Albany, NY called “The Yoga of Radical Affirmation.” I’ve taught this workshop many times. The teachings are not new. But there were some students in the workshop who were brand new to Ashaya and the Nondual Tantra philosophy.
As I began to teach, I could see the students’ faces soften, their eyes water and light up with the recognition of what they’ve known in their hearts for a long time but couldn’t find the words to express. As they received the teachings and opened their hearts, my heart began to open more too. I started to hear the teachings through their new eyes and ears. The reciprocity of the experience was mind blowing.
The morning’s topic was Awaken Your Radiant Heart and Vibrant Body, how saying yes to life, affirming that life has our back, is the same as saying yes to the universe. When you say yes to life, the universe opens doors of opportunity for you. A simple yes within, brings about a smile on your face that disarms others and makes them feel a sense of calm. People trust you and feel safe around you because you are at peace within yourself.
When we say no to life, close our heart, or resist what’s arising, we close down. Doors of opportunity slam shut, and we narrow our worldview, we live small. Yoga is the dance of saying both yes and no. We always try to say yes first, to open to the moment and give it a chance. Then we can step back and say no to what’s not life-enhancing. No to what’s against life.
The afternoon session was about Awaken Your Peaceful Mind, and I taught more about the power of being able to say no to what’s no longer life-enhancing in our life. We are the gatekeepers of our mind. We get to say what we let in and what we keep out. When we say no to what’s against life, no to what steals our joy, it’s as good as saying yes to life.
Creating a healthy self-boundary is as much a part of the practice as saying yes.
Life then becomes a dance of yes and no and when you find the balance, the place in the middle where yes and no are in balance, your heart opens, and you begin to see with the eyes of grace. You begin to see the sacredness of life.
At the end of the afternoon session, after a beautiful series of deep practices of asana, mantra, meditation, and Yoga Nidra, the students and I were completely blissed out. Their perspective shifted and many of the students shared how it was difficult to find words to describe the sublimity of their experience. Life changed in that moment.
We sat together in the miracle of life, just being in the open space of source consciousness without interference from the negative contractive thoughts of judgment, doubt, anxiety, regret, or fear. We just were. We were present. And in that present moment, the sacredness of life shone clearly for all to see.
I’ll never forget that moment! It was a blessing. This is why I practice. This is why I teach Ashaya Yoga. I believe that it’s possible to live a life with the realization that everything in life is for our awakening, that our relationships are sacred, that every aspect of our life is sacred. This is the true journey of the heart.
This extraordinary reality, the Maha Prakasha (the great light of consciousness) exists right here, right now, but is unseen by most people. The great light of consciousness chooses, out of its own delight, to conceal itself. Hidden by its own will, it self-conceals only to self-reveal when the student is ready.
This process of self-revelation is radically transformational, astonishing, and so beautiful that it goes beyond the senses, beyond sensations, into the depths of inner consciousness.
Just touching this wholeness even for only a moment, is enough to produce profound transformation and shifts of consciousness such that you begin to see the light of the sacred in all things and in all beings.
May we traverse in the inner space of consciousness which has the capacity to take us beyond the contraction of limitation into the experience of unboundedness
This February, in honor of the month of love, may you cultivate your relationship with source consciousness to be able to experience the sacred in everything you do, see, hear, smell, taste, and touch!
Namaste,
Todd
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