Don’t worry your heart and mind…

The word Sraddha in Sanskrit means Faith and it is the first quality of enlightenment, according to The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which is the most highly revered and authoritative text on Yoga ever written. The Sutras came 500 years after Buddhism, however, what is ingenious about Yoga is its non-discriminative and Universally embracing approach. It does not teach that you must believe in a certain God to awaken to your highest potential, but rather, that one’s Highest Good can be achieved through the consistent practice to realize this Reality of Goodness, Peace, Joy, Bliss within one’s own Self. A person can certainly realize this through devotion to an incarnation of God such as Buddha, Krishna or Jesus, but it is not imperative.

So, as we grow in our practice of Yoga we become increasingly faithful. It’s hard to imagine a better topic than Faith at this very moment and time, given the recent turblence with what’s been going on with our country’s economic situation. So, the first place to look when any type of panic or fear is happening with the collective consciousness, is right within your own heart and mind. One of the most powerful questions we can ask ourselves is how are our thoughts impacting the greater Good. Are there thoughts of scarcity or lack running through your mind? Are there any ripples of fear about loss? Do you buy into the idea that there’s a reason to be scared? If so, then there is transformation that needs to happen within yourself.

Be Ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. Romans 12:2

At times, it’s easier to disregard the hype. But at other times, like the past week, it seems to become more difficult to unplug from the fear-based collective unconscious. It’s literally filling the air as fear messages from countless mediums (tvs, satellites, radio) travel through waves transmitting their signals and messages all around us. And yet, it’s these times when we get to awaken to a greater state of faith within our own mind and heart. It’s at these times when we really get to examine ourself and realize where it is that we are allowing ourselves to live in fear, living in the world bound in some way by the idea of material loss.

So, my first recommendation to dissolve any ripples of fear is to practice your 1:1 Pranayama breathing and to meditate regularly. Allow yourselves to plug into the message of Truth from the One, Unchanging, Always Present, Ever-Existing Consciousness, the Energy that always was and always will be. And with each breath you breathe, allow yourself to breathe away fear. There really is nothing to be afraid of and this is scriptural no matter what your specific faith is. Many of the recent experiences I’ve gone through in my life have been teaching me this very lesson. Any fear we experience really comes from one fear, which is the fear of death. That’s why as a Yogi, we are continuously evolving and dissolving this fear every breath of the way.

Those of you who live in Dallas, I hope you will join me this Friday night at exhale dallas for a Yoga Trance Dance from 7-9 pm. This Yoga Trance Dance couldn’t come at a better time as we will actually be going through a process called Ha Kriya to slice away and free ourselves of fear. This is an incredibly insightful time we are in and so there is much to be released and liberated as we dance fearlessly!

It did occur to me I really need to share some of the specific teachings from my Yoga teacher training with Rod Stryker. It’s great for me to have received the gift of these teachings, but they are most beneficial the more I can share them with you. As these 5 principles of enlightenment become most relevant, such as Sraddha, I will share them with you here. So, here’s an excerpt from the training I attended, Yoga Sutra: Light on Self-Mastery.

This is what Patanjali’s saying enlightenment looks like. These are the qualities of enlightenment. What is Sraddha? Sraddha is Faith. There’s a beautiful teaching in the Bhagavad-Gita that says your life is the size of your Faith. The bigger your faith, the bigger your life. The moment you embrace, even the Unknown, and create trust that you are in the right place, that you will have everything you need, that the Divine, or however you want to think about it, Nature, God is on your side…the moment you make that decision and the extent to which you make that decision, your life opens and everything becomes possible. So Patanjali is saying we’re going to make this number 1. This first sign of enlightenment is this embrace of the whole of existence, even in the darkest night, in the darkest days of our lives, there is still this flame of, not hope, but belief in Goodness…ownership of what is possible. So, #1 is that. So in your times of confusion and doubt, and indecision, life challenges and loss, all of those things, there is still this underlying sense that you are exactly who you need to be, you have everything you need in order to attain everything your heart truly desires. Despite there being no evidence, that’s the way of life. That’s the facts.

Also, I just received an e-mail today from Shiva Rea. I’ll be blogging more shortly on the Navaratri festival which began today. She began the e-mail saying this:

I hope you are staying connected to your center in the midst of America’s muladhara shaking. In yoga, an unstable foundation must change so this is a good process that needs to happen in order for real strength to emerge and grow. We are in need of real leadership to navigate the changes ahead. The way that each one of us listens to a deeper current and emanates from that place rather than fear and anxiety is a tremendous contribution at this time.

I wanted to make sure you had this information for Navaratri.

She then went on to offer ways in which she is personally observing this 10 day cycle. Here is another portion of the e-mail which she just wrote in her newsletter:

On the eve of the New Moon, Rosh Hashanah and one of the most important Hindu-Tantric ritual festivals, Navaratri, I wanted to honor this sacred cycle of deep alignment and ritual renewal that is available to us all during these times of intense change.

Days 1-3 (Tuesday -Thursday) Purification of Inner and Outer Obstacles on the Spritual Path (Durga Shakti)
Days 4-6 (Friday – Sunday) Worshiping the Healing Beauty and Abundance of Maha Lakshmi
Days 7-9 (Monday-Wednesday) Awakening the Divine Wisdom and Creativity of Saraswati Ma
Day 10 Victory of Shakti

I have not even fully absorbed everything Shiva wrote to us, nor have I read the article she recommended, but I intend to as soon as possible. This celebration and observance is new to me, but I am so grateful to receive this information from such a blessed teacher as she. So, we have every reason to be faithful. We are simply riding the waves of strengthening change. Om Shanti!