You might call love fullness, luminosity, and wholeness. The feeling or expression called human love does indeed reach for, or perfume itself with, this higher love, which is why we seek it out in so many ways, both helpful and hurtful. Seeing love this way was, for me, a simultaneous understanding that love is the same thing as fullness. Fullness applies to all lived experience.

Attachment is when we believe our desires. It is when we think and act transactionally. It is when we are willing to barter our current peace and happiness for a peace and happiness that we believe lies in the future or in the past. 

I call compulsions, reactions, and hot spots that show up in our systems and in our relationships with people and the world activations because these impulses are simply made of energy- energy that is trying to guide us back to the heart.  When we have an activation we feel it.  We know that there is something in us that is asking us to listen, to look, to see. 

In yoga tradition and symbology the snake goes a step further than even the notion of life, death, earth, and sexuality by bringing forth the concept of Kundalini. Kundalini is the primary force of the subtle body of energy that lies within the map of the physical body, and it is an anatomy just as vital, detailed, and investigated in the various Indian traditions as is the physiology of form.

The sound Om holds a particularly sacred place in Yogic tradition and subtle body technology.  In fact, to refer to Om is to diminish its sacredness: in most traditional texts, including in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Om is given the name of Pranava, or that which contains the supreme prana.

Our awareness does not change, only the circumstances that the awareness observes changes, and it does so constantly.  The yogi in a state of Santosha is able to remain vertical as that awareness in the horizontal plane of time and circumstance.

The subtle body and the physical body are interconnected and bound through breath, electric and energetic current, and inner alignment.  In other words, the body is the classroom where our physical and our divine meet, play, and fall in love with one another.  

Curiosity, then, becomes an Asteya practice.  Staying open to your process by not stealing, shutting down, and manipulating your deepest authority and intuition.  Even when you have a real spiritual insight, does this insight come out of the inspiration of your curiosity or is it a stolen concept that you hold jealously?  You can absolutely feel the difference.  The first is free and multiplies upon application in the world- the more people that teach this truth the better; the second is a closely guarded and trademarked item that you monitor like a dragon over its keep.

The heart can rest in a deep, spacious peace when we are in a complete ahimsa practice. You start to trust your intuition; you start to observe the mechanism of your thoughts and how frequently they pay service to judgments toward ourselves and toward others, allowing this dysfunction to soften and melt away; you develop boundaries that express how fierce kindness and justice must be in its greatest glory. 

Practice is a form of imagination: we create a structure and a goal and then we create a way to move toward that goal. In Vedanta you might hear a teacher say “Pretend, Tend, End;” that is, imagine the goal, pay attention to it and nurture it, and then achieve the state of Self that is eternal, beginning-less and endless, where practice dissolves and all that remains is the whole, complete Now of your Being (the so-called end of self-inquiry).

Here lies a perennial question: what is free will? Is my will free? What choices do I have when everything in life’s flow has led to this exact moment? What in the world do I do with that?

Notice what you are doing in every single given moment. Begin by just pausing a few times in your day to notice what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, what actions you take to self-sooth uncomfortable feelings. Don’t try to change your activities. Don’t manipulate your thoughts or feelings. Just notice them. Become the great observer of your life. If I could sum up every teaching of yoga in one phrase, “notice what you notice” always stands out.

Our relationships matter. Our contracts and our jobs and the way we communicate matters. How did you speak to your partner today, or your children, or the person in the checkout line at the grocery store? Are you open and honest in your heart, in your humanity, in your inner landscape of thought and self-inquiry?

Let us be comfortable in the furniture of the house that breaks, the stuff that we hold precious or that our near-ancestors and loved ones held precious long ago at some faded moment; that we are afraid to break and that we tiptoe around, but don’t know quite why; the overstuffed stuff and the under-dusted surfaces. Let us be as welcoming in these crowded rooms as we are in the bright spaces when the sunshine bursts through the window causing us to throw open all the doors and breathe sweet air.

Just like any scientist, the Yogin prefers to work in the laboratory rather than only in the classroom. That is, we actively engage in the process of self-investigation by tinkering with this or that aspect of reality, thought, emotion, and sensation. Observe, change, observe again. We are not merely the student that listens and absorbs but does not get dirty and up to the elbow in dissection. We are both.

I see god in everything

I suppose you could call me a stalker

Admittedly a very

Lazy

One

The lessons won’t look the way you think they will look. There is no such thing as an easy path. And most importantly, spiritual practice will not make you more perfect. It will make you more vulnerable, more honest, more compassionate. But it will not alter your life situations or challenges and turn your inner landscape into the garden of Eden.

There is nothing to gain from this process. There is nothing here for you at all.

This is a good thing.

Nothing challenges us as humans the way uncertainty challenges us, which is why people’s minds love routine, control, and structure. But these very gifts of the mind (routine, control, and structure) can also be a great enemy during times of challenge until we can begin to find some balance through faith, self-compassion, and gratitude: in other words, how can your heart meet your mind in equally-balanced harmony?

We do not need to be so extreme in our actions to practice Tapas. We can simply deepen what we’ve been practicing all along: wisdom, honesty, straightforwardness, strong boundaries, self-investigation, and self-compassion. Commit yourself to your inner practice. These very extreme teachings show us what commitment looks like when it is undertaken totally.

The triggers that come up in our most complex interactions with those with whom we are the closest is exactly the trove of material that gives us the most opportunity for growth and transformation. In modern life this is where we can find the lessons of Brahmacharya.