Diving into Sādhana….

Some people approach sādhana with a dualistic map. Some people approach with a nondualistic map. What is important is right effort—approaching with right effort. God created us and this world in Love; our misery is because of our wrong understanding. Our wrong identification with vehicles like our bodies, mind, emotions, thoughts. The more we differentiate in our identification, the further away we are from God.

God is everything and everywhere and all-powerful and all-Loving. But, as Bishop William Bernard Ullathorne wrote, “God is everywhere but not everywhere to us.” Our wrong understanding exiles us from the Self. To return home to God, we have to give up our separateness, our sense of individual power. We are the moon, not the sun. Our light comes from the sun, but we foolishly think we are self-illumined. When we do right effort, we remove our wrong understanding and align with God.

In his commentary on Śiva Sutras 1.5—“Effort is itself Bhairava [God]”—Baba writes about right effort:

Right effort is this: on attaining knowledge of the nature of the highest reality, one strives to remain constantly immersed in the awareness of the inner Self….Separative knowledge relying on words only produces dualities such as love and hate, and joy and sorrow. But the undifferentiated awareness of one’s true nature, which is the same as Bhairava (Shiva), releases pure bliss. To remain aware of the inner Self is right effort. To understand that all thoughts that spring from within and take verbal form are nothing but the pulsation of Parashakti, anchors one firmly in the Self.

The dichotomies of relative reality then dissolve. With right effort we develop discernment, because we move toward right alignment with God. Our attachment to our feelings and emotions dissolves, and we are in Love. Our emotions are then vibrations that color and enrich our lives but do not run them. We are bathing in Love rather than drowning in the world.

Many people believe that resonating like a tuning fork is connecting with others, being in tune with others. In reality, resonating is immature caring—not real care or empathy, but a form of self-absorption. It means forsaking our own Heart, losing ourselves in a pool of vibrations rather than connecting through Love. When we resonate, we drown with the other person. Connecting with others in truth, in the deepest sense, does not happen when we are attached to our bodies as ourselves. We truly connect with others and the world when we live in who we Are, not as an idea but as reality.

To live in the Self we have to purify our understanding. We first have to call what is what it is. That is why clarity of language and thought is so important. If I call losing myself in others and being codependent being caring, then I am out of alignment and cannot find harmony. I end up with wrong action and do not know why. So our first steps are to clean our actions and thoughts from wrong understanding.

Along with that, we must clean our emotions and motivations. The willingness to be honest with ourselves is so important. We speak of good character; this is where we develop into people we honor. Our actions then manifest from pure intentions, not the idea of pure intentions. Once this shift occurs, we are then no longer fighting right action. Love informs our life on all levels. This is not an idea, so the fruition of this takes much hard work and continuous practice.

As we perform right action, we develop the awareness that we are not our bodies and we understand the scriptures in a way we were quite incapable of before. We mature into light and right understanding. It is a consciousness that has nothing to do with drowning and being lost. When we dive into sādhana, we then have the scales removed from our eyes and Grace guides us. Our right effort has taught us to swim in harmony with Grace.

Resonating then reveals itself as empty and immature. Our connecting has a depth that goes beyond the body, mind, and emotions. Our connecting is at a level we had no idea existed. And at that moment we are thankful for all the trials and tribulations we have gone through in order to arrive at Truth, Consciousness, and Bliss.