All is misery. This is because of the kleshas, the afflictions spoken of in the Yoga Sutras. Our ignorance of who we are is what causes our misery. There is always a sense of missing something, of not being true, of not feeling fulfilled or experiencing Love. We can have moments and then say we are fulfilled in our work or have great relationships, but always sitting around the corner is the pain, whether we admit it or not, that we are just not ourselves. When we have had enough of this nagging feeling in the background of our lives, we may start our search. This will be the search for deeper meaning, more fulfillment, authentic voice, true happiness. In the world today there are many circus barkers selling the solutions. And for them their solution is the solution. They have come up with an easy new way that will get you there in a heartbeat with no work. Magic.
Sorry, I do not hawk magic. This is not an easy path. It is very steep. So if you are not up to the task, that is okay; you can tune out now. If you want the Truth, however, the path that has been traveled for thousands of years and that brings you to the goal, then listen up.
Ignorance according to Patanjali is taking what is not real to be real, what is impermanent to be permanent, what is impure to be pure, what is not-Self to be Self. Once we do this, we lose our subject in the object with which we have mistakenly identified. After this, we are then attracted to certain things because of our wrong identification; we are also repulsed by certain things because of this identification. Finally, we cling to this identity because we have fear of death. All the writings of all traditions and schools of thought say we can be freed from this wrong knowledge.
The first step is for us to be able to listen to and hear our honest answer. Our honest answer is not the true Self; it is just our honest answer. But it is our honest answer that runs us, that controls us, that keeps everything going. So if we do not hear our honest answer, we do not know what we are actually doing. We may intellectually have really good ideas, but it is the honest answer sitting underneath that runs us. So what we need to do first is be able to hear our honest answer. We may think there should be no reason why we would not listen to ourselves. But our honest answer is not always the answer we want to hear. And if it isn’t what we want to hear, we may deny it. Therefore, step one is to hear and then accept our honest answer. The foursquare game is a way of developing this hearing and acceptance. The seed exercise will help with seeing and acceptance. Until we get to and accept our honest answer, we cannot move. If we are tormented by our answer, then obviously we have not accepted it. We have somehow run away. Our job is not to judge but to accept. Once we have continuously listened to our honest answer and accepted it, we can then move. We can actually start working.
Second, we need to be with our experience, let whatever comes up come up, and function efficiently and appropriately on the physical plane. It is better to be with whatever our experience is than to deny what we do not like. Being with our experience is, again, not wallowing or tormenting. We have to accept. Everything in the world comes from us. If we do not accept this we unwittingly end up perpetuating pain when we believed we were acting out of love and compassion. We have to own the truth of our motives, and we cannot until we are willing to live, being with our true experience of the moment and not denying it. We have to be strong enough to look squarely at what comes up and accept all qualities. Not functioning appropriately is one way of not accepting our honest answer. By the way, if we do not allow ourselves to be with our honest experience of the moment, we may believe we are only avoiding negative experiences that we call bad. In fact, we are also avoiding true positive feeling, like actual joy or love. We will only be allowing the shadow or the distant iteration of the true experience. For instance, if we are committed to positive sentiments, we will just manifest as sappy, which will then annoy many people. So we have to be willing to be as true as we can be in the moment and function appropriately.
This third step is where we are no longer in the territory of the therapeutic model. Most of the work in the early stages of sadhana, which can take years, is about cleaning our vehicles, so good therapy can be very helpful. During these early stages, people may think that therapy and spiritual practice are the same thing. It is in step three that the two schools separate very clearly. Therapy wants me to be the best “Rohini” I can possibly be. Spiritual practice knows that I am not Rohini, because Rohini is a knowable. The goal of spiritual practice is to disentangle from Rohini. So step three is letting go of perceivables. Our task is to keep withdrawing the line of demarcation between who we think we are and what we perceive. We are disentangling what we perceive from “I”. Eventually, we will get to pure Subject, with no object.
When we get to pure Subject with no object, we will Know who we are. We are the Perceiver, not the perceived. We are the Seer, not the seen. If we can know it, perceive it, see it, then it cannot be who we are.
What is the means to get to pure Subject? According to all the schools and traditions: discriminative knowledge. How do we acquire this knowledge? If we return to step one, we will see that from the very beginning we have been practicing and developing this means. Being able to hear our honest answer rather than the “right” or “good” of the small self is an early form of discriminative knowledge. If we can accept this answer, then we are not running away from ourselves, even in our shrunken form. Then, as we proceed, we can discern who we are not from who we really are. Discriminative knowledge is being able to tell the difference between the Real and the not real.
Who are we? We are the Self of All, Pure Love. Practice, and then be your Self. And remember: this takes many years.
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