When all the desires that surge in the heart are renounced,
the mortal becomes immortal.
When all the knots that strangle the heart are loosened,
the mortal becomes immortal.
This is the teaching of the Upanishads.
--Katha Upanishad
The spiritual path is full of paradoxes. The one I’m taken with today is this:
We must contract in order to expand.
To say this a couple of different ways, we must turn inward before we can move outward.
We have to practice self-discipline before we can effectively offer compassion to the world.
In practice this means that order to grow, to expand to our full potential, first we have to stop.
Just stop—and witness . . . witness our thoughts and emotions and reactions to the worlds that are both within and without. This is how we find the knots . . . the knots that bind us to our limited conceptions of who we are and what we can be.
To undo these knots, to be free of them, we have to let go of fear, whatever our fears might be—fear of the unknown, of failure, of looking ridiculous (<-- that’s a big one for me).
Whatever your fear might be, it will become apparent to you if you just watch, just turn inward and listen.
And then, after we’ve gone within, witnessed and done the work of recognizing the arbitrary constraints that we’ve incorporated from culture, from family, from wherever . . .
After we’ve cut through these knots that tie us to the small, limited self . . .
Then we can expand!
Then we become what we always already are--divine consciousness in physical form. And we are able to live from a place of ease and spontaneity, a place of trust and love.
Now, if this seems far away, or even hokey, that’s o.k. Because the practice we do when we come to our mats, to unite body and mind in mindful movement and stillness, this practice has short term and long term benefits that come with or without the goal of radical freedom. All you have to do is keep coming back to your breath and your body, to the experience of right now.
And maybe by turning inward,
by letting go of the rest of the world,
by contracting,
it will be easier later
to move outward,
to expand out into the world
with compassion.
Written for Soul Expansion in Bisbee, 20 February 2016
the mortal becomes immortal.
When all the knots that strangle the heart are loosened,
the mortal becomes immortal.
This is the teaching of the Upanishads.
--Katha Upanishad
The spiritual path is full of paradoxes. The one I’m taken with today is this:
We must contract in order to expand.
To say this a couple of different ways, we must turn inward before we can move outward.
We have to practice self-discipline before we can effectively offer compassion to the world.
In practice this means that order to grow, to expand to our full potential, first we have to stop.
Just stop—and witness . . . witness our thoughts and emotions and reactions to the worlds that are both within and without. This is how we find the knots . . . the knots that bind us to our limited conceptions of who we are and what we can be.
To undo these knots, to be free of them, we have to let go of fear, whatever our fears might be—fear of the unknown, of failure, of looking ridiculous (<-- that’s a big one for me).
Whatever your fear might be, it will become apparent to you if you just watch, just turn inward and listen.
And then, after we’ve gone within, witnessed and done the work of recognizing the arbitrary constraints that we’ve incorporated from culture, from family, from wherever . . .
After we’ve cut through these knots that tie us to the small, limited self . . .
Then we can expand!
Then we become what we always already are--divine consciousness in physical form. And we are able to live from a place of ease and spontaneity, a place of trust and love.
Now, if this seems far away, or even hokey, that’s o.k. Because the practice we do when we come to our mats, to unite body and mind in mindful movement and stillness, this practice has short term and long term benefits that come with or without the goal of radical freedom. All you have to do is keep coming back to your breath and your body, to the experience of right now.
And maybe by turning inward,
by letting go of the rest of the world,
by contracting,
it will be easier later
to move outward,
to expand out into the world
with compassion.
Written for Soul Expansion in Bisbee, 20 February 2016
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