carnage @carnage-blog1 - Tumblr Blog

self-meditation

When sadness or anger wells up within you, do something completely unexpected to break the pattern. If you feel angry with someone, give him/her a big hug! Be innovative and imaginative.

This particular breath will not come again - so pay attention.

When troubled feelings threaten to blow you off course, meditate and be aware of the storm.Watch the waves of negative feelings and thoughts as they wash over you. Accept their presence, rather than trying to avoid them. Observe the turbulence, rather than identifying with it. Move into the eye of the storm, into your center. Watch the storm die down and be replaced by a calm mind.

Don;t let negative thoughts weigh you down. Imagine each as a bubble. Let the slowly float up and out of your head, each carrying away a bit of tension. your spirit will soon feel lighter.

Gatha for arriving home: "I have arrived, I am home, in the here and now. I am solid, I am free. In the ultimate, I dwell. My mind can go in a thousand directions. Now I walk in peace, each step a warm breeze. With each step, a lotus blooms."

Prayer: "Grant that may be given appropriate difficulties and sufferings on this journey, so that my heart may be truly awakened and my practice of total liberation and universal compassion may be fulfilled."

elene brower: understanding why we keep secrets

This is our ode to our humanity, our wellness, our intelligence.

This is our ode to our secrets.

We all think we have secrets; actually, they have us.

The number-one reason people keep secrets or lie is to “keep the peace.” We hold onto secrets to keep other people happy, safe, set in their vision of the world, and in their vision of us. After my friend Lauren Zander’s 20 years of coaching people, she’s found “lies” to be the sturdiest walls that we humans erect within and around ourselves, thereby keeping ourselves trapped and wrapped in a wide range of limitations.

In the Handel Method, all the different types of lies are defined, from white lies, “Oh yes, I’ve read that book,” to the full-blown secrets that some of us call “those we take to the grave,” such as shameful abuse or cheating. In the gray area between those two extremes of lying is where we live most of our daily lives, with little, supposedly harmless untruths. All lies create the conflicted cast of characters within us, that each express their truth differently with different people.

Who better than a highly intelligent human being to justify why she’d never go into the horrific, disingenuous world of politics — yet won’t tell her husband that she bought shoes with cash, leaving the box at the store so he wouldn’t be mad?

Do you lie?

Do you want to say “no” immediately? Good, you’re in the right place. Everyone’s initial reaction is to plead, “No, not me, I’m no liar.” Mine was, too. One of my stories to Lauren when she first began working with me was, “I’m a yoga teacher. I don’t lie. I’m actually helping people. That justifies secretly enjoying a few cigarettes even though I’m teaching people how to breathe. They’re my little secret, and they help me stay sane.” Good one. So when she gave me permission to smoke only as many cigarettes per week as I’d have my 4-year-old son smoke per week, I was done. And then I realized that I wouldn’t want to practice yoga with someone who smokes.

Or lies.

Lauren marvels at how easily people shift gears once she defines what’s included in a lie: those little details we hide from others, because we’ve deemed them irrelevant; or the way we tell most of the story, depending on who’s listening. She and I teamed up to create a class for yoga teachers, having learned from my smoking situation, about the stark divide between the lies we’re telling and the teachings we’re sharing. I was a hypocrite, plain and simple. The smoking was one of my lies. Telling people I’ve read such-and-such book after having glanced at the chapter titles is another funny catch. All of it is lying. Now, if I catch myself in a lie of any kind, I have fifteen minutes to come clean, from the moment I recognize my skewing of the truth. And the coming clean is always exhilarating, and brings me closer to my heart every time.

Can you begin to see how your ability to justify everything you have to say is exactly how you’ve trapped yourself into the “you” you aren’t actually living up to?

In my example, Lauren pointed out yet another massive lie from my past: my infidelity. I was justifying it because I wasn’t going to tell anyone about it, ever, and I wasn’t going to leave my marriage; I told myself at the time I’d just needed more attention, which somehow made it okay. I hung that lie out as my “poor me” banner for months.

That story was about to become my son’s hidden, secret legacy. So around six months after the time that Lauren pointed this out to me, I apologized. My ex-husband told his own truth, and we’ve become dear, true friends. Most importantly for my son — I finally love myself past that destructive choice — instead of allowing that secret to erode my confidence and diminish my capacity to serve. I began telling on myself to anyone who would listen, in the hopes that others will find this healing freedom in their own lives. This is possible for all of us, no matter how horrible the prospect of telling the truth might seem. There are ways to frame and create conversations wherein everyone, ultimately, is healed.

Here’s the gold: my self-love and freedom come from the confidence I’ve gained in fully admitting how this lying lives in me.

Can you admit how your lies live in you now? Can you dare to make your own connection between your lies and a subtle but disconcerting lack of self-respect? No matter how well the secret is kept, it’s leaking somewhere, somehow, into your life. If you let the “real” you be a liar, then the person you’re showing the world is basically a people-pleaser, quietly stuck, keeping the peace, exactly like I was, slowly becoming more sad and unsettled.

Do you even care about having this level of self-love or freedom? If your answer is no, think about the people closest to you before you commit to that answer. My son was managing my wild pendulum of moodiness, all due to the fact that I was overseeing a collection of secrets that were making me terribly nervous and afraid to lose it all. I only saw that link once I confessed.

Now that I’ve come clean, my fear-filled fits of temper have (for the most part) shifted into constructive, caring conversations (I’m actively addressing this every single day). Instead of trying to dress up poison as poise, I want to offer him the full force of a grounded, gorgeous Mama who knows where she stands on planet Earth.

What if you had to make a list of your lies from your past? And then the list of the people with whom you’d be frightened to share them? That list is the exact formula for your access to real freedom; on the other side of your fear to tell, is your voice. The art and science of the truth is how we humans can make real magic.

Our ability to be confident and truly present rides on our having nothing left to hide.

Integrity is the relationship of energy and power. The way we embody that relationship is who we are in the world. It’s our truth.

If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. – Will Rogers

Years ago when I was in teacher training, the first order of the day wasn’t Sanskrit, breath work or warrior two. It was sitting up.

We spent hours – lots of hours every day – sitting independently, sitting up on the floor. Intentions were good, yet many of us were quickly sore, tired, and daunted by our inability to do this one simple thing and stay at it. So we did what people do when they lack commitment: we equivocated. “It doesn’t matter,” “It’s not what I came here for,” and best of all, “I’m trying.”

Trying is putting energy into something without getting any power out of it. The only way that can happen is if we’re actually leaking the energy, and not turning it into what we’re trying to do. Sincere trying is simple ignorance putting itself in the path of whatever experience can teach it. Sincere trying evolves. If there’s never any innovation we ought to be suspicious – of ourselves.

It’s time to stop digging.

Once in a workshop, I had been trying for too long to do urdhva dhanurasana, getting nowhere with it. An assistant came by, “Push,” she said. “Harder.” She showed me where, thus relieving me of ignorance. As I popped up into wheel, I felt my own grip release in just the area where I’d really had to work the hardest. I realized I’d been fighting myself all along. I was giving as much energy to being the obstacle as I was to doing the posture.

Most of what we say we want will come to us if we are committed to it: a good relationship, the job we want, inner peace. When we come up short we get all down in our “acceptance” – “It just isn’t meant to be,” or, “The Universe has something else planned.”

You have to wonder who has something else planned. The problem usually isn’t that we want “wrong” or impossible things, it’s that we aren’t committed to what we say we want.

Asana demonstrates that to us every time we practice.

Integrity is the relationship of energy and power. That relationship is essential to life. The way we embody that relationship is really who we are in the world. It’s our truth.

Getting clear on that, developing integrity, is fundamentally why we practice yoga.

When you practice commitment there really isn’t anything that’s failure, there’s only the state of working on something. Without commitment, though, every effort leaks away energy at the expense of power.

Sitting up isn’t something we can make a commitment to once. Like everything else, we have to make the decision to stay in the relationship over and over again. Nothing in yoga is more fundamental than returning to the focus without tangling up in the lapse.

Waking up isn’t just some ethereal state that flies down from the sun: it’s attention, and the only thing that can develop it is commitment.

Each day of my teacher training the muscles along my spine got stronger through use. The contraction of the muscle was more efficient and lasted longer, the neuromuscular connection – that of my muscles to my brain – maintained its clarity, and my emotional life grew steadier as I experienced the rewards of commitment.

It’s not just that my back got stronger and all of my posture work got brighter (my blood circulated more freely, my organs regained tone and function and my oxygen levels improved). Those were the little things.

What I found was a kind of physical confidence that I was not at the whim of the past and I felt less attached to those habits that had long defined me and what I thought I was capable of. Amid the noise of inner chatter and requests to do something distracting, I simply chose to return my focus repeatedly to my posture. I had decided not to accept anything else.

Integrity is our commitment to bring ourselves, our responsibilities, and our values into equal participation in our lives. It’s bringing things into relationship so they function as a whole.

The stronger my back became the better I noticed its position; and the stronger my attention to my posture became, the stronger my back got. These two strengths were the same strength really, as far as the mind of my body was concerned. They were the same thing, whole. And that wholeness was me.

osho's ten commandments

Never obey anyone’s command unless it is coming from within you also.

There is no God other than life itself.

Truth is within you, do not search for it elsewhere.

Love is prayer.

To become a nothingness is the door to truth. Nothingness itself is the means, the goal and attainment.

Life is now and here.

Live wakefully.

Do not swim—float.

Die each moment so that you can be new each moment.

Do not search. That which is, is. Stop and see.

whimsicalele

carnage-blog1

There are many subtle but easily overlooked forms of ego that you may observe in other people and, more important, in yourself. Remember: The moment you become aware of the ego in yourself, that emerging awareness is who you are beyond ego, the deeper “I.” The recognition of the false is already the arising of the real.

For example, you are about to tell someone the news of what happened. “Guess what? You don’t know yet? Let me tell you.” If you are alert enough, present enough, you may be able to detect a momentary sense of satisfaction within yourself just before imparting the news, even if it is bad news. It is due to the fact that for a brief moment there is, in the eyes of the ego, an imbalance in your favor between you and the other person. For that brief moment, you know more than the other. For that brief moment, you know more than the other. The satisfaction that you feel is of the ego, and it is derived from feeling a stronger sense of self relative to the other person. Even if he or she is the president or the pope, you feel superior in that moment because you know more. Many people are addicted to gossiping partly for this reason. In addition, gossiping often carries an element of malicious criticism and judgment of others, and so it also strengthens the ego through the implied but imagined moral superiority that is there whenever you apply a negative judgment to anyone. If someone has more, knows more, or can do more than I, the ego feels threatened because the feeling of “less” diminishes its imagined sense of self relative to the other. It may then try to restore itself by somehow diminishing, criticizing, or belittling the value of the other person’s possessions, knowledge, or abilities. Or the ego may shift its strategy, and instead of competing with the other person, it will enhance itself by association with that person, if he or she is important in the eyes of others.

fernsandmoss

Today I affirm that there is nothing in me but love. This love comes from total acceptance of myself and the understanding that I am a perfectly imperfect human being. I will walk through today and allow myself to fully express my perfection. I realize that all my “faults” are actually the Universe’s unique way of expressing itself through me. I let go of self judgment and any projected judgments of others that I have chosen to believe and finally allow myself to just be what I truly am: infinite. As this is true for me, so it is true for all other beings on the planet. I will choose to accept everyone in my life with the same radical acceptance I have for myself knowing that we are all perfectly imperfect human beings simply doing the best we can.

Jackson Kiddard

osho: strangers to ourselves

We are born alone, we live alone, and we die alone. Aloneness is our very nature, but we are not aware of it. Because we are not aware of it we remain strangers to ourselves, and instead of seeing our aloneness as a tremendous beauty and bliss, silence and peace, at-easeness with existence, we misunderstand it as loneliness.

Loneliness is a misunderstood aloneness. Once you misunderstand your aloneness as loneliness, the whole concept changes. Aloneness has a beauty and grandeur, a positivity; loneliness is poor, negative, dark, dismal.

Loneliness is a gap. Something is missing, something is needed to fill it, and nothing can ever fill it because it is a misunderstanding in the first place. As you grow older, the gap also grows bigger. People are so afraid to be by themselves that they do any kind of stupid thing. I have seen people playing cards alone; the other party is not there. They have invented games in which the same person plays cards from both sides.

Those who have known aloneness say something absolutely different. They say there is nothing more beautiful, more peaceful, more joyful than being alone.

The ordinary man goes on trying to forget his loneliness, and the meditator starts getting more and more acquainted with his aloneness. He has left the world; he has gone to the caves, to the mountains, to the forest, just for the sake of being alone. He wants to know who he is. In the crowd, it is difficult; there are so many disturbances. And those who have known their aloneness have known the greatest blissfulness possible to human beings - because your very being is blissful.

After being in tune with your aloneness, you can relate; then your relationship will bring great joys to you, because it is not out of fear. Finding your aloneness you can create, you can be involved in as many things as you want, because this involvement will not anymore be running away from yourself. Now it will be your expression; now it will be the manifestation of all that is your potential.

But the first basic thing is to know your aloneness absolutely.

So I remind you, don’t misunderstand aloneness as loneliness. Loneliness is certainly sick; aloneness is perfect health. Your first and most primary step toward finding the meaning and significance of life is to enter into your aloneness. It is your temple; it is where your God lives, and you cannot find this temple anywhere else.

eckhart tolle: on conditioned roles

If you are awake enough, aware enough, to be able to observe how you interact with other people, you may detect subtle changes in your speech, attitude, and behavior depending on the person you are interacting with. At first, it may be easier to observe this in others; then, you may also detect it in yourself. The way in which you speak to the chairman of the company may be different in subtle ways from how you speak to the janitor. How you speak to a child may be different from how you speak to an adult. Why is that? You are playing roles.

You are not yourself, neither with the chairman nor with the janitor or the child. When you walk into a store to buy something, when you go to a restaurant, the bank, the post office, you may find yourself slipping into pre-established social roles. You become a customer and speak and act as such. And you may be treated by the salesperson or waiter, who is also playing a role, as a customer.

A range of conditioned patterns of behavior come into effect between two human beings that determine the nature of the interaction. Instead of human beings, conceptual mental images are interacting with each other. The more identified people are with their respective roles, the more inauthentic the relationships become.

eckhart tolle: the three modalities of awakened doing

There are three ways in which consciousness can flow into what you do and thus through you into this world, three modalities in which you can align your life with the creative power of the universe. Modality means the underlying energy-frequency that flows into what you do and connects your actions with the awakened consciousness that is emerging into this world. What you do will be dysfunctional and of the ego unless it arises out of one of these three modalities. They may change during the course of a day, although one of them may be dominant during a certain stage in your life. Each modality is appropriate to certain situations.

The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. Each one represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness. You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them operates whenever you are engaged in doing anything at all—from the most simple task to the most complex. If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others.

Acceptance

Whatever you cannot enjoy doing, you can at least accept that this is what you have to do. Acceptance means: For now, this is what this situation, this moment, requires me to so, and so I do it willingly.

For example, you probably won’t be able to enjoy changing the flat tire on your car at night in the middle of nowhere and in pouring rain, let alone be enthusiastic about it, but you can bring acceptance to it. Performing an action in the state of acceptance means you are at peace while you do it. That peace is a subtle energy vibration which then flows into what you do. On the surface, acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it is active and creative because it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, that subtle energy vibration, is consciousness, and one of the ways in which it enters this world is through surrendered action, one aspect of which is acceptance.

If you can neither enjoy or bring acceptance to what you do—stop. Otherwise, you are not taking responsibility for the only thing you can really take responsibility for, which also happens to be one thing that really matters: your state of consciousness. And if you are not taking responsibility for your state of consciousness, you are not taking responsibility for life.

Enjoyment

The peace that comes with surrendered action turns to a sense of aliveness when you actually enjoy what you are doing. Enjoyment is the second modality of awakened doing. On the new earth, the enjoyment will replace wanting as motivating power behind people’s actions. Wanting arises from the ego’s delusion that you are a separate fragment that is disconnected from the power that lies behind all creation. Through enjoyment, you link into that universal creative power itself.

When you make the present moment, instead of past and future, the focal point of your life, your ability to enjoy what you do—and with it the quality of your life—increases dramatically. Joy is the dynamic aspect of Being. When the creative power of the universe becomes conscious of itself, it manifests as joy. You don’t have to wait for something “meaningful” to come into your life so that you can finally enjoy what you do. There is more meaning in joy than you will ever need. The “waiting to start living” syndrome is one of the most common delusions of the unconscious state. Expansion and positive change on the outer level is much more likely to come into your life if you can enjoy what you are doing already, instead of waiting for some change so that you can start enjoying what you do. Don’t ask your mind for permission to enjoy what you do. All you will get is plenty of reasons why you can’t enjoy it. “Not now,” the mind will say. “Can’t you see I’m busy? There’s no time. Maybe tomorrow you can start enjoying….” That tomorrow will never come unless you begin what you are doing now. When you say, I enjoy doing this or that, it is really a misperception. It makes it appear that the joy comes from what you do, but that is not the case. Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you. The misperception that joy comes from what you do is normal, and it is also dangerous, because it creates the belief that joy is something that can be derived form something else, such as an activity or thing. You then look to the world to bring you joy, happiness. But it cannot do that. This is why many people live in constant frustration. The world is not giving them what they think they need.

Then what is the relationship between something that you do and the state of joy? You will enjoy any activity in which you are fully present, any activity that is not just a means to an end. It isn’t the action you perform that you really enjoy, but the deep sense of aliveness that flows into it. That aliveness is one with who you are. This means that when you enjoy doing something, you are really experiencing the joy of Being in its dynamic aspect. That’s why anything you enjoy doing connects you with the power behind all creation. The new earth arises as more and more people discover that their main purpose in life is to bring the light of consciousness into this world and so use whatever they do as a vehicle for consciousness. The joy of Being is the joy of being conscious. Awakened consciousness then takes over from ego and begins to run your life. You may then find that an activity that you have been engaged in for a long time naturally begins to expand into something much bigger when it becomes empowered by consciousness. Some of those people who, through creative action, enrich the lives of many others simply do what they enjoy doing most without wanting to achieve or become anything through that activity. They may be musicians, artists, writers, scientists, teachers, or builders, or they may bring into manifestation new social or business structures (enlightened businesses). Sometimes for a few years their sphere of influence remains small; and then it can happen that suddenly or gradually a wave of creative empowerment flows into what they do, and their activity expands beyond anything they could have imagined and touches countless others. In addition to enjoyment, an intensity is now added to what they do and with it comes a creativity that goes beyond anything an ordinary human could accomplish.

But don’t let it go to your head, because up there is where a remnant of ego may be hiding. You are still an ordinary human. What is extraordinary is what comes through you into this world. But that essence you share with all beings. The fourteenth century Persian poet and Sufi master Hafiz expresses this truth beautifully: “I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves through. Listen to this music.”

Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm means there is deep enjoyment in what you do plus the added element of a goal or a vision that you work toward. When you add a goal to the enjoyment of what you do, the energy-field or vibrational frequency changes. A certain degree of what we might call structural tension is now added to enjoyment, and so it turns into enthusiasm. At the height of creative activity fueled by enthusiasm, there will be enormous intensity and energy behind what you do. You will feel like an arrow that is moving toward the target—and enjoying the journey.

Enthusiasm and the ego cannot coexist. One implies the absence of the other. Enthusiasm knows where it is going, but at the same time, it is deeply at one with the present moment, the source of its aliveness, its joy and its power. Enthusiasm “wants” nothing because it lacks nothing. It is at one with life and no matter how dynamic the enthusiasm-inspired activities are, you don’t lose yourself in them. And there remains always a still but intensely alive space at the center of the wheel, a core of peace in the midst of activity that is both the source of all and untouched by it all.

Through enthusiasm you enter into full alignment with the outgoing creative principle of the universe, but without identifying with its creations, that is to say, without ego. Where there is no identification, there is no attachment—one of the great sources of suffering. Once a wave of creative energy has passed, structural tension diminishes again and joy in what you are doing remains. Nobody can live in enthusiasm all the time. A new wave of creative energy may come later and lead to renewed enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is the power that transfers the mental blueprint into the physical dimension. That is the creative use of mind, and that is why there is no wanting involved. You cannot manifest what you want; you can only manifest what you already have. You may get what you want through hard work and stress, but that is not the way of the new earth. Jesus gave the key to creative use of mind and to the conscious manifestation of form when he said, “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

pema chödrön: be grateful to everyone

If we were to make a list of people we don’t like—people we find obnoxious, threatening, or worthy of contempt—we would find out a lot about those aspects of ourselves that we can’t face. If we were to come up with one word about each of the trouble-makers in our lives, we would find ourselves with a list of descriptions of our own rejected qualities, which we project onto the outside world. The people who repel us unwittingly show us the aspects of ourselves that we find unacceptable, which otherwise we can’t see. In traditional teachings on lojong it is put another way: other people trigger the karma that we haven’t worked out. They mirror us and give us the chance to befriend all of that ancient stuff that we carry around like a backpack full of granite boulders.

“Be grateful to everyone” is a way of saying that we can learn from any situation, especially if we practice this slogan with awareness. The people and situations in our lives can remind us to catch neurosis as neurosis, to see when we’re in our room under the covers, to see when we’ve pulled the shades, locked the door, and are determined to stay there.

“Be grateful to everyone” is getting at a complete change of attitude. This slogan is not wishy-washy and naive. It does not mean that if you’re mugged on the street you should smile knowingly and say “Oh, I should be grateful for this” before losing consciousness. This slogan actually gets at the guts of how we perfect ignorance through avoidance, not knowing we’re eating poison, not knowing that we’re putting another layer of protection over our heart, not seeing the whole thing. “Be grateful to everyone” means that all situations teach you, and often it’s the tough ones that teach you the best. There may be a Juan or Juanita in your life, and Juan or Juanita is the one who gets you going. They’re the ones who don’t go away: your mother, your husband, your wife, your lover, your child, the person that you have to work with every single day, part of the situation you can’t escape.

These situations really teach you because there’s no pat solution to the problem. You’re continually meeting your match. You’re always coming into a challenge, coming up against your edge. There’s no way that someone else can tell you exactly what to do, because you’re the only one who knows where it’s torturing you, where your relationship with Juan or Juanita is getting into your guts. Others don’t know. They don’t know when you need to be more gentle, when you need to be more clear, when you need to be quiet, and when you need to speak.

What you can learn from the Juans and Juanitas in your life is not something that you can get a patent on and then sell as a sure thing that will always work. It isn’t like that. This kind of learning is a continual journey of wakefulness.

whimsicalele

Aloneness is the ultimate reality. One comes alone, one goes alone; and between these two alonenesses we create all kinds of relationships and fighting, just to deceive ourselves – because in life also, we remain alone. But aloneness is not something to be sad about; it is something to rejoice in. There are two words – the dictionary will say they have the same meaning, but existence gives them totally opposite meanings. One word is loneliness and the other word is aloneness. They are not synonymous. Loneliness is a negative state, like darkness. Loneliness means you are missing someone; you are empty, and you are afraid in this vast universe. Aloneness has a totally different meaning: it does not mean that you are missing someone, it means that you have found yourself. It is absolutely positive.

Osho (via whimsicalele)

#osho

whimsicalele

All of you are here to look into the dark, because in the dark you will find both the light and the reason the light is returning. You cannot simply go toward the light and say, “Hey, darkness is bad. It is negative. I don’t want to see.” Be open to what you do not want to see. Keep your heart open, and trust that the pain you may experience needs to be explored so that it can be released after being processed on a memory level. You are at the time when memories are floating to the surface, coming from deep recesses. These memories can bring emotional responses. Whatever you see needs to be looked at. It is you. Accept it and say, “Aha! Based on what I know, and on the preparation of my consciousness, I can look at this and see that it was a misuse of energy. That is all right. I will transmute it. I will turn it into something of joy.”

Barbara Marciniak, Earth (via whimsicalele)

fernsandmoss

carnage-blog1

page from Toward The One by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan (via fernsandmoss)

so many amazing reads

http://denisebenitez.blogspot.com/

http://drgailparker.wordpress.com/

http://journalpractice.wordpress.com/

a meditation on desire from the radiance sutras

The English word desire means: “To want something very strongly; to long for; to crave,” and it comes from the Latin phrase de sidere, “from the stars.” Sideris is a “heavenly body, star, constellation.” Desire is from the heavens, and to follow your desire is to follow your star.

We all have a dozen or more desire-stars to follow, our own personal constellation. These may include: friendship, exercise, food, sex, play and power. Desires often come as a sequence – we want to eat good food, in a great place, while feeling love and laughing with our friends. It takes skill to line up a day so that even some of our desires can be fulfilled. When we apply ourselves to this skill, we are practicing a Yoga of desire, kamayoga, (kama = desire), and flowing through kamakrama (krama = ordered sequences).

Embracing desire is intense and challenging. The ultimate source of desire is the soul’s impulse to express itself in the world. That doesn’t go away. What do we do with ourselves when a particular desire is not being fulfilled? Where does the energy go? Misplaced energy can be the source of compulsions and addictions. When we feel we can’t express our energies, or we don’t know how to do so, we get into trouble. Overeating, for example, can come from a frustrated craving for love, acknowledgement, comfort or solace.

Yoga offers many practices for investigating, shaping, redirecting, and delighting in the flow of desire. In The Radiance Sutras, a translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, Shiva sings of one such technique.

Just as a desire leaps up,

And you perceive the flash,

The sparkle of the urge,

Quit from its play,

And maintain awareness

In that clear and shining place

From which all desire springs.

jhagitīcchām samutpannām avalokya śamam nayet

yata eva samudbhūtā tatas tatraiva līyate

Inserting word boundaries, giving the letters a haircut to remove the diacriticals - (ś) - then looking at the individual terms in the superb Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English dictionary (created to help Christian missionaries convert the heathen Hindoos), we see:

jhagit – a sparkle, flash; ichcham – desire, wish, hankering, longing, craving, urge, will; samutpatati – rise, ascend, spring up; avalokana – observe, glance, view, see; shamam – equanimity, tranquility, to end; nayet – brings, carry; yata eva – verily, wherever; samudbhuta – arising, springing up; tata-tatraiva – there! (put your attention) there!; leyate – become absorbed.

“When a desire arises in you, let it flow. Sense the sparkle and flash as the desire springs up. Put your whole attention into that flashing energy. Seeing desire in this way brings tranquility and equanimity. As you absorb the energy of the desire, you glow with satisfaction.”

Give the desire space to live in your inner world before you go for it in the outer world. The technique here is to savor the energy of desire and use it as you would a mantra, a focus for meditation. Desires flow, like an electric current – let that flow of juice nurture and energize you. Imbibe the sparkle, dissolve, transcend with that desire and be fulfilled. “Relax, don’t do it, when you want to go to it.” (Thanks, Frankie Goes to Hollywood.)

When I relax into a desire and investigate it, a world of opportunities opens. In a heartbeat, I can change directions, take that energy and do something else. I can go ahead and go to it, with more power behind my action. I can wait for a better opportunity to live the desire, and I can also reshape it, turn the volume down or up so that it fits my life.

Desires pop up quickly and you can do this technique in the space of two breaths, perhaps ten seconds.

The next time you become aware of a desire, inquire, “What do I really want? What am I really craving when the picture in my head of what I want is a beer, a joint, sex, another slice of chocolate coconut cake or to go shopping?” By staying closer to the current of desire, you can steer your life force into healthier directions. This kama Yoga allows the body to be illuminated by the sparkle of desire, even those that are not manifest in the outer world yet.

Notice that this practice is not nirodha, defined in Sanskrit as “confinement, locking up, imprisonment, restraint, check, control, suppression, destruction.” You can look up the definition of nirodha here, and here, in the Monier-Williams Sanskrit- Dictionary.

Yoga is often associated with nirodha, possibly because for the past several thousand years most of the historical or mythical yogis, the yogis who were prolific writers, were renouncers – their path was to renounce desire. They took vows of celibacy and poverty, and often wandered around the countryside naked, covered in the ashes of cow dung, stoned on hash.

The path of a householder yogi – with a job, friends, and a family – is very different from that of a renouncer. We have to continually keep track of our desires, work with them, put some into play and put others aside. No one, no matter how much they’ve got it together, can live all their desires everyday, so some cravings have to remain a sparkle on the screen of our inner vision. We are always praying, “God grant me the courage to live the desires I can, the serenity to let go of the desires I can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

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