The Jewel

It was the 4 and 1/2 year old,

Who first received the Jewel.

Little did she know-

What it was

Much less, give it a name! 

All she knew was how it moved,

in her breath,

and her body,

and through the dark clouds 

in her head. 

Nobody else knew these lands,

where her breath gasped-

and her body weighed down.

Adults and caretakers,

Vendors and neighbours-

Everybody around,

Yet none present

In the land of the Jewel. 

Until one day--

She heard the Koel; 

He reached over,

the great distance of the small street,

From the garden across-

And cut through the clouds! 

Coo-oo! 

Her breath eased... 

Coo-oo! 

Her body lightened.... 

And the Jewel at her Heart,

Illumined brightly. 

The only Jewel-

that she needs adorn,

the 45-year old realises! 

The only Jewel,

that has kept her sane 

And real and honest - 

The Jewel of Loneliness. 

The loneliness that recognises

The futility of seeking,

Human hands to make true love. 

That loneliness which waits,

For the Koel's call - 

Knowing that the birdsong

harkens to the Love 

Beneath all loves. 

Some reflections on emotional experience of a Sadhaka, particularly anger; being a woman in group spaces; and being a community of Practice (Sadhana)

 

If Anger was Music in Me…

…Then,
अथ योगानुशासनम् ॥
atha yoga-anushAsanam.
Herein begins the practice.

Drumroll-s starting faint-
sounds of beats coming closer,
Louder now;
more and more pronounced-

Matthalam and Mridangam,
Dholl and Tabla and Nagada-
Ghatam and Kanjira and Udukku

An orchestra of beats,
Getting louder and louder…
His hand holding the Damroo;
Leading the rhythm of Life.
Building into a crescendo
Thundering in the Universe’s ears
Erasing all the dust of thought clean-
Wiping pure all the stains of memory-

Until only heart-beats are heard,
Heart-beats of the Here & Now-
Gathering into Herself;
Resting
in the Final refrains of Silence-
Of the Beginning and the Aftermath.

一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一

Sound arises from and subsides into silence. Movement arises from and rests again in stillness. A fundamental practice of Yoga is the constant and committed effort to becoming aware of these elements of life, watching them and dancing in tune with Life’s music.

Background reflections 

While the subject is one of a few threads of ongoing examination for me as a Yoga practitioner, this set of reflections and “emotional labour” as a friend called it, comes from an intense and intimate conversation that we had in my community of Sadhana, Aram, with soul mates in one of our Purnam Café online meets, end of March 2026, about 10 days back.

We were discussing self-reflectively, the ideas from Vimala Thakar’s life and message, through her essay, Awakening to Total Revolution, and a film about her, In the Fire of Dancing Stillness.

I think many of us were feeling that we had touched a profound sense of communion and rawness during the conversation. The qualities of a good Sadhaka had been up for discussion next. We didn’t have time to go into this discussion – as always Life happened propitiously and the process that unfolded played out an exploration of one quality of a Sadhaka at the very least – emotional awareness, intelligence and regulation.

I will eschew the word “control” in favour of “regulation”. Self-regulation, co-regulation, emotional regulation…so on. Regulation feels more like a flow of water, flexible, allowing for the mysterious logic of the Universe to work its magic, sometimes steadily aligning to the shores of context and geography while at other times breaking banks and dams to make its own paths and landscape, fathomable only to a degree by the human mind caught in its limitations.

Below is my reflective map of the movement of energy that happened within me at a point in the conversation, resulting in a feeling of anger. The map depicts this movement through the layers of the self. These layers and movements are based on and interpreted from fundamental frameworks of Yoga and Sankhya philosophy that I have studied and work with actively.

The awareness is that, not only is the experience being articulated through the lens of the framework, it is also that the experience itself maybe coloured by the lens. Hence the practitioner cannot say that she is experiencing reality as is and thereby simply purely conscious of it.  

Movement of Energy into the emotional charge of anger

Natya Yoga Book reference in the illustration above - please see footnote [1]

Process reflections 

A questioning-examining statement had been made during the conversation, “What if I am raped?” The question was asked by a woman, sitting in a woman’s body and the primary response to the question came from a man (also because it was directed at him as a response to a comment he had made). My body reacted to that question. As a woman. And I sensed that the question was coming from a particular situation and understanding as a woman. (It was, I found out later)

The practitioner and co-sadhaka/group member in me saw me fragment into the identity of a woman; saw the emotions and the challenge that the woman in me was facing with her anger; her silent protest that the question was not being given its experiential due, and was being treated “intellectually” and that we were missing the point. The practitioner simply wanted to pause a certain line of narrative that was building and ask to retrace our steps and begin from our respective, lived experiences of this question, woman or man or any gender.

Initially, the practitioner started speaking, of the challenge and that she possibly needed help to try and hold the fragments together and stay located. However, the moment she spoke of the woman’s anger, the woman started taking increasing control, and I use the word ‘control’ here deliberately. The movement of energy as depicted in the illustration above was swift and moved away from the underlying layers. The practitioner who could be anchored at the deeper layers of the self was forgotten and her narrative shifted swiftly to become only the woman’s.    

Life holds me, us and the contexts that we live in

Reality check #1 – The statement, “what If I am raped”, yes, is a very strong statement and needs to be made carefully, not lightly. However, in today’s larger context and the compelling chilling reality of the Epstein files, the multiple cases of rape that come up daily, case in point the horrific Ghaziabad rape case [2], is it any surprise that this comes up as a practical question in a spiritual quest-conversation, trying to reconcile these individual human fragments and a collective consciousness? In a group setting, each will need to become aware of their level of engagement with the intensity and charge of what is brought into the group. We all consciously or unconsciously do make our choices of our recognition and engagement with what is arising.

Reality check #2 – But, do we have to load the context and group with our recognition and intensity of a matter, even if it is both larger scenario in which we are living and we may have a personal hook to it? Is there a disproportion in the action-reaction quotient for the current group purpose and discussion?

The above are not questions that can be answered conclusively and objectively. Any community that is committed to Sadhana, to human evolution and transformation, to forging new ways of living that uphold Life, cannot afford to have answers etched in stone. (Even stone alters over time with water).

Any community / group will by default have, said and unsaid norms about group behaviour for the purpose of functionality. A community of Sadhana will need to surface such conditioning and also dynamically reexamine, recalibrate and make a constant effort at holding such norms consciously for group and individuals’ safety and expression.

Learning reflections 

A true response-ability arises out of an attempt to hold these truths together, in simultaneity. Not making it into an Either-Or situation. Both, in an individual and as a group.

Herein was also the sort of double bind that Priya was not slowing down enough to see, had been running away from in fact. The response-ability of simultaneity and inclusion is Love, Shringaara, for her and what she swears by.  However, staying at that layer meant encountering the meaninglessness of love that she is currently holding. There is an existential tiredness about all the old meanings and actions of love and none of them seem to make complete, joyous sense as before.  There are easy platitudes of course, a comfort zone and lip service that she slips into – Arunachala’s love and her eternal path around her centre. However, the true, REAL feeling and a sensation of love that used to flood her just at the name, at the thought, has increasingly eluded her and there is an emptiness. The swift progression into anger is an escape from staying with the emptiness of meanings, an escape from the pain of this search coming up empty-handed and empty-hearted. The anger holds the question, Arunachala, what the ____ is your love that makes this insane world, and this violence and this war inside and out and this loneliness? The seeker needs to walk through yet another dark night of this soul. She has to slow down enough and walk barefoot, which she hadn’t done in a while [3].  

Natural henna leaves paste kept overnight,
a labour of love

There is also a sort of threshold or Bardo that she is going through, very significant for a woman’s body – the menopausal threshold. There are natural life events that are thresholds and social, cultural customs and rituals as well that we have traditionally built around such passages. The physiology & physicality is the gross manifestation of the passage. The menopause is a phase when the biological function of the body as a woman is ceasing. There is a natural ask of Life to look further than the identification of a woman. However, Priya’s Yoga therapy work and stances and meanings have been quite attached to the pains and joys of being a woman. Her student-clients are 80% women, most of whom have faced violence of one kind or another on account of being a woman. She holds her personal experience as well as that of her students and the collective everywoman experience of no general group space being appropriate for the woman’s emotions, questions and difficulties, and this work and holding being relegated to ‘therapy’ or ‘women’s circles’ or some such specialised spaces [4].

At an individual level these two pull-pushes seem to be connected and something she is sitting with in her practice. 

Coming to the practice as a group, it is so profoundly ironic and telling that the Aram community that came together and held the conversation so beautifully, could do so simply because, the larger awareness of Life unfragmented by identities and conditioning breathed in the group space. It would not have been possible for the group to hold this space of response-ability, Love, if it had also fragmented itself. The process that emerged, the different questions and sharings that co-sadhakas asked, the silences and utterings, each feels like a whole part of life itself; that anchored it in a whole Life. It was possible to hold everywoman and everyman in the space because there was a larger container of awareness.

Emotional investment, regulation and intelligence cannot be bypassed. No matter at what level of engagement and intensity – where we choose to place ourselves, a community of Sadhana needs to be aware that the journey of spiritual awareness cannot but include emotional awareness and work. Emotions are portals into deeper parts of our being.  Just as asana-pranayama is not merely about the physical appearance of the body, but really to plumb the depths of what the body is holding and manifesting from various layers of the self, all the way in to psychological, energetic and spiritual; emotions can be traced back to their energy components and natural states of being. This can allow us the balanced deployment of this energy for action.  

The way the group held the space and this process was a manifestation of Shraddha for Priya. She feels grateful and blessed that her practice of Shraddha, a trust in the process of Life no matter what, remains uninterrupted and unwavering. The group process manifested and illumined her practice for her. 

Slowing down, working with Prana and its channels

Priya, April 2026

Foot Notes

---

[1] What I have drawn and the interpretation is my own.  However, the book Natya Yoga is a beautiful, solid reference for understanding emotions & is one of my primary go-to wisdom. Sriram is a senior Yoga teacher from the Krishnamacharya tradition, one of the wisest Elders and for me someone who comes from a silence often. It was a deeply joyful and humbling experience for me to work on the draft of this book, offering my comments and suggestions to Anjali and Sriram.

[2] Both the instances mentioned have children being assaulted, raped, murdered, who are not even in any awareness of themselves as gendered bodies yet. And multiple, numerous cases of rape of persons who identify themselves with other genders.  

[3] At this present time of writing this piece, she has already started some slowing down practices that she’d not done for a while and picked up again during conversations with soul mates in the Aram circle – 1) drawing kolams (thank you G), 2) vipassana-type sitting practice (thank you P, what you said about Mula Prakriti was like an illuminating flash of reminder), and 3) recognising the existential tiredness, grief, & giving it time and space through self-care (thank you N)

[4] An additional note about healing, wounds and victimhood - it seems standard to describe these experiences of a woman, as being victimised, and to talk about the archetypal Victim in psychology and Antaranga Yoga Sadhana.  I am not negating the process of being hurt, of feeling helpless, resource-less, suppressed and so on. However, nowhere in the Yoga sutras, which I consider a primary text of psychology and human mind, there is any description or definition of a Victim, in the popular and archetypal ways this term has come to be understood. (At least that I am aware of) Also, my healing grammar of Reiki and my fundamental practice of Shraddha that considers anything as part of the healing journey feels that this is a degenerative way of framing that in fact escalates the feeling insidiously. This examination is on and alive, I do not have any bright alternatives to offer. The jury is out on this one. 

sAdhanA – Looking In, Looking Out (Part 1)

In the philosophy and practice of Yoga, the words sAdhanA and abhyAsA are used almost interchangeably. In my swadhyaya, I recently saw and felt an expanded view of the idea of sAdhanA, a view that I have hitherto read about, appreciated, and tried to emulate in an intellectual way. 

One of my mentors blessed me after I recounted a particularly insightful and transforming meditative experience to her. Her blessing was “May this (experience) create a shift in your sAdhanA”.  Sometimes teachers and their words can be like clear mirrors that one can look into and catch a stunning sight of oneself. 

The flash of a question and a picture of sAdhanA arose in quick succession in that mirror.  The question in my mind had been, “oh, hasn’t the shift already happened? Wasn’t I doing my sAdhanA / abhyAsA with all that meditative practice?”  It was followed by a view of Practice or sAdhanA made up of seemingly discrete images and scenes from my own life, excerpts from stuff that I have read and stories I have been told, all coming together into one whole picture. I attempt here to draw that picture I seem to be holding.

The word sAdhanA is related to the following words in Hindi / Sanskrit:-
- sAdhan – a tool or instrument that helps us reach our goal,
- sAdhya – is like an achievement and / or possibility,
- sAdhaka – is the practitioner.

sAdhanA is a continued practice or discipline that is undertaken in pursuit of this goal. abhyAsA is a persistent and steady effort in one's practice. Both indicate that there is a direction of movement, while also having the quality of staying still with a pursuit / enquiry.  This dual quality is important to my meaning of practice. 

The ultimate journey and goal is to the truth within. This is like a theertha yatra that one undertakes – the big “who am I?” For, what is the truth within one is the most sacred of all things sacred, and the most mysterious of all mysteries, that philosophers, artists, writers, poets, dancers, and all spiritual seekers of all times have sought.

In this Yatra, I have been finding “me” at various times in different ways, at different levels and depths. One seemingly obvious truth that has hit me again and again with progressively harder impact until an extremely protective and hard shell layer cracked and shattered open, is that I can only be myself!  “Everyone else is already taken”.  (Someone has said this quoted phrase, I am not sure who). I have to nourish my unique beauty, as does each one.

It is only when I reach the real “me” inside, shattering years of hardened, comfortable notions, assumptions and beliefs about myself, can I meet the real other.  It is when I can see the ‘me’ who is behind many layers of the front-me that I can see the real person behind the other that I am trying to engage with and relate to. Their real desires and dreams underneath masks of politeness and propriety perhaps. Masks of cultural and other conditioning. The real fears, doubts and strengths.

My sAdhanA takes me continually to the more real Me and a more real world that I inhabit. However it cannot stop there.  Finding the real worldly me cannot be my purpose in this world. Finding this me is for getting to the purpose of my existence in this form. Of this I am now very sure.  It is through and while fulfilling this purpose that I can reach the ultimate Me that is the truth of all truths. In another lifetime.

In Yoga Therapy, especially in the Krishnamacharya Tradition which is my mother and father in Yoga therapy education and training, working with one’s Exhalation is given primary importance for healing and transformation. “It is exhalation that cures” is a statement I have heard often from my teachers.  The Elders say, “Inhalation takes care of itself. It is given by the Lord, the Universal Consciousness or Truth, and an extension of one’s Exhalation.  Make the Exhalation active and strong, and you will find the Inhalation also getting where it is meant to be.”

The Inhalation then is like the prasAdam (sanctified / consecrated gift) that we get after we serve our offerings to the Divine. I am sure this is also something one of my teachers must have said at some point, I don’t remember who or when.  The Inhalation is then all the gracious gifts that I receive from my world. I’m aware - just like that, in the blink of an eyelid, I have substituted the Divine with the world. This feels completely natural and a given for me. Must be the Vedantic upbringing and cultural atmosphere that I live in. Swami Vivekananda saw his Shiva in every being that he met, and served that Shiva (in his own words, Lectures from Colombo to Almora).  That is just one lived example and practice of the pantheistic understanding of my religion. 

The life that I receive is Inhalation. 

It then follows that the Exhalation is what I am offering to the world. What I give to the world around is like the Exhalation that I follow during my AsanA-prANAyAma practice.  I also wonder that there is a correlation between the quality of one’s Exhalation and the quality of one’s contribution in prANA exchange. (Every engagement in the world is an underlying exchange of prANA)

My sAdhanA on the mat is a practice of keen attention on the breath and body, which continuously takes me to a keen attention on where my attention is.

My sAdhanA off the mat is the keen attention I am able to offer to my world and the natural manifestations of that attention.

The spiritual practice that we call sAdhanA then does not stop with an individual, personal practice that I do with this limited ‘me’ that I can conceive of – limited by this body, my thoughts, emotions and breath.  It will include all that I do in the world outside, and even beyond to what my world is doing.  Every movement (physical, mental, emotional…) has to be infused with sAdhanA then for it to be worth its name (without making it into an injunction!).  And ‘my’ sAdhanA is not just mine. It is connected to everyone else’s.

The Yoga sutras talk of Bhava Pratyayas, people who are born in or experience and live in an exalted state of awareness, in a state of Yoga. Ramana Maharishi for example. These people don’t do, and don’t need to do an active sAdhanA as we understand it. Their very being is sAdhanA and if anything, they also undertake sAdhanA for the sake of healing and transformation of others. Their very presence is sAdhanA.

But for the rest of us, an active sAdhanA is prescribed by Patanjali in the Yoga sutras. And I realise that for me this includes all the work and everything else that I do, off my mat as well. And do, I must. This is part of my spiritual practice.  The keen inward attention during my personal practice, and the keen attention on matters of the world are like two polarities that I have to hold together, simultaneously. They make each other. Like Exhalation and Inhalation together make a breath.  Make life.

Someone like a Swami Vivekananda didn’t rest with his individual moksha. He served incessantly and achieved enormously in the public domain within the short life that he lived.  He talked some, and demonstrated much more, the interdependence and mutual existence of one’s inner journey and its outward, social manifestation. Gandhi’s life without a doubt was cut and woven together from the same spiritual cloth.  I recently read in an article by Pannalal Dasgupta about “this strange, Janus-like quality of Gandhiji – two faces looking in seemingly different directions.” 

This is the quality I believe my practice needs to strengthen.  It is the Practice. Of being able to look in and look out simultaneously without letting go of either.  For sAdhanA to come into its power, it needs to move out from the mat and change matter; Manifest as a coming together of the inner and outer journeys. And this is the meaning I give to the blessing I received from the mentor.  

Unrequited Love?

The old story was that of unrequited love. From parents, from friends, situations, opportunities, relatives, a beloved canine, my childhood journal...from the world. 

There is no question of requited or unrequited love. Love is just love. It is there, a spontaneous exchange, connection and perception of prANA. By unrequited, what we actually mean is that it was not requited in the way we wanted or expected it out of our limited and conditioned minds. 

The new story for me has at least two nuances to it. One is that I have been blind to the universe's ways of requiting my love. My environment and cultural conditioning includes an axiom that the universe does requite our love; there are no two ways about it. I stand on this fundamental ground. What's more, I have in recent times been experiencing the truth of this in many small and big ways. I have started to recognise the numerous ways my love is being requited. Just not always in the ways that I envisage it. 

The other nuance and corollary to the above is that I have always been expecting an equal and returning force of love, a requiting, from humans around me. What a huge burden to put on myself and another. This reduces my capacity of love to a transactional expectation. It also functions on a limited understanding of how people love, and constricts the space of love. Who is to decide how much is equal and the same? And how can it ever be the same when no two entities are the same? There are as many ways to love as there are creatures on Earth, or more. How is it then possible that another give me love just the way I give another? There is only one unique me, and there is only one unique another. And this is not even yet taking into considerations the vagaries of one uniqueness - the circumstances, duhkhas, preoccupations, changing aspirations, needs and whatnot through the passage of seasons and time. 

Here's then to new stories of Love, stories that have no beginning or end, but just a constant buoyant recognition of another in oneself, and self in another, or a striving for that union. 

Reflections after Facilitating a Workshop in a Style Unique to Ritambhara*

Kaya Madhya Sutram (KMS), Tiruvannamalai, Jan 2018 - Reflections

Even while planning for the programme this time, I was planning with a lot of space. Usually I pack a lot in my planning and tagging several items in the sequence as ‘optional, if there is time’. This instance I straightaway noticed that my inclination was towards keeping the minimum required for it to be a KMS event. A vinyasa where each activity led to the next in natural logic. This actually gave me a lot of space to work in and flow and play and allow the same for others as well. I realised while planning and while executing, how much I have been cluttering my space with overplanning and overthinking. (I am not going into the roots of the overplanning and overthinking here, not within the scope now).  Without that clutter, the pressure for it to happen, and happen in a certain way was absent and I was completely aware of this. What freedom!

At the recent ECC (Exploring Contemplative Conversations) workshop, a reflection that came up in one of the early morning theatre sessions:  

I have never been able to feel Veeryam after any other Rasa but Roudram. I necessarily had to get in touch with Roudram in order to experience Veeryam.  Pre-planning and during KMS, for the first time, I was in a quieter space and a sense of courage and conviction that was flowing out of connection and quietness, manifesting in action at the event.  I am afraid and cannot give the quiet space any rasa name categorically for I don’t know what is lying further underneath in deeper layers of the mind and being.  Nevertheless, for this layer, there was a quiet breathing that I was connected with, and there is a Friend that I seem to be continuously in touch with. Feelings of clarity, fear, tentativeness, a definitive conviction and awareness of what I am doing at the moment, were all seemingly being held simultaneously.

A nuance of holding space that I got in touch with in the sessions mentioned above: during the pair dancing (with palms or fingers touching and no talking), the experience that when I actually stopped trying to lead and fighting the resistance (even when it was my turn to lead), and simply left my palm there, it became the other’s responsibility and effort to hold on and follow. My palm was simply there and the process started shifting from leading-following to simply a natural dance and co-holding of space.  I was holding this awareness within me as I went into the event.  Thank you Ganesh for demonstrating this beautifully during ECC programme.

I am also aware that the action and conviction, the sense of quietness will not stay just this way all the time. This sort of a being is also due to the external influences and satsangam of, KMS at Hyderabad, Parenting Retreat, ECC, circles and conversations here in Tiruvannamalai, and individual interactions with several of you**.  So much is happening on the outside to keep this going.  And a couple of other things that I have been doing / practicing (including asana-py-bhavana- of course), which have started the important work of establishing some of these new movements within me firmly.  There are and will be times when all the external support systems are not there and I am by myself, and those will be the test of how much I have been able to stabilise this ground and will tell me where I need to intensify efforts, what I am missing from the whole picture and so on.  What I hold here is also the dance between community / support systems and standing alone, which seems to be especially important for us as practitioners, (training to) hold space for others to explore / discover / understand in different formats.  

I got in touch with what feels to me as a significant factor in the ways I have been listening and what I need to pay close attention to.  I am realising that I saw it perhaps because of that space of quietness and awareness that I carried with me into the event. This was allowing all my senses to be so wide awake and I was both listening to the outside and inside at the same time.  Ok, cut the hemming and hawing already.  It has been and probably still is difficult for me to stay with and even look at my vulnerabilities, leave alone sharing them, putting them out on the table, unless the other is expansive and strong enough to hold space for me to do this in a safe and comfortable way. However I am inclined to intense feelings, passions and able to inspire and evoke others to touch their passions, deepest desires as I have often experienced.  What has been happening in the interface is that, I evoke this in the other just as I do for myself, but then run away or get into escape routes just as the going gets intense, and I leave the other perhaps hanging or colluding.  The intensity of the evocations touches my most vulnerable spot every time – the tension between who I am and who I am not.  I am always guarding who I am, and afraid that who-I-am-not will change or invade who-I-am.  This is also why when the other provides a ‘safe’ environment, (which for me is, not threatening my sense of who I am), I can let go and be ‘myself’ and end up indulging the ‘who-I-am’ and not stepping back and examining this process.  I had been unable to stay with this tension between the I-am and I-am-not, and so whenever the exchange starts getting into this tension area, it gets intense (if it already was not!) , I would quickly jump into my fortress and deploying, possibly, all kinds of weapons from there, just varying degrees of potency.  And I can get intense about the batting of an eyelid! 

The sad part of this process is that because of years of practice of building up the fortress, it has become a habit.  So even in moments when there is actually no real fear, simply the force of habit takes over.  I am feeling immensely sad because of all the pictures that are coming up for me just now when I have allowed a particular moment to wilt or not bloom to its full beauty and authentic expression because of the guard.  I am realising that the sadness is from a mixture of love (of the other and people and discoveries and unfolding) and anger (at myself that I have not given this space for myself and my world).

I am seeing the friend sitting here with me, just now after some breath-watching and shifting focus to some immediate domestic chores for a few minutes. She is holding a lot of kindness for me and is reminding me of the magic of this entire process and to keep at it.  I remember this sutra that Raghu brought up during ECC, which took off like a flashbulb inside me: Smrti-parishuddhau svarūpa-shunya iva artha-mātra-nirbhāsā nir-vitarkā (YS 1.43).  I experienced tangibly with the veeryam (mentioned in the 2^nd para), how just the act of giving attention to something can momentarily shift the entire picture.  And then it’s ‘just’ continuing to give attention!  J

Today is the first day of the Tamil month of Thai.  A proverb goes, “தை பிறந்தால் வழி பிறக்கும்” (rough translation of the essence in this context: with the month of Thai comes a new beginning).  A tangible bhavana / exercise / activity that I need to do as preparation before every event is: walking out of the fortress and into the gardens, fields and forests out there, and meet and walk with friends under the open sky.  The giripradakshina around Arunachala comes up for me as a space and time when I feel open, vulnerable and strong.  

--------------------------------------------------------

* Ritambhara - Go to the Website

** - friends (co-practitioners and colleagues)

Where from my Muse?

This essay is inspired by a friend's question on reading one of my poems. Here is the complete poem. 

One of the stanzas has the lines, 

"She sees these portals of Purity 

Her mind's eyes turning Red,
As she contemplates her anger and disgust. "  

And follows up the above lines with, 

"With a sigh of quiet resolve,

She turns to the day ahead,

..."   

The friend's question is, 'How did the anger and disgust transform?'  (I am guessing, such that there could be a "quiet resolve" in the next line). My initial reaction was along the lines, "this is the practitioner's work, our entire practice is that transformation(?); it is each one's journey and the 'how' of this transformation (if at all) is a wheel that has to be turned time and again, it is different for different entities..." 

However, from awareness of some movements that happened in the mind exactly at that inflexion point, and for the joy of this examination, I write further. 

An opening to the examination could be, I dont really think that the anger and disgust transformed into something else. 

The original last line of that stanza that had floated in my mind was "As she contemplates flying away".  I paused at that point, looked up at my beloved, sacred hill, drew him in with my breath, held him, allowed him to pervade my being, and that union flowed out through my pen with my exhalation. I changed the words to the current ones as my contemplation did, and sat watching this and my breath for a short while (or it could have been an eternity) before the next line happened. 

I could dedicate this process to my daily, long-standing practice of asana-pranayama-meditative-enquiry, that seems to have a life of its own, and takes matters into its own hands sometimes. The yoga sutra, "Sa tu dheergakala nairantarya satkara adhara asevito drdha bhoomih" (I.14) comes to mind. [Meaning of sutra: Practice becomes firmly established when it is cultivated uninterruptedly and with devotion over a prolonged period of time]. 

And I could dedicate this timely intervention to the grace of Arunachala whose town I reside in. “Bhagavat Kaingaryam” (roughly, the grace of the Universe / God / Higher forces) according to elders.

Much of the time all that seems to be needed is that pause and space for observation; space for just being with what arises, between one line and the next, one step and the next, one kshanam (approximately, a moment) and the next.

Examining further, that space of contemplation and what was happening for me then; I feel that words may never be able to capture those sensations and nuances of movement precisely. I can at best say that, a larger love, understanding, happened in those moments. Many pictures and scenes from my life, and of others flashed in front of my eyes like a movie, and some questions arose. Amidst pictures of many blurred uncertainties, the next certain lines presented themselves to my mind’s eye in sharp focus, even as I continued to watch my breath.

I did not see anger and disgust transforming into anything else. In retrospect, I think that the pictures I saw were of instances where these emotions were held and expressed in different ways (I want to add the word ‘appropriately’ here, but tentatively and with a question mark for I can only speculate on the appropriateness or lack thereof).

And with quiet resolve, the crow could have flown way to other parts to scavenge. She could have transformed to other colours, birds, doing other things, each of them possibly pausing on other terraces and window-sills and returning to crowhood. To burst again into more colours. I don’t know for sure, the possibilities are endless. It may be another story the next day. A different crow perhaps.  

Herein for me lies the Art of it all. The art of writing. The art of this very life. Many have looked at the meaning of art in their lives and tried to describe it. For me, all Art seems to be a search and / or expression of glimpses of an Infinite source of everything. It seems like we are trying to touch and express something that is eternal, infinite through what we can hold of transient and finite life, and death.

A painter is trying to capture the eternal beauty underneath the grotesque ugliness of urban landscapes that he is seeing. A husband illustrates the small moments of togetherness with his wife and family, attempting to put in his frames, everlasting love. Look at the temple of Arunachaleshwara here in Tiruvannamalai. There is something larger than life, larger than the finite hands and bodies of the sculptors and workers that flow through the stone. What infinity did they see that transformed their finiteness?

I am seeing Art as the channel, the medium of that infinite source within us, within everywhere. And by this very nature, art lends itself to other factors:

-       It is a process that is ongoing and reflective. I believe that it is not possible to touch, glimpse or taste something in the subtler and finer realms, and give over to meta processes, with the cognitive mind.  By the very swadharma of being art, it forgets / bypasses the cognitive mind and reaches beyond this to a space of insights and subtle sensing. And this space is that of Nature, of Life, of Reality – which means it is ever-changing, it is a process. It cannot be bottled or packaged into a static form of time and space. How paradoxical it is that we need to dive into a space of ever-changing change in a search for the constant!  A corollary is that it is possible to express from that reflective state. Art is that expression. It is also true that in expression, the cognitive mind can also jump in out of sheer habit and propensity. It may also happen that a cognitive mind and expression is necessary.  And this brings us to another factor:   

-       That of context. Very often (I actually want to say, ‘at all times’) the manifestations depend on the context. There are many who would refute this factor. In any case, we cannot really have conclusions. I believe that we are not looking only at art and the artist. Both, the artist and the process of art exist in a context, and this context I believe is alive in them, whether the artist is conscious of it or not, whether others in the context are conscious of it or not. This is most visible in performance art, in theatre.  The art is not simply a rehearsed piece that is performed on stage. Art is happening with the active participation of the audience during the performance. It is an alive conversation.  The conversations get more complex when the art involves, say, a poem. Like mine for instance. The artist dwells on her reflections, and in the process of creation / art. There are times when a third (say, you, the reader) is already present even during the creation (like with this essay) and there are other times when there may not be a conscious intention of presentation (like with the poem). Even here there are complexities that can be examined, and conversations with the self, abound. When a reader actively enters the scene, he / she brings in her reflections and is creating art anew then. There are questions of belonging and ownership that come up for me here. The same piece of expression could become an object of analysis and cognition the next day.

Like today, I am looking at ‘my’ crow fairly analytically and dissecting it, while also attempting to reflect and put together a larger picture. And we could still be in the realm of Art. Or not.

For my crow this moment

is empty

and still,

all the anger

and disgust

having become

foam and froth

with the water in spate,

that flooded

every nook and corner,

purifying,

taking with it

fishes and plastic

garbage

and plant matter

all the same,

while gushing downstream,

towards its destiny.

--------------------------------------------

Notes :-

-       At this point, the YS II.48 comes to mind – “Tato dvandvanabhighatah” – From this, one is not afflicted by the dualities of the opposites.

-       I must say thanks to my friend and co-sadhaka who spotted the exact point of inflexion and asked the question which wouldn’t leave until I wrote this.

Vulnerability

High spirits without
Deep emptiness within 
The higher
The deeper.
Loud music and laughter
What is this search
Much activity, increased social posts,
Dark wasteland stretching far.
How much more to go? 
Where to? 
Exploring, experiencing, celebrating
Running from the shadows.
The shadow trying to escape;
An empty self 
asking Who am I.
Not this, no longer
Not that, no longer. 
A crowd of friends milling about.
Alone, untouchable, untouched. 
A lonely search
Discarding all the knowns
Further emptiness,
If that is possible. 
Brave statements with background music
Pitch perfect silence;
Shall the twain never meet? 

A Soliloquy on Identity – Part III: This Moment is its Own Affirmation

Or I could borrow Joseph Campbell’s quote, “You become mature when you become the authority of your own life” for the title of this essay in the Identity series.

I could title it, “Who Am I?” or “The Pathless Path”, if I wanted this chapter to be the beginning of the next section of my autobiography!   

The earlier essay, I left off with saying that needing recognition seems to be one of my fundamental patterns.  In fact, this had been occupying such density in my being that it has taken all this time to stay and work with this part of me and arrive at a location to pen it down. 

We all need affirmation one way or another from our people, our audiences, clients, friends, children, parents… I am seeing around me that most of us need affirmation of various kinds.  This plays out in our lives at different levels and intensities, and we make up some of our narratives depending on our experiences with affirmation (or lack of it), how we understand and learn to handle / mishandle / be with, this need.  And so, what if the normal need for affirmation that begins in a child and can regulate itself into a healthy feedback mechanism for coherent functioning as the child grows older, becomes a hidden (even to herself), compulsive seeking of affirmation through various means and ways even as an adult?

The recognition that I wanted / needed from my world is nothing but simple (or not so simple!) affirmation that I did not get as a child.  I had been an adult by age, living and functioning as an adult outside, driven by the child’s need for affirmation, inside. Carl Jung had said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate”.   This is true for me, except that I don’t call it ‘fate’.  This unconscious relationship with affirmation that I have had made my choices, determined much of my action and has also limited who I am up until now. 

The relationship – I sought affirmation from the authority figures in my life (either I set them up so and they colluded, or vice versa).  And my story has been that I don’t get the affirmation that I want / need from them (since I didn’t get it as a child).  Hence I also set up the stage for not receiving the affirmation from these authority figures. Then I don’t conform, I rebel ‘against’ these authority figures and take up causes to do so.  I became the rebel against any system (for me, authority), the angry young man syndrome.  I constructed my identity, my idea of self, out of this relationship with authority and affirmation.  One of my primary narratives had been this: whoever I see as authority will ‘fail’ me by not affirming me in the ways that I need, and I will find some way to be the righteous rebel, try to get out of the web of authority and strike my own path.  There will be a flash of brilliance as I try to find myself, but I will set myself up to fail, because the sense of self was so enmeshed with the idea of being affirmed by authority, that if there was no authority, there was no self.  Who will affirm me? I was trapped in my cyclical story for the longest while.

However, there is more than one story in the unconscious that direct one’s life. In fact, there are several, and we collect more on the way.  I call in Thoreau along with Jung into this essay, “We are constantly invited to be who we are”.   And so, even though I chose the affirmation one as my primary story, there were others whispering and flirting and gesturing and waving for my elusive attention.  I noticed one such when it simply wouldn’t be ignored – my story of practice versus / and theory, also a gift from my family.  My well, rendered dry with intellect alone, was searching for the water of practice. This took me to the practice of asana-pranayama, and the path of yoga.  This ongoing story led me then to many others, and some more, and continues.  They started knocking on my door time and again as seemingly far-fetched opportunities, uncomfortable questions, bursts of colour, myriad meanings and metaphors, insights …

  

The righteousness soon dropped away.  The rebel is a warrior and this part of cell memory doesn’t get erased that easily I find.  However, she has learnt to set down her arms and keep her sword sheathed unless she feels it necessary to fight.  She has also learnt to see that there are ways and ways of putting up a fight.  There is another story in this of course, that of finding the woman, the shakti.  There is no cause or context for rebellion in these tales.  There is also a story of what to fight for, which is a wondrous one, that of Mother Earth, as ancient as she.  

When these masks were removed, I had to face my vulnerabilities: there is no authority to get affirmation from.  There need be none.  I am not that child who did not get the affirmations she needed, any longer.  I am an adult with many gifts, many stories, having a child of my own whom I need to affirm in many ways while giving her space to grow independent.  But where and how is my affirmation happening? How can I design a wholesome feedback process for myself? Do I need such a thing or is it my need for affirmation acting up? What would I be without this need and seeking for affirmation from authority? What would I be owning up to authority where it is required? Is authority even required or is my mind playing games? What am I missing?  

I turned to my asana-pranayama-swadhyayam, practice, as usual, and a question that stayed is, ‘what would I be without this need, free from this cycle?’  The practitioner and teacher in me joyfully announced the experience: that the practice itself is the affirmation – this moment is its own affirmation.  I realised the truth of this somewhat. When I am practicing, and when I am teaching someone for therapeutic purposes, I need no validation for what I am doing.  I am deeply into the process, and it runs the show.  Every step and moment speaks for itself and illumines the next.  My authority comes from my personal practice and the needs of the process when necessary. 

But, what does this mean for my question?  Who am I by myself? What is my process then if that is what I am looking for?  The stories that came knocking now were vague sightings into a dark wilderness that I began to see from the edges but didn’t initially venture into, being fearful of what I may find.  Tentative steps and short trips into the forest revealed more stories. Walking alone in the moonlight breathes energy into this quest.  Walking alone, even more.  Stories of art, aesthetics, writing and beauty rose up from the unconscious.  An avalanche of memory, I remember the numerous instances that I had bypassed when life had been inviting me to be who I am.  How did I not attend these stories earlier?!  

But there is no path prescribed by any authority in that wilderness.  I need to plunge headlong into it. I smell a story of fear here.  Fear holds me back from making that dive.  Fear of what? Perhaps of making mistakes.  What is the question I need to ask now? It strikes me that I am not afraid of making mistakes in my personal practice, or even with a student.  I completely trust the process and the relationship and there is an element of something much larger than merely ‘I’ that I give up myself to.  I believe that this something may be the grace of the universe, god… that is always available to each of us. The “Ishvarapranidhana” that Yoga sutras mention. How do I open myself to receive it? How is it that I can feel this in asana-pranayama and not with this fear that holds me a prisoner? Or am I just trying to escape into a variable called Ishvara and say, this is all I can do, that this is my best? What is the fear holding me?  The fear that I may be wrong about all of this: perhaps I am imagining the stories of creating and writing and art, perhaps I am not this at all. But why does fear stop my action? Can I move despite fear? I see a story of the habit of fear. How do I engage with this? 

I remember the first time I went into Sirsasana (headstand). It was a surprise. Had I known earlier that our goal posture for that day’s group practice was headstand, I would have skipped the class. Just 3-4 postures before our goal, it was mentioned casually that we need to prepare in that current posture well, if we wanted to go up on our heads.  My hands went cold and clammy, thinking of my positional vertigo condition etc. But the environment of my yoga sangha, colleagues and friends doing the practice, the instructor (whose sirsasana is to die for!), and my commitment to improvement in asana-PY practice made me stay.  I still can taste the ramyam of going up on my head that day. 

Perhaps I need to surprise myself out of my fear of being wrong.  How? And even if I am wrong, what other choice do I have?  All I have are these stories and my practice. I have nowhere to escape, no masks to hide behind, and I don't want them.  I am in this space from which there is no going back and the way forward and sideways is a jungle with no path.  Just many symbols and metaphors and ideas and a quest for beauty.

I cannot see the path ahead all that clearly, and I do not know for sure that this is a pattern that has stopped “directing my life” as Jung says. But I can say definitively that my mind cannot even turn in the direction of my affirmation-need without me being aware of it, and pausing to look at it with careful caution and interest, and also keep the wilderness in view.  Perhaps my short forays in, will prepare me to walk straight and deep into the jungle one of these days without returning to safety. 

Where is the lamp?

Burning the midnight oil,
No lamp around.
A new fire inside. 

Listening

Sound, its essence. 

It's dance with Space. 

I wanted to see this. 

"Look at the space that sound creates"

-Our teacher's words to us. 

I meet with the mountains,

I hear the monkeys chattering.

The woodpecker is at his job - 

Tock! Tock! Tock! Tock! 

Other chirpy birds

Join the symphony. 

The axiom says - 

Sound is the ancestor.

Hearing is born thence. 

These words that I pen down then,

Are not mine. 

They were around,

For me to hear. 

Where do they come from? 

What's behind this mountain's music? 

Like a coy lover on her honeymoon,

The new moon appeared a sliver. 

Before disappearing into the western sky

He is the same moon

Who's been lighting up the nights

of moony romances 

Through centuries. 

And yet he is not the same. 

Is he not also weary, agonised? 

Listening to the sorrow of loneliness

Crying herself to sleep night after night. 

He is changing all the time. 

The sound of this moment,

Has altered this moment's space-

Irrevocably. 

This moment is never again. 

Neither is the space it occupied. 

What is Space then,

If not the passage of Time? 

As I sit with the mountain,

And hear its music_

Her stillness tugs at me.

His silence invites me. 

This is music, hidden. 

Beyond my reach. 

Yet I can feel it. 

The silence reaching out

As no spoken word can. 

The silence that manifests,

as the crik! crik! of the cricket

holds a thousand other insects,

scurrying about their jobs. 

The silence,

in the howl of a solitary dog

also carries another dog,

that she is calling out to. 

The silence of this dark mountain,

is the sound of fire crackling

And lava gushing out 

from a volcano in the Maldives. 

As I sit here

with my back on the grass,

looking up at the infinite inky blue

I write these words

that are not mine:

When all is quiet,

Where is yesterday?

Where is tomorrow? 

This moment holds all. 

The space of this moment. 

The sound of its silence. 

Full Circle

The sonorous beat of "Vishoka va jyotishmati"
Training breath with systematic sound.
Reciting a sutra with the teacher,
A glimpse of silence within.

Walking alone, I am not alone at all.
These majestic hills stand with me,
Trees and leaves and pebbles and ants -
All their sounds merge into a stillness,
That continues all the way to my heart.

The heart of silence.
Can I go into it? I am afraid.
Walking into the forest with friends
Plunging into the stillness I saw from afar,
Climbing, clinging, slipping, holding, walking
Into the depths of a silence
That burst forth into divine melody -
Our teacher sings for us.

We made sound,
That took me to silence.
From that silence,
Came the gift of sound, music.
Full circle.