Taste the State of Your Practice and Addressing Racism

STUDENT 1
I was thinking the other day a lot about the different feelings related to– when I feel like I'm really engaging with life or engaging with practice. And then when I kind of act as more floating along, or I feel like life is driving me in. And so I was really wanting you to talk about that active engagement.

SHAMBHAVI
I kind of would reverse that. When you're being more in presence, when you're relaxing more in living presence, then you're more being moved along. So that's where the sense of dance or improvisation or of being moved by life happens.

Although there is only one Self, there is still the fact that this one Self is producing a sense of dialogue, a sense of communication. A sense of reciprocity, of improvisation.

And so when we're just more resting in our real nature, that sense of conversation, of dialogue, becomes more apparent to us.

And we have a sense that we're responding to something freshly in the moment rather than operating under the false impression that we're independent beings making decisions and going along.

So there's more of a sense of being steered along by this much wiser improvisational partner when we're resting and then just being at rest while we're going about things.

There's this sense of dynamism, and there's a sense of stillness that is happening at the same time, when we're resting in our real nature. It's active, but it's also restful. There's no sense of planning or undue effort.

There is effort, but not undue effort.

There's no sense that we're just dragging ourselves along, having to force ourselves, or that it's all up to us. That pressure when we feel like things are up to us. Then we get all tied up in knots.

And then when we're being more in ordinary mind and being less in touch with presence, that's where we get the feeling of effortfulness that is draining. And a sense of responsibility. Sort of a hyperbolic sense of responsibility for everything.

We lose our sense of playfulness. Things can start to feel very stale because, of course, we lose contact with presence in characteristic ways. That's what the six realms are.

The six realms are the characteristic ways in which human beings lose presence, or fall out of contact with the natural state. Each of us has characteristic ways that we get back into more of our mundane ordinary frame of reference.

And so, because they're characteristic—that means they repeat a lot—they feel stale and kind of heavy. And at the same time, we attach a lot of importance to it.

And it's interesting because, I don't know what it's like in other cultures, but here, when people have a really, really important decision to make, they often want to forget about their practice and rely on ordinary means.

That's kind of an interesting juncture that people get to. It kind of shows you where you're at in terms of what you have confidence in and how you've been trained.

When you cross the river and have more contact with living presence, then it's the important decisions that you DON'T want to treat in an ordinary way. Right? You realize how inadequate your ordinary means are.

So sometimes, for instance, students of mine who have been trained in divination, they'll do divination about relatively unimportant things. But then when it comes to the most important things, they won't do divination. Because they're afraid.

They want to rely on ordinary mind and still very much mired in ordinary emotions and patterns that still seem very important and worthy of following for some reason or another. That's an interesting thing that happens.

But we can easily tell when we're being in a more restful immersion in presence versus following fixation, being in more ordinary mind. Flat world versus round world. It's so easy to tell.

If we stopped and asked ourselves: how am I operating right now, what's driving me right now, we COULD make a choice.

But one of the things that flat-world ordinary mind comes with is a sense of its own importance, its own urgency, its own validity. It comes with that. That's part of the way that it drugs us.

It drugs us with this sense of, I can figure this out, I know what I'm doing. Or, I can figure out how to know what I'm doing using ordinary means. And other ways of deciding are dangerous.

But if we could pause. When we find ourselves chugging along, if we notice that staleness. If we could pause and really feel the staleness and feel the heaviness and feel the sense of urgency and– distress, really. There's a sense of distress associated with operating in this way.

If we could really feel that and then invoke our practice, that would be a very powerful gesture.

We don't only need to unwind our karmas in the sense of not relating to life through our karmas, but a prior step is really feeling how imprisoned we are by them. And particularly imprisoned by their own overweening sense of importance.

It's almost like a drug that has built into it this message: I'm very important. You're not safe if you let me go.

So the thing is, when you notice that you're in that condition, to pause. Invoke your practice. Try to then move into the state of your practice. See what happens. It's an experiment that we need to do over and over again if we want to really have significant realization.

STUDENT 2
Can you talk about when we abide at the end of a practice, and if we do that for a long time, how is that different or similar to meditating?

SHAMBHAVI
Well, meditation is a technique. And the techniques that we use, like meditation or other techniques, are meant to deliver us to a state of immersion in living presence.

So the technique of meditation is not the conclusion of our practice. The conclusion of our practice, or anything that we're doing, is relaxing in the natural state and just letting ourselves be immersed in that with no agenda.

That can happen while we're doing formal practice. We can be doing meditation, and we can be delivered to that restful natural state and that sense of immersion. We can be doing japa and have that happen. We can be doing kriya yoga and have that happen.

But in general, that is something that takes a little while to get to because people are so focused on technique, thinking that, oh, I'm DOING my practice. I'm DOING the technique, and THAT'S the practice.

That isn't. That's the tool to help you to get to the condition where you can relax in the natural state.

So when we abide after each segment of our practice, we are trying to relax with no agenda. No label, no agenda. Just being awake.

So it's not the time to take a nap. In that sense, there might be some effort involved [laughs]. But we are just trying to relax and feel immersed in what's called the state of our practice. Which hopefully is close to the natural state.

Sometimes when you're practicing—and I'm sure most of you who have practiced for a while have had this experience, at least sometimes—where you're going along, da da da, maybe it's pleasurable, maybe it's not, maybe it feels special, maybe it doesn't.

But suddenly there's this effortlessness that happens. And you just feel like you could go on forever, and it would take no effort whatsoever.

And one loses the sense of accomplishing anything. You're just doing it because it feels kind of magical, and that's it.

So abiding after each segment of our practice helps us to discover that more. It also helps us to, what one teacher of mine said, marinate in the state of our practice.

In other words, we do practice and our senses, our perceptions open up to some degree. We relax to some degree. And then we want to NOTICE that.

We don't want to be on the checklist system where we're just doing some technique and then we check that off, and then we move to the next technique and we're not really ever being aware of what is happening.

It's like the difference between gobbling down a meal and actually tasting it. If you gobble a meal and you eat unconsciously, you know, you're eating your lunch at your desk while doing something on your computer related to work.

We all have that experience of, like, oh my God, I just ate this whole sandwich, and I have no idea what I ate and I didn't taste it.

So if you do that, if you eat your practice in that way, then you can't cook it later on.

So if someone hands me a sandwich and I eat it in that unconscious way—okay, check, lunch, back to work—then I can never make that sandwich on my own. Because I wasn't paying enough attention to know what was in it.

But if I eat it slowly and savor the taste, then later I can remember. And I can make that sandwich again.

So when we abide in the state of our practice, we are helping ourselves to taste the state of our practice more deeply and subtly so that later we can come back to it more easily. We're creating more of a beacon or a roadmap.

We're getting that feeling deeper into our cells, into our mind, into our energy body, so that it becomes easier to get there again.

Whereas if we're just doing: okay, I'm going to do this for 5 minutes and this for 10 minutes, okay 15 minutes for that, then.... It never really gets in all that deeply. Because we're not noticing it enough. We're not paying enough attention. We're not tasting it deeply enough.

STUDENT 3
Today at work, we had a training. And during my meditation in the morning, there was a lot of thoughts about addressing some potential racism happening in the facility.

And I was kind of, like, pumping myself up a little bit to address it in a good way, because it just felt like that needed to happen, even though there's lots of fear around that.

And right now, I feel that again. I cried when I was talking about it. And I just am coming back to this question of if I'm too sensitive.

SHAMBHAVI
Well, no. There's only one answer to that, and that's no. When you cried, and then you have feelings about crying in a business setting, the feelings about crying in a business setting are part of what has been bequeathed to us.

That's, like, internalized misogyny right there. That we aren't supposed to display certain kinds of emotions in a business setting. Or that it's humiliating or embarrassing.

I mean, 'too sensitive.' Isn't that one of the things that gets thrown at women all the time?

STUDENT 3
I feel like I know this on a cognitive level, but it just keeps coming up.

SHAMBHAVI
Yeah. And then the fear of bringing up particular issues of racism is so legitimate. Couldn't be more legitimate.

And crying. I just know from the places where I've experienced depression, it's not just fear. It's a whole complex of things. Just longing, and fear, and anger, and helplessness, and wanting to be seen in a way that we aren't usually seen, wanting to be heard.

I mean, there's so many things. Each tear is, like, a rich world of all different kinds of things.

And the fact is that whomever one is, whether we're talking about racism or homophobia or transphobia or misogyny or whatever we're talking about. We're talking about having experienced in our different ways many, many, many, many, many generations of conditioning and trauma.

Then you're trying to figure out a good way to bring this up. In many, many circumstances, we get a lot of push-back. And sometimes we're beautifully received, sometimes we're not. But it IS a scary situation.

So I just want to affirm that.

And also say that Jaya Kula is a group of people. There's been lots of things that have happened around racism and misogyny and transphobia, homophobia, and class prejudice. I mean, just your usual stew of human life.

But I will say that we have collectively done a lot of work together on these things. And trying to have Jaya Kula over time, slowly become a place where—I wouldn't say it's safe [laughs] because I wouldn't say any place is safe—but where there at least is a container or a crucible to bring this issue up.

And I'm really just so happy that you said that you felt this fear of bringing this up here. That is something you can say here.

We're doing our best to be a community that is welcoming. Where people can discover a sense of belonging, whatever condition you're in. And where, when things do come up, they're addressed right away. And people are at least trying to take responsibility for what's happening.

So I'm really happy that you brought this up, and I realize it was probably an experiment. I hope you experiment again, here.

From my perspective, just reflecting back on other similar experiences I've had to what you just described. Throughout my life, the conclusion that I've come to is that everything that you felt and brought to that meeting, and the fear that you felt, and the hesitation and the bravery and the tears, and everything you brought is 100% appropriate to that circumstance.

We feel all those things because that's the experience that we've had in our histories, the histories that we bring to those circumstances.

We don't need to cover those things up just to fit in with some version of oppressive professionalism. And again, it's a huge risk not to do that, but it's a risk that's worth taking, for sure.

STUDENT 3
Yeah, I just feel grateful for the community we're dealing with. I would like to serve in the highest possible way. So if you see any way that that's possible, I would love to hear that, too.

SHAMBHAVI
The best service is always just being in our hearts without any narration about what that means. Just relaxing in the heart and acting from that place.

And then forget about any ideas of highest or lowest or medium-est, because we really are all just stumbling along, and we should think of everything we do as experimental and just be okay with doing our best.

Forget about the highest. Just do your best.

Let yourself be human. Let yourself make mistakes. Let yourself get out of control if that has to happen sometimes. Just be in whatever condition you are and try to remain in the heart as much as you can.

I don't know if you're coming to morning practice, but if you aren't, it's happening on Tuesday mornings at 7:30 AM Pacific on Facebook, my personal Facebook page, and Jaya Kula's YouTube page.

It's a live group practice that I'm leading every Tuesday morning, and it's always based in the heart.

That's a really good place to start if you don't quite grok what I was talking about. To start understanding in a concrete, practical way what I mean by offering service from the heart.

It's not really an idea of, like, love or something like that. It's literally learning how to identify and recognize presence in the heart space and offering service from that place.