What are some experiences that arise as we do daily sadhana? How do these experiences compare to our expectations and fantasies about spiritual practice? A podcast from Satsang with Shambhavi
Podcast First Words
Anandamayi Ma always urged everybody to keep going. To not get stuck. To not be satisfied with anything less than everything. She said various statements like this over and over again in teachings.
Every tradition, and every person in any tradition, carries around some ideas that can cause you to stop and get stuck. They may be ideas that you learned from your teachers or from your traditions. They might be ideas that you received from your culture that you’re not even aware of. Our culture’s allergy to discomfort is an example. Most of us have a very strong samskara that pops up all over the place that says uncomfortable equals bad—AVOID AVOID AVOID. This is a huge obstacle.
Here are some of the more lineage-based, religion-based, or tradition-based ideas that cause us to get stuck and think that we have arrived somewhere. Number one: ideas of what enlightenment is. You know, in the Eastern traditions there are various ideas about what enlightenment looks like, feels like, or smells like. You get taught this, and then you get stuck if you should ever come upon that state.
So, for instance, there’s a concept about enlightenment that has a lot of popular momentum in Indian traditions in particular: being enlightened, being realized, or being awakened has something to do with having no thoughts. In fact, you’ll read in different teachers’ writings, or hear in different talks, that the goal is to have no thoughts. The idea that something about reality would have to entirely disappear in order for us to be realized is absolutely counter to this tradition. ALL of reality according to this tradition is already made of enlightened essence nature.
