As you play the instrument, so shall you hear the music. ~Anandamayi Ma
Satsang is a microcosm of our call and response reality.
We gather together with a teacher who, to some degree, embodies the teachings. In this circumstance, an alchemy takes place, and we can experience more of our real nature.
Gathering in satsang, we ask questions and receive answers. We laugh, listen, and even cry in response to each other. We sing kirtan—call and response music.
Satsang is not a performance or a lecture. It is a sadhana. Sadhana in any form always asks for our participation.
We come to remember who we really are and what is of most value. We come to relax, to be relieved of some of our conditioning. We come to engage more fully in the messiness, beauty, spontaneity, and wonder of manifest life.
Satsang helps us to practice being more expressive in our lives as a whole. Slowly over time, we can grow accustomed to relating to others and to circumstances in a more creative and less contrived way. When we call out, we can become more sensitive and intelligent in hearing the response.
join the improvisation.
Manifest life is improvisational, not planned out. Satsang is a little theater for learning to appreciate and enter into the ebbs and flows of improvisational life.
We can start to notice the different ways that this alive, aware reality responds to us when we are in various conditions. We start to notice that all of life is call and response music.
If we are distracted, life brings us something to bump into or trip over to wake us up with a jolt.
If we are prideful, life brings us a fall.
If we are mean-spirited, life brings us loneliness so that we are forced to lower our barriers and reach out.
If we are open-hearted and generous, life brings us more and more opportunities to express these virtues until our lives become a joyful outpouring.
Instead of being imprisioned in a lifeless, cause and effect point of view, we can begin to notice everything calling and responding to everything.
The rock playfully yielding to the stream.
The trees speaking back to the wind.
The ear reaching out to meet the sounds.
The upsurge of wisdom leaping in the cave of the heart to answer our queries and doubts.
Eventually we learn that we are always in satsang.
with much love,
Shambhavi
Shambhavi holds livestream satsang every week. Find the full schedule here. And request to join the Facebook group Jaya Kula News in order to get the Zoom link.
*Photo by Richard Lannoy.
