The Interconnectedness of all Things

During our Patanjali studies this week on just this subject, I remembered one of those seemingly insignificant interactions that just…stays with you for some reason. It was during my days living in the Yoga ashram in Bahamas. One day, a friend said to a senior staff member that I worked with, “Oh, you really love Shama (Sara )don’t you?”, to which she replied “Yes of course, she is my own true Self.”

What did she mean?

Well, there is a concept running through the teachings of Yoga and Ayurveda that in essence, at our deepest dimension of being, beyond the realm of changeful thoughts, beliefs and feelings and within each one of us, there is a changeless, unlimited aspect to our being. It is vast like the ocean, being formless and timeless. Some call it our consciousness, others our essence, others our source. Here, let’s agree to call it our consciousness.

This consciousness is the heart and soul of our being, and from the Ayurveda and Yoga perspective, this consciousness precedes the body and mind. In the process of creation, consciousness is always the starting point, and later comes the mind and then the body.

We expereince this consciousness as the witnessing self, the one who is present to all the happenings that take place within the flux of our lives and yet never changes, ages, nor becomes affected by those happenings. Have you noticed? Are you aware of this one, who is always aware of any experience, thought, or feeling you maybe having at any point in time? And this witness, this consciousness is born from and remains a part of an all-pervading, ominscient universal consciousness, a universal intelligence that permeates this whole existence and all that is manifest within it.

The mind, in this Ayurveda-Yoga way of looking at life and creation, is the means by which we piece together the constructs of our personal identity. Fed by the storehouse of memories in the subconscious part of the mind, this identity forms the ideas we have about ourselves, who we think we are, and how we engage with the world at large. This identity gives us a separate sense of self, an individual identity with which to navigate life.. Of course, we need this sense of self and every living being, down to the smallest ant is given a sense of separate being.

However, in the human construct of a separate sense of self much suffering arises, individually and collectively. Through the construct of a personality, identifed with thought tendencies, emotional inclinations and held beliefs, a struggle begins as we endeavour to on to hold those thoughts and feelings that support or uphold our sense of who we are, to the pleasant and affirming: and as we reject and deny that which is uncomfortable and not aligned with who we think we are.

We reflected in the Yoga Sutras class this week, that the mind in essence has no substance. We all know it is different from the brain, right? And that no surgeon who might open us up in search of the mind will ever find a thinkg called mind inside of us, yes? Mind really just a mix of thoughts, memories, conditionings and past experiences. It is ever changing, like the moon: the mind is often referred to as “moon” since both are changeful. In class we aim to “steady the moon” to sustain a focused practice, meaning we are steadying the changeful, impressionable mind.

And so, we are often in conflict with the mind and it’s turning, aren’t we? We might cherish certain thoughts, feelings or beliefs, and try to hold onto them and not let them pass or change. We fight to stop other thoughts, feelings and beliefs, or to push them away, right? Both the grasping onto and the rejecting are futile, yes? First of all because thoughts, like the mind, have no substance. They are simply energies, movements arising one moment and falling away the next.

This rising and falling of the thoughts in the mind are frequently likened to the waves on the ocean. We say thoughts are just like those waves. In fact we call them “thought-waves”, right? Trying to grasp onto or push away thoughts and feelings, is like trying to catch hold of or push away the waves rising on the surface of the ocean. It is impossible that we will succeed isn’t it?

Waves are going to rise out of the ocean, and return to it, and they always remain a part of the ocean, yes? And this brings us to the second point. The waves rise and fall as a part of, the ocean, which highlights the futility in trying to catch hold of them as if they were separate things in and of themselves.. Trying to catch or push the thought waves away would have to come from a belief that they are separate from their source, wouldn’t it?

It is the same within us, regarding all that arises in our minds. We have come to identify with the contents of our minds as the heart and soul of who we are: and so we want to hold onto or fight with thoughts and feelings and acquired beliefs, according to whether they do or do not support our view of ourselves. We try to hold tight onto some, and desperately try to escape from others.

We believe that we are the thoughts and beliefs we have about ourselves. And this is what the Buddhists call the “great mistake”, and the Yogis call “avidya” or “wrong understanding”. All spiritual traditions have pointed to this mistaken and limitng self-perception. And we are all subject to it. It is as if we are born to inevitably live with this mistaken notion of who we are. That we are separate individuals – that we are the waves and that the waves are separate from their source..

We have forgotten who we are in essence. In this mental construct we have developed about ourselves, we have lost touch with the true heart and soul of our being. Instead we become trapped in the fluctuations of the mind, looking desperately for an anchor to steady us and hold us firm amidst the flux of thoughts and feelings. And mind is changeful: we can never find a firm anchor there. It is said that all our suffering in truth has it’s souce in this wrong understanding. And it is not due to the thoughts themselves: they will rise and fall always of their own accord. It is because of our attraction to some thoughts, and aversion to others that we suffer. By themselves, the movements through the mind cannot leave their mark on us. They are like birds flying across the sky: they do not leave their footprint, until we start to grapple with them due to the mistaken notino that they have any real substance.

The panacea for this state of affairs, for the predicament we ALL find ourselves in then , is to move into the depths of our being, beneath the dimension of mind. Yoga invites us to move beneath the turbulence of the waves of thoughts and feelings to the still depths of being. Again, just like in the ocean where the waves only exist on the surface and there is stillness in the depths of the water, so it is within us. The depths remain undisturbed by the turbulence of thoughts and emotions. There in the still depths we truly come to find the answer to the question “Who am I, in truth?”

Yoga asks us to rest there, in our own inner silence, and to simply allow the waves of thoughts and feelings to arise freely on the surface of our consciousness and to freely fall away again. Just as clouds pass across the sky without making a lasting impression on the sky, as we allow the thoughts to rise across the mind and do not struggle with them, so they leave no mark, they no longer disturb us. In fact perhaps we just enjoy their coming and going. .

Indeed, as we stop giving fight or struggle to the thought waves, slowly they subside and there is a deepening let go into that inner stillness. Everything becomes calm and clear. There is a settling. And as we let go into this quiet, this settling and into the depth of our being, it is said that a new seeing and understanding about the nature of things and about our own nature begins to arise.

It is just like when the winds stop blowing across the surface of the ocean and the waves subside. As they subside, the true depths and nature of the ocean is revealed. The sediment settles and the water becomes clear. When the waves move, all is stirred and we cannot see into the depths. There is no clarity. Likewise with the mind, when it moves we have no clarity and we grapple with the thoughts to futilely try to garner some understanding. We remain in confusion. As the waves arising on the surface of the mind subside, as we sit quietly and remotely witness the coming and going of our thoughts, there is a settling within us, and we areble to drop into and experience the changeless depths which are our consciousness. And there, the true qualities of our being are revealed to us.

Here when we rest in the source of our being, in consciousness, we find that all distinctions that to date have given us our sense of self, cannot exist., The individuating factors such as beliefs, creeds, cultural conditionings we find only exist on the surface of our psyches. In the depths, beneath the rising waves. When we drop into the soures of our being, likewise we find there is only one, indivisible, illimitable consciousness which is vast and all-pervading.

Not only our thoughts, but each one of us is just like a wave rising on the ocean of the infinte, eternal universal consciousness. We are born out of this vast ocean of consciousness for the small time-frame of our lives and the one certain fact of life is that one day we will return to it. In between these two points of the arising from and the returning to the ocean of consciousness, we become forgetful that this vast ocean of consciousness remains always . Just as the wave arises but the ocean is always there, likewise, we are born and take individual form but we are always still a part of the limitless Universal consciousness from this intricate web of life arises.

There are many waves with the same one source, the ocean: and there are many beingsin this universe, all born from and always a part of that universal source of life.

And so, in truth, “You are my own true Self”. Our source of being is the same one source of life, and in that source all the individuating aspects that define and make us appear separate are dissolved. They cannot exist there, just as the wave cannot exist in the depths of the ocean, in the source from which they arose. When the wave returns there it dissolves na and all waves become as that one ocean again. They were always one in their essence, in their source, and so it is with us. .

It is, of course, difficult for us to hold to and live by this understanding.

However perhaps we can remind ourselves, next time we take a stand for our against someone or some group: when we condemn one and condone another, when we reject, criticise or judge, that we are all in truth one huge universal family. That there is a common source at the heart of each one us. That what we are all just one aspect of myriad ways that the source of all life is expressing itself .

Let’s endeavour to remember the shared source of our being. That in spite of our indivdiual expression of that source, we all remain in our very centre a part of that one consciousness.

The politicians we may or may not like, the person who does or doesn’t treat their child or pet the way you would, the faith or culture that does or doesn’t sit well with your own personal inclinations and conditionings: let us remember that all are one in essence. We are one big universal family. And our perceived differences, we now know, are just surface stuff arising from varying states and qualities of mind, doubtless capable of great acts of beauty, healing and creativity, and equally capable of acts of destruciont, cruelty and violence. No matter how the wave is expressing itself,, in the vast depths of our being there is so “much more that unites us than divides us!”

We are all therfore intrinsically connected and one and the same in the heart of our being. We are connected, according to this Yoga-Ayurveda understanding of life, not only to all human life, but to all beings and in fact, to all manifest matter, even to inanimate matter as in creation has that once shared source – that one supreme universal intelligence or consciousness.

This means the rocks, the plants, the mountains, the lakes, the clouds, the stars,the planets. All are related to us as all are born from that same one source. There is literally stardust in you and me!

That intelligence that gives rise to all form, that consciousness at the heart of this existence also manifests matter and forms through the same building blocks always.

This illusion of separateness that we hold is therefore truly “a great mistake”.

Let’s remember this as we look up at the night sky this week and see the planets and stars, as we hear the birds starting to sing to welcome the Spring and all of nature waking up.

Will you aspire to remember with me this week, the interconnectedness of all things.

Let’s look and know that whoever we rest our eyes on really is “my own true Self”. Not the behaviours, not the personality remember: these are constructs of the mind, but in the heart of being there is just one Self. The heart of our being, our source, is beyond conditioning, beyond behaviours, beyond good and bad. It is where we all meet as pure presence, pure being.

We now know where we can go to experience a true and connected and changeless dimension of our being, but HOW do we get there?

Meditation is the way there and only meditation. And not the meditation so popularthese days where we are taken on visualising and healing journeys of one sort or another. These are beautiful and they have their place.

However it is the focused meditation of classical Yoga, which helps us move beyond mind. Practiced consistently it will take us to re-member ourselves and to know all as that consciousness beyond name and form.

Let me close this week’s reflections with the words of the Sufi poet Rumi, I’m sure you’ll have heard them before. Maybe now, however, they will have a different resonance.

“Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”

In the heart of our being, beyond the movement of thoughts and ideas and so beyworld of separation, we are at peace with all. We love the whole world. Not for what the world does or doesn’t do. We just love. Because in the heart of our being, in our source, we are love. the universe, at it’s heart, is born of love.

Meet us in this field, in any Yoga and meditation class. We always come to rest together in source. Each week, in every class, this is where we journey to together.

If there is hope for our world, it is in this. A humanity that knows and can anchor itself n the interconnectedness of all things, This is our way to a world of peace and harmony: this is our true strength – the unity in our diversity.

THIS EVENING ✨✨ enjoy this short practice. Sit or lie quietly somewhere and begin to connect with your breath. Take your awareness to your breath and watch it’s rise and fall as you breathe in and out through your nose. Can you sense that your breath travels down to touch your heart centre, deep in the middle of your chest? Feel your exhale release there, in your heart. See a light in your heart centre which has rays radiating out in all directions. Slowly, gently as you begin to settle your mind into you heart, see these rays getting brighter with each breath.

They fill your body, and then your room, your home, your town/village/city, your region, your country,. They extend across the seas and cover the whole world.

Feel your whole being dissolving into the light of your own heart, now embracing the hwole world.

Feel your connection with the essence of all that is in our world., with the love at the heart of existence.

Count blessings this evening through thish practice, and remember the gift of the everyday things that carry us through our life. Altogether, these little things serve as a reminder of the incredibly rich and blessed life we have been given. We have been given so much without even asking, haven;t we? ✨✨

THIS WEEK 🌻🌻When you find yourself locked in judgement, criticism or condemnation of another, can you return to the mantra “You are my own true Self”?

Let go of reactivity and drop into your heart, and feel the oneness of being, the shared heart of all. 🌻🌻

It doesn’t mean that we condone behaviours or that we let ourselves become a doormat,

It does mean that we lessen the suffering of separation from our own source where there is no judgement or division

And so, we keep our hearts open to the love, the beauty and the peace in the shared heart of our being.

As the Indian sage Ramana Maharishi said, ” Don’t push anyone, including yourself, out of your own heart.”

I’d love to know how you get on with these weekly sharings. Please get in touch any time to let me know. I’d love to hear from you.

Have a wonderful week. I hope it is full of connection to your own heart and the heart of all.

For now, my love and best wishes,

Sara Shama