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CYCLE OF DEATH AND REBIRTH

CYCLE OF DEATH AND REBIRTH

Nov 17, 2020 | Spirituality, Tantra

Tantra

Another deconstruction, another emptiness from which an unknown self will emerge. She is gone, whoever I used to be. I keep trying to summon her up, out of habit, but she is simply not here. My whole body, it is trying to become new as well. But for that, a bit of death is needed. A bit of death is compulsory for any act of rebirth, for any miraculous transformation. Death as shedding, death as old skin itching to come off, death as a body that is relearning how to be. Death as a waiting for someone who is more myself than I used to be to arrive. Let us be here now- let every dying part fall, let every new piece of skin be felt.

 

In Tantra, death is revered and meditated upon as a form of the Divine that invites us to embody the essence of our impermanent nature back into the still, unbounded void [Siva]. Despite compelling appearances of separation and diversity, the worldview of Tantra sees everything as one unity consciousness, one reality, one divinity. Death is just an expression of our consciousness that is ready to let go of its manifest-form and to rejoice back into the sea on consciousness. What is important to know from the view of Tantra is that consciousness takes a form in physical and non-physical aspects of form such as in words, thoughts, emotions, seasons, relationships, physical body, you name it. All that we can experience through the human senses of touch, feel, see, smell, taste is a manifestation of consciousness expressing itself as something in a particular form. If that holds true, then “death” happens at every moment in many forms, but consciousness itself is not dying, it is only just rekindling back to its state of expansion [siva] until its ready to take form again. This is all a part of the divine play [leela] of consciousness that is the universal nature of expansion and contraction in-and-out of consciousness-form. You see, a part of us dies in every moment: every time a conversation ends, every time we go to sleep, every time we say goodbye, and every time we experience a transition in life. Death is but a never-ending cycle of growth, change, and a journey back to the truest Self.

 

QUOTES ABOUT SEASONS

One of my favourite contemplations to explore is the nature of seasons within us as we are a reflection of nature and its five elements. So what we see in nature can be  experienced within our own human bodies. Realising that we are a part of a larger cycle of life in which there is time for growing, a time for blooming, and a time for dying, we experience the life force at work in every season. Here are a few of my favourite quotes to contemplate.

1. “Be aware of what season you are in and give yourself the grace to be there.” — Kristen Dalton

2. “All the trees are losing their leaves, and not one of them is worried.” — Donald Miller

3. “When the winds of change blow, remember… sometimes what appears dead is simply preparing for a new season.” — Jane Lee Logan

4. “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” — Alan W. Watts

5. “Trust the wait. Embrace the uncertainty. Enjoy the beauty of becoming. When nothing is certain, anything is possible.” — Mandy Hale

6. “The moment in between what you once were, and who you are now becoming, is where the dance of life really takes place.” — Barbara De Angelis

DEMYSTIFYING YOGA: WHAT IS AWAKENING?

DEMYSTIFYING YOGA: WHAT IS AWAKENING?

Jun 10, 2020 | Spirituality, Tantra

Tantra

In the modern Yoga, the term awakening is often misunderstood as an esoteric and mystical idea that only a select few can experience. And if you haven’t gone through a spiritual awakening, you will most likely regard it as a complete myth. A spiritual vocabulary to lure students or convince students of something bigger than what it truly is. The questionability behind the idea of awakening stems from the lack of knowledge and the airy fairy language from those that speak on its topic – yes, yoga teachers we are at fault here. But what if I tell you that we all have the innate capacity of awakening? Right now, as you read this, you have the seed of awakening within you that is ready to ripen into fruition. What if to awaken wasn’t an experience, but a paradigm shift. A new view to life that reconfigures the way that you experience everything around you. What if to awaken means to wake up to your true essence nature of who you really are. The you beyond mental constructs, beyond beliefs, beyond identities, and beyond the facades that we carry in our day-to-day lives.

Society lives in two states: the dream state and the waking state. Everyday the majority of society is awake in literal sense, yet completely and utterly asleep at the same time. Awake to the programming of their conditioned beliefs, yet asleep to the possibility of expanding our awareness of what is. We have become a slave to the identities and beliefs that we carry since the day that we’ve been born into this world; thinking, speaking, acting from a place of conditioned programming from our upbringings and belief system. To be awake is recognise the long held belief system engrained in us and to let it go to come closer to the truth of our being. History can prove the devastation that arises from the ignorance of our belief system. We have the graveyards and memorials to prove it. 
To awaken is to wake up to our own ignorance. 

“Awakening entails losing something—specifically, your deeply conditioned beliefs about who you are and what the world is—and gaining nothing.” – Christopher “Hareesh” Wallis

Awakening can happen in various stages. Here I have listed down 2 identifiable stages as expressed by my teacher Hareesh Wallis.

1. Waking up to the social constructed self. That means waking up out of the belief that your thoughts, memories, self-images, or ‘stories’ define who you fundamentally are. Our beliefs are mental constructs that create an imagined order for us to structure and organise our lives on the superficial level. But on the most fundamental level that are invalid. To awaken is to recognise that we are experiential beings not conceptual ones. You are something far beyond your identities and beliefs. 

“How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined.” ― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

2. Waking up out of the dream of separation. To shed the belief that there is something separate from you and other. This stage is often glorified as “we are all One”. Which is quite airy-fairy, isn’t it? What this is speaking to is the possibility of recognising that there is nothing separate between us on a fundamental level. What creates separation are the beliefs and constructs one might carry. To wake up out of the dream of separation is to see things as they truly are without conditions or filters.

So you can choose to live your life in two ways: in the dream state or waking state. You can choose to live your life as a slave to your identities and beliefs, living each day as if you’re being programmed by something or someone. Or as a conscious agent aware of the conditioned thought patterns that arise and being able to choose to accept or reject it. There is nothing more empowering than being able to recognise the rooted mental constructs that were once so deeply attached to your identity and to finally break free with the knowing that you are still the exact same You that you always were, just more free from mental suffering. Now you know the secret as to why yogi’s can find innate joy in any situation that arises. So take the first step. Step into the awareness of your everyday thoughts, actions, and words. Notice where your response is coming from. Is it coming from an impulse rooted in conditions? Simply to step into this question of awareness is the first step into becoming more awake.