Tag Archives: Swami Satchidananda

Think Happy | Be Happy

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THINK HAPPY

BE HAPPY

A t-shirt on a young girl shouted at me in bold, bright letters. I forgot that sometimes the answer is so simple.

“The…true you reflects in the mind which is your mirror… If the mind has a lot of waves like the surface of a lake, you will be seeing a distorted reflection.”

-Thinking negative thoughts distorts your natural peace.

“To see the true reflection, see that the water is clean and calm and without any ripples.” (Swami Satchidananda, Book 1 Sutra 3*)

-To feel our true self, our self at peace, we must remove disturbing thoughts.

Think Peace

Be Peace

How?

I have had many negative thoughts this year in particular and at times have felt I hit bottom. I keep waiting to not feel crushed, but have realized that I myself am keeping myself down by allowing – feeding on – negative thoughts. Now I try to be vigilantly conscious of their appearance and with great struggle stop a thought and replace it with something else.

I remind myself that negativity only hurts me. The world doesn’t change – only my experience of it can change.

I remind myself to nurture gratitude and list a few things I am grateful for in my head.

I remind myself to replace a negative with a positive (or at least a neutral).

I remind myself to breathe.

Frustrated the other day because my 3-year-old refused to listen to me (as is perfectly normal for his age and an everyday occurrence) – I laid on my bed and covered my face with a pillow. He clambered in after me asking what was wrong. “Mommy, take a deep breath.” After I complied, I told him I felt better.

I guess he does listen…

* Quotes from Satchidanada, Swami, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali/translation and commentary by Swami Satchidananda, Integral Yoga Publications, Yogaville, 1990.

Muddling peace

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Over the past few weeks I have been profoundly affected by quotes that have come to me that speak so perfectly to what I am going through. Deep reminders . One came to my email, one was in a newsletter, and one was a quote I used in my own writing that I came across as I was editing. They brought me to tears.

It is so hard to stay strong. Each day is a struggle. Even through the tears, it is so comforting to feel some guidance, however difficult that guidance is to actually follow it provides a clearer path.

Swami Satchidananda has always come to me in times of uncertainty. When I returned to New York from India, I was bouncing around between different yoga studios, looking up different teachers and schools of yoga. I was reading books from many different gurus and thinking I wanted to find someone in New York. I sat on the subway one day, having just been turned away from a particular yoga center that didn’t want to honor a free class card a friend had given me and didn’t seem interested in me attending their programs, disappointed and wondering where to turn, when I happened to glance down at the magazine the person sitting next to me was reading. Looking up at me was Swami Satchidananda with a big smile. I laughed at myself. Of course.

A quote by Swami Satchidananda arrived in my email about allowing ourselves to be supported by sangha–a spiritual community. We can’t get through life’s difficulties alone. We shouldn’t even try. Family, friends, and community are there to help, to guide, to support, to be a shoulder to cry on, to offer a smile and comforting voice. Allowing others to give is giving them a gift. Giving is joy. I am so thankful for the help those around me have offered, in every tiny way. Just having someone say they are thinking about me while I navigate stormy waters, helps steer me into a calm harbor.

A man on the sidewalk greeted me as I walked by and said, “It’s nice to see you out today.” And I thought–it’s nice to be out in the world today, it’s nice to be seen, to get outside of the jumbled mess of existence in my head.

A recent newsletter from Integral Yoga reminded me to “clean up my mind”–to stop allowing negative thoughts, blaming, anger to dirty my mind. When I can clean my mind then I will have a clean heart and be at peace.

Editing my book, I read a passage I had written about dealing with hardship:

The life of a yogi is to prepare the self in times of stability to pass through times of disquiet with peace. It’s a preventative care strategy. It’s a long-term plan of dedicated, continuous work. The waves of life move and break unceasingly–whether we tumble under, get pummeled, get swept into unknown regions, or ride them with a smile is up to us. Staying afloat on the surface, not engaging, not fighting against the current, remaining only a witness to the tide is the practice of yoga. Swami Satchidananda says:

If you want to be peaceful always, identify yourself as the ever-peaceful witness within. “I am that eternal witness. I am watching everything that’s happening in the body and mind.” That is the supreme way of maintaining your peace. If you can’t get to the state of identifying yourself as that eternal witness, simply say, “I am not all these things. I’m not the mind, not the ego, not the senses, not the intelligence. I simply watch them. I am the seer, I just see.”

These are some of my recent muddled thoughts as I search for balance and peace.

Gently down the stream

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GangaIn The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Swami Satchidananda says, “The entire world is your own projection.”  What a powerful idea. What does he mean? We choose to give meaning to things, to people, to places and we choose what particular meaning to give them. We then react in response to those meanings. I lost an inexpensive ring I had bought for myself – I had given the ring the power of being a reminder to me of the spiritual path. I loved to look at the ring and remember where I was and how I felt when I bought it. Then I lost it. I was upset, it was meaningful to me and irreplaceable.

But, did I lose the spiritual path? Was that reminder in a physical object more powerful than the practice itself? No. I had given that little piece of metal power but it in itself was just a little piece of metal. I let it go and the upset followed.

Being able to control how the world affects you is the key to peace.  Knowing the difference between your true self and your affected self is yoga.

“Yogas chitta vritti nirodhah – The restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga.” Practicing yoga is practicing letting go. Our minds jump around and react constantly – stilling, restraining the mind, letting go of the reactions, the attachments, and just being brings peace.

How we react to the world around us is what creates the world around us. But it is such a difficult practice to become aware of our reactions, to control them, and to let them go. Peace is not easy to achieve.

My two-year old son seems to have mastered letting go in mid cry and turning his frown upside down and laughing at it all. He sang to me: “Row, row, row your boat gently on the lake. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life’s a piece of cake.” Life’s a piece of cake mommy, why are you making it so hard?

Then he changed it up to: “Row, row, row your boat on a on a mouth. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life’s a piece of mouth.” He thought that was supremely hilarious and laughed heartily. I have to give it to him for being creative and trying to make a joke – but mostly I admire his ability to laugh. He reminds me every day to laugh. Life really can be laughable if you let yourself see it that way.

Row gently and know none of it is real. It’s amazing how hard it can be to laugh, to let go of attachments, to believe it is all just a dream. It’s all a creation of our minds. Everything we hold onto is ultimately unimportant. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have people or things in our lives but we should try to be in control of how our mind reacts, how we attach, how we project meaning and expectations onto them. It must be easier if you become a monk…

But I will row on and practice.

Quotes from Satchidananda, Swami, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali/translation and commentary by Swami Satchidananda, Integral Yoga Publications, Yogaville, 1990.