Raise Your Self! Look up!

The higher thought processes can free you from your lower self. 

Michael A. Singer.

Raise your Self! Just raise yourself.  Look up!

I often tell my students during hatha class to keep looking up. whether their eyes are open or not. I want them looking up toward the sky during most asanas and I want them lifting their gaze to the sixth chakra or above during seated or meditative practice.  "Just keep looking up". 

It no longer seems natural for us to look up, does it?

We are habitually drawn to, unfortunately, as in little me's never ceasing dramas, that which is down.  Ego brings us down, Spirit (or whatever you want to call it) naturally pulls us up. Focusing on this body, heart, and mind, and what is happening to it brings the energy of  consciousness which is meant to be elevated and euphoric...down. Most of us are spending our lives looking down rather than up.

I love Singer's reminder to his podcast audience last Sunday that this powerful flow of energy called Shakti is within us all.  For most of us,  it will remain coiled up and asleep at the base of our spines our entire life without us even knowing it is there ( Kundalini).  For yogis, however, who seek to gently and gradually wake this sleeping energy up, to unblock the Sushumna so Shakti can flow up through the higher chakras...there is the possibility that we just may experience that magnificent flow within us at some point in this life time. If we can do our best to stop creating more blockages to the flow with our preferences, resistance, supression, and repression; if we can learn to release and relax into life; if we can learn to refocus our awareness and to look up away from all that  we are so addicted to looking at ...keeping the gaze of consciousness on the subject of consciousness rather than the object...we just might wake up that coiled energy. So, look up instead of down...is my mantra.

Though I remind my students and  myself how important it is to keep the gaze up to where that higher energy comes from...sometimes I slip and find my focus pulled down as I did a few days ago. I found myself looking down into the muddy whirlpool of a "me" in a body that is constantly making noise that seems so difficult for others to hear because that just may be the way it is supposed to be, a "me" who is surrounded by the thick mud of circumstantial drama as it keeps getting  pulled down into it like quicksand. I find myself sinking, sinking, sinking until all I can see is the mud on either side of me.  This is what happens when I forget to keep my gaze up, when I fail to fall back into a much purer, mud free flow I cannot yet see or feel but know instinctively  is there. I forgot to look up. I got stuck in the mud, of human drama.

Whenever I realize I once again n fell into the mud of  mind created suffering rather than the clear, healing  flow of Shakti...I sigh...and return to my yoga practice. Again, and again, and again. My practice is all about not closing or resisting to what life is giving me, therefore, not adding more blockages to the Shakti flow.  It is about creating space for the samskaras to arise and be released as they are so inclined to do. It is about allowing: allowing  Life to be exactly as it is and allowing whatever I stuffed in my psyche to emerge so I can let it go. I know that is the only way to go.

How do I know it?

I don't know. I just do.  Though I practice all kinds of yoga : Hatha Yoga, Karma Yoga, Kriya Yoga, sometimes Japa Yoga, and Raja Yoga...I think it is  the Jhana Yoga that has gotten me so far. I am trying to use the higher thought processes to bring this "me" up and out. I study and write what I learn from masters who studied and wrote because that is so natural for me.  I teach as I learn because that too is natural for me. Though I am keenly aware of the limitations of concepts and such knowing...I often use this means to raise me from the mud. 

I am not sure if I will ever truly expereince the free flow of Shakti within me in this carnation but somehow the learning I am doing is pointing the way there. If  I get there, this  method of freeing myself from the mud will be totally obselete, I am sure. It won't matter once I am floating in the Shakti.

As I practice Jhana and all other forms of yoga; as I take each step and breathe each braeth...I need to remember to keep looking up. Keep looking up.

All is well 

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe ( March 17, 2024) Shakti-A Deep Dive Into Your Energy Flow. https://tou.org/talks/