Not only  is this moment a new experience for all of us, but it is new in a different way to each of us. Even though we each experience this now in a way that we never have before, we also experience it with an awareness that is different than any other. We each experience what is, now, uniquely. Not only is each moment unique, each experience of the moment is unique to each that shares the experience.

Not only do we each experience life as an eternal stream of subtle (and not so subtle) newness and discovery, everyone around us is continually having their own version of this in their own unique way. So that right now in this precise moment each individual is having their own personal experience of now in a way that is different from that experienced by anyone else.

AND not only is this moment being spontaneously experienced by each of us in a new way that is different than the way that anyone else is affected now, we are also experiencing our awareness in a way that has never been before because there has never been anyone exactly like any one of us before. So not only is this moment always an experience new to ourselves and everyone around us, it is new beyond what has ever been experienced in life before.

This continual flow of newness is not limited to ourselves as humans, it includes all life. All creatures, trees, grass, even bacteria all share in and are part of this perpetual uniqueness of experience. And because of this there is always unpredictability in every experience. We can only predict what we know. We can never predict what is unknown to us. This means that because each moment contains unique newness simultaneously for all life,  life always, continuously, presents an unexpected factor to all life.

Others have sat in a chair and gazed at a tree growing outside their windows. But no one, not even ourselves, have sat in sat in this exact chair at this precise moment of the chair’s existence and looked at this particular tree in this moment of its stage of growth and life cycle. Even the trillions of cells that make up the physical body that encapsulates us and the tree are different in this moment than they have ever been before or will ever be again.

Even the photons of light that we experience as we look at the tree are a new configuration of energy than has ever been before. Most of those photons were produced in the Sun as a product of its nuclear fusion inside its core. What we perceive as light was produced as atoms, each unique unto themselves, combine and give off and absorb energy so that the ever changing atoms are always different, and the photons of light are ever changing and being recreated. This is happening so intensely that it takes more than 100,000 years for the photon energy that is produced at the Sun’s core to reach its surface. The tree we are seeing is an experience of light that has been forming for longer than our concept of humanity.

There is no end to the expansion of our awareness of this. It is beyond our ability to conceive it. It is also forever beyond our ability to predict, manipulate or control just as each of us is beyond anyone’s ability to predict, manipulate or control. This truth is the source of eternal conflict within ourselves because we forever desire to predict, manipulate and control everything, including God. Of course this produces conflict.

Instead of accepting that the infinite creativity that we experience as this, the eternal flow of now that is the ever-present manifestation and experience of the infinite, which is God, we invent our own images of something that is not part of the reality. We form these images according to our limited thoughts and concepts and call that God. We do not even have words to adequately describe the experience of looking out our window at a tree, yet we presume the ability to convey an image of that which is infinitely infinite beyond the concept of any consciousness. Imposing these images onto reality as religions do by purporting to accurately convey God is an insult to all creation.

As we understand this internal conflict the question arises as to whether we will choose to maintain our religions with their disdain for the spontaneous experience of reality, in favor of the fantasy of controlling that which is beyond any limitation and call that God, or to humble ourselves and choose spirituality and become still enough to develop an appreciation and understanding of the flow of consciousness and experience of God.

In order to understand this it is necessary to define and explain a few basic terms.

What is spirituality? Kundalini Yoga teaches that we and all creation exist in Oneness with God. If spirituality means connection to God then all living things are equally spiritual because all things are equally part of the Oneness of God. This would mean that spirituality has no real distinction.  What makes spirituality distinct is the ability to recognize the connection of Oneness. Humanity has this ability which other species appear to lack. The basis for this ability of humanity to recognize our connection with Oneness lies in our  ability to recognize what is true. As humans we can recognize when we are being honest with ourselves and when we are not and make choices accordingly. We also have the ability to hear what we want to hear and believe what we want to believe. We have these opposing abilities in equal amounts. This is the basis of our free will. We have the ability to choose to develop more honesty within ourselves or to choose ignorance and maintain our delusions. Anything that we do that causes us to become more honest with ourselves is spiritual. Anything that encourages us to hear only what we want to hear and believe what we want to believe inhibits our spirituality.

A spiritual practice then is anything that we do that develops our ability to be honest with ourselves. Kundalini Yoga is the science that includes all forms of spiritual practice. Kundalini Yoga makes no differentiation for religion or belief system. If the intent of the practice is to cause the practitioner to become more honest with themselves it is a valid spiritual practice and part of Kundalini Yoga. Kundalini Yoga is not just the exercises and kriyas that are associated with yogic masters like Yogi Bhajan. Kundalin Yoga includes all types of prayer, all chanting and singing of hymns, all bowing or genuflction before what is deemed sacred, all contemplation of any divine form, all performance of devotional service, and all recitation of divine mantras. If it is a practice that causes folks to become more honest with themselves it is part of Kundalini Yoga.

Meditation is the ability to process ourselves to discover what is true. It has two parts, expanding awareness and applying consciousness. We all learn through expanding our awareness and applying our consciousness. It is the only way we ever learn. When we learned to walk or talk we had to expand our awareness to incorporate parts of ourselves that we had never used before and we had to make decisions about what worked and didn’t work by applying our consciousness. The expansion of awareness and application of consciousness is so essential to learning that it is even key to the evolution of all lifeforms. In other words, evolution itself is based upon the development of the skills necessary to meditate. What makes humanity unique is that we can directly access the expansion of our awareness and the application of our consciousness while other species have not adequately developed them to do so.

When we have learned meditation to the point that we can expand our awareness and apply our consciousness at any moment on command this is still not meditation on the Naam. Meditation on the Naam means that we we have expanded our awareness and applied our consciousness to the point that we have come to the experience of our essence, the Oneness. It is called the experience of the Soul. When one can meditate and produce the experience of the Soul this is meditation on the Naam.

It is the purpose of all spiritual practices to cause us to become more honest with ourselves so that we can directly access the ultimate honesty within ourselves which is the experience of our own Soul which exists in Oneness with all creation and God.

3HO and Sikh blogs: Random Caligraphy, How to Meditate | MrSikhNet, Sikhnet Discussion: Do we believe in God or Naam?, The Concept of Naam, Naam Jaap-Contemplation, Meditating the Sikh Way, Gurta Gaadi of Guru Gobind Singh, Lord’s Name is Peace Giving 20L, Sikh Book Club, Sahaj and Sikhism, Ik Onkaar at golden temple, God’s Note, Sat Nam Wahe Guru, Valor Counterbalancing Bravado, The Cosmology and Methodology of the Siri Guru Granth Sahib,

Our last Introductory Meditation Seminar was at the end of May. At the last seminar, Jagatguru Singh had us working in pairs. We experienced interconnectedness through recognizing and stilling ourselves to the tension that we feel in relationship to others. Recognizing interconnectedness and the peace that it brings is one of the first steps to learning to meditate.

The next Introductory Meditation Seminar is this Saturday, June 26th. The address of the Seminar is 5820 Merriam Dr, Merriam, KS. The site for the seminar is a historic schoolhouse. It is a large brick building on the West side of the road and parking is on the side of the building. We’ll be gathering at 5 PM, and should be finished by 7. The cost is $20. Please feel free to bring friends or family. We will also have Meditation Practice CD’s available for sale at $20 each. There will also be a sign up sheet for the Stilling the Mind course.

We are committed to offering courses and seminars that are true, and clear. Students gain experience from the teachings at every level, making their value evident.

We hope to see you there,

Bibi

Read more about Sacred Space Courses here.

Contact us: bibi.estlund@gmail.com

A few years back I was working in a college bookstore. One day I was cleaning out my email inbox and came across an email from the campus library announcing their new acquisitions. As I quickly scrolled through the list a book written by the Dalia Lama caught my attention. I felt a very great desire to read it. Books in general have an intoxicating effect on me but particularly when coupled with subjects that are close to my heart. I knew, however, that my time for reading or doing anything else was non-existent. I was working a physically and mentally demanding full-time job, going to school part-time and along with my husband raising an active family. Every spare moment I felt compelled to study so that I could maintain excellent grades. It was absolutely insane to add another thing to my schedule. I did not even have the time to go and check the book out. I sat for a moment investigating my duality. When I came to a point of inner peace I knew that I didn’t need anything outside myself to make me whole and that whatever I was supposed to experience would come to me. Within myself I said, “If I am meant to read this book it will have to grow feet and walk to me” and I hit the delete button on the email. In that very same instant my phone rang. I was surprised that it was the very librarian whose email I had just deleted. It was so uncanny that I felt a little guilty having just rejected her list of offerings. I blurted out “I just read your email” and half expected her to say I know. She said they had a lot of good books this time and was there anything that I wanted. So, I told her about the Dalia Lama’s book. This was too weird she said she would check it out for me and bring it over right away. Just when I thought she was some kind of omniscient being turns out she let me know the reason for her call. She needed to purchase a book for a class she was taking and she was calling to make sure we had it. That book did grow feet and it was a confirmation of something my teacher had taught that there are two ways to get something, one way is to chase after it and the other is to let it come to you. When you let it come to you, you know it is really yours. The challenge is stilling yourself from the chase.

Guruparwaz

Since this is my first post contributing to the Sacred Space blog, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Bibi (Khalsa) Estlund, and I’m Jagatguru Singh’s eldest daughter. One area that we would like to showcase here on the sacred space blog is the process of spirituality. One way to do that is to tell stories of meditative experiences. I would like to invite all readers to submit their own stories…but while we’re waiting on those, my own story will have to do.

I, of course, have been learning from my father since birth, but my journey into the realm of meditation did not begin until I was eleven years old.  Sant Guru Dev Singh had been to visit our home in Kansas City, and taught some courses on the healing art of Sat Nam Rasayan. Papa was going through quite a transformation, and I felt he was becoming insufferable to live with.

Papa had always been a sort of macho man. He liked to work with his hands, as I’m sure would be the case with anyone who was both a massage therapist and a handyman around the house, and he’s always been a bit of a perfectionist. But once he started studying under Sant Guru Dev, things changed. He was now practicing yoga and meditation for what seemed like half the day. He couldn’t get enough of a particular tape that was nothing but rhythmic chanting.

I remember thinking that there couldn’t possibly be anything more boring than living in a place with so much emphasis on sitting with your eyes closed and being still. Every time I tried to do meditations (which is what we called sitting in a yogic posture and using a chant) I became acutely aware of how itchy my clothing was. I was an absolute master at secretly looking at the clock and checking how much time was left.

Rebelliousness is absolutely a part of my personality. I can’t stand to be told what to do (as evidenced by the state of my bedroom during my teenage years), and so I didn’t come around easily to my father telling me that meditation was something that I needed to learn. I decided that I was going to have nothing to do with it. And of course no one could make me…what surprised me though was that no one tried.

I of course knew when Sat Nam Rasayan and meditation practices were held at Papa’s office, and one day, of my own accord, I walked the block and a half to his office and arrived right on time. All of us students sat in a circle around one person who was lying down to be healed. Papa led us. First we became aware of the gravity that was pulling on all parts of ourselves and that we were simultaneously ignoring. That simple act of awareness awoke something within me. I immediately recognized the stillness in myself which for me feels like a calming, low vibration of electrical current. The pleasantness of that moment was astounding. This of course set off fireworks of thoughts ranging from the profound to the minuscule.

Papa and I locked eyes afterward. He knew that I had gotten a glimpse of the stillness. I remember that day vividly, as if it was the most important part of the process to getting there. On the other hand, I can’t remember much about the days that I was feeling grumbly and sour. Yet, I know that they were no less important to the process of learning to meditate. On this road, I’m learning that there are countless steps that we take, and some of them seem significant and others don’t. The one that I’ve just recounted seems of large significance…and then I remember about how I used to ignore gravity. It reminds me that breakthroughs come from the mundane, and that it’s all a part of the cycle.

Bibi

The reason that meditation is so misunderstood is that the real “how to” of how to meditate must be learned in the second side of the teachings. If a person has not learned or understood the second side of the teachings, they do not know how to meditate. In an elaborate demonstration of how the vast majority of his students had not learned the second side of the teachings, and did not know how to meditate, Yogi Bhajan allowed IKYTA certification to be marketed to his students. Yogi Bhajan did this because there was/is so much posturing and competition between his students. Yogi Bhajan allowed the IKYTA certification to be marketed because students that buy into this certification program demonstrate that they do not understand the second side of the teachings or how to meditate. They demonstrate that having a competitive edge by posturing is more important. Yogi Bhajan did this so elaborately because he came to realize that competitive posturing is a major obstacle to shifting from religious to spiritual that there needed to be a dramatic demonstration of how corrupting it is.

Becoming certified by IKYTA is supposed to validate the credibility of a student to lead Kundalini Yoga classes, but instead it demonstrates a corruption of personal integrity. This corruption happens gradually. A person practices Kundalini Yoga and experiences something profound. Each time they continue to practice they “tune in” at the beginning of their session. They begin their practice with the chant Ong Namo; Guru Dev Namo, which means I humble myself to the Infinite Creativity; I humble myself to the Angelic Light that dispels all darkness. We who have practiced Kundalini Yoga have been taught that this chant is essential to begin every session. We have also been taught that performing this chant establishes our link to the lineage of Spiritual Teachers that have produced what we are practicing. When leading a Kundalini Yoga session for other students we have been taught that practicing this chant at the beginning is the way to humble ourselves and tune in and become a pure channel for the teachings. If we are experiencing this tuning in, if we are experiencing a humility that produces the insight of what to teach, then this is an extremely profound and valuable thing that needs to be validated above all else. It is the only thing that validates us to teach not from our own egos. If we do not have this experience then it must be questioned why we are sharing something that we do not know to be valid.

IKYTA certification allows the student to avoid the soul searching that is necessary to validate “tuning in”. A person that truly experiences humility when they tune in perceives a shift in themselves that produces a purer channel for the teachings. The second side of the teachings teaches us that a shift of this kind is always a product of humility. A  person that experiences this then understands that what is essential for sharing the teachings as a pure channel is this humility. The second side of the teachings also establishes that those that experience this transformation through humility must live to examplify it as a reality, to be living examples of that purity. Rather than validating that purity, the IKYTA certification discredits it by indicating that there is something more valid, the accreditation that they sell. IKYTA certification is a clear statement by those that participate that what really matters is not the broadening of humility and the purity that “tuning in” produces but being connected by becoming certified.

The process of producing purity through humility is exactly what meditation entails. Meditation requires the development humility so that we can become aware of a deeper purity. We deepen this purity evolves until at a certain point humility produces the experience of the Soul. The Soul is then understood to be the ultimate reality to be used to bring clarification to all things through humility. Utilizing the Soul in this way for clarification is meditation. As a true Spiritual Teacher, Yogi Bhajan understood how competitive posturing disallows us from work together to produce sustainability. He had recognized this as a major corrupter of all religions, the Sikh religion in particular. (His attitudes on this and confrontations of it are the reason the Punjabi Sikhs disliked Yogi Bhajan so much.) Yogi Bhajan decided that the process of producing purity through humility had to be demonstrated as a vital reality in order to validate the Soul and meditation. We either buy into social certification or remain true to something that is more true for us, our own experience of spiritual reality. This is the requirement to become a Spiritual Teacher. This is what the world needs more of, and what fulfills the mission of Yogi Bhajan to produce Spiritual Teachers.

Getting back to guided visualizations, the experience of the Soul is beyond words or images or imaginings. The Soul is the ultimate reality where we understand that all our imaginings are distractions from that purity. Visualizations distract from the experience of reality. Visualizations are not meditation. More distractions are not needed. What is needed is more humility. Humility is the path to meditation.

It’s not the life that matters, but the courage we bring to it.

Blogs about Shirley MacLaine and spirituality: New Age Spiritualities, Are We Just Good At Imagining God?, Worldview & Basic Beliefs Review

Blogs about meditation: Simple Breathing and Relaxation Techniques, Devotional Commentary of the 23rd Psalm, “Saving” Christmas, Grace, Mercy and Favor, Improve your Personal Life in Awareness

Blogs about humility: Life’s A Blog & A Symphony, Hwp8j’s Weblog, Possessing the Treasure, Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks, Amitabhm’s Blog

Blogs about Kundalini Yoga/IKYTA: Eat Pray Love, Kundalininow’s Blog, What is Kundalini Yoga?, the grateful phoenix, Kundalini Yoga Room, Take a Breather with Kundalini Yoga

Change comes from within. When change is attempted only externally it does not work. This is why dealing with global climate change is so difficult to deal with. It requires us to each change how we relate to ourselves and the way we each live our lives. It requires us each to change to become more ethical in our own lives when it is easier not to do the right thing. This requires internal change. When this problem is approached with from an external solution point of view it is not even clear what to do to solve the problem. There are some general ideas, maybe even some general agreement on a good day, but no clear path out of the mess. This paradigm can be applied to any of the imminent problems facing humanity. This is because the solutions that are proposed for these problems attempt to impose change from outside on the problem, rather than approaching the issue as needing deeper spiritual responsibility and development from within. These exterior solutions have the effect of medicating the symptoms of the problems but never getting to or dealing with the root of the problem.

Blogs about global climate change: Top 10 worst effects of global warming, Vancouver Unitarians for Climate Change, Eating and Climate Change, Pachauri claims Indian scientific position arrogant, A World War II-Scale Effort

The war in Afghanistan is a prime example of how solutions that are imposed from outside do not fix the problems within. There are huge problems with the way that the folks within Afghanistan have in dealing with each other involving everything from violence to corruption. Until those issues are dealt with by them, no solution that is applied from an exterior source will work. Where they are not taking responsibility for their own problems no outside aid or force will work. David Rohde is very articulate on this topic also (Spiritual Conflict Resolution).

Blogs about David Rohde: A war reporter’s story, One Journalist’s Capture and Escape from the Taliban, An Element of Danger, A Taliban haven inside Pakistan?, Are we there yet?

How to develop the spiritual growth needed in these cases is the realm of expertise of Spiritual Teachers. Spiritual Teachers are those rare individuals among us that have learned to address their own internal corruption and manipulative behaviors and understand that serving this spiritual growth in others is the path of their lives. In this day and age Spiritual Teachers tend to be objects of suspicion and mistrust. This is because  no distinction is made between them and religious leaders and they are therefore considered to be as corrupt as their religious counterparts. The big distinction betwen the two is that the job of a Spiritual Teacher is to take the student to the point of spiritual independence while the religious leader is continually tries to increase their own authority and that of their religion. While Spiritual Teachers can be affiliated with a religion, they recognize that religion is just a vehicle to present spirituality. The Spiritual Teacher’s responsibility is to the development of spiritual understanding and not to the religious participation of the students.

Another misconception is that Spiritual Teachers are considered to have lived long ago and are not thought to be around today. Religions revere Spiritual Teachers like Moses, Buddha, Yeshua (Jesus), the Prophet Mohammad, and the Sikh Gurus religiously and mostly ignore the presence of Spiritual Teachers in our own time. To confuse things even worse, posers promote themselves as Spiritual Teachers which makes it seems as if true Spiritual Teachers are the same as these posers. They are not.

What makes Spiritual Teachers so vital for us at this time is that they alone have the understanding of the spiritual changes that we each need to go through individually, and teaching others who are then capable of teaching others is the only feasible way to multiply the numbers needed to have sufficient impact on our most serious problems.

In order to help validate that real Spiritual Teachers are with us today there is a page on this blog entitled “How I Met My Teacher” that contains real life experiences of people meeting Spiritual Teachers. This page is for everyone to post in the comment box their own story of how they recognized their Teacher as a Spiritual Master. It is also OK to challenge the validity of these experiences and the Spiritual Teachers associated with them in the spirit of investigating and actually defining what a Spiritual Teacher really is and is not.

Spiritual Teachers that I have personally identified in this lifetime are:

Yogi Bhajan

blogs: Kundalini Connection, Kundalininow’s Blog, Who is Yogi Bhajan?, Recipe by Yogi Bhajan, Be the Lighthouse

Sant Guru Dev Singh

blogs: Sat Nam Rasayan Canada, Guru Dev is in Town!, Healing and Shuniya,

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

blogs: Tibetreport’s Blog, The most important thing we can do, Chinese angry on India, Pay it Forward, The Buddhist Tradition, Khamerlogue

Thich Nhat Hanh

blogs: On Technology as the Solution, Meditations on Anger, my time?, Crossing A Channel, A Gift of Dharma for 11.9.09

Preah Maha Ghosananda

blogs: The Gods Drink Whiskey, Making Peace, The rising of the light, Democratic Peace

Eckhart Tolle

blogs: JasonGarcia’s Blog, I smoke, Christianity vs. Islam, I Totally Blame Eckhart Tolle

The money discussion with the guy turned into an argument, and I eventually gave him only $350 and told him to get lost. I remember the look he gave me when he left. It was a look of disbelief that I could treat him so unfairly after he had worked so hard every day to help me finish that job. It had truly been hell humping those sheets of sheet rock up scaffolding, holding them in place on the two story ceiling while one or the other of us got a nail in the stuff. It had been truly awful but he had given his all every step of the process and I had misused him for it. Although he couldn’t speak English that parting look said, “I can’t believe you can treat me like this. I actually thought you were a good person. You intentionally cheated me. I don’t see how you can live with yourself.”

Time passed. I never saw the guy again. I never told anybody about it, I was too ashamed. I pretended like it had never happened. I forgot about the whole nasty affair. Fast forward seven years to 1987.  I’m married with two kids and Houston is in the midst of a recession. I’m unemployed and decide to start my own painting/sheet rock business so our family can survive. I had three or four jobs going at the same time, one of them being a very large job on a wealthy person’s country home on their ranch outside Sealy, TX, more than an hour east of Houston. Things were not going well on my jobs. I was stretched too thin to attend to all of them properly. Consequently the money was not coming in fast enough to cover expenses. Luckily I had a large chunk of money that I was supposed to receive on the Sealy job the next day as long as the required amount of work was complete. I needed to purchase materials for the jobs I had going in Houston and I did so with a check that I did not have funds in my account to cover. I figured I could have the draw on the Sealy job deposited the next day and that would cover everything before the materials check hit my bank. I had a real bad feeling when I wrote out that materials check but I kept telling myself that the Sealy draw would cover it.

I was supposed to pick up that draw at 11 the next morning. The work that was supposed to be complete in order to pick up that draw was not finished but we were close. I told myself that I could get our crew out there really early and maybe get everything done before 11 and schmooze it with the owner lady if it was not. The next morning I was loading the truck at 5:30. The phone started ringing. Problems with one of the Houston jobs. As I was dealing with that, problems with the workers on my crew had to be dealt with. At 7:00 I was racing off to deal with an unhappy customer at one of the Houston jobs. I still had to deliver materials to the other sites. The customer kept me waiting at the first site, then when he finally showed up he had a whole line of contractors there that he had to deal with. I had to wait in line for my turn. All morning I was racing from one job site in Houston to the next. I had told my Sealy crew to be at my house at 7:00 so I could drive us out to that job. At 10:30 I was still racing to another one of the Houston jobs and I hadn’t even picked up the crew for Sealy yet. On top of that EVERY traffic light I came to was red. I was about to explode. I started cussing out loud at God when there was another red light. I seriously considered running it and every other red light until I was on the road to Sealy. It was such a perfect storm that I had no doubt that it was being divinely generated.  I asked God why EVERY traffic light had to be red. I felt like I was about to have an emotional outburst of rage and frustration. Then it dawned on me that it was just a test of whether God could reduce me to a screaming lunatic. I decided there was no way that I would give God the satisfaction.

As I had these thoughts I noticed that I had I was feeling intense anxiety that felt like it would overwhelm me. I associated this overwhelming anxiety with God pushing my buttons and decided, “Bring it on. Give it your best shot. I am not afraid of this anxiety and to prove it I am going to allow it to overwhelm me.” I then consciously allowed the most intense feelings I was having to happen to me. My fear mounted similar to the way it does when you slowly climb that first hill on a roller coaster, crest that hill and begin hurtling to certain death. Surprisingly, at the point where the intensity seemed like it was going to overwhelm me it began to subside. I asked myself what was the worst that could happen. The materials check would hit my bank and cause an avalanche of checks to bounce causing my account to be closed, forcing me out of business? I hated this business. I had never enjoyed it. It was just what I did when I had to survive. Let the check bounce. Then an insight occurred. What I was afraid of hadn’t happened yet and just like the morning I was having had been completely unpredicted by me, something beyond what I could imagine was possible. It was even possible that the Sealy owner lady might be a little late herself and I could distract her from noticing that there wasn’t enough work completed for our draw.

At that instant I realized that the intense anxiety I was feeling was all about my impatience at being where I was and wanting to be someplace else. The anxiety conveyed the thought that where I was, doing what I was doing was not good enough, that I was just a worthless piece of shit that was never good enough and never going to be. I realized that I was actually doing everything I possibly could in that moment to live up to my obligations to my customers and my family. I realized that I actually was at exactly the right place at that exact time doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing to the best of my ability. I was still sitting at that red light. It hadn’t even changed yet. I looked around and noticed that it was a very beautiful fall day in Houston. There was a magnificent large oak tree to my right that canopied my vehicle with shade. It was superb and I had been so self involved that I hadn’t even noticed.

The light changed to green and I completed what business I needed to attend to and was soon on the road to Sealy with the crew. When I came to a red light I noticed the anxiety begin to build and I would allow it to wash through me as I had learned that morning. Each time I did, there was further resolution that I was at the right place at the right time. When we got to the Sealy job it was well past noon and there was only one other vehicle there. It belonged to one of the carpenters. I got the crew lined out doing what we needed for the draw. Then I hunted down the carpenter and asked him if the owner lady had been by. He said he hadn’t seen her, but that he had just gotten there himself and there wasn’t anyone there when he pulled in, no work crews at all. This was not good news, but I figured we needed to finish our work to get the draw anyway, we were all the way out in Sealy now, we just needed to do our work. Less than a half hour later I saw the owner lady’s car pulling onto the ranch. I thought, “Here it comes. She’s pissed because she was here earlier and saw that we hadn’t completed the work for our draw, and she’s doubly pissed because there wasn’t anybody working there that morning, and I am going to catch her anger for all of it.” I decided to walk out to her car and take it like a man, expecting to get fired.

When she saw me she said that she was very sorry to have not made it out there that morning as she had promised, that she knew I was relying on that draw and so even though unimaginable hassles had kept her from making our appointment on time she had come out there regardless of the lateness to make sure I got my money. She went on to tell me that she knew that she had promised to walk through our work with me so that I could have her decide on the incidentals that had come up but that there were things that she absolutely needed to attend to back in Houston. She apologized but we would just have to reschedule the walk through for another day. I graciously accepted her apology and her check. Five minutes after I saw her car leave the ranch I told my guys to pack it in because I needed to make a deposit before the end of new business at 2:30. I made that deposit at 2:25. I am completely convinced that had I not learned to relax there would have been a very different outcome with the owner lady at her ranch. I think that her circumstances would have changed so that she would not have missed that appointment. The depth of me knows that she and I were affecting what was happening in each other’s lives that day.

Some of the anxiety that I felt at the stop light was a shame that I carried around with me from my first sheet rock experience. As long as we carry around unresolved shame, or anything that causes us to feel that we are basically flawed, we never feel that we are at the right place at the right time, and we cannot truly appreciate life. When I allowed those intense anxieties to wash over me and do their damnedest I was relaxing my control complex, and as soon as I did this I was able to notice and appreciate the panorama of life that surrounded me, most notably the wonderful canopy of the tree that was shading me (which has its own symbolism as well). Despite my best efforts to present myself to the world as if I were a good person I had issues of shame that I. I tried to pretend like I  did not have those issues, but they were always there. I claimed that I wanted equality and justice and a new spiritual understanding to develop in the world and all the time I carried the burden of my own hypocrisy around until a situation developed where I could no longer maintain that facade.

On that day at the stop light I  began to crack away at my facade because I started to deal with my self-deceit. I did not remember the incident from 1980 on that day at the stop light. I still had no idea the depth of the guilt that I carried. That came later as I continued to delve deeper into what I learned under that tree’s canopy. Shortly after this was when I met Sant Guru Dev Singh and he healed my broken rib (The Healing of Sat Nam Rasayan). Later it was learning Sat Nam Rasayan, the second side of the teachings, where I learned to systematically delve deeply into these issues and understand the connections. I found that in order to get beyond my shame I needed to learn to forgive myself.

In order to alleviate the feelings of shame and guilt that we carry around we first have to become completely honest with ourselves in order to admit what we are feeling guilty and ashamed about. We have to investigate within ourselves how we learned to react in the way that causes us this suffering. Inevitably this leads to a discovery that when we learned this self-destructive behavior it was at an earlier time in our lives when it seemed the only course to follow. Many times we find that this developed because we were embroiled in intense situations of fear and degradation. Developing the habit pattern that had become the source of our suffering was the best we could come up with at the time. It was just the way we had learned to survive. Delving deep into ourselves in this way develops the understanding that is necessary for us to forgive ourselves for learning to behave in the ways that cause us shame. In such a state of self-honesty we also realize the suffering that we have caused others and it becomes clear that in order to be truly responsible for what we have done me must not only renounce that behavior from that moment forward, we must commit ourselves to addressing the issues involved to make amends for our contribution to the moral decay. If we do not address the issues we now know so thoroughly, who will?

That was the pledge that I made to myself as I learned to face my own personal corruption, the issues that I was a slave to when I decided it was OK to not pay the guy I hired to help me hang sheet rock. It was because of this pledge that I am outspoken against the certification that IKYTA does. I know that this seems like a petty issue, but I know differently. I know that what I went through in learning to redeem myself, everyone must go through. I know that Yogi Bhajan had the structure of Sat Nam Rasayan developed so that it could be learned openly and safely. I know it works because I experienced the miracle of it. I know because learning it I learned to redeem myself, and I know that this is the true path that leads to becoming a Spiritual Teacher as Yogi Bhajan intended all along.

I also know that the IKYTA certification is only a way to pose as someone that knows something spiritual. There are no requirements beyond the ability to pose well in front of a class of yoga students. Having gone through the hell of confronting my own inner corruption I know that as long as there is an easy out we will not face that corruption. If there is any excuse available we will avoid dealing with our shame. This ties in with IKYTA because not only does the IKYTA certification process not teach what is necessary to produce Spiritual Teachers, it facilitates the corruption of all that participate in that process. It condones posing as spiritual as more important than being spiritual. For me not to speak out against this institutionalized corruption of the teachings violates my commitment to my own redemption.

The structure to redeem ourselves exists. Sant Guru Dev Singh teaches it, masterfully. If it works for someone like me, it will work for anyone.

It’s not the life that matters, but the courage we bring to it.

Blogs about Kundalini Yoga instruction: Catalyst Yogi, Kundalini Yoga-FAQ, Eyes Wide Open, Breakthrough healing, Savitree

Blogs about Sat Nam Rasayan: Darsana Wellness, Healing with Lea, The Yoga Cafe,

In the intro of his book The Power of Now (pp. 1-2) Eckhart Tolle describes the intensity that he went through as he learned to unlock what he had blocked. It is highly recommended that this be read in order to understand the level of intensity that we are dealing with and also to be familiar with what someone else did that was healing when they found they could no longer block their most intense feelings.

Recent Eckhart Tolle blogs: On Being Yourself, PAIN BODY OR POSSESSION, Witness Self, Words, Climbing ladders vs. building bridges

I read a post yesterday of a piece of prose entitled Cafe News, Volume 2. In its seven brief paragraphs it describes the Hell that we create and maintain for our lives. The piece’s honesty describes internal thoughts and emotions that we all have and have learned to avoid. In fact we have become expert at avoiding them because the survival of our psyche has depended on it. This survival has become our persona, and this piece of prose accurately conveys how we do this to ourselves.

Cafe News, Volume 2: Actually, I don’t even know anymore, what’s true and what’s not.  I don’t even know if I care.  Mostly, I just sit around, wishing for some life other than the one I have.  Wishing something external would change me into what I want to be.

We are sensory beings. We see, we hear, we touch, we feel. We have a sense of everything that is so complex that we cannot fully understand anything. There is always a deeper understanding. We are connected to and part of infinity. We experience infinity as always more complexity because each experience is a part of our experience of the infinite interconnectedness of the Universe. Every experience also contains uniqueness that gives every moment in every life unpredictability. While it is predictable that the Sun will rise in the morning, the exact experience of tomorrow morning is always beyond anyone’s ability to predict. These qualities that every  experience is infinite and beyond our ability to ever fully comprehend it and at the same time unique can be referred to as infinite-creativity/God. We are always in this experience of infinite-creativity/God to the point that we cannot even conceive of ever having the same two exact experiences or meeting the same two people.

This continuous experience of infinite-creativity maintains constant uncertainty, and uncertainty causes us to question ourselves and our connection to everything (Actually, I don’t even know anymore, what’s true and what’s not.). Whatever else life may be it is always an experience of constant uncertainty, and as former two year-olds we have all developed behavior patterns to in some way to control the uncomfortable feelings of our constant uncertainty. When we try to hold onto our control instead of humbling ourselves to expand our concepts it causes us the pain of the Cafe News quote above. We are clinging to a delusional sense of control. At the same time we are aware that this is not working and is in fact causing us unhappiness, yet we resist that awareness because we do not know how to act other than our control pattern so that clinging to our fantasy of control only causes the intensity of the uncertainty to increase. In this way we maintain our ignorance. We ignore that our delusions of control do not work and are the source of our suffering.

If all life is, is a continuum of the unique experience of uncertainty in each moment, there would be no redemption and no such thing as spirituality. This is not the case because within our suffering there is always a delusion that we are holding onto. When we surrender our control of this delusion we are able to consider possibilities beyond those of our delusion, and when we relax our attitude in this way something beyond the outcomes that our delusion of control predicts manifests. (There is always this cause and effect relationship. This is one of the proofs that spirituality exists.) The tension of our uncertainty is therefore constantly teaching us how to recognize our control issues, and experience a reality beyond our delusions. This is the path of our redemption. It doesn’t matter what religion we belong to we must all redeem our delusions.

Notice that in Cafe News, Volume 2 the dissatisfaction that is felt indicates what is causing the suffering. Mostly, I just sit around, wishing for some life other than the one I have.  Wishing something external would change me into what I want to be. . . . I always told myself I was a cut above the rest.  Unfortunately, this is true.  I am clearly capable of achieving absolutely exceptional examples of self-deception. We know when we are deceiving ourselves we even know how we are doing it. We always feel it. We try to avoid our feelings of self-deception but this only causes our suffering to intensify because it is only more self-deception, and we know it. Even our attempts at self-honesty are deceptive: Basically, I’ve come to realize I’m full of shit. Rather than using this honesty to redeem ourselves we find a way to diminish it and sustain what we are ignoring: Not that it matters, because everyone is.

We feel all of this because we have awareness of all of this. We have feelings of how we are maintaining our state of self-deception in every moment. This awareness of our self-deception is something that we are always aware of even in our dreams at night as Cafe News describes so eloquently. Correspondingly, we always know when we are being honest with ourselves. Always. Just as our self-deception happens incrementally, builds on itself, and becomes habitual, self-honesty can grow from the seemingly insignificant honesty of identifying what we feel (How we deepen what we know is true). In this state of honesty we can then also identify what our reaction to what we are feeling is, what our preconception is about that feeling, and then evaluate the validity of our reactions and preconceptions. This is all included in what Eckhart Tolle relates [The Power of Now (pp. 1-2)].

Ultimately it is important for us to develop our self-honesty in order to understand what it was that sparked us to develop our patterns of self-deception in the first place. This is necessary in order to completely redeem ourselves and establish a new behavior pattern. I will relate a personal experience of this in the next post (Self-deception and Redemption, a True Story).

It’s not the life that matters, but the courage we bring to it.