Revolution of the Soul by Seane Corn

Author:Seane Corn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sounds True

AN EXPANDED HEART: FEELING COMPASSION

By the time I left Mysore, I was feeling pretty discouraged. But then, I arrived in Pondicherry (now called Puducherry). Whoa, I thought, this is it. It was everything I had craved. I felt like I was in Xanadu. Just like being in a great cathedral, it was all so inspiring. God must be here, right? It was too heavenly for anything other than the Divine. Its orderliness and its elegance were outward manifestations of all things transcendent, I just knew it.

Wait a sec. Wasn’t I first introduced to God in a sex club? And in the grit and the grime of New York City’s Lower East Side? Clearly, I needed a reality check. What made me think God had suddenly decided that crystals and rainbows and disciples decked out in white were the only suitable trappings for Divine presence? Just because my experiences in Mysore made me uncomfortable didn’t mean that God wasn’t there. God was everywhere, in everyone and everything, as Billy taught me, but I didn’t see it, and I didn’t feel it until I got to Pondicherry — or so I thought. But Pondicherry wasn’t everywhere and everything either, not by a long shot.

So what the hell was happening? I had thought that India would provide the guru I needed to liberate me from my shadow self, to set me on a path toward enlightenment. I was determined to find my teacher. This singleness of purpose, this intense focus, is tapas. I just knew if I prayed more, worked harder, kept searching, I’d find the One. I somehow missed the memo that tapas is not an outward-driven practice; it’s an inward investigation. I also seemed to forget that I had agency, that I got to decide what worked best for my own journey toward liberation. That’s svadhyaya — the capacity to see what’s true in every moment, to distinguish what we really need from what others tell us we need or what we think we ought to need.

And finally, I discovered what happens when I choose to move out of my small self and see the Divine in all beings. I found God not in the shala of Pattabhi Jois, in the hugs of Ammachi, or in the rainbows and flowers of Pondicherry, but within myself. Yogis call this ishvara pranidhana — radical openness, surrender, devotion, communion with the Divine — the fifth of the five niyamas. When that happened, I witnessed the sacredness of the whole world. Swami Satchidananda nailed it when he said we must surrender to what is, which “requires trust in our deepest Self, our intuition and the courage to express ourselves for who we are, as we are, with all of our perfect imperfections, all of which ultimately leads to freedom.”

It took a bee sting to get my attention. There I was on my knees, praying for an awakening, asking to be shown the way, the light. But when I discovered a bee drilling a small hole in my forehead, I prayed instead that I wouldn’t end up going into anaphylactic shock.

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