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04/09/2002 Archived Entry: "3/14/02 Ups & Downs"

Quite a few years ago, when Yogi Bhajan asked me how I was doing, I complained that my consciousness seemed to be like a roller coaster. He patted me on the shoulder and said, "Baba, life is full of ups and downs."

Now, many years later, and feeling, sometimes, quite a bit wiser, life is still full of ups and downs. I wrote this poem several years ago:

Old Habits:
old demoting
habits
die hard
like trick
birthday candles
that won’t
stay out

One of the primary aims of yoga is to gain control of the mind. The object is for the mind to serve the higher consciousness rather than the other way around. Over the weekend as I was leading the Teachers Training Course, everything was very clear. I was coming from the Teacher’s space. I was "the Teacher." My consciousness was at one with my higher self. Not necessarily my "highest self,’" but certainly my higher self. I spoke of sadhana, of the higher triangle, the sixth, seventh, and eight chakras, and of controlling the mind. Harnessing the bloody thing to serve. This is not an easy task. I am still at it. It is an unruly beast, and my poem comes back to haunt me, over and over again.

I think." Ah, I have it under control. I am in the flow." And then, I looked away, or something, and my mind is rolling about in the gutter. "Whoa!" I say, and I am not even heard. Now I am using this writing as a tool. It is, I am realizing at just this moment a new tool. Awakening as we speak. Very nice. In the background, there is Snatam’s (middle daughter) new CD. Her chants resound with penetration.

For a while I was thinking that there was my teacher self and my ordinary (or mundane) self. Most of the time I was my ordinary self, with the Teacher self only manifesting when I was actually teaching. That the function of my ordinary self was to create opportunities for the teacher self to manifest, by setting up classes, workshops and lectures. Then, a year or so ago, Yogi Bhajan was lecturing to the Khalsa Council, and he said, "It is easy enough to be a teacher when you are teaching a class, but your work is to be a teacher all of the time." My first thought was, "Oh shit! What an extraordinary amount of work." Most of the time I am still my mundane self, and sometimes my lower self. I deal with guilt somewhat less than I used to, as I have learned that guilt is the enemy. I can become guilty just over wasting my time. A friend of mine in the Dharma, told me last summer that Yogi Bhajan has told him that "the difference between me and you is that I accept my weaknesses." I knew exactly what he was speaking of.

In my opinion, much of my (our) falling from satisfactory consciousness has to do not so much with whatever issue may be involved in the falling, but in the guilt it evokes. This has to do with one’s self image, sense of self worth, and the question of, when self worth issues lurk, proving that one is not worthy. This is why the lotus is used as a symbol of higher consciousness. The seventh center, the crown chakra, is spoken of as the thousand petalled lotus. The lotus grows in swamps, it emerges from the fetid primal ooze, and opens in its pristine beauty, untouched by the mud below it. What an apt analogy. May our minds rise like the lotus, opening to the light of higher consciousness, rising above the mud, and bathing in the pure light of unity with the One.