When you can drop and let go, yoga happens

Om Namoh Bhagavate Vasudevaya

Om Namoh Bhagavate Vasudevaya

Om Namoh Bhagavate Vasudevaya

Yat gyatva matto bhavati, stabdho bhavati, atmaramo bhavati

Knowing this you become intoxicated, spellbound and you repose in the Self. There is nothing that can intoxicate you like love. And all the intoxication that people use is to be in that love, is in the search for that love. But they are searching for love in the wrong place. It is the frustration, the ‘unfulfilment’ that makes one go for intoxicants, isn’t it so? What happens when you are intoxicated? The ‘two’ disappears, the ‘other’ vanishes. When the other vanishes, then you are more at ease and love is that which gives you such ease, such comfort.

Divine love intoxicates you. Just knowing Divine love, you get intoxicated, spellbound and wonder-struck. When we are miserable, we ask many questions, “ Why this, Why this?” When the questions turn into wonder, love arises. Love does not give rise to more questions - it is the  answer for all the questions.

Love is not a path actually. Love is home. Love brings you back home. Love is not an act or an action. It is a result.

Then the next question arises, “How can I have it? That’s what I want.Yes. What you are saying is right! How can I have it? I want to have it. I desire for it.” Then the Rishi says :

Sa na kamayamana, nirodha rupatvat

It cannot be an object of desire. When the desires cease, then love can be felt, experienced. Don’t make love an object of desire. Desire means what? Not now, not this; something in the future. Desire simply means, ‘not now, not this - that and then’. Desire causes such feverishness, love is such a cooling impact. Sa na kamayamana - don’t make love an object of desire, the goal of your desire. When the desires calm down, you realise that love is right here - Now. That is why Buddha said that desires are the cause of sorrow and misery. Love is the goal of all desires  and when you cannot have, when you cannot experience or achieve that love, then hatred and anger come. The desire for love brings all other imperfections, for e.g. frustration. Whether fulfilled or unfulfilled, desire brings frustration. This is the nature of desire. Love cannot be  achieved by just desiring it because it is the cessation of desire. It is the source or goal of all desires - sa na kamayamana.

Then what is that cessation? How does one stop that?

Nirodhastu loka veda vyapara nyasah

It is taking a break from all activities, whether worldly or spiritual, whether religious or material - being centred in both activities. Nirodhastu - there is a feverishness to do something, to achieve something. You say, “I don’t want anything material,” but then it could switch over to wanting to achieve some heaven, some spiritual merit, or bliss or some state of consciousness.

See, you are still holding on to the desire and the action, but it has shifted from the material to the more ethereal, non-material. Our mind is so tricky.

Loka veda vyapara nyasah - you cannot leave activity just like that. So what can you do? If you are 100% in an activity, then you become free from the activity. You are able to rest from that activity. This is what we don’t do. Being 100% in an activity centres you. Desire is not  being involved 100% in action.

Suppose you want to drive and go to Los Angeles - you just drive and go; but if you just sit and keep thinking about it, it creates the feverishness. This is desire. Desire is chewing on to something and not swallowing it - not really acting on it. Those  activities which you have to do, do them and rest. Those which you don’t need to do, leave them and rest.

Nyasah - being centred, letting go. However important an activity is, are you able to let go of it in a moment? Then you will see that it does not bother your mind, it does not bother you and it increases your efficiency. It is your attachment to an activity that makes that activity suffer,  whether it is spiritual or material. Your obsession to act, your inability to retire and repose in the Self brings you frustration. Do anything with 100% and you will be able to drop it effortlessly.

This ability to let go comes to you. Often you let go of things when you are frustrated. When you can drop and quit in a moment, without getting frustrated, then Yoga happens - you have retired back to the Self. You are holding onto things, onto activities and that holding on creates frustration. This is what desire does.

Excerpts from the book An Intimate Note to the Sincere Seeker by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar www.artofliving.org