Yogic Wisdom Blog

Human life is made of struggle, difficulty, joy, and happiness. It is the contrast of these different experiences that brings one into focus in human life. If it were all happy and all good, then there would be no contrast, and the experience would not be as appreciated.
 
So human life is a combination of struggle, difficulty, joy, and goodness. And this combination is one that is there for all humanity. And not only for human beings but for all beings. It is the nature of this dualistic world that is the material plane. It is a plane that is both a heaven and a hell.
 
And so at times in one’s life, one feels the joys and fruits of life, and it is very enjoyable. And then at other times, one experiences the difficulty and the struggle, and it becomes hard.
 
So there are lifetimes where there is more struggle. And for some people, there is more struggle; for others, it is less. But it is still there. Life is a contrast. On the personal level and on the social level, there will be a contrast.
 
And so this world is one in which you struggle to find your way to spiritual knowledge. For if you simply live in the day-to-day and your physical experience, you will find that you are limited, that you are immersed in the physical world and the ups and downs, in trying very hard to protect yourself and achieve what you need, and also struggling to avert and avoid pain and suffering. You may think you’re good at this, but Mother Nature may prove you wrong at one time or another.
 
So, how to relate to human life when it is filled with struggle and difficulty as well as joy and attraction? The Yogis felt that to be bound in the sense of individuality, in the feeling of separate self, is to struggle in this life with acquiring and aversion, and the ultimate aversion and acquisition is to hold on to life and to fear death. That is the ultimate acquisition and aversion.
 
But this tendency and desire to achieve and avert suffering permeate your life if you think about it. You want your family to be well; you want yourself to be financially secure; you want to have a nice home and a car; you want to have physical comforts.
 
And so this naturally brings the feeling that there is a purpose to life. The purpose is to achieve what you want, what you desire, to bring happiness to yourself.
 
But many people find that even when they are very successful, have wonderful jobs, are by human standards complete successes in their lives, they find a lack of something inside of themself. They still feel restless, they still feel unfulfilled, they still feel a need. And it can be success that drives people to spirituality. It can also cause suffering, pain, and difficulty. Both of these can awaken you from the conditioned mind and your unconsciousness about your life.
 
When adversity hits you, certainly you’re crying, “Oh God, please help me.” Suddenly, you believe in God. Suddenly, you want help; you hope that there’s some grace out there for you. You need something.
 
And when you’re very, very successful and you have what you need, and you’ve had it for a while, and you feel you can achieve it, and you find you’re still not feeling fulfilled. That also makes a human being turn to spiritual life.
 
When there’s this turn to spiritual life, it means there’s a deep searching for truth and for happiness that is not dependent on your struggling to achieve it and always thwarting that which is threatening you. Instead, the happiness that comes in spiritual life is a deep happiness of wholeness and completeness. It doesn’t happen the opposite.
 
You can’t struggle to achieve it, and you can’t achieve it by pushing away all the difficulties in life. Those you do to maintain yourself in this physical world as an individual. But as long as your mind is bound in the idea of your separate self as an individual, you are in a state of limitation. You don’t connect with and feel that eternal presence which is always there.
 
When, through deep self-inquiry, through continual meditation on the nature of Self, you begin to open up the unitary wholeness, you begin to open up the feeling and experience of unitary wholeness, you begin to feel that you’re not separate but you’re a part of something larger, you’re a part of an interwoven, interconnected web of life; you’re a part of what happens in the universe from the greatest, largest stars and galaxies to the smallest atom, to the tiniest beings. All of it hangs together, is part of a whole in which you are also part of that whole.

So, when, through deep honesty, you begin to see that the separate self that you have thought to be you and led your small life in this world, a short life is just a part of something else, something vast, something great. Then you realize that death is not something final. Death is merely a transition. Death in this physical world is only a transition. You begin to see that you have a continuity; you have a continuity as part of something great, part of something whole, part of something profound.
 
Through deep, deep understanding in the depths of meditation, you come to realize that there is a love, a deep presence of divine being that is omnipresent love, that is deep peace. The true nature of that Self of your self, that one of which you are a part, cannot be spoken in words. For it is beyond the understanding of the mind.
 
But the feeling of it can be known and can be described in words, though they limit that which is, that which is eternal, immortal, undying, aware, present, conscious, infinite love, a divine intelligence that does not die; that is eternal; that is unending; that creates the patterns which create planets, create solar systems, create living beings—plants, animals, human beings. All the nature of life abides within this cosmic intelligence. And that intelligence holds the patterning—I use the word intelligence because it does not take intelligence to create this massive universe with all its multiplicity and diversity? Isn’t manifest existence a profound patterning and encoding that only a vast intelligence far beyond humans can perform?
 
This divine presence, this infinite all-compassionate loving intelligence some call God, some call Allah, some call El, some call by the names of saints and sages and Gurus, some call Baba, some call Ama, some call Divine Mother, Holy Mother, all of these forms in which the divine can be seen are but one form in a universe of forms in which the divine abides, in which this cosmic intelligence, this all-loving, all-attracting intelligent consciousness abides. And when, through deep inquiry, through deep understanding and meditation, one goes into the depths, the knowledge comes that this consciousness that is you is not limited by a body. This body is only a change of clothing, something to wear for a little while, and then it’s taken off.
 
All forms are that way. They’re all in a shift, all in change. They’re temporary. But what you are and what is in the essence of all forms is permanent. It is because you are composed of that divine source, that omniscient unitary wholeness, that infinite intelligence which creates the universe, creates everything and everyone within its consciousness, so you are composed of that infinite one.
 
There is nothing inside of you that is separate or apart from that. There is nothing around you that is separate and apart from that. All forms are the holy form of the divine being when the eyes are open to truth.
 
The one eternal love abides everywhere. It abides within you. It is omniscient. And you do not have a separate little corner in which you live. You are a part of this whole. Knowingly or unknowingly, you are already part of the whole. But you have the opportunity as an evolved being to become conscious that you are part of the whole, to become self-aware, self-awakened, self-realized. This is the secret blessing of human life, that this may happen.
 
And it’s not just for some great Yogis in the Himalayas somewhere who meditate 18- 20 hours a day. No. It is for everyone. It is your nature. It is the truth of who you are, and you have every opportunity to awaken to that truth, to be that love, to be melted into eternal being.
 
Where is the separation between you and the infinite one? Your Baba, your Ma, your Ishta-Deva? That omniscient, omnipresent Godself? Where is the separation?
 
It is an idea that separates you, a belief in your separateness, a belief that you have independent actions, free will for making your own choices. You’re an individual, and you’re in charge of your life. That is the dream.
 
You think that you’re separate from your Godlike being that is yourself, that is in charge and connected to the body and mind. The small self that struggles and gets pushed around by the forces of nature, this way and that way, gets an illness, gets sick, has a loved one die, or is in an accident. So many things can happen in human life, some of them very difficult. And then finally, there is death.
 
 If you identify as the body and mind, and you believe that the small self is you, you die. For that form that you have inhabited will not last, as all forms do not last. Even the forms of planets, even the forms of stars, do not last. But you, that which is and makes all forms, have a continuity, an eternal life, an infinite existence.
 
So, awaken from the slumber of your conditioned mind. Awaken and allow truth to live in you. Allow yourself to feel the presence that is inside of you, all around you, the presence of the divine, pure, omnipresent, all-compassionate, all-attracting, infinite love, eternal peace, a grace that is showered on you at all times, a love that is always there. All you need to do is take down this idea, this belief in ego, in separate self, and let yourself melt back into your true nature. You know the truth of this.
​

Spiritual awakening is often imagined as a kind of transcendence that lifts us out of difficulty above pain, above conflict, above the ordinary struggles of being human. This misunderstanding is one of the most persistent myths in spiritual culture, and it quietly sets people up for confusion, disappointment, and even self-doubt.

Awakening is not an escape from life’s difficulties. It is a radical re-entry into them without the usual layers of avoidance, denial, or false consolation. What falls away in genuine awakening is not difficulty itself, but the belief that we should not be touched by it.

When awareness deepens, we begin to see that suffering does not arise simply because life is hard. It arises because we resist what is here, because we argue with reality, because we try to protect an identity that cannot ultimately be protected. Awakening does not remove loss, uncertainty, grief, or fear. It removes the fantasy that we can bypass them and still live truthfully.

This is why awakening often feels disorienting rather than blissful at first. The old strategies for coping, numbing, striving, spiritualizing, or dissociating no longer work. What remains is a naked intimacy with experience. Life is felt more directly. Joy is brighter. Pain is sharper. And yet, something essential has shifted. We are no longer facing life alone from the center of a defended self.

Awakening reveals a deeper ground of being that is already capable of holding what the personal self could not. From this ground, difficulty is not interpreted as failure or punishment. It is met as part of the living texture of existence. Fear can be felt without becoming the whole story. Grief can move through without collapsing us. Uncertainty can be tolerated without frantic grasping for answers.

Courage, in this context, is not the absence of fear. It is the willingness to remain present when fear arises. This presence changes everything. When we stop trying to escape difficulty, we discover that much of its power came from our resistance to it. Pain still hurts, but it no longer defines us. Challenges still arise, but they are no longer personal verdicts on our worth or spiritual progress. They become places where clarity, humility, and discernment are refined.

Awakening matures us. It does not make us invulnerable. In fact, one of the clearest signs of genuine awakening is an increased capacity to stay with what is difficult within us, and in the world without closing down or hardening. We become less reactive, not because we feel less, but because we are less afraid of feeling. We learn to listen more deeply, to respond rather than defend, to act from alignment rather than impulse.

This has profound ethical implications. When awakening is no longer used as a refuge from discomfort, it becomes a source of responsibility. We begin to see how our inner life shapes our outer actions. We recognize that turning away from suffering—our own or others’—is not spirituality, but avoidance. True realization brings us closer to the world, not farther away from it.

Life does not become easier after awakening. It becomes more honest. And honesty, while sometimes demanding, is also liberating. There is a quiet strength that comes from no longer needing life to be different in order to meet it with integrity. There is a grounded peace that arises not from control, but from trust in our capacity to meet whatever unfolds.
​
Spiritual awakening is not an escape from life’s difficulties. It is the discovery that we are finally equipped to move through them—with courage, clarity, and an open heart.

In the sea of eternity, there are highs and lows. There are untold worlds of living beings, multiple universes, and different dimensions of reality. It is a vast, interwoven, interconnected manifestation.
 
Yet it is very simple. To know this vast, eternal, cosmic essence, you only need to know your own self. For within every drop of water lies the sea. Within the sea lies eternal being. You, like a grain of sand on an endless beach, are part of a vast, interwoven, interconnected web of life.
 
To know that web of life, know your own self. For within you lies the whole universe, as you lie within that creation. Infinite, eternal, everlasting, the flow of cosmic being is unbound. There is no beginning; there is no end; there is no time when there has not been this eternal cosmos.
 
Timeless, immortal is the essential essence of all that is. The dream of your life is a dream within the consciousness, the awareness of the eternal being. That eternal one is the source of all that is and is the essence of everything. There is nothing outside of it.
 
When you go within, stop the racing of the mind in the dream of creation, in the dream of your life, you settle the restless thoughts; there is within you a quietness, a peace, a love so great it cannot be defined. As you sink into that peace, into that love, the sense of self begins to thin, to evaporate like a mist. For it is a dream; it is an idea in the mind of the infinite. And you, what are you; who are you? Is there a you?
 
As your awareness flows to the depths, the idea of you dissipates. There is an eternal being, known not with the mind, but known through knowingness. It transcends the brain, and the body. It is a knowingness that the "I" and the "you" that knows the knowing melt together.
 
That divine infinite peace, love that surpasses understanding short circuits the brain and the intellect. They dissolve. The sense of the doer goes away. Who is there to do anything? For this love, this great peace, this infinite Self, infinite being, has no beginning, has no end. There is no one apart from the whole. There is an ocean of love, a peace that has always been.
 
And you have always been in this peace, in this love. It is natural; it is your home. As you sink into it, you sink into your own natural state of being, eternal, immortal, infinite. You have always been here. You will always be. The dream of your life, a fleeting moment in eternity, is a drop of water, a grain of sand on an endless shore. The peace and love, the one, has always been, will always be. There is no time, no place. All places, all times abide within this eternal essence.
 
Consciousness, attention, and awareness move between, are fluid. Always, in essence, it is the Self, eternal, unmoving. And within it lies the dream of infinite planets, untold beings. The cosmos lies within this peace, in the dream of creation. And in that dream, there is you, the grain of sand on the endless shore.
 
You come, you exist for a while, and then you dissolve into the peace, the love; timeless, always existing. There is no past; there is no future; always, all has been and will be ever present, now.
 
You have always been free; you will always be free. It is your natural state of being. You dream the dream of the past and future. You dream the dream of unique separateness. You enjoy the birdsong, the beauty of creation, and the pain and the contrast. You love, you feel, and you pass away. From dust to dust.
 
But that which is you has never changed, will always be, was never born, and will never die: eternal, immortal, infinite, a love that cannot be defined, a peace beyond understanding. The attention, the awareness returns home. But you have never left. The you that you have known dissolves like a drop of water in the sea. Your dream of you is gone. There is only this ocean of love.
 
You have always been free. To break the dream, all you need to do is remember your natural state of being. Let go. Let go of the dream.
 
All right? Namaskar.
 

Today is a new beginning, a new day. Every day of your life is a new beginning, a new day, a new opportunity to be all that you can be. Never think, “My life is useless. My life is downcast. I’m doing nothing.” 

On each day you awake you have the opportunity to bring your life in connection to all life, in connection to all living beings, and to live in service to all living beings. This is the opportunity that presents itself every day.

So never dwell in the past, in regret, in guilt, in fear, in worry. They do no good. Rather, wake up each day and think, “This is my opportunity. This is my new beginning. This is my connection, here and now.” What has been gone. What will be is not here. What is now, that is what you have.

And so, every day, arise, brush yourself off, forget the past. And live your day afresh.

Every moment is an opportunity to know the supreme, for that one lies within you, all around you. The Self of yourself, the nearest and dearest to you, infinite beyond description, beyond words. That one always is, always has been, and always will be. It is your innate nature. 

That infinite consciousness, that aware self-being that knows who you are, that knows everything that you think, feel, see, hear, experience. Everything is known to that divine one, to Parama Purusha, the supreme entity, the supreme aware being.
For that is the real Self within you. There is the ego self, the small self that says, “I am the person who lives in this body and perceives and does this and does that and suffers this and is accomplishing that.” That I-person, that small person, that’s not you. That is a function.

But the Self within, the real Self, is not that small person. It is the self-aware intelligent consciousness that knows you, knows your existence, sees out of your eyes, hears with your ears, and is in every other living being, even in the rock, though it is quiescent in the rock. But in the cat, in the dog, in the bird it is alive. It is seeing out of eyes, hearing out of ears, feeling the feelings. It is alive in the being.

But it isn’t limited to that being. It is everywhere, this intelligent, self-aware being alive. And its flavor, its nature, is love unconditional. It is the base of everything that is, the substance of all that exists.

That substance, that solid Self, is the one true reality that doesn’t change. It never changes. It appears to change in all the colors and forms of creation, in the appearance of past and present and future. It appears to change, but it doesn’t change. It’s unchanging. It is this quiescent, infinite love. It is the Self of yourself. You exist—you feel you exist in the body, the mind, and the senses that your awareness is attuned to. But the reality is you exist in all living beings and all living beings exist within you. 

You exist in all of creation, and all creation exists within you. For your true nature is this undying, quiescent beingness, awareness which abides, conscious, intelligent, infinite love, beyond description with words and language. It abides. You abide. For that is your nature. And you abide in all beings. All beings abide in you.

You are those suffering the horrors of war. You are those seeking power. You are those being born. You are those loving. You are the deer in the wood, the bear prowling, the coyote, the squirrel, the bird. You are in all that is. And all that is, is within you. 

The you that identifies as a little body and mind is only a speck, a grain of sand on the great sea of creation. But your true nature abides in all that is. You are vast beyond comprehension. You are in the smallest of the small, in the tiniest molecules, in the subatomic materials. You are in space itself. You are born in the stars. You are in multiple dimensions. There is no end to the vastness of the true Self.

The human mind cannot comprehend the nature of the Self. It is better understood with the heart. Its quality is more akin to love, though the love that is the nature of being is beyond words.

This is the reality of your existence. Lives come and go. Identities come and go. But the Self remains always, unblemished, unchanged. Forms a rise and fall within you, but you remain ever as you are, the infinite supreme unending bliss of being. Even the bliss is but a passing form. 

In the true nature of Self, there is all form and no form, quiescent; a deep peace beyond the comprehension of the mind abides. An infinite love draws all existence into itself. From the one abiding in the one drawn back into the one, creation unfolds, exists for a time, and returns to the quiescent peace, the eternal nature of being.

So, you identify as a person in a body. You identify with the senses, with experiences from the past, with reactions to those experiences, with Samskara, Karma. You identify and you dance the dance, believing that to be your reality, until one day, awareness, your awareness turns away from that and looks at your nature. 
And when that aware self-beingness becomes self-conscious, aware of your own nature, you become timeless. You become unbound, undefined. Time and space do not tether you. 

For you to realize that witnessing consciousness, that infinite aware intelligence—and intelligence is not simply the mind, it is the heart that is intelligent—that intelligence lives eternally. That intelligence of unbound love, of quiescent peace in which all of the features of creation, time, and space abide.

When you become self-reflective, your aware intelligent mind becomes immersed in this divine Self, in your Baba, in your Ma, in your divine father, in the divine mother, and you feel that you are forever immersed in this eternal, infinite Self. Where is there to go; what is there to do? That restlessness that searches always is, that wants to go, to do, to find, that restlessness comes from that feeling of separation. 

But when your light of aware intelligence moves to the divinity within, to the self-resplendent eternal being, you realize that is yourself, the Self of yourself. There is no separation. The drop of water is not separate from the sea.  You, your beingness, your aware self, is not separate from the eternal, immortal beingness, the great love, the quiescent peace, the eternal one.

Dissolve the small, separate sense of yourself into an immortal being. Then there is no death, for you have always been you will always be you are eternal quiescent peace beyond thought, beyond mind. And you are expressed in the whole of creation. 

The smallest of creatures, their pain is your pain. The ones who suffer—you are those. The ones who exploit—you are those. The ones who live simple lives enjoy being alive, are those. You are a small woodland creature. You are the whale in the sea. You are the stars being born. You abide in all things and all things abide in you. 

Quiescent in the rock and the inanimate objects, yet their forms abide within you. Quiescent, asleep to eternal nature. But even those sleeping objects, that consciousness, will return. All is drawn. There is a restlessness in creation, a small memory. Ah, there is something more. And that something more draws back to eternal being, where there is no separation, no “I” and “thou,” no differentiation. Eternal one life, one existence, one truth. And this truth is your Self.

Let go; let go of the constructs in your mind, the beliefs of your identity. Let go.