Santosha, Tapas Svadhyaya and Ishvara Pranidhana Thoughts for Reflection

Santosha Contentment Santosha invites us into contentment by taking refuge in a calm center, opening our hearts to gratitude for what we do have Looking outward for fulfillment will always disappoint us and keep contentment one step out of reach. Seeking and avoiding are expensive uses of our energy. When we give the power of our emotional state to someone or something outside ourselves we have made ourselves helpless. Practicing gratitude protects us from our own pettiness and smallness and keeps us centered in the joy and abundance of our own life. Discontentment is the illusion that there can be something else in the moment. There isn’t and there can’t be. The moment is complete.

Tapas: Self-Discipline Tapas is our determined effort to become someone of character and strength. It is the times of hopeless desperation that shape and mold us into someone of depth. The question becomes for us, what are we practicing for? When is the last time you even asked yourself this question? In those times when we don’t know how to get through the next minute of what seems unknown and overwhelming to us can we hold on until we are somehow blessed by our struggle? Tapas is the willingness to be both burned and blessed. The promise of a crisis is that it will pick us up and deposit us on the other side of something. Will we trust the process or will we run and hide?

If you are a friend of God, fire is your water You should wish to have a hundred thousand sets of mothwings, So you could burn them away, one set a night. The moth sees light and goes into fire. You should see fire and go toward light. Fire is what of God is world-consuming. Rumi

Svadhyaya: Self-Study Svdhyaya, or self-study, is about knowing our true identity as Divine and understanding the boxes we ae wrapped in. This process of knowing ourselves, and the boxes that adorn us, creates a pathway to freedom. We cannot love or hate something about another person or the world unless it is already inside of us first. We need our eyes and hearts wide open to look at every ripple of disharmony that we experience. As we unpack these boxes of our belief systems, strong and often painful emotions can be released in the process. The witness is our ability to watch ourselves act and respond. It is this ability to watch that begins to bring healing to our lives. Knowing that we aren’t who we throught we were begins to open up the possibility of knowing our true Self.

Ishvara Pranidhana: Surrender Jump into your life with your whole heart, trusting that you will fly to God! C.S. Lewis . . .the jewel of surrender presupposes that there is a divine force at work in our lives. Ultimately this guideline invites us to surrender out egos, open our hearts and accept the higher purpose of our being. As we learn to stop fighting life, we can begin to act skillfully. Surrender asks us to be strong enough to engage each moment with integrity while being soft enough to flow with the current of life. Ishvara Pranidhana is the surrender of the ego to a higher purpose. As the ego stops fighting to be number one, life begins to nourish and feed us in amazing ways.

Ultimately there is nothing I can tell you about surrender except Having nothing and wanting nothing; Not keeping score, Not trying to be richer, Not being afraid of losing; Not being particulary interested in our own personalities; Choosing to be happy, no matter what happens to us. These are some of the clues. The rest we learn with practice and grace. Swami Chetananda

Journal Possibilities Watch your attitude and responses to the moment. Are you fearful, trusting, fighting, judging, annoyed, loving, etc? Notice if there is a pattern to your attitude. Notice any tension that arises in your body when you need the oment to be “your way”. Consciously choose to relax and shift your attitude to curiosity. Notice what happens. Practice welcoming each moment and growing yourself into the opportunity of what is being offered and asked of you. Become a skillful student of each moment that life presents you. Wake up every morning and let God in. Believe in something that is greater than you are and let your actions, mind and heart align with that greatness.