INTO THE HEART

SUMMER IMMERSION

AUGUST 2020

BOULDER
 PURPOSE

Our purpose is to probe the deeper longings of our hearts, to unravel the knots that
surround them, to release their implacable force, and to allow that force to move
through us with a natural grace, that we may support others with deeper generosity,
kindness and compassion, that our thoughts and words and movements and modes
of relating may gradually begin to reveal the astonishing, otherworldly movement of
unconditional love. This is our yoga, the yoga of intimacy with other beings, and with
the sublime forces that make us who we are.

You have, within your heart, a burning desire to expand. A desire to open your heart,
spread yourself out, beyond the edges of the world. You have a desire to feel the
world turning within you, heaving and moaning, and to reel in the quiet and ecstatic
awareness of its unfoldment.

You have a desire to peer down into the source, to feel the heat of creation rushing
back against your skin, to feel the movement of your own intelligence, spiraling up
through the center of your being. You have a desire to come alive, to uncover your
hidden potentials, and to realize every noble aspect of your nature, every sublime
secret that makes you who you are.

This is the deepest desire of your heart, the desire of consciousness to know itself,
through the spontaneous and endless unfoldment of its own creative power.

All beings have this same desire within them, this same implacable impulse to know
themselves, to experience themselves through the wonder of the senses, and to
engage in the miraculous experiment of self-expression. And though it may seem to
turn us into ourselves, this experiment demands a higher mode of relating, and one
that supports the conscious participation of every sentient being.

Only when we turn our attention outward, without prejudice or preconception, to

behold the inexplicable wonder of life and of embodied consciousness, to behold
the diversity of thought and feeling and expression, can we begin to appreciate the
sublime nature of who and what we are.

The desire for self-expression refracts through human minds in billions of different
ways, limiting itself through various psychical defenses, entangling itself in endless

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thoughts and memories, and obscuring itself in the forgetful consciousness of
ordinary life. To have intimacy with the movement of self-expression, and to be
consciously involved in the experiment requires profound openness, both to
ourselves, and to other beings. That openness is pure love. And this is the sublime
nectar of our yoga, the nectar that answers the deepest longing of our hearts—to
come out of our isolating delusions and meet others in the space of intimacy, where
we can behold the countless ways that our nature expresses itself, and begin to share
the mutual recognition of who we really are. In that space, for which our hearts yearn,
every thought, word and movement can be a revelation, an expression of reverence,
at the spontaneous movement of the sublime.

In this immersion, we come together to think a certain thought, which has been
thought and rethought through the centuries, and comes down to us on the breath of
the practice tradition. This thought can be cast in thousands of ways, and what
follows is only one. I have broken this thought, not without reason, into ten pieces.
The arrangement is made linear only to help us organize our efforts, and to follow a
common thread, though the experience of thinking and contemplating this thought
may not be linear at all. Each piece illumines the others, and the actual practice of
thinking demands a continual cyclical movement between them.

The basic idea is to begin by connecting with the most primitive elements of our
nature, with consciousness and creative power, and to feel them with an astonishing
directness and immediacy. This is what we might think of as the first function of asana
and pranayama and meditation, to connect us to these elements.

Then we turn toward the various elements of our mentality that obscure and reveal
our nature, and we experiment with different ways of working with these elements to
bring greater clarity to our experience, and to welcome new forms of insight. This is
where we start working directly with the energies of our emotions and desires, and
our modes of relating to others. As a result, our practices of asana, pranayama and
meditation take on a new dimension.

Then we start working with the revelations that we uncovered in the previous two
phases of practices, integrating them into our consciousness. We begin to see our
practices of asana, pranayama and meditation as part of something transcendent, a
cosmic ritual of self-expression, in which we participate, consciously, in the endless
and spontaneous unfoldment of the creative sublime. And we begin to rediscover,
again and again, the locus of that process, and the source of its creative power, in the
luminous depths of our own hearts.

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 THE THREAD

Grace in Receiving
1. There is something luminous inside you, something that loves and listens, abides
and attends, to every thought and feeling that passes through your mind. This loving
presence knows everything about you. It knows your dreams and aspirations, your
traumas and wounds, your darkness and prejudice—and it cradles you just the same,
with perfect warmth, openness and receptivity.

Siva
Pure Consciousness
Generosity in Receiving
Myth - An Elephant’s Head

Grace in Giving
2. There is something tremendous inside you, swaying to the rhythm of your breath,
beating the pulse of your heart, and dancing across your sensory fields with streams
of sensation. This dynamism is supporting every moment of your experience, and
asking for nothing in return. Feel it unfolding through you, and your precious human
life, and gifting you the most precious gift of all—the opportunity to wake up to the
sublime reality that is unfolding so perfectly around you.

Sakti
Creative Dynamism
Generosity in Giving
Myth-She Who Is-(The Gift of Giving)
The Ascent (5 elements)

Desire for Intimacy

3. The creative power dances to wake you up, to pull you out of yourself, out of the
darkness of your delusion. And you listen because you long to open up, and to feel
that power as the spontaneous unfoldment of the divine creative potential that is the
primitive source of your being. This is what you feel most intensely, an urge to be
awake, to see, taste, touch the world around you, not through the lens of your
delusion, but immediately, nakedly, intimately, so you can see things as they are. This
is the demiurge that moves the cosmos—the urge of the creatrix to see and be seen,

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to touch and be touched, to be completely exposed to consciousness, and the urge
of consciousness to experience itself, through the spontaneous unfoldment of its own
creative power, absolutely, without limit.

Omkaram
Desire for Intimacy
Siva Lingam
Maitri - Loving Kindness (As the Clarification of What you Really Want)
Myth-Sacrifice of the Feminine

The Loving Heart

4. The creative power dances to wake you up. And the dance allures you to
deconstruct your attachments, to rend the boundaries of your heart, and to awaken
your most sublime power, which is the power of unconditional love. What you
experience as loss and heartache is part of the process, part of what presses you to let
go. You cannot fall in love without being wounded. Yoga reopens the wound, and
allows you to touch back into your tenderness, not with sourness or defensiveness,
but with the strength and nobility of gentleness and forgiveness.

Yuyam Vayam
Myth - Siva’s Dance
Sa-Ha

Compassion
5. All of us have the same urge within us, the longing to come out of ourselves, out of
the darkness of our delusions, and meet one another in the spaciousness of a larger
awareness, where there is room to breathe.

All of us have the same longing to open ourselves up to the movement of creative
power, and to recognize the sheer bliss of being, not by having an isolated realization,
a protracted fantasy that unfolds in the privacy of our own minds, but by seeing that
recognition, that bliss, shining back through the eyes of others, and receiving it in a
moment of mutuality.

All of us have this natural warmth and tenderness, though we hold and hide it within
our hearts in a thousand different and ever changing ways. And as we obscure it from
ourselves, so we obscure it from others. To encourage mutual recognition, we have to
reverse the isolating logic of the egocentric self.

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Karuna - Compassion
Meditation on Heavy Emotions
Basic Tonglen
Myth - Siva’s Grief

Working with Difficult Emotions

6. Our resentments toward others, our anger and jealousy and grasping, only
encourages others to close down. It reinforces the collective delusion of isolation.
Anger, Attachment, Jealousy, Arrogance and Stupidity all arise from an exaggerated
sense of self importance. But even if we recognize this intellectually, and refuse to
recognize them as defining who we are, they are not so easily dismissed. We have to
hold them for ourselves, and cultivate attitudes of loving kindness and compassion
toward those make us bristle. This is some of the hardest work of all.

Meditation- On Difficult Relationships

Purnam
Tonglen

Tasting the Poison

7. Our natural warmth and tenderness is obscured by an abiding confusion and fear,
a dark shadow of doubt, cast by a limiting conception of who we are, which naturally
defines us against others. Our negative emotions have their source in the same
natural confusion—that we are the limited idea of ourselves that our minds project,
and that we are therefore impoverished, isolated and in desperate need of continual
expansion and enrichment.

We live together in a world that reinforces this doubt, this delusion, and keeps us
isolated and confused, always competing with one another, vying against one another
for wealth and acclaim. We raise certain others up, place them on pedestals, and
hold the rest down, to meet the impetuous, polarizing demands of the ego.

Like small children, we grasp for the objects of our desires, unable to see beyond
ourselves, or to consider the impact that we have on others. Our incessant drive for
expansion and enrichment becomes our reference point, our touchstone, and we
confuse it for our vitality, riding it recklessly through all the circumstances of our lives

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Our world encourages us to remain like children, emotionally speaking, with all of the
same arrogance, aggression and jealousy. We are taught to take care of ourselves,
above all, to defend ourselves, to protect ourselves, and to collect markers of success
in an endless polarizing game. And the more we fall for this, the more we isolate
ourselves and others.

Karuna - Compassion
Malas and Kañchukas
Meditation on Emptiness of Self
Halahālā and Schenpa
Myth-Tasting the Poison

Alchemizing Desire
8. In the restlessness of desire, there is a hidden intelligence, an understanding that
we are vast and expansive, generous and unbound, and this is why we cannot be
content with our little successes. That intelligence is guiding you even now, showing
you, through that old feeling of impoverishment, that what you want is not this, not
that, but something finer, richer, more alive.

Even our basic sense of neediness is but one inflection, conditioned by ignorance, of
the richer desire for intimacy. That desire is the vehicle of awakening, and only in
confusion do we shun it. But we do shun it when we see how possessive and
objectifying it becomes into the hands of the egocentric and narratively structured
psyche.

The path that concerns us is not the path of ascetic deprivation, but of releasing the
energy of desire from its egocentrically defined object, so that our sense of what we
desire expands and becomes more rarified, until it loses its object completely.

Myth- The Burning of Kama

Hatha-pāka
SL verse 9
Meditation on Excitement and Wonder
Soma

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Simple Bliss of Being
9. See how your heart light up when you see the smile of another, and especially
someone that you love. That flash of luminosity is your deeper awareness, recognizing
the simple bliss of being, and rejoicing in the immediate appearance of bliss in the
smiling face of the other. Notice how that moment of recognition is completely free of
projection. This open space of mutual joy is the space of sushumna, the space of true
intimacy.

Mudita - Sympathetic Joy

Meditation - Wishing Well to Others, Admiring Selflessly
Equalization of self and other
The Re-enchantment of Ordinary Life (The Descent)
Myth-Daughter of the Mountain

Drowning in Reverence
10. The movement of the heart is to awaken with clarity to what we all really want. To
recognize that we have been grasping in the darkness at mere shadows of things, and
that the real object of our longing is something that we cannot own, possess, control,
because it is formless and sublime. And yet, for all of existential impoverishment, and
our sense of isolation from the source of being, that same enigmatic something is
always already present, unfolding right before our eyes. It is the sweet shining edge
of suffering, over which the delusions of the mind dissolve, into the ecstatic and
radiant emptiness of being.

SL verse 28
Asana as Prayer
Pranayama as Listening
Emptiness and Beauty
Sundari

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 36 TATTVAS

HṚDAYA

1.Śiva (consciousness) 2. Śakti (creative dynamism)

3. Icchā (willing) 4. Jñāna (knowing) 5. Kriyā (acting)

|
6. Māyā
|
Five Kañchukas (limited powers)

7. Kalā (agency) 8. Vidyā (knowledge) 9. Raga (desire)

10.Kāla (time) 11. Niyati (causality)

♂ ♀

12. Purusha (individual consciousness) 13. Prakṛti (nature)

malas

anava (impoverishment) mayīya (isolation) karma (desperation)

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 PRAKṚTI
14. Buddhi (intelligence)
15. Ahankāra (“I-maker”)
16. Manas (attention and sense processing)

JÑANENDRIYAS KARMENDRIYAS TANMĀTRAS BHUTAS

17. Ears 22. Mouth 27. Sounds 32. Space
18. Skin 23. Hands 28. Feel 33. Air
19. Eyes 24. Feet 29. Appearance 34. Fire
20. Tongue 25. Genitalia 30. Taste 35. Water
21. Nose 26. Bowels 31. Smell 36. Earth

BHUTA BIJA SHAPE QUALITY

EARTH lāṁ golden yellow square solidity
WATER vīṁ silvery crescent moon (turned up) liquidity
FIRE rūṁ red triangle (pointed up) mutability
WIND yaiṁ six smoky dots, on the points of a star mobility
SPACE hauṁ black sphere vacuity

EARTH hearing touching seeing tasting smelling

WATER hearing touching seeing tasting
FIRE hearing touching seeing
WIND hearing touching
SPACE hearing

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 FOUR IMMEASURABLES

Yoga Sutra 33
maitrī karuṇā mudito-pekṣāṇāṁ-sukha-duḥkha puṇya-apuṇya-viṣayāṇāṁ
bhāvanātaḥ citta-prasādanam ॥33॥

The mind is harmonized through kindness toward those who are at ease,
compassion toward those who are suffering, sympathetic joy toward those
who hold themselves in alignment with their hearts, and equanimity toward
those who do not.

maitrī - loving kindness

karuṇā - compassion
mudita - sympathetic joy
upekṣāṇāṁ - equanimity

Kindness
caring for the happiness of those around you

Imagine what it would be like to have a genuine wish for the happiness of all, a
wish with the same depth and constancy as your own wish for happiness.
Imagine how it would feel to expand your wish for happiness into the universal,
so that your animating concern is not just for yourself, or for your loved ones,
but for everyone else.

Imagine how that would change the tenor of your experience, open your
sensory field, and imbue your mind with lightness, if you had no obsessive
concern for your own needs and desires, but cared as much for those around
you, and considered their happiness as part of your own.

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Imagine how graciously you could move through the world, if you were no
longer absorbed in your own concerns, but you had your gaze turned toward
others, and you were able to share their sadness and pain, but also rejoice with
them in every smile, every laughter, and every sigh of relief.

Imagine how your sense of isolation, of separation, of loneliness would

dissolve, if you saw everyone around you as belonging to your community of
concern, and as residing within the space of your heart. That would be
genuine maitri or kindness, and it would allow you to breathe.

The potential for that kindness is inside you, and inside every one of us. It
belongs to the same intelligence that gives us life, the same intelligence that
makes our hearts beat, without asking for anything in return. And the
awakening of that potential is the foundation of all spiritual awakening.

Imagine how expansive you would feel if you allowed that potential to
inundate your minds and your senses, so that every thought, word and action
was an instrument for that kindness, that generosity.

The very idea is exhilarating. And it throws all selfishness into relief, exposing
selfishness as a confusion. What we really want, it seems, is to live in a world
that is full of kindness and love, a world that allows us to feel the abundance of
selfless giving. Contemplate that deeper longing of the heart, and make a wish
for the liberation and happiness of all.

Compassion
attention to the suffering of others

Recall the last time you were badly misaligned, and making a wreck of your
relationships. Recall feeling the heavy and toxic emotions of anger, jealousy,
shame or reckless arrogance. Try to bring the feeling of that emotion back into
your body, so that you can feel the heaviness and tightness of that experience.

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Notice how it contracts your consciousness, and makes you feel shrunken,
hardened, and endangered.

Then breathe space around those emotions. And as you do so, recline in a
deeper awareness, one that is calm and open and unbothered by the
sensations of the body and mind. Stay aligned with that deeper awareness and
allow the emotions to take their course, forgiving yourself for anything you
might have done in the past.

Now remind yourself that these same emotions are holding others captive all
of the time. Those who have wounded you, betrayed you, or otherwise caused
you harm, have been in the teeth of these same emotions, and they did not
have the strength or clarity of vision to pull themselves out.

Reflect on how fortunate you are to have the simple wherewithal now to hold
your ground, to stay centered, to remain calm, even as the energy of these
emotions course through you. Have gratitude for your ability to breath through
these experiences, and to hold them in perspective, so that you do not harm
others, as others may have harmed you.

Remind yourself that our world, on the whole, does not teach us how to handle
such emotions, but instead teaches us how to struggle against one another,
and how to manipulate our situations, to protect our own interests. Reflect on
how sad this is, and on how it deepens the confusion of the world. Remind
yourself that you too have contributed to the same confusion at times, by
meeting the confusion of others with aggression.

Allow a feeling of sadness and renunciation to pass through your heart. Then
let it go. Forgive yourself and forgive others, for whatever has been done.
Remind yourself that in our hearts, we all want to live in world of kindness and
love, and that when we act aggressively, we do more harm to ourselves.
Develop a genuine wish that all beings be free from suffering.

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 Sympathetic Joy
selfless delight in the mirth of others

When you are grounded and calm, you smile upon the world with warmth and
tenderness. That smile is a prayer for awakening. The warmth that comes
through belongs to your deeper awareness, and more pointedly, to the
kindness that your heart bears toward you.

See how your soul lights up at the smile of another. That smile reminds you of
the simple bliss of being. And when you smile back, without thinking, you find
yourself suspended, for a moment, in the mutual recognition of something
sublime.

That ability to touch, taste, and above all, to share, in the quiet exuberance of
embodied consciousness—that is your own most remarkable capacity, and it
moves on the medium of love. To trust in yourself, to trust in your potential for
waking up, for living in lucid recognition of the sublime reality of other beings—
there is nothing more you need.

That shared smile is an affirmation of who you really are. It opens a space of
intimacy, in which each is exposed to the gaze of the other, and to the warmth
of the selfless and loving heart. To feel that warmth is to feel something natural
and easeful, which makes you abundant as you give it away. This is mudita, or
sympathetic joy. And you can cultivate it simply by remembering the smiles of
others, and allowing those smiles to spread across your open heart.

And when the winds of fear and doubt blow through, you may feel that space
suddenly closes. But the memory remains, like a note left behind by an
agonized lover, reclaimed by an inconsolable grief, who suddenly had to
depart.

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Remember what it is like to feel that space close. Develop a sense of sadness
and renunciation. Then open back up, remember the warmth of love and
laughter, and quietly rejoice.

Equanimity

Seeing the equal worth and dignity of all beings

All human beings have within them an aching desire to overcome suffering, to
realize the secret of a profound and lasting happiness, to embody that
realization in thought, word and action, to share that realization in relationship
with others, and in that very way, to thrive. This desire colors everything that we
do. All of our aspirations come from this.

We are all equal in this most primitive wish. But the wish expresses itself
through the hearts and minds of different people in as many different ways.
Just for that, we often imagine that we have little in common, that our hearts
push us in opposing directions. And so we pursue our own happiness without
troubling over others.

In pursuing our own happiness, we implicitly suppose that our own happiness
is what matters most. And in concerning ourselves so narrowly with our own
happiness, we contract our sense of ourselves. Our world narrows, and our
hearts close.

The irony, then, is that in pursuing our happiness to the exclusion of others, we
create the conditions for our own suffering, our own sense of isolation. And
the more we isolate ourselves, the more we deprive others as well.

A little reflection can uncover the contours of the confusion. When we imagine
our own abundance— material, social or spiritual—we naturally imagine

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something that helps us connect to others, raise them up, quicken their spirits,
bring smiles to their faces and warmth to their hearts.

Intuitively, we know that what we have is worth only as much as it allows us to

give. If we had an abundance of resources of any kind, but no one to share
them with, we would have almost nothing at all. And squandering leads to an
obvious and familiar form of misery.

So to realize our happiness, we must consider others, and be attuned to what

they need. The point is not that others must be instruments of our own
happiness, but that what we really want is not just happiness for ourselves, but
for all beings.

Only in sharing, in the abundance of generosity, can we find any real

happiness. And this is because our desires are not little isolated pushes toward
different things, but they are diverse and sometimes divergent expressions of
one universal longing, inherent to all sentient life, which is to thrive. And
human beings do not thrive in isolation. They thrive in communities, and more
pointedly, in communities that recognize the equal worth and dignity of every
human being, and celebrate human uniqueness as part of the mysterious
expression of who we are.

All human beings are equal in the eyes of the divine consciousness. All of
them are singular expressions of the creative principle. And all of them are to
be loved just for that. To see all human beings through those eyes—as
mysterious, inviolable and worthy of an infinite love, no matter how threatening
they may be—is to have true equanimity.

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 CHANTS

INVOCATION

vande gurūṇāṁ caraṇāranvinde

sandarśita svātma sukhāva bodhe

niḥśreyase jāngalikāyamāne

saṁsāra hālāhala moha śāntyai

I bow to the two lotus feet of the (plurality of) Gurus, which awaken insight

into the happiness of pure Being, which are the complete absorption into joy,

the jungle physician, eliminating the delusion

caused by the poison of Saṁsāra (conditioned existence).

ābāhu puruṣākāraṁ

śankha cakrāsi dhārṇam

sahasra śirasaṁ śvetaṁ

praṇamāmi patañjalim

I prostrate before the sage Patañjali who has thousands of radiant,

white heads (as the divine serpent, Ananta) and who has, as far

as his arms, assumed a human form, holding a conch shell (divine sound),

a wheel (a discus of light or time) and a sword (discrimination).

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SAHA NAVAVATU

saha nā̍vavatu |

saha nau̍ bhunaktu |

saha vırya̍
̱̄ ṁ karavāvahai |

tejasvi nāvadhı ̄tamastu

̍ āvahai ̎ ||
mā vidviṣ

om śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ̍ ||

Together may we be protected.

Together may we be nourished.

Together may we work with great energy.

Together may our study be brilliant and effective.

May we not oppose each other.

Om. Peace, peace, peace.

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INVOCATION TO GANESH

om gaṇānāṃ̎ tvā gaṇapa̍tigaṁ havāmahe

kaviṁ ka̍vı ̄nāmu̍pamaśra̍vastamam |

jyeṣt ̣arājaṁ brahma̍ṇāṁ brahmaṇaspata ā na̍ḥ

̍
śṛṇvannūtibhissīda sādanam ||

We invoke thee, O leader of all the hosts. The wisest of the wise.

The Sage of Sages with treasures beyond measure. The King of

Brilliance. The Lead Chanter of prayers. Come with your blessings,

listen to our prayers. Have a seat in our sacred space.

SARASWASTI NAMSTUBHYAM

saraswati namastubhyam varadé kāmarūpiṇi |

vidyārambham kariṣhyāmi, siddhirbhavatu mé sadā ||

Salutations to you, Saraswati, giver of boons, Kamarupini (one who gives form

to desires). I now begin my studies, may success always be mine.

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MANI BHRATPHANA

maṇi bhrātphaṇā sahasravighṛtviśvaṁ

bharāmaṇdalāyanantāya nāgarājāya namaḥ

Salutations to the king of the Nagas,

to the infinite, to the bearer of the mandala,

who spreads out the universe with thousands

of hooded heads, set with blazing, effulgent jewels.

PURNAMADAH

om pūrṇamadah pūrṇāmidaṁ

pūrṇāt pūrṇamudacyate |

pūrṇasya pūrṇamādāya

pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate ||

That is the perfect whole.

This is the perfect whole.

From the whole comes the whole.

The whole remains whole,

Even as the whole comes out of the whole.

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ASATO MA SADGAMAYA

asato mā sadgamaya
tamaso mā jyotirgamaya
mṛtyormā amṛtaṁ gamaya

Lead us from Unreal to Real.

Lead us from Darkness to Light

Lead us from the Fear of Death,

To knowledge of Immortality.

SUSUMNAYAI
Hathapradipika, chp 4, verse 63

suṣumnāyai kuṇḍalinyai sudhāyai candrajanmane

manonmanyai namastubhyaṁ mahāśaktyai cidātmane

Salutations to the Sushumna, to the Kundalini, and to the nectar originating

from the moon. Salutations to you, the Unmani mind, to the great Shakti, to

pure being as empty awareness.

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OM NAMAH SIVAYA SATATAM

om namaḥ śivāya satataṃ

pañcakṛtyavidhāyine

cidānandaghanasvātma

paramārthāvabhāsine

Reverence to Siva, who ceaselessly performs the Five Acts,

And who, by doing so, reveals the ultimate reality of one’s own self,

spilling over with the bliss of consciousness.

OM NAMAH SIVAYA GURAVE

om namaḥ śivāya grave

saccidānanda mūrtaye

niṣprapañcaya śantāya

nirālambāya tejase

Reverence to the inner light, who is the highest teacher,

the embodiment of being, consciousness and bliss,

who dwells within everything

who needs no support, and is perfectly luminous.

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YUYAM VAYAM

yūyaṃ vayaṃ vayaṃ yūyaṃ

ity āsīt matir āvayoḥ |

kiṃ jātam adhunā yena

yūyaṃ yūyaṃ vayaṃ vayaṃ ||

You were me and I was you

Thus, once it was, that we were one

But what has happened now by which

You are you and I am I?

OMKARAM BINDU SAMYUKTAM

oṁkāraṁ bindu saṁyuktaṁ

nityaṁ dhyānti yoginaḥ
kāmadaṁ mokṣādaṁ caiva
oṁkārāya namo namaḥ

The syllable OM united with the bindu

on which the yogis ever dwell

grants desires and liberation

Salutations to the Omkaaram.

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SHIVA SAKTI STUTI

karpūrgauraṁ karuṇāvatāraṁ
saṁsārsāram bhujagendrahāram |
sadāvasantaṁ ḥridyāravinde
bhavaṁ bhavāni sahitaṁ namāmi ||

Pure white like camphor, the incarnation of compassion,

the essence of existence, whose necklace is the kind of serpents,

always dwelling in the lotus of the heart,

to Siva and Sakti, I bow.

twameva māta ca pitā tvameva

twameva bandhuś ca sakhā tvameva |

twameva vidyā draviṇaṁ tvameva

tvameva sarvaṁ mama devadeva ||

You are my mother, you are the father,

You are my sibling and my friend.

You are my knowledge and my abundance.

You are everything, my shining one.

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI
Verse 9

mahīṁ mūlādhāre kamapi manipūre hutavahaṁ

sthitaṁ svādhiṣṭhāne hṛdī marutam ākāśam uparī
manopi bhrūmadhye sakalam api bhitvā kulapathaṁ
sahasrāre padme saharahasi patyā viharase

Through earth and also water in Muladhara, fire in Manipura,

So you rise from Svadhisthana, through air in the heart, and space above,

and through the mind in Bhrumadhya,

Having climbed the kula-path, and pierced through all of these (chakras),

You consort with your beloved secretly in the thousand-petaled lotus.

Verse 28

dadāne dīnebhyah śriyam-aniśam-āśānusadriśīm

amanda saundarya prakara-makarandam vikirati,
tava-asmin mandārah tabaka-subhage yaatu charne
nimajjan majjīvah karana-charanaih shat-charanatām

May my life become beautiful like a bouquet of flowers, set upon your feet,

Dripping with the honey of splendor, bestowing abundance on your devotees,

My senses forever drowned at your feet, like a six legged honey-bee.

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FIVEFOLD MANTRA OF SUNDARI
This is a soma mantra to Sundari, who is the Goddess of Kundalini after she has

risen to the abode of Siva at the thousand petalled lotus, and begun her

sublime descent. It has a cool, lunar energy that soothes the nerves, calms the

heart, and invites creative inspiration. It can be used to cultivate the perception

of beauty and feeling of inner abundance. It is said to help fulfill our deepest

desires.

OM HRĪM SHRĪM KLĪM AIM SAUḤ

HRĪM is the sound of the heart.

SHRĪM invokes devotion.

KLĪM invokes divine love.

AIM is the primal energy of speech.

SAUḤ causes the energy of the previous sounds to flow.

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CLOSING CHANT

svasti prajābhyaḥ paripālayantāṁ

nyāyena mārgeṇa mahīm mahīśaḥ

gobrāhmaṇebhyaḥ śubhamastu nityam

lokāsamsatā sukhino bhavantu

May all of humankind be happy and well.

May the great noble lords protect the earth in every way by the path of virtue.

May there be perpetual joy for those who know the real nature of things.

kāle varṣatu parjanyaḥ

pṛthivī sasyaśalinī

deśoyaṁ kṣobharahito

brāhmaṇa santu nirbhayāḥ

May all the worlds be happy.

May the rains fall on time, and may the earth yield its produce in abundance.

May this country be free from disturbances, and may the knowers of truth be

free from fear.

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27
DANCING SHIVA

THE FIVE ACTS

sṛiṣti
creation
upper right hand
damaru drum

sthiti
stability
lower right hand
abahya mudra

samhara
destruction
upper left hand
agni

tirodhana
concealment
lower left hand
dandahasta mudra (pointing to raised foot)

anugraha
grace
raised foot

The right foot is standing on the demon Apasmara, (“forgetting”) who represents
ignorance and delusion.

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ŚIVA LINGAM
discovered in Vatican City
(“Vatika” is sanskrit for “center”)

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 PRANAYAMA
Ujjayi

Rechaka Viloma (3 rounds)

Ujjayi

Puraka Viloma (3 rounds)

Ujjayi

Combined Viloma (3 rounds)

Ujjayi

Nadi Shodana (5 rounds)

Ujjayi

Sa Ha (5 rounds)

Sa Haṁ (30 I Am She) Ucchāra (5 rounds)

————————————————————————————————————

NADI SHODANA
Intro
inhale both
exhale left
Rounds
inhale right pause
exhale left pause
inhale left pause
exhale right pause
Outro
inhale right
exhale left
inhale both
exhale release

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