PUSHTI: June 2024, Svāhā!
“Gonna free fall out into nothing, gonna leave this world for a while.” – Tom Petty
“We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.” – Alan Watts
“If you want to be reborn,
Let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything,
Give everything up.”
– Ch 22, Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell Translation
“Surrender to the grief, despair, fear, loneliness, or whatever form the suffering takes. Witness it without labeling it mentally. Allow it to be there. Embrace it. Then see how the miracle of surrender transmutes deep suffering into deep peace.” – Eckhart Tolle
“Surrendering, letting go of possessiveness, and complete non-attachment –
all are synonyms for accumulating merit.” – Pema Chodron
Svāhā! is exclaimed when offerings are thrown into the fire, agni. It is a fire offering, ceremonially called Agnihotra. Svāhā is the female energy of fire, the wife of Agni. Our emphatic proclamation of svāhā, often at the end of chanting a mantra, is to say “I release this into the exalted fire of transformation.” It changes the tone of the let go from a bitter and resentful “whatever” – when things don’t go according to plan – to a blissful path to freedom. We dance on the grave of our attachments.
This month, we will start each class by doing what most of us hold fear around – dance – which not only may be a trigger for vulnerability, but also is perhaps the most base and simple path to joy.
The idea of letting go resonates with us so deeply – we put it on T-shirts and hats, write songs about it, remind a friend to do it when (s)he is freakin’. Because letting go is the truth that there is absolutely nothing one can hold on to. Yoga asks, “When it’s time for the inevitable transition out of this body, what can you take with you?” Nothing. And there is little in our culture that prepares us for this reality. With great fanfare we battle, we hold on, we accumulate, we rage, we fear. And we perpetuate this ruse by making the only certainty we know of in this life – death, which is completely natural – the absolute worst thing that could ever happen. This insane and dysfunctional dynamic is perhaps the greatest source of suffering.
Sadhana (conscious spiritual practice), however, requires that we not only contemplate death, we practice it (shavasana). Become intimate with the reality of our own demise, thereby fully embracing the preciousness and abundance of the days embodied, as well as the mystery of death’s unknown arrival (who doesn’t love a good mystery?). When death is close, befriending the thing that terrifies us most, life is vibrant, unapologetic, courageous, and adventurous – Svāhā! Let’s dance!
Svāhā is a cathartic shift in perception. By making svāhā part of common language, inserting it where blame, anger, and resentment used to be, we identify our attachments and the burn of disconnection from the reality of our Being. Knowing that an exalted letting go is an act of profound love, and we gain everything, we boldly proclaim “Take from me all that is not free – Svāhā! Svāhā! Svāhā!”
In Yoga we dwell,
Jeffrey
June 2024