Follow your Swadharma!
“Each man has a swadharma, a law of his inner being which he must observe, find out and follow. The action determined by his inner nature, that is his real Dharma. To follow it is the true law of his development; to deviate from it is to bring in confusion, retardation and error.”
I have always had a tendency in this life to weigh more heavily on the spiritual which has probably been a pattern over lifetimes. If one is on the path of the Integral Yoga, we have to be very vigilant to not fall into the ascetic path as ‘All life is yoga’.
I hadn’t realized that with all the spiritual classes and meditations I was doing, how reclusive I had become, meeting very few friends, not going to music concerts I loved or painting or listening to my favourite music. I was totally immersed in studying the books of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and was living in a beautiful mental formation of the ideal spiritual life! Not engaging with life, not following the nagging whispers of my consciousness to bring to life all those wonderful soul inspirations I had. I was doing some design work that kept me going. And of course, spending more time with my mother after my father’s passing, my home in Kashmir and was coping with very legitimate other duties which took up most of my remaining time. I was busy doing my dharma but not acting on my swadharma. So I had fallen into the trap of what the integral yoga is NOT about—the path of the ascetic!
I was acutely aware of the ascetic path, but didn’t even realize that I had comfortably slipped into the mystical mental land of spiritual escape! A very easy path if all your needs are met. I had learnt earlier that my life has to be a balance between the spiritual and the material. I am a creator, a designer, an artist, an author, but I just couldn’t manifest my ideas so I named my company Manifest, just so I would bring to life all the intuitive ideas I had received. But there was this great fear that stopped me from doing all that I had wanted to do workwise and I couldn’t push past it. Whilst I immersed myself more and more in duties and responsibilities and took refuge in my spiritual sadhana, I was feeling this anxiety that I wasn't doing what I was supposed to. My spiritual classes and daily sadhana glossed everything over and I had this constant unease which I ignored. I was just too overwhelmed with the choices I had and was too paralysed with fear to take action, so the spiritual escape worked well ... till ... I found myself in hospital!
The diagnosis was very low electrolyte levels due to some drug interaction. When I was discharged 3 days later and the incident started sinking in, I went into a deep and shaky realization of how I had been living my life in the last few years. Basically, the inner ‘salt’ of my life was not flowing with joy, vitality, purpose and balance. How perfectly our body gives us the message to understand the lesson. I was ignoring my body and living in a mental realm. My body, this matter which was my earthly identity, was tired of being ignored. Well, it certainly had my attention now!
I was galvanized into action once more, revisiting and planning new paths of my swadharma! I was walking through those old fears as there is nothing to fear except fear itself. I am so grateful to my divine body as without it there is no me! I cannot exist without my body, this matter too is divine as all is the substance of the Divine Mother. She has created me to evolve one minuscule aspect of the divine aspect in Her form and as Her instrument to create in this plane which I wasn’t doing. I had discounted the physical to a large extent.
We cannot bypass evolution and our psychic being needs certain experiences for our growth. We cannot focus only on the higher planes with a weak foundation in the lower planes of material existence. It is only when we live fully and embrace life, not shun it, that the growth can take place. Spirituality is not an escape. We are meant to engage with life fully as this mind, life and body we have been given are very precious and all are important for our evolution. Being in embodiment is a gift and is a soul choice so don’t take it for granted!
My key learnings
1. Procrastination is due to fear
Push through the fear. We have to make an effort to overcome it as that’s our lesson and the Mother is always with us. We are never alone. I had umpteen dreams that my fear which I had imagined to be a big tiger was actually a harmless cat! Listen to those gentle reminders before life forces one to listen through pain.
2. Follow your swadharma first
Don’t get caught up in other people’s dramas and lives at the cost of yourself. We have all come to serve our own evolution and the Divine, not our egos or other people’s egos.
3. Balance the inner and outer life
We are in embodiment because we have to engage with life, interact with people, use our talents and skills, enjoy painting, music, or whatever else each one loves doing according to their swabhava — all to divinize matter in the unique aspect of ones’ soul. The Mother handled the ashram, the sadhaks, the dining hall, food purchases, the school, buying and building, the finances; she painted, taught, wrote, started the Society, Auroville, new departments... just to name a few things! She didn’t sit back and just meditate and read all day. She was actively working day and night!
4. Get moving!
Start acting! Don’t wait for the Divine to do things for you. Tamasic surrender is not the way. It is such a joy to be in alignment with one’s soul following one’s path. A certain peace will overcome you when you follow the inner nudging of your soul.
5. Be patient and put in the work
Don’t attempt to bypass the work or the effort with just prayer and meditation. We have come to Earth for experience. There are no shortcuts to realization no matter how strong your aspiration is.
6. Offer your work and surrender the outcome
It is Her Grace that will take you where you are meant to go, whether you are meant to succeed or fail. We know now that there is no failure in terms of soul learning.
7. Have faith
The Divine is there with you, guiding and protecting you.
8. Share your gifts with the world
Don’t be shy to share your learnings, skills and talents with others. Each one has a unique experience and aspect of divinity to share and we have so much to learn from each other. I am sharing my experience with you all because I was inspired to.
Go on, the world is waiting for you!
“Follow then the law of your Swadharma, do the action that is demanded by your Swabhava whatever it may be. Reject all motive of egoism, all initiation by self-will, all rule of desire, until you can make the complete surrender of all the ways of your being to the Supreme.”
- Devika Khanna (India)
Thank you Devika. This has been my jounrey too. The shift from Mental Ideallism to Spiritual Realism. I loved reading your article since it resonated so deeply with my own experience.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, Gomathy!
DeleteBeautiful! I find myself deeply connecting with several points. Some because I have had similar experiences, and some because my experiences were somewhat opposite and yet the lessons learned were more or less same. I resonate deeply with the idea that we can not bypass evolution and our psychic growth needs experiences. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteThank you for your feedback, Beloo!
DeleteDear Devika,
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely personal sharing and the idea of key learnings in life is so important as well. It is the kind of reflection that can help us know where we are and where we need to go from here in the unique evolutionary trajectory of our psychic being.
I have worked with swabhava and swadharma in the context of integral psychology with particular emphasis on discovering our swahbhava. What has helped me is to see swabhava as the unique sate of my soul at birth, or in other words, how far my soul has come so far on it's evolutionary journey and find out what is exacly unique about me as an individual soul.
To do this I would have to set aside all the things I have acquired from without ( family, education, culture, society etc. ) and look deeper into who I am.
A practice that can be helpful is to go back through time in a meditation setting, first reflecting back at recent events, and then going back further, weeks and months, and then years back to my early childhood before my ego and personality were formed. Once one can find a footing, it becomes easier to go right back to this state in future sessions and see what I can discover about myself in my earliest memories, hopes, dreams etc. as a child in the first few years of life.
There is a good chance in this state to get in touch with the swabhava. Then the psychic which has a blueprint of my entire path toward wholeness can help show the way to the future.
Meditating on one's future evolution is a little more challenging. It requires envisioning a more evolved version of ourselves, not in the distant future, but just around the corner, the next few months or a year or two. This should be done not through cognitive imagination (idealization) which is an egoic function, but through soul visioning. Some call this the imaginal state.
That will give us indication of swadharma and the path forward.
Thank you, Bahman, for elaborating on the swabhava in more detail. I agree that the Swadharma state is trickier to envision as the ego can indeed lead us astray. Hopefully, with Mother's Grace and guidance we will all get there!
ReplyDelete