Establishing a Divine Frame of Reference
I once spoke about singing Christmas carols, and how I had come up with “O Come All Ye Faithful,” even though I was not in a Christian situation. I had a great experience singing that song, because I was bringing a positive experience from my past into my experience of the present. Most of us say, “Huh?” [Laughter] And that’s because our whole education system and our whole cultural background, basically say, “Well, the person that does that is not connected with reality.” But when we sit back and we look at the free-floating anxiety that you’re experiencing, especially when you don’t have a reason for it, I would say that that’s not a connection with reality, either.
The circle practice is a very good thing to do. Remember that these practices aren’t just itinerate thoughts that I’m throwing out here, but there’s some design in this. The design is to begin to utilize positive experiences from your past, but not the circumstances of them. For example, when we did the little short preparation for Tonglen practice, I said, “Remember a time when you felt loved.” And then I said, “Now don’t get into the circumstance, but focus on the feeling within your self of being loveable.” In a sense, that’s what we’re trying to do now. In this Deity Yoga Practice, we want to go back and pull some of the youthful enthusiasm and sheer joy that a child expressesin their play, or in whatever they do. We want to begin to tap into that, and bring that inner sense of joy of expression into being in who we are today in singing our song to the Deity.
That’s a great time to do a Deity practice. Going back to you, you have a non-attached anxiety which is really the result of a super-structure of conditioningan attitude and an identity of worry. And for you this is because, unconsciously, you’ve utilized the very same techniques that you can use to do Deity Yoga Practice, but in a different way. So sit down with it in yourself. If you don’t feel like looking at the circle, or don’t feel like looking at the Deity and doing the rest of that, you don’t have to. You can sit down with yourself and say, “I’m going to remember aspects of experience in which I opened up, and felt the flow of being come through me.” Again, “Don’t get hung up on the circumstances.” Let the circumstances of the experience be dream-like in your mind, but focus on cultivating the feeling.
And as you cultivate the feeling, you can even take a while and sing a little song or a chant. Go in the bathroom and singif you sleep with somebody else. The idea is to begin to imprint the positive, or the open-ended aspect of this new super-structure that you’re bringing into being in your life.
Yogi Sean is the student of Swami Ramananda and the author of Dancing in the Fire of Transformation and The Everyday Sanyasin.
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