Lucknow, India • Originally created March, 2013
Yoga is the cessation of the turning of thought.
When thought ceases
spirit stands in its true identity
as observer of the world.
Patanjali
Ultimately, if you are a sincere yogi interested in liberation, or a meditator trying to reach enlightenment, you have to finally graduate to the Supreme Yoga of Non-Ado.
The Supreme Yoga is not a physical asana, it is not a breathing exercise, it is not a practice. It is simply to Stop: it is the most difficult, the rarest, the simplest, but simple is not always easy.
What could be simpler than nothing at all or just stopping? But the impulse of the behavioral addiction is to pick up the next thought: the identity of me. The only yoga of true liberation is to stay completely where you are, which doesn’t mean staying where your body is; it means staying true by not identifying with the imagined thinker of thought and content of thought.
Our spiritual subculture perpetuates the gross misunderstanding that “I’m just being here now” without ever examining: Who is being where now? And what is “now,” exactly? Too often, that means: “me and my body are showing up in this space, which I’m sharing with you while just being here now.” This is called “egoic identity” or the trance of identification with a me that’s personal and separate from the totality or the deeper truth of who you are. This me may show up as a spiritualized identity that’s certainly better than an angry, drunk, aggressive identity, but it’s still an egoic trap that doesn’t give you fulfillment.
What we’re really here for is true fulfillment. True fulfillment is possible for everyone, which means it’s possible for you too. And it’s what brought you here, it’s what you really want, it’s what’s alive in your heart.
When you stay true, there’s a final surrender of control; of being the one in charge of what should happen. That’s the one—the idea of a “me” in control—that surrenders. The illusory controller surrenders to the unknown: back into the totality and allows wisdom to choose what happens next. Wisdom chooses what does and doesn’t get spoken.
This wisdom is trusting in yourself, which has nothing to do with your body, feelings, experiences, and thoughts. It’s not about working on yourself, improving yourself, or transforming yourself. While fixing yourself may have been useful at a certain stage, you reach a point where such egoic strengthening is no longer in service of awakening. You finally reach the end: the end of the spiritual path, which is the end of the trance of an egoic me who suffers.
Many people have heard that my teacher Papaji said: “Give up the search,” but “Give up the search” doesn’t mean you go back to sleep. We tend to hear: “Okay, I’ll give up the search and just let things happen and then I don’t have to do anything.” Giving up the search is not going back to your old habits and conditions as a personal entity, which is a type of lazy egoic surrender.
When you give up the search, you stay awake and vigilant. You stay exactly where you are, not moving, wanting, or needing. In this true giving up, everything is revealed in the deepest possible way. This revelation is beyond words or language and yet endlessly deep and rich; it’s a revelation that spontaneously gets expressed in your daily speech, writing, and life.
In this revelation, your life becomes the embodiment of boundless love. When you wake up you realize that the body is just a little speck in an ocean of love. You can’t go to the ocean with a tea cup and expect to say: “Oh, now I’ve got the ocean.” You just throw the tea cup into the ocean and it’s finished.
