Tantra Yoga: Journey To Unbreakable Wholeness Part 1
Episode 17 with Redesigning The Dharma by Sahaja Soma is the first part of a two-part conversation with Todd Norian, the founder of Ashaya Yoga®. The conversation centers on Tantra Yoga and how it offers a nondual and joyous framework for understanding life.
Todd begins the discussion by debunking some misconceptions of Tantra and then dives deeper into some of the core tenets of the practice, including its view on suffering, the balance between transcendence and embodiment, and the value of embracing life's full spectrum of experiences and emotions.
This episode highlights a more integrated approach to the householder path and encourages listeners to view life, including its challenges, as part of their awakening journey.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 Introducing Todd Norian
03:03 Defining Tantra Yoga and Clearing Up Misconceptions
12:10 The Balance Between Transcendence and Immanence
17:56 Questioning Perfection and the Guru Tradition
23:46 Embracing The Discomfort of Challenging Emotions Like Loneliness and Grief
33:39 Three Guiding Questions For Spiritual Awakening and Empowerment Through Tantra
Guest Bio:
Todd Norian, E-RYT 500, YACEP, internationally acclaimed yoga teacher, founder of Ashaya Yoga, author of Tantra Yoga: Journey to Unbreakable Wholeness, A Memoir, musician, acharya in Blue Throat Yoga, and a Kripalu Legacy Faculty, teaches classes, workshops, retreats, and teacher trainings both live in-person and online, for students and teachers all over the world.
A student of yoga since 1980, Todd brings a depth of inner strength, devotion, vulnerability, and an unapologetic sense of humor to everything he does. Todd seeks to awaken others to their inherent potential for healing and joy by integrating the body, mind, and heart through Ashaya Yoga and meditation.
In 2012, Todd founded Ashaya Yoga®, an alignment-based, heart-centered practice which uses the five elements and the teachings from the Nondual Tantra tradition to build strength and flexibility while giving students access to a universe of power within. He is a guest teacher at many renowned spiritual centers and conferences including Kripalu Center, Omega Institute, Esalen, and the Toronto Yoga Show. As a classically trained jazz musician, Todd created several music albums for yoga and relaxation, including the world-renowned Bija: Soothing Music and Mantras for Yoga and Meditation.
Full Transcript:
Adrian: Hello, this is Adrian Baker, and welcome to Redesigning the Dharma. Today, I am speaking with Todd Norian.
Todd is an internationally acclaimed yoga teacher and founder, and seeks to awaken others to their inherent potential for healing and joy by integrating the body, mind, and heart through yoga and meditation.
Believing that yoga is a gateway for self discovery and spiritual growth, Todd founded Ashaya Yoga in 2012 to guide his students through an alignment based, heart opening practice that builds strength and flexibility while giving them access to the universe of power within. A student of yoga since 1980, Todd brings advanced biomechanical knowledge, Tantra philosophical teachings and an unapologetic sense of humor to his online workshops and trainings.
As a classically trained jazz musician, Todd created several music albums for yoga and [00:01:00] relaxation, including Bija, soothing music and mantras for yoga and meditation. More recently, Todd is also the author of Tantra Yoga: Journey to Unbreakable Wholeness, a memoir.
So, Todd and I have known each other through workshops and retreats through studying with, two teachers that we have in common, Douglas Brooks and Paul Mueller Ortega, both in classical Shaiva and Shakta Tantra, who have been very important for both of us.
And so that is really informed Todd's work in my own. It's very reflected in what I offer here on Sahaja Soma and on Redesigning the Dharma.
So he was really ideal guest for me to have on, and I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with him and I hope that you will as well. So without delay, here is my conversation with Todd Norian.
So first things first, thank you very much, Todd, for making the time and coming to speak with me at Redesigning The Dharma, and really looking forward to this as someone else who's into the, very niche world of [00:02:00] Shaiva Shakta Tantra. So, happy to geek out with a fellow practitioner.
We should share with the audience in terms of Full disclosure, you know, we, we study with actually more than one of the same teacher with Paul Muller Ortega and with Douglas Brooks as well. And we've met briefly in person before.
Todd: Yeah, and I just appreciate you so much for having this podcast and there's nothing I like to do better than geek out on, you know, basically the nature of reality as seen through, through this incredible sort of esoteric focus of this philosophy.
I mean, it has really altered my perspective on life. And so maybe we'll get into that a little later.
Adrian: Absolutely, or right away. And what I appreciate about what you're doing and what we're going to try to do here is, we're trying to make the teachings accessible on the one hand to people who might not be so familiar with some of the language and these practices and teachings. And on the other hand, we're speaking to [00:03:00] people who are, perhaps already really into this and like geeking out on it as well.
But for that reason, I'd love to start by asking you to explain, what is Tantra yoga, since you wrote a book on the topic. For people who might not be familiar with that term, especially perhaps you can clear up some misconceptions about what what the word Tantra is.
And so, yeah, what is Tantra yoga?
Todd: The word Tantra in Sanskrit means several things. It can mean something as simple as a book or a scripture or a text, but it also means a loom like a weaver's loom. And the definition I like most of Tantra is that it is the process by which we weave together the dispersed parts of ourself and weave it into an integrated meaningful matrix of relationship.
Tantra has to do with finding our relationship with ourselves, with life, with God, with others, and to try to make sense [00:04:00] of it all. And Tantra has as its sort of highest goal to return to what we are, and what we are is this ecstatic vibration of joy. That's why you'll see that in the background, the Shiva Nataraja, which means Lord of the Cosmic Dance.
Nataraja is dancing, and the quintessential question is, well, why is he dancing, you know? Well, he's dancing the eternal rhythms of the universe into existence. So you might say, well, that, statue is a depiction of, of reality, like the highest level of reality. That it's eternal. It keeps dancing itself into existence. And then we ask, well, why, why is he dancing?
And the answer I keep coming back to is for the play of it. For the delight of it. Because delight and joy and play is a very important aspect of the perspective of [00:05:00] this tantric view.
And, I came from a tradition which was more like classical yoga. And there, it was more focused on yoga as a way to get into the body to get out of the body. In other words, the view of that tradition is that life is suffering basically. And we're here now, today, because we failed last time.
And so we keep coming back to this land of suffering to get it right. And so in that perspective, there's kind of an ascension. That we want to learn how to transcend so we don't have to come back so that we don't have to suffer again. It's one view and I followed that view for a long time.
I mean, I, I was a musician. That was like my, childhood and I majored in music in college and then I went to a ten-day yoga retreat and I stayed for 13 years. It [00:06:00] completely changed my life because I saw a vision of yoga, which was to live holistically, to focus on health, to focus on serving others, to focus on having a happy, healthy, joyous life rather than what I was going through, which was intense competition.
You know, the music world, I don't care what you say about it. It is beautiful and I'm so glad there are still musicians coming through the system and everything, but it's a dog eat dog world. Unfortunately, there's so much competition. And the stress...
And for me, I shifted from classical into jazz because I wanted that freedom of expression. Classical was too limiting for me. Plus I was up against these child prodigies that, you know, they've been playing since they were two years old. I just couldn't compete. So jazz was much more forgiving. It was so much more fun. And you know, the path that I'm on is really, I call it the path of the heart, which is part of the tantric path as well.
We're [00:07:00] following our heart's deepest, most desire. And when we're tuned in, when we're listening, most everyone is doing that. but We can be pulled in all different directions when we're not listening to our heart. But I kept listening and it took me from sort of the rigidity of classical music into creating my own music, you know, jazz improvising, which, in a sense, is very similar to the tantra path because I subscribe to the no mistake theory in life. There's only learning. There's no such thing as a mistake. Because we're learning all the time.
And in jazz, you know, there's no mistakes, only solos. I just love that idea. Just listen to some Miles Davis and you'll hear this guy like became famous for cracking notes, playing off key and, and he happened to be a genius, but, uh...
So what I'm getting at is, Tantra is the path of non perfection. It's the recognition that we [00:08:00] live in a world of non perfection, that we are perfectly imperfect, which is perfect. Okay, so you're going to hear like a bunch of paradoxes coming down.
We are perfectly imperfect because we live in a perfectly unfinished universe of becoming. That's the depiction. There's not Enlightenment where there's a goal line. And so if we purify enough, we cross the goal line, then we don't have to come back to the world of suffering.
Tantra sees everything upside down. So instead of trying to get out of the suffering, the idea is to get into it, to embrace it and start to see the beauty of life itself. That life is not something we want to escape from, but it's actually life holds the source of the solution. Which is to see that everything in the manifest universe, including our body and our mind, is the expression of the vastness of eternal consciousness.
And [00:09:00] therein lies the non dual, meaning a philosophy of unity consciousness, what we see in life and all around us, we see difference, we see the multiverse around us. But the multiverse is the expression of the universe. The one song becomes the many songs for the delight of it. Okay, here we're going back to the, the cosmic dance. Because, so the universe can know itself more. The universe limits itself. It takes a piece of its infinite nature and condenses it to create Earth, to create this body. You know, and Earth comes from stars.
So we can see in our astronomy that, everything that we see in the material world has its source in the elements which are forged in stars. Like, ultimately, we're sky babies.
And so part of my thrust in the tantric view is to help people wake up to their divine nature. Instead of saying, God is not this, it's not this, it's not this, it's not this. Oh, I'm not God. [00:10:00] God is up there and up there is better: dualism. So let me surrender myself and go into the, infinite like that.
Tantra is turning that path of not this, not this, not this, which is neti neti neti as a way to describe what reality is. Tantra saying, this too, this too, this too, you know.
Oh, I'm feeling sad today. Yep. That's divine. I'm feeling angry or I made this mistake or, you know, I'm, I'm having a rough day. And so my approach to Tantra is to use everything at our disposal. We have a body, we have a mind, we have a heart, which is like spirit, and we use all those tools. To weave together, to braid together the body, mind and heart to discover the unity of consciousness that we are. And when we wake up to that, when we [00:11:00] recognize that, the heart cracks open and we have a revelation.
And suddenly we get a hit of, Oh my God. That's exactly it. It's like, Oh my God, everywhere. And as a colleague, teacher, friend of mine says, Christopher Wallace, in his book, Tantra Illuminated, he says, this is as God as it gets.
That is a super deep contemplation.
But what he's saying is the loom, the weaving together, this warp and weft to create the unity of a fabric. We need horizontal. We need vertical that weave together. To really create this fabric of life, which moves us out of this survival mode. In fact, trying to get out of it to a celebration mode where we thrive. Everybody has the possibility to thrive and find deeper meaning, deeper joy, deeper happiness, deeper [00:12:00] fulfillment, which is the purpose of the whole thing.
Adrian: Yeah. So let me linger, let me pick apart a couple of things you said there, because you said so many things. I want to even just highlight a couple. I mean one thing I'm hearing from what you're saying, and even for folks who might not be into yoga or tantra yoga, there's a a very typical pattern, which is a lot of spirituality is associated with transcendence.
Or it's viewed as synonymous with transcendence. And you're saying, and Tantra is saying, the tradition saying, no, it's not only transcendent, but it's also eminent. It's also embodied. And I think that's a really important part of the messages as well, because so many times, whether it's not just something like psychedelics, but meditation, lots of spirituality, it's just associated with that.
So we're emphasizing equally the eminence, the embodiment, along with the the transcendent. That seems to be one really important thing.
Todd: And we need to understand the relationship between those two because transcendence [00:13:00] supports eminence.
Adrian: Because the body is the vehicle for awakening to the transcendent
Todd: And we can't have an awakened body experience without the transcendent.
So let's say we go into deep meditation practice. We are clearing our conditioning, we're removing the veils. You know, I like to say happiness is what's left over when you're out of the way.
Because happiness is the nature of existence itself. You know, I call that unreasonable happiness. It's a vibration for no reason at all.
So we want to tap into this unreasonable happiness so we can be happy without needing a reason to be happy. When you're on the surface of life, the waves give you the reason to be happy.
win the lottery, you're happy. You know, you lose a friend or lose a loved one, you're sad.
So we can either be buoys or we can be an anchor. Bouys just bob the whole life up and down, up and down, up and down. And our happiness is externally conditional. Well, you know, I know, we know, [00:14:00] Tantra knows that there is a deeper source of happiness.
And all the practices in the Tantric tradition help to give you that anchor to go deep into the ocean of the heart, the ocean of the self, to get to the depth, the deepest depths there and tantra delineates like these four different levels. I'm not going to go into as complicated, but you get to the fourth state and there's no thinking. In the fourth state it's still. And maybe there's just a subtle vibration, but it's not in the way.
And that's when we have this heightened experience of timelessness, of being in the zone, being in the moment. We can have revelation after revelation after revelation in that state. It's a 100 percent Shakti state, you know?
so touching that state, we bring a little bit of that ecstatic nature back with us every time we go deep, we bring a little bit of what we touched back to our day to day [00:15:00] reality. And you've heard the metaphor of dyeing the cloth,
Adrian: Yes, but please share it with people
Todd: Well, in India, to get the cloth in their such vibrant colors there. They take a white cloth and they saturated in a bucket of dye. Then they hang it out to dry and it fades a little. Then they take the same cloth, same bucket of dye, they saturate it again. Think of that as we go into our meditation practice, we get saturated with source spirit consciousness. And then we take it out, it dries in the sun and it fades a little more.
We go about our daily activities and we lose a little bit of that realization because we dull ourselves, you know? And so we go back in and eventually you do that enough times that the fabric becomes colorfast.
That the That the fabric of our body, the threads of consciousness, we become spiritfast. Which means that we, wake up to that essence of what we are when we realize it in the deeper states of meditation, and we're able to have that [00:16:00] flow through everything that's happening on the surface.
so it's an interesting idea to say non dual because it has the word dual in it. And in an earlier tradition, the Advaita Vedanta
Adrian: Sorry before we even go into that just because non dual can be a whole nother topic for people
Todd: Sure, okay.
Adrian: Just to underscore what you're describing there with that dying of the cloth, is that that's what we're doing in our meditation practice or in our sadhana, right? Is we're continually dying the cloth and going deeper and deeper, back into that source that you described a few minutes ago, and it's tricky to even call it, should we call it a state or some people wouldn't even want to use that language, right?
But just sort of that idea of just returning to sort of that deepest part of our own, you know, true nature self, whatever you want to call it, but
Todd: The part behind the conditioning.
Adrian: Yes.
Todd: Yeah.
Adrian: And so through that metaphor, it's, can think of what we're doing through practices. It's a process of [00:17:00] refinement. That yoga is a process of refinement
Todd: Absolutely, Absolutely but refinement without a goal line.
Adrian: And And I'm glad you brought that up because I wanted to ask you about that. Different yoga contemplative traditions, they will talk about this in different ways. Is there an end point or not? And without going too inside baseball for folks, but I'm also very curious because we both studied with Paul and with Douglas, who kind of have different views on this.
Um, I'm curious. or, or perhaps they don't, but this notion of Siddha, of being perfected, of being done... that's a very predominant view in the tradition, including Tantra traditions, right?
Moksha, that you're done with it, or enlightenment.
Do you think about it that way? Or do you think about, for example, awakening is a spectrum and you're just somewhere along that continuum and there's really no endpoint on that spectrum?
Todd: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what my view is and why.
[00:18:00] Um, Probably there's a tantric path that aligns with it, but I'm not sure.
I have not really found a teacher, maybe Douglas has said this before. And I even think that those who say that there's an end, I think there's probably more to the story.
Adrian: Hmm.
Todd: I'm not sure, but it it seems like if you think there's an end, then you think there's a perfection outside of yourself. And so, I'm a recovering perfectionist. My dad was a perfectionist, and I got shamed for not performing up to his level. And it triggered my Anava Mala, which is everyone has this innate sense of lack.
Well, shame increases lack and shame is sourced in perfectionism, meaning trying to achieve something that is perfect, which is just out of reach, that secures our unworthiness. Because if I don't reach, I must be unworthy. I must be lacking some [00:19:00] because I haven't made it. So that spiritual paradigm keeps us locked in in a shame paradigm, which I believe is untrue.
This is one of the questions I asked Paul early on. I've been studying with Paul for 13 years. And in the beginning I said, Paul, who decides? Who's holding the bar? And he really didn't have a good answer. In fact, he, he was, he got a little flustered with that question, you know?
Because I wasn't really trying to judge him, but I was challenging this notion of, of the Siddha path.
Adrian: Right.
Todd: And so here's another perspective. Maybe the Siddha path is a way like religion controls through fear. Maybe Siddha is the way that these gurus control by keeping the students in a submissive role. Because they're obviously down here and they haven't gotten it and the teacher sits up here and the teacher's got it or they say they got it. But who really knows if they have it? So [00:20:00] I'm, I mean, you can, I come from a guru tradition, but I'm completely anti guru now, because I just, I don't believe it's a helpful path for people to submit.
I do believe in having teachers, but I also believe in owning the guru within ourselves and using that teacher to awaken the guru. But it's tricky because as soon as you give your power over, that teacher, you've lost a part of yourself.
So I believe There's a mature way to be a student, and that is to be completely open to the teacher, to receive the teachings, then take them back and examine them, keep what works and throw out the rest. And continuously take that teacher off the pedestal because it is a dangerous, loss of self that is unnecessary in the spiritual path, and it can lead to deep disappointment.
Adrian: You're sounding like quite a rejonica student right there.
that sounds very much, well, I think [00:21:00] of Douglas line that his teacher told him, which was defer but never submit.
Todd: Beautiful,
Adrian: Yeah, and I mean one thing I will say I heard Paul Paul saying more than once, and I'm sure you have too, he definitely said there's no end. Just sort of the depths of consciousness the way the journey continues to unfold
Todd: Perfect.
Adrian: So
I always really resonated with the way he described that but I mean even when I was asking about Douglas's view and how you felt about that and just to underscore it for people weren't familiar with this, you know, most yogic traditions, including tantric traditions are operating on a bondage to liberation paradigm.
And his teacher really sort of opened him to, I mean, it would effectively be heresy, right? Within within that tradition, which was an offshoot of Srividya, that that wasn't the goal actually. The goal was just to live a really rich, full life. And the goal, in a certain sense, was to be a Rasika, right? To experience all the different flavors of experience, including [00:22:00] grief being the flip side of love, and we're not trying to have a kind of immunity or exemption from the difficulties of life, which a lot of these traditions, most of them, you know, in even subtle ways are trying to do. And that's what I'm hearing a lot in the message.
Todd: It's...
Adrian: You're trying to convey. Is that fair to say?
Todd: very very fair to
say that. It's how to experience the full catastrophe of being a human being. Which includes heartbreak,
loss, celebration, achievement, joy, love, grief, sadness, the full range, you know.
I heard a podcast recently with the psychologist who is really great, Dr. Susan David, and, she has the book called emotional agility. So I teach a lot about emotions as, another tool of self knowledge.
That we need to learn how to master our [00:23:00] emotions, which to be more facile with our emotions, most people get really stuck or we suppress our emotions because they're scary, you know, and the comment she made was, after you die, she was facetious about after you die, you're gonna have a whole lot of time to experience nothingness. You know, she's gonna have a whole lot of time to not have heartbreak.
There's no grief or loss after. She didn't know. I mean, she was just like making a point and she said, but on this side of death in this short, limited lifespan that we have some more limited than others, it is our gift. It is our joy. It is our privilege. To go through all these experiences. And why heartbreak? Because the difficult and challenging emotions are the ones that contain the gifts.
Douglas and I co taught a workshop called stand in the gift [00:24:00] of the wound and most people want to just control that wound because it's so easy today to just dismiss things.
Like, if you're not happy with your iPhone, you get a new one. If you're not happy with a relationship, you just ghost them. You don't have to get back to them at all. It's like we're living in an age where we can have instant gratification of anything we want. And so, when something gets a little uncomfortable, we tend to delete it, like to just get rid of it.
And she was saying, no, we need to learn how to be in the discomfort, especially of our emotions, because our emotions are the guideposts. They are the guideposts of our body's need for something.
And so, it just changed my whole thing. Instead of trying to resolve this emotion, which is so uncomfortable. You know, one of my difficult ones is loneliness. And, I mean, I have circles of friends, I should not be lonely. But nevertheless, it comes up. [00:25:00] And I'm becoming more and more able to just be and then discover like a yoga pose,and breathe into it, and when I do that, suddenly, I get all kinds of realizations and information.
And it starts to instruct me. It points me more to my values. Well, why am I sad right now? You know, why do I feel lonely right now? And we say, well, maybe I have a need for connection or have a need for something else because I value being connected. And I value loving myself, like it takes us from the emotion to our values. So we want to become value driven rather than emotionally driven.
And to me, it's the yoga of emotions because we need to learn how to not react to the challenge. And some of them are just, it's excruciating. It's like fingernails on chalkboard. It's so excruciating, like grief. We tend to just push it away.
But you know, we need to give ourselves time to to grieve the immensity of a loss and understand why it's such a [00:26:00] loss. Like I lost my dad. It's been a while now, six years ago now. I couldn't grieve in the beginning because the loss was it was if I let myself grieve, I would fall apart.
So I didn't I kept it in. And then I don't know what it was, but I was at a family gathering and someone else in the family, probably was my sister, she just let loose. And hearing her tears and the depth of her grief triggered mine and then I let go. And what happened was after I could release and really feel that grief, the grief gave me all these messages.
The grief started to shift. Not so much focusing on what I lost because I couldn't get him back, but focus on what I gained because it's true, I have loss, but also what did my dad give me?
And I started to reflect on all the times when he played with me, and when I was a little kid. He got me into sports. He got me into baseball. He played catch with me. I mean, he wasn't the perfect father, but he did a pretty [00:27:00] darn good job. You know, I got a sense of humor from him. I got a focus from him. Discipline. Like there's all these things.
as soon as I opened the grief door, suddenly that burden of this heavy weight of grief brought me into this incredible current of flow, of love, of integration. And I got back to my values. Which was, I am a whole and complete person, capable of grieving, feeling my loss, letting go, and most importantly, moving forward, moving on.
And it takes courage to do that. And a great definition of courage I've heard lately is courage is not the absence of fear, courage is fear walking. Where you hold the fear, listen to it, but don't let it stop you.
So, can you hear the nuance of by putting a yogic frame on emotions that we start to [00:28:00] get to the essence of why those emotions are even present? They're gifts from the body. Calling us come closer, go deeper, integrate more, find out what you truly value. And let go of the rest.
It's a beautiful process and for me, it's inseparable to be a Yogi and not have this emotional agility. Like the gift of emotional agility is what are we doing? And for me, it always comes back to how can I source my own dance, my own joy.
And, uh, that's been a really beautiful practice, personally that I've taken on, and I give it to my students to the last three months in my membership, the focus has been on the yoga of happiness. And I took that from all different angles, you know, and, it ends at the end of this month and we go on, every month I have a different theme, but, it's a fascinating topic and, uh, thanks for listening to all this.
Adrian: No, I think it's, I think that's important to talk about because that's also [00:29:00] something that's left out of the traditions, typically. I mean, emotional the
emotional I intelligence. I mean, you can see a lot of that coming in with Tantra. You can see that's sort of the rise of the archetypal feminine influences. There becomes more of this interest, not just on transcendence, but embodiment.
And we get more interest in sort of working with emotions. I'm thinking, in a Tibetan Buddhist context, for example. Right? That's when a lot of these practices start coming into play. But I think it's a similar theme which is, a more balanced approach to awakening, which is there is, polishing the mirror of the mind, but we also need to work with the contents of consciousness as well.
You know, sometimes in these traditions, they just want to emphasize, oh, it's, it's kind of just
Todd: polishing Yeah. Yeah, and in that view, some things are God and other things aren't.
Adrian: Yeah.
Todd: Because they have a dualistic view that spirit is superior to embodiment,
Adrian: Yeah.
Todd: That the renunciate path is superior to the [00:30:00] householder path. you know, Paul is changing that. He's saying the householder path is just a different path that is equal to, it's not inferior. And the renunciate path, very few can do that path. God bless if that's your path. It was for me, you know, I mean, I, I was in training to become a monk. It was at Kripalu Center back when, when it was an ashram and they had this renunciate track. And right before I took my vows, I decided to get married.
You know, I just, I just.
Adrian: The fear at the last moment.
Todd: Well, now I kind of wish I was a monk because I think relationship is harder.
Adrian: Yeah, disregard everything I just said about wanting to work with emotions. Yeah.
Todd: I wanted to just, cap this by saying the renunciate path, the path of transcendence is a one way ticket. They want up and out. The Tantra that you and I are practicing is round [00:31:00] trip. In other words, we allow ourselves to transcend. We go to the highest peak or whatever, and then we come back and put it into our life. then we go again, maybe we go to a different peak or a higher peak, or we gain even more realization and we come back.
So it's this continuous round trip, and Advaita and Adwaiya. So Advaita is that word that means "not two," because you can't say oneness because it distinguishes something out. So you have to say "not two", just saying it it makes it dualistic. And so you, can't say oneness. You say Advaita which is " not two."
And it's also that path of neti, neti, neti. They're describing what it's not as a way to get to what it is. Just a different approach. What's beautiful about that is Tantra comes and they substitute the word Adwaiya for Advaita. And that word Adwaiya, this changed my life, means never without [00:32:00] duality. A unity that is never without duality.
Adrian: Yeah. And let's, cause you said two big things there again. So I'm going to slow you down. That's part of my job cause I know this will be a lot for some of the people in the audience.
So even that point about the tantric path versus the renunciate, choosing to really be deeply engaged in the world, within that, even if you're choosing that householder path, which is, what the vast majority of us want.
In fact for most people going into yoga class who aren't even aware of all this It's just a given, they're of course, they're not interested in being a in a monk.
within that householder path can can look very different in terms of how we want to balance that so if we think of maybe the goal or the paradox of the spiritual path and we're embracing the paradox instead of a problem to be solved, is we all want intimacy but we also want autonomy. We we want freedom and connection and these forces are in tension [00:33:00] and how do we balance that?
And that can look very different for different people. You know, it's intimate relationship or not, or married or not, or kids or no kids. And so I think it's inviting people to figure out how they want to explore that paradox themselves.
And helping them to realize that it's a paradox.
You know, it's not a problem to solve.
And so when you make that choice, it's inevitably going to have trade offs, things you don't like. So it's really figuring about what feels right or what feels right in this period of life.
And going with that.
Todd: Yes.
Adrian: And not making people feel like there's one goal that we're moving towards.
Todd: Right. And Tantra asks only three questions. And these have been guiding questions for me in the chaos of a householder life. Just
Adrian: These are great. Let's lay these out.
Todd: In the chaos of the world. Like, do we even track spiritually?
So we need frameworks, we need boundaries. So I'll get to those three questions in a [00:34:00] second, but you said the idea that we're bound being seeking freedom, which is all paths except Tantra.
Tantra has the assumption that we're born free, seeking boundaries. We are free beings seeking boundaries because if you don't bind yourself to what your heart most deeply desires, something else is going to bind itself to you that probably you don't want.
And that's when we start to get into being pushed by life or being sort of overtaken by life situation where we feel a victim, like we just we can't solve that. So we have to get back to these three questions.
And the first one is what does your heart most deeply desire? And then we're going to refine that. So that's heart. The next one is what value does that have for you? So what is your heart most deeply desired? That's of the heart. What value is it? You have to [00:35:00] employ your mind. You have to discern. You have to think clearly. because not everything is as valuable as everything else.
And it'll help. Like, you know, I do pros and cons, like with decisions that are difficult. I'll do a pro and a con. Well, what are the positive things that'll happen if I go this direction? What are the negative things? Can I tolerate those negative things? Well, I can because the positive things are really worth it.
And because I live in a world of non perfection, I'm not trying to have no problems. I'm not trying to not have any discomfort. I'm not trying to be uncomfortable, but that's no longer as big of a factor in my consciousness.
And then the third question, what are you prepared to do about it? So what is your heart most deeply desire? Like, what is your purpose? why are you even here? What value is that to you? And then what are you prepared to do about it?
And that just reframes, like when I have a difficult decision to make, it helps me remember [00:36:00] what it's all about. And that's why, you know, my yoga is called Ashaya yoga, a boat of the heart. That this is, a path where we tune into the heart because the heart is in the middle of the middle.
Remember Paul teaches about the threshold, like the place in between two opposing forces. It's the sweet spot, you know, it's the place where we get to the furthest boundary of individual nature. And then the universal is right there. So boundary and freedom come together. It's like looking face to face into into the eyes of grace. It's as close as we can get.
And then sometimes we merge into her. Other times we remain separate. It Is a co participation to get to that place in the middle. But the heart is the representation of the midline, first of all.
And then in the chakra system, the heart is chakra four. So we have three energy centers above three below. So that's why there's so much meaning about do you know your heart? Do [00:37:00] you know what your heart? I mean, we all have different desires, but that heart's most vdeepest most desire is the one we're looking for.
And then that becomes our North star that becomes our Druva is, is, is our pole star. It holds what our purpose is or what our purpose is meant to be. And I mean, we have to choose what that is, but it becomes more obvious, you know,
Adrian: So as an example, do you mind sharing for yourself? Like, what for you is, is that deepest desire that guides you that's
Todd: you,
Adrian: north star?
Todd: Well, I had a really deep spiritual awakening when I first got into yoga. I write all about it in my book, Journey to Unbreakable Wholeness, there's a lot of detail to it, but it was so potent, but part of my journey, I mean, it was like dark night of the soul potent.
What I came through on the other end of that was a very clear vision for what my purpose was. But like every cell of my body was [00:38:00] with that. That's what made it so easy for me to shift from music to yoga. Because every part of me wanted that.
You know, I wanted spiritual community. I wanted right livelihood. I wanted a healthy living. I wanted the spiritual teachings. I wanted to wake up. I wanted so called enlightenment, which at that time was the striving to get to the goal line.
I mean, it's helpful. It did get me to where I am today, but now there's like a broader idea of enlightenment that it's a never ending journey.
And the purpose was handed to me. We could say from a deep place inside myself, but I think of it as the universe just spoke to me and said, you are here to bring heaven on earth. And as esoteric as that sounds, the idea was
Adrian: That's grand. No pressure.
Todd: just to serve the light, you know, to help people wake up, to bring more joy. To [00:39:00] be able to live, to, first of all, to make sense of all the suffering, like let's make sense of it, it's there, let's acknowledge it.
And so many of us have these traumas, you know, small T traumas, large T traumas. And what I write about in my book is that it's not about the trauma per se. It's about the meaning we assign to that trauma. And it's about the meaning that we assign to moving forward from that, that determines which direction you're going to go.
Adrian: I I think that's actually how, Gabor Maté defines trauma. He says, it's not the event that happens to you. It's your response to the event.
Todd: Beautiful.
Adrian: Yeah.
Todd: And it's difficult to craft our own response when we're overtaken by it. And I think that's when we really need to get support and go deep with it. And EMDR, like all these different techniques that help, re-train the nervous system to be able to release the PTSD. Or at least [00:40:00] make it more constructive for someone.
But ultimately, I mean, you hear about these, best selling authors who had this huge trauma and then they came through it and they have all this wisdom to share and help others to learn, how to transform it too.
While others have that same trauma or similar trauma, and they go into deeper states of depression. They can't pull themselves out of it. And I, I do believe everyone has their journey. And everyone has their path, but yoga is the process where it's like a stepladder that can help us climb a little bit higher to gain more insight so that we start to look back at our life and instead of living with so much regret, we live sort of the divine story that each of us has.
And we create that story as we live. We start to tell the story of our life and we get to a place where we can envision where the story wants to go next. And it's, it's a beautiful empowerment that we don't have to live in [00:41:00] victim consciousness.
So we come to deeper realizations that life has our back. That challenge only comes when we're ready for a promotion. When we're ready to rise up. When we're ready to learn something. When we're ready to change. And that everything in life is for our awakening. And I mean everything.
To get to that place you have to look at what you don't like about what's happening in life, or on the planet or what's going on for you. And ask a different question.
Adrian: Thank you for listening to this podcast. If you enjoyed it or found it helpful, please consider subscribing to Sahaja Soma on YouTube, rating the Redesigning the Dharma podcast on Apple or Spotify, or sharing this episode with someone who might benefit from it. Any and every little bit helps. Also, please bear in mind that the plants and compounds mentioned on this podcast and on the Sahaja Soma platform are illegal in [00:42:00] many countries, and even possession can carry severe criminal penalties.
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