Dear Readers,
This newsletter has been lying in the lurch for a while. I stopped publishing because I felt I was not doing my inner work deeply enough to write from a space of shantam and adbhutam.
During the winter break, I took time to strengthen my sadhana and also serendipitously pick up a powerful book “Surrender Experiment” written by Michael Singer.
The Surrender Experiment
In an age of information abundance, the barometer I choose to complete a book from start to finish is this: Is this book radioactive enough to change a pound of my being forever?
Michael Singer pens a powerful tale of his colourful life journey that traversed the world of economics (where he has a Ph.D), spirituality (he attributes Yogananda as his guru who helped him discover his path), computers and business (he was the earliest pioneer of medical tech where he built a billion dollar business with a golden exit and unfortunately got embroiled in a securities fraud and fought a legal battle to clear his name ).
Unlike other biographies, which take an outside-in view of life's journey, Michael Singer narrates the entire journey inside-out, talking of his surrender experiment - surrendering completely to the mysterious flow of life’s events, rather than trying to change or control them.
For someone like me whose life has been a hitchhiking ride from engineering to tech consulting to a solopreneur journey in culture and agriculture, naturally, this biography spoke to me at ineffable depths and dimensions.
Balancing my spiritual pursuits (with my Acharya Sangha at Ritambhara) with my entrepreneurship journey has been a perennial challenge. More often, when left to their own devices, spiritual explorations become a refuge from the competitive, uncertain-led games of entrepreneurship.
This book breaks this duality between the world of spirituality and life as it happens outside with a powerful premise:
"What would happen if we respected the flow of life and used our free will to participate in what’s unfolding, instead of fighting it? What would be the quality of life that unfolds? Would it just be random events with no order or meaning, or would the same perfection of order and meaning that manifests in the rest of the universe manifest in the everyday life around us? "
YogaSutras have been talking about Ishwara Pranidhana for centuries. However, when surrender is presented as an experiment, it becomes so easier to incorporate within your inner work, more so when you are practising meditation with uncertainty in the name of entrepreneurship.
Driven by the power of surrender experiment happening underway in my psyche, I have been making a few fundamental changes in the way life energies steer my waking moment.
Five Planes of Existence
Sometime back, my Yoga Mentor Raghu Ananthanarayanan sketched five planes of existence.
Here is a detailed description of each of the planes in his words
1. VippaNi-Market place; Transactional; for profit/ avoid loss; defend/ aggress; opportunity/ threat; actor; listening with vigilance- extractive world
2. PaishAchika Padam -Veranda; Green room; team up to increase the possibility of profit/ avoid loss; share and learn skills; information and intelligence for planning; guardian / judge; listen with curiosity- entropic world- avidya kshetram
3. MAnuSha Padam-Hearth; belonging; community that shares joys and sorrow; replenish and rebuild, through tending and nurturing; develop identity; world view, perspectives, values; victim-friend; listen with compassion- enlivening world- dharma kshetram
4. DaivIka Padam- Heart; healing; a community that enables deep transformation through embracing the shadow; transcend identity- embrace heroic potential; cosmology, sacredness, service; dreamer-meditator; listen with meditative witnessing- coherent world- DhyAna kshetram
5. Brahma Padam-Divine; transcending; community that reinforces sacredness; transcend the worldly- embody divinity; Consciousness, ecstasy, co-arising; pUrNatvam; silence. - Satchidananda kshetram.
While most of us have access to Vippani and PaishAchika Padam, unless we are part of a spiritual sangha, we have lost access to the remaining planes.
A complete rasathmic life would have thriving spaces that access all these five planes of existence.
Now that most of us are in planning and resolution mode as we enter a new Gregorian New Year, how do we build a thriving ecosystem that enables us to access the five planes of existence?
What is the supporting infrastructure that we need to build to access all these five planes of existence? We will explore this and more.
Check-In: What do you feel?
How do you feel about today’s edition? I would love to get your candid feedback. Your feedback will be anonymous. Two questions. 1 Minute. Thanks.🙏
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