Bliss and Grief, Joy and Sorrow, Happiness and Sadness. Again and again, we open to the Light, and then we find ourselves back in the darkness. In my new book, Radiance Rising: Spiritual Practices for Daily Living (which is going to the printer very soon and which is now discounted on this website store), I describe the spiritual process of expanding and contracting: “As we practice opening and closing, it is helpful for us to understand why we have to keep closing. Simply put, most of our systems are just not ready to open to the Full Bliss of the Universe all at once…. So, we open our hearts again and again, gradually expanding our capacity to be in the bliss state.”

Understanding the spiritual process of expanding and contracting is really important, especially for those of us in the West. We have to let go of our fast-paced mode of doing, and relax into a slower state of being. For most of us, changes within our beings occur very gradually over a long period of time. Once we begin to witness ourselves and we understand that the spiritual path is a gradual journey of opening the heart, then we can release the expectation that we will be happy all the time. Keeping in mind that it is our expectations that create our suffering, we can see the need to realistically approach our emotional states.

If we understand that expansions inevitably follow contractions and contractions inevitably follow expansions, then we can more gracefully navigate the shifts between joy and sorrow. We can even begin to see how these two states are really part of one whole circle. They even seem to touch each other at times, like when we laugh so hard that tears stream down our cheeks.

Kahlil Gibran describes this quite brilliantly in his chapter On Joy and Sorrow: “When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” He goes on to say that joy and sorrow are inseparable. (The Prophet, Pocket Edition, Alred A. Knopf, Inc., NY, 1973.)

When we cultivate the witness, that objective part of ourselves that simply watches everything we are, we intimately get to know the ways in which we open and close. Take a moment to reflect on the ways you open and close. When expanded, how do you feel? When contracted, how do you feel?

My expansions feel like sparkly Bliss. When my mind and heart open, I feel incredibly connected with All that is, and I feel so in love with everything and everyone. For me, the expanded state carries the quality of excitement. At times I feel so much Radiance and Happiness rising inside that I feel like I could just bliss right on out of my skin. In my memoir, The Rita Lila: A Western Yogini's Journey to Bliss (published under my pen name Rita Ann Shankara), I share my process with learning to hold more Bliss and with allowing all my emotions to purify me.

All spiritual practices are designed to purify our minds and hearts. In the Bhakti Yoga tradition, all emotions are viewed as fuel for the purification fire, so all emotions are embraced and offered to the Beloved. I practice this with my emotions, but I notice that I have to be careful not to get stuck in the sorrowful feelings.

My contractions sometimes feel like a grief so deep that it could stop my heart from beating. I tend to cry easily and often, as anyone who has read my memoir can attest. I have a lifelong pattern of releasing my emotions through tears. I can remember feeling things quite deeply, even as a small child. In my baby book, my Mom recorded an incident from when I was two years old. It was the middle of the night, and I stood up in my crib and called out, “Daddy, Teja’s crying!”

A few days ago, after crying over something, I called a dear yogi friend of mine, and I said, “I was just crying because” and right then, he interrupted me and declared, “You were just crying because that’s what you do!” I laughed and said, “You are right. I was just crying because that’s what I do.” We then joked that I could be the crying saint. I said maybe I could put a video of me crying on my YouTube channel, and he dared me to do so.

But who would really want to watch me lying on the floor sobbing in front of my altar? Wouldn’t people rather watch a video of me laughing? (If you have an opinion on this, you can post a comment at the end of this article.)

Crying can be spiritually purifying. Sometimes people feel relieved after a good cry. But, as I said before, we have to be careful because crying can also lead to a state in which we get stuck in the pain body, that emotional mass of energy which holds all of our pains. For me, when I am in the pain body, I lose my connection with the Light, and I feel stuck in an isolated bubble of contracted energy.

Also, I sense that the Universe can’t hear us when we are stuck in our pain, because the pain can block our connection with the Universe. Yet, once we fall into the pain body, it can be difficult to find our way back out of it. That is when it is good to remember that we are not our pain, but rather we are the one witnessing the pain that is passing through us. It is also good to remember that we are not isolated in our pain. We can think of all the other people who are feeling pain at the same time, and send love to all their pain bodies.

The Buddhist path focuses on the “middle way,” which means accepting and allowing our emotions without repressing them and without indulging in them. Pema Chödrön, a Buddhist nun, describes tonglen, a practice in which we breathe in whatever feels bad and send out whatever feels good. (I did not mistype that sentence. Tonglen is actually a practice in taking in pains and giving out relief from pains.) She writes: “People everywhere feel pain – jealousy, anger, being left out, feeling lonely. Everybody feels it in the painful way you feel it. The story lines vary, but the underlying feeling is the same for us all. By the same token, if you feel some sense of delight – if you connect with what for you is inspiring, opening, relieving, relaxing – you breathe it out, you give it away, you send it out to everyone else.” (Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion, by Pema Chödrön and Emily Hilburn Sell, Shambhala Publications, Inc., 2002.)

Cultivating the witness part of ourselves helps us to stay in the middle, just watching, accepting, and allowing our emotions. So with grief, for example, we simply allow the grief to pass through us, without repressing it and without indulging in it. Repressed emotions get stored in the muscle tissues, which can cause illnesses, so it is important to allow ourselves to feel our feelings. Yet, we have to learn the art of feeling the emotions and then allowing them to release.

When I get stuck in grief, no matter how bad the pain feels, I keep saying to myself, “There I am feeling grief again. This too shall shift.” I remind myself to keep putting my attention on things that expand me, and to hold onto my intention to be happy and open to all of life. When we are contracted – no matter how bad the pain feels – it is really important that we continue to hold our intention to keep opening our hearts.

Sometimes during a bout with grief, if I cultivate the witness part of myself, then I pop back into the Bliss state, in which I experience self-love, inner harmony, and compassion for all beings. The witness part of ourselves is one with the Bliss of our Inner Beings, so tuning in to the witness helps us to keep a bigger perspective. If we visualize our pains in the context of the vast cosmos, then we can (sometimes) laugh at how tiny our pains are compared to the vastness of the stars.

Bliss and Grief. My two lives. Both are true, and that beautiful circle of joy and sorrow is leading me ever deeper into the vastness of my beating heart. May we all come to know the healing self-love that arises when we accept all of ourselves. May we all experience more and more happiness, even as we journey through the pains of life.

May all beings everywhere know Peace and Happiness.

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Photo of crystal reflecting green light in kitchen by Teja Shankara.

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