“Liberation” Teaching Theme

AUDIO

In this audio excerpt, Swami Radha emphasizes that Liberation is an ongoing process — we take one step in our learning and the resulting awareness opens the door to our next step. It is in our everyday life that we find our lessons and make the decisions necessary to move forward.
You can listen to it here:

TEACHING IDEAS

At the Ashram we will be using our weekly classes to explore liberation through a variety of practices and reflections.

Here are some ideas.

• Challenge a limitation by consciously changing your behaviour.
• Challenge an idea about yourself by doing what you normally think you can’t do.
• Change habits. Walk to a different place or take a different route.
• Can you liberate yourself from a habitual speech pattern?
• Observe for a week. How is renunciation related to liberation?

2. Work with your dreams, following the messages from your inner guru. (See Realities of the Dreaming Mind, p 37-38 for the dream method.) Write four or five questions that arise from your dream. Then give your partner your questions to ask you over and over for 10 minutes. Write your experience.

3. Hidden Language can help liberate truths from our bodies. Try these poses.

• • Lotus – The lotus opens only after a minimum of four hours of sunlight. Fill yourself with Light. What can you let go of?
  • Headstand – How do you gain freedom by turning your usual view upside down?
  • Start with a firm stand in the Mountain pose and focus on a strongly held conviction. Turn this conviction upside down in the Headstand. Now work with the Little Bridge and find a way between the opposites. Write your reflections.

4. Yoga is the Path of Liberation; the Kundalini system is a map of this path.

• • Reflect on the cakras. What does this map show you about liberation? How can you apply your understanding in your day?
  • Find two or three key questions from Kundalini Yoga For the West that will help you open your mind. Use the same questions throughout the month, discovering how questions can penetrate complacency. Check in at the end of the month. What have you learned?

5. June 21st marks Summer Solstice in the northern hemisphere, the time of maximum Light. Practice the Divine Light Invocation 5-10 times each day from now until the solstice. Make it your goal to grow into Light!

6. What lessons from your understanding of resilience and creativity can you bring to liberation? How can you apply these insights now? Where have you worked and had victories?

Try these ideas for breaking through barriers:

• Draw or paint with the opposite hand. Can you find freedom in limitation?
• Create your own freedom dance.
• As a group, design your own board game – “The Path of Liberation.” Each person can identify traps, how to get out of them and practices that help elevate you.