Inner silence and grounding

13. Building a Daily Practice with Self-Pacing
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Hi all,

To quote Yogani:

All we have to do is meditate twice a day, and listen to what our inner silence is telling us. We will know what to do. (Lesson 29 - Alcohol, Tobacco and Drugs)

Yogani also says that we ultimately become like a movie screen upon which all of existence is projected. Ultimately, this is the main reason why I meditate.

Reading that (and other similar quotes), I came to believe that during daily activity, all I would have to do is get off the driver’s seat and let inner silence guide my actions ; which would include socializing, working, moving, etc… and even grounding.

In other words, I came into AYP believing that the inner silence I would cultivate through deep meditation (and samyama) would become like a guide, and that I would eventually just have to surrender fully to it, and that it would guide my every action (including grounding).

Now, I’m a bit confused as to why we have to make conscious attempts (decisions) to do something in daily activity to ground ourselves, when we are literally cultivating inner silence (God realization, or the “supreme guide” … or whatever you want to call it).

Note that I would understand that this would be the case if we were cultivating inner energies (kundalini) to an excess instead of inner silence (which is the foundation), and why there would be many ongoing issues of energetic overload and so on for people who aren’t actively engaged in twice daily meditation, but this is not the topic I am raising here.

Isn’t the point of cultivating inner silence, to stop making decisions based on ego, and rather to start living intuitively, without strain (effortless living, or “Thy will be done, not mine”). Wouldn’t any need to ground be included in that effortless living (stillness in action)? Wouldn’t inner silence provide that automatically for ourselves?

Does any of this make any sense?

Cheers

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Hi qspadone,

I think the answer to your question is that until inner silence has become sufficiently abiding (or permanent, 24/7), one likely does not perceive most decisions (e.g. related to grounding) as coming from stillness, even if one is cultivating inner silence through practices like DM and Samyama.

My understanding is that it takes many years or even several decades of practicing until stillness is fully abiding. But this is a gradual shift and so I think this is why Yogani calls it the rise of the witness.

I’m also very curious about how this will eventually feel like. I think glimpses of this acting from a place stillness can be noticed much earlier, so one gets a taste of it. But such glimpses are not the 24/7 witness.

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Hi qspadone
We are doing kundalini activating stuff even if it is very little breathing or asanas…and inner silence although different from kundalini also can lead to overload cause it can be overwhelming to see through all the mental stuff that arise in daily life, it can be overwhelming not to be in the driver seat as you said
In the end kundalini and inner silence are interwoven
That is why grounding is important

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I just came home from my second AYP retreat. And while there is a lot more fascinating stuff that happened there (and I could talk about), two things relate to this topic: the boosted and palpable experience of inner silence in activity and a large selection of grounding activities readily available to engage in. So an AYP retreat is perfect to explore both these aspects (besides the obvious, of learning a lot about practice). Inner silence is much more lingering and noticeable than in a normal day environment because of more meditation, that is done in the group, without having any worldly distractions and 12 hours of silence every day. And grounding activities, like nature walks, swimming in the creeks and rivers and karma yoga are all available without any planning or effort and after some experimentation one can more easily feel which activities are more grounding than others thanks to the lingering inner silence.

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