Yogachaitanya: New Yoga CDs

Sounds of Transformation

Yogachaitanya has created a CD set for yoga practice and sadhana, with Yoga Nidra as the first in the series. He explains the concept behind the CDs to Carol Sill, while discussing the practicality behind using the CDs for daily sadhana.

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Yogachaitanya on Yoga Nidra (Pt.2)

Yogachaitanya continues his discussion of the practice of Yoga Nidra with Carol Sill. He describes how surfing influenced his early exploration of the states of mind and body. He also touches on the topics of breathing and meditation and the implications and range of possibilities for the application of yoga nidra - for both athletes and recovery from surgery.

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Yogachaitanya on Yoga Nidra (Pt.1)

Yogachaitanya discusses the practice of Yoga Nidra with Carol Sill. Working with the neural and physical systems, the practice creates a wholistic experience for the entire being, which benefits all systems of physiology. Functioning between the waking and sleeping state, the practice enables one to return to a place of optimum efficiency, addressing deep layers of consciousness and emotional being.

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The Soul and Balanced Mastery

In my experience of myself as the soul I feel that my main purpose in the world is to create, and that’s where I get the most joy. That’s the feedback that comes to me from those higher levels. So it has nothing to do with being able to control other people or have power or money or influence or any of that, it’s just the sheer joy of creation.

Lee Van Patten talks with Carol Sill

C: Hi, I’m Carol Sill and I’m here in Vancouver talking with Lee Van Patten about spiritual life and inner development and how that expresses in the world. So maybe you could just tell us something about your path, and what you are involved with right now?

L: I’ll tell you a little about my path. I think I really got going in my spiritual life back in the ‘70s. I studied for a while with a man who was involved in Indian guruism that had to do with a Swami in India and he was carrying on that tradition. I kind of fell into it by happenstance, and I wasn’t really attracted to it and I became disillusioned with guruism in general. I could see how it was not a balanced system that created a lot of problems among the people that were following gurus.

But at that time I also read the Ouspensky material, about George Gurdjieff, so I became interested in Sufism. And then I read some Idries Shah stuff as well, so I learned a little more about Sufism. Then I met some Sufi people in Toronto and studied with them for a while but there were some things I didn’t like about organizations, spiritual organizations in general.

Over time I came to feel that any organization that has to exist for a long period of time, maybe it’s based on a charismatic leader. The charismatic leader passes away but the organization continues on. But in order to continue on it usually attracts people that are bureaucrats basically, who are there for their own self-interest, to have a career. And the organization begins to lose the essence of the spirit from which it originally came. So I moved away from that as well, but I continued my own inner process to the best of my ability.

I’m almost 60 years old and what I’d like to convey here is a couple of things I’ve learned along the way. One is that I believe it’s wrong to think of ourselves as having a soul. I think it’s kind of the other way around, that we’re actually the soul, and we are manifesting through a physical form.

That change in perspective is important, because if you think that you have a soul, that is your ego owning the soul and essentially controlling it. And when people think of their soul in that context they often think of a child-like kind of a semi-formed entity that has feelings but no real power. In actual fact, when we come from the soul perspective, we have a lot of power, and we have a lot of creative energy.

In my experience of myself as the soul I feel that my main purpose in the world is to create, and that’s where I get the most joy. That’s the feedback that comes to me from those higher levels. So it has nothing to do with being able to control other people or have power or money or influence or any of that, it’s just the sheer joy of creation. When you’re in that space I think you’re really well connected with your soul. The minute you try and own your artwork or own anybody’s anything then you begin to lose that feeling and you go into the ego.

The other thing that I’ve learned over the course of my life is what I call the Inner Family. And that is that people don’t really grow up, in the sense that we think of growing up in our society, where you develop from a child to an adolescent to an adult. I don’t think it’s really like that. I think it’s more like these are developmental layers that pile on top of each other. That child persona or aspect of ourselves doesn’t go away, nor does the adolescent.

So therefore in order to be a balanced person at the adult stage we need to have a balanced inner family. It is our adult that provides the stability and security for those earlier aspects of ourselves that are still present and are still expressing. If we don’t have a balanced inner family, if say there are unmet needs at the adolescent level, that adolescent’s going to keep rebelling in our lives in our internal life and in our external life, regardless of how strongly developed the adult level appears to be.

That’s important in the spiritual sense because in order to bring through the soul and have that soul be able to express in a balanced and productive way, all of those aspects of ourselves have to be happy, with each other. And then that’s going to express in a really positive way. Without that, I guess an example would be like a person who meditates for several hours a day, and yet in the rest of their life they’re not happy, things aren’t working out for them. Well, that’s because there’s an overabundance of focus on spiritual practice, but they haven’t done the inner work that’s necessary to bring all of that into harmony and bring it into expression.

And that, I think, is the essence of being a spiritual master. Mastery is not in the sense of control but in the sense of skillful use of everything that comes to you in your life, that you have all of those things well-lined up with each other, and you have that inner peace that allows the soul to express. Without that you haven’t really gotten there yet, no matter how adept you are at one spiritual path or another.

C: Beautiful. Thank you.

View the video of this conversation.

On Soul and the Inner Family

“In my experience of myself as the soul I feel that my main purpose in the world is to create, and that’s where I get the most joy. That’s the feedback that comes to me from those higher levels. So it has nothing to do with being able to control other people or have power or money or influence or any of that, it’s just the sheer joy of creation.” Lee van Patten discusses the process of spiritual maturing, with emphasis on understanding the Soul, as well as explaining the concept of the Inner Family.

See the transcript of this video conversation.

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Inspiration and Balance

Carol and Jim explore some of the connections between living a creative, spiritual and balanced life. Where does inspiration come from? Is balance useful and important? How can we journey deeper and deeper into our lives?

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