Episode 14 - Our Path to Enlightenment through Focus and Meditation. Samadhi and What That Means in a Modern World featuring Melissa Townsend
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IN THIS EPISODE:
Melissa Townsend is an Artist, Author, Psychic & Astrologer, and she lives in San Francisco with her husband, Gordon, and her son, Jesse.
She has been a practitioner of Yoga for over 35 years, studied Sanskrit for over 15 years, and now teaches the language to others. In 2011 she started translating the Yoga Sutras. Her paintings, translations, and commentary of the Yoga Sutras, Book One and Book Two, have been published in full-color, soft-bound books.
She hosts a popular YouTube series with videos on Astrology and the Tarot.
Everything she does is the product of asking and trying to answer those age-old questions, the ones that push us onto the spiritual path, “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?” All of this is a way to engage with each other, as we all ask and try to answer those questions.
In this episode we look at these universal questions through the lens of yoga philosophy and the path to Samadhi, a state of meditative consciousness and how this process of concentration and focus can be part of what we do in this very busy modern world.
From Patanjali’s Eight Limbs, we discuss the last three -Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi.
LINKS & ABOUT
Subscribe to her YouTube Channel
Learn more about Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi in Yoga Journal
TRANSCRIPT
Note: Please excuse any errors in the transcription.
Recorded Intro (00:05):
Yoga Philosophy for Everyday Living, a podcast to bring the ancient wisdom of yoga to inform your everyday living on and off the mat. Hi, I am your host Monica Phillips. So often we sabotage ourselves because of the chatter in our heads. This podcast will take you through the eight limbs of yoga with leading yoga instructors and introduce you to executives who have brought yoga into their lives so they can thrive. Please listen, subscribe, and share it with a friend.
Monica Phillips (00:41):
Welcome to Yoga Philosophy for Everyday Living. I'm so glad to be here with Melissa Townsend. Welcome to the show. Melissa Townsend is an artist, author, psychic, and astrologer who lives in San Francisco. And she's been practicing yoga for more than 35 years. She studied Sanskrit for over 15, and I came to know of her through her meditation deck, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which is this incredibly beautiful artistic depiction of the sutras for meditation, which she'll get to tell us more about. She's also translated the yoga sutras through painting since 2011. And they have been put together into two books, Yoga Sutras Book 1 and 2 in full color. And she also has YouTube videos on astrology and the tarot decks as well. And ultimately, what I love that you say, Melissa, is that everything you do is the product of asking these two age old questions, "Who am I?", and "Why am I here?"
Monica Phillips (01:38):
Which is a perfect way to get into what this is all about, which is throughout this podcast, I've been interviewing guests on the eight limbs of yoga which is one way of looking at yoga, for sure. And the last three are Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi, which is what I would love to ask you about first. We talked a little bit about this. Help us understand what these words are and how we experience them.
Melissa Townsend (02:08):
Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi are the last three limbs of yoga. They are, Dharana is usually it's a concentration with contemplation. It's picking a point and focusing on that, putting your attention on the point and then Dhyana is the continuation of Dharana. It's keeping the attention on, is maintaining the flow of attention on that point. So you pick a point, you keep your attention to the point. And then Samadhi is when it all disappears. It's when through maintaining focused attention on a point, the barriers between yourself and it break down and you have a profound experience of physical reality in which the barriers between yourself and that point - and that point could be a thing, the point could be an idea, it could be a mantra, but, it can be the heart, it can be the third eye.
Melissa Townsend (03:00):
It can be, the point could be whatever, but the idea is to keep the attention going there and then have the, lose that, your sense of self through focus on that point, lose that sense of that small self inside to have the barriers break down and that's Samadhi, which is then an experience of absorption. And if you're meditating, it's a meditative absorption of transcendent, meditative absorption that can have a lot of different levels from the, in the yoga sutras, they lists in book one, it begins listing there's samprajnata [conscious meditation] and asamprajnata [superconscious meditation] samadhi, which is with the focus and then without, and then it breaks down the samprajnata samdhi, samadhi with a focus breaks down into four levels. And each of those four levels breaks into two levels. But the idea being that, for example, the first level of the Savitarka Samadhi theoretically, I mean, at some level, even if you're really focused on something that you're working on and you lose yourself in that, that is a kind of vitarka samadhi. That is like the first level, when you lose that sense of yourself due to being focused on something.
Monica Phillips (04:11):
We had talked about the movie, Soul, and there's that scene where in the end where he's playing his piano and he enters the next dimension, this sense of ease and flow that allows you to transcend the thing you're doing. Is that, would you call that
Melissa Townsend (04:25):
That would be like the vitarka samadhi. Again, samadhi has all these different levels. So the degree to which you, you transcend and lose a sense of yourself and become absorbed in a larger experience of reality can vary. But yes, that would be a type of samadhi. And then in book three, which discusses the last three limbs, those three combined together, Dharana, Dhiyana, and Samadhi. Together, those three are called Samyama. That's a technical term for the application of those three. And it's just a term that makes it easier to say, if you focus on this and then keep that focus, Dharana, Dhiyana, and then experience Samadhi, this will happen. If you focus on that, that will happen because a lot of book three goes into the siddhis, into the powers, and each of those is related to having a particular focus.
Monica Phillips (05:25):
Tell me more about that. So is this like in visualization, visualizing the outcome you want to achieve and focusing on that so that will happen.
Melissa Townsend (05:34):
I don't think it's exactly the same thing as that. The only way that it could be thought to be the same thing is if you, because visualization, it only, if you then have a samadhi experience, if you lose that sense of yourself. A lot of the times visualizing on a desired outcome has a lot of ego involved. Like I want this, I want that. Anytime that's involved, nothing's going to happen. Something might happen like in terms of visualizing a desired outcome, there are certain desired outcomes that are going to happen and certain ones that aren't. So, but the visualization, the meaningful aspect of it, that would be like that application would be only to the extent that you allow yourself to focus on it. And then kind of on some level lose focus. You keep the focus, but samadhi, it's a kind of maintaining focus and losing focus at the same time, so that only works with visualizations. If you reach a point where there's no longer a sense of self and you just feel without ego, without desire, without anything, you feel something, or you have some experience from having been focused, but you can't be hungering after that desired outcome. So the fact that there is a desired outcome is already a problem.
Monica Phillips (06:49):
Ultimiately in the Sutras we learned that that desire has to disappear and to reach samadhi and it's letting go of the outcomes. And we were talking about before, life is the thing, not the thing that you do, but the process of being.
Melissa Townsend (07:03):
That's the hardest thing for all of us. That was a really wonderful message I think of that movie, Soul, is that life is about life. It's not about what you do. It's about being alive. I love that scene where he's talking. He says, well, so what happens next? And she tells the story about the young salmon asking, "I'm looking for the ocean" and the older one going, "you're in the ocean." And he's like, "no, this is just a lot of water." That's it?
Monica Phillips (07:29):
There's a great Rumi quote, too. The wave, being the wave, and then going back into the ocean. The wave is still there. It's just changed its form to be the ocean.
Melissa Townsend (07:39):
Another Rumi is the Guest House is my favorite Rumi. "This life is like a guest house. You're welcoming one guest after another and welcome them. Even if they come and steal everything you have and bring a bunch of sorrows that each one is there, the messenger from beyond." It's about accepting what happens with a kind of joy, whatever it is.
Monica Phillips (08:00):
Seeing the gift in everything. And also the sense of everything is temporary. These experiences we have are temporary. Even this experience on earth is temporary. My sons is creating a Tibetan Mandala in school for art class. And I thought like, that's so cool. Like the sense of creating something so intricate and then letting it all blow away. It's here for now. Like we get to borrow these experiences in life.
Melissa Townsend (08:23):
I think that's so hard to, it's so hard to really comprehend that. So it's good to do things, make the mandala, to know that. But there's so many things that you think about if I were to die. But the fact of the matter is we all think about our lives. We do think about our lives as if we're not going to die. We actually are. It's just so incomprehensible. And the notion that this, whatever it is, this is it. And this is exactly what it's supposed to be. It's so hard to really experience that and live for what it is and not for what you're trying to make it and for what you're hoping it's going to be and what you think it's going to be and what you think it should be and what you expected it to be. That's all shifted. That's all this stuff that we're carrying. But that's all that internal dialogue, all that stuff. That's (motor running sound)
Monica Phillips (09:11):
Yeah. I was telling you how everything I learned from yoga philosophy is coaching. And as a coach, I noticed that when my clients are in this stuck zone, it's because their current state does not meet their expectations. And there's discord. My yoga mentor, Tiffany Russo, she did this great exercise with all of us. "What is the pose that you had to let go of and how did that make you feel?" And gosh, probably even four years ago, I was doing back walkovers and handstands, and now I think I don't need to do those. And my body doesn't really want to allow me to do those. And I think I'm pretty good in Savasana. Have I become comfortable with letting go of this pose? Which just seems so silly and yet we attach ourselves to, "I am Urdvha Dhanurasana." No, I'm not. I'm savasana, completely letting go.
Melissa Townsend (10:00):
There's nothing like aging to help make that happen.
Monica Phillips (10:05):
And appreciating it.
Melissa Townsend (10:05):
That's definitely been a lesson for me. Or it's kind of ongoing. I used to be for years. I mean, I was one of those people who did all those amazing things and then starting at a certain point in my fifties. So I'm 61. So I developed severe arthritis in my left foot. So that has an impact on everything, on doing everything. And then your body just does other stuff too. This is the other thing. I thought that yoga would protect me from all that. It's sort of in the literature too, that yoga is going to protect you from all that, but it doesn't necessarily. And also that is also part of it, letting go of that whole notion that
Monica Phillips (10:41):
Philosophy is protecting you from expecting it so that you can enjoy what you have now. It's different. Every day is new. That's something that's guaranteed that every day is new. I say you're rocking 61! Way to go. Yoga definitely contributes to some sort of cellular regeneration and growth in ways that we don't always see. We were talking about my experience with my grandmother because of samadhi. And I asked you, I have this experience I shared this before that my grandmother came to me before she died. I was in a really great spiritual place. I was very much at ease with myself and she came. A robin landed on the fence and the wind blew through the redwoods. And I was at a friend's house at a party in 2014. And I heard her say, "I want to go, I want to be free. Can I go?" And then my father called the next day to let me know she had died and that she had shared these words with him. And it was really powerful and before this experience. I wouldn't have known how to react to someone telling me about an experience like this. And I know that it seems crazy to so many people. And we were talking about that in terms of samadhi, this power of letting go of self, to be more in touch with the universe,
Melissa Townsend (11:53):
The experience that you are, again, back to the definition of yoga, yoga is the restraining or the control or the limitation of the citta vrittis, the constant churning. The constant activity of the citta and citta is usually translated as mind, but it's really much more than mind. I like the translation of internal organ. Like as if there were some internal organ that involves the mind and the, the thoughts, the feelings - thinking, feeling, and all that "I-ness", the expectations, the planning, the, those are all thoughts, but there's an intangible quality. That's all citta. So the idea is that by restraining the constant activity of all that internal stuff, you let it drop. And as you said, you get out of your own way. You get that by letting it drop, by controlling it by, by letting it settle down, you get out of your own way and experience of reality
Melissa Townsend (12:52):
that is an experience of yourself that is not connected. That is bigger than that. That is endless. That is infinite and perfect and eternal connected to everything everywhere that is indescribable as well, that you then experience that, which is your true nature. And if you're there, if you're in that experience, the yoga sutras relates to sankhya philosophy, and there's a whole technical explanation for how reality breaks down. And they have the parusa, the soul, which is formless and which is what you're connected to, what you want to identify with and then prakriti, which is everything else. And is everything else, including your thoughts, but the idea being that once you drop that connection to citta, prakriti becomes, you interact with reality at a place where it is no longer, where the boundaries are more flexible, are more fluid. On some level they're non-existent all of it. Everything that exists in prakriti is prakriti. So it's all just different configurations of the same energy as one or the same elements. Actually they break it into the three - rajas, tamas, and sattva.
Melissa Townsend (14:08):
So once you get out of your own way, you can experience, not only, you can experience yourself and reality is much more fluid. And experiences like the one that you described are not at all unusual. My day job is as a psychic. That kind of thing is my stockage. I'm like, yeah, that sounds right.
Monica Phillips (14:28):
I'm so glad to be able to share it with you.
Melissa Townsend (14:31):
It's normal in an amazing way. I love it though. I love that kind of thing's part of life and that we don't think that it is, and we don't think that it should be, but it actually is.
Monica Phillips (14:41):
I think of it in coaching. And I know that we get in our own way and we prevent us from doing our best work and that we, that getting in the way is the ego. And I know this, but we do. We get in our own way. And it is ultimately these things that we're stuck on, these expectations. My yoga teacher, my YogaWorks 200-hour teacher, Mynx Inatsugu, she would say, maybe you want chocolate cake, and then it's okay. If you have chocolate cake, eat the chocolate cake, enjoy it. But if you can't get chocolate cake, don't be so overwhelmed with desire for the chocolate cake that you let go of other things along the way. Sometimes that desire is too much. We are, we're human. Enjoy what you have. Enjoy it, be grateful for it. And then if you can't have chocolate cake tomorrow, be okay with not having the chocolate.
Melissa Townsend (15:25):
Or be okay with going full force and doing everything you can to get chocolate cake without being attached to the fact that you might or might not actually get the chocolate cake, but that's what you want so go after it, but maybe you'll get it maybe you won't. You have to let that desire move you without being attached to the outcome. That's really the trick. I think the kind of work you do as a coach and the kind of work that I do as a psychic, the, this partnership work, so astrologically, that would be Seventh House. So what you see in the other is often what you need to see in yourself. And I was saying to you as well, that it is not uncommon in my work as a psychic to find myself saying to people the same thing that I also need to hear. That is one of the gifts. That is a gift at least of our shared humanity, that we are all on the path together.
Melissa Townsend (16:16):
And that to say, we're here to help each other. We can help each other, and we can help each other just by interacting and being aware of the interaction. And it's a gift. It's a gift to, human interaction is a gift. A gift that we're all very aware of as a gift in these COVID isolation times.
Monica Phillips (16:34):
My mission is to create space for everyone to be seen, heard, and valued. That's the first part of it. And I think of what you said is that ultimately, it's such a great reminder for me, that people really do want to be seen and witnessing someone else and allowing them to be present is so powerful for someone.
Melissa Townsend (16:49):
Because then that gets back to also the soul. That the point is not, it's not really what you do with who you are. It's just being who you are. And of course being who you are, you're going to do things.
Melissa Townsend (17:03):
Human beings do things, but the point is, kind of like my son who's 19 was saying, I don't even know who I am. Look at all the things growing outside. The Crocosmia growing - it doesn't know it's Crocosmia. The holly tree doesn't know it's a holly tree, it just is. Look at our cat Chester? Do you think he asks who he is. He just is. And do we know what Chester is? Yeah, he's Chester. You just are what you are. The fact that we as human beings, question it is, is access to a tool that we can use. But it's important not to forget that the fact of us is just as exciting and interesting as the fact of the rose bush or the grass or the sky or the cat. It's just what it is. And it's just amazing.
Monica Phillips (17:52):
I just finally watched Bridgerton, which is a very steamy show. There's a scene where, you know, the lead asked her mom about sex and the mom's trying to describe it. And the mom is very timid about using any words that might convey any body part. And she says, you know, it just is, you look outside and you see the lions and then you meet lion Cubs. They don't have anyone to tell them what happens. It's just, they figure it out. There are certain things that happen. Whether someone tells you if it's going to happen or not.
Melissa Townsend (18:19):
The issue of having a child, though, it is helpful to know that certain actions will lead to having a child.
Monica Phillips (18:25):
Tell me about your art and how you decided to, what inspired you to depict the sutras through art?
Melissa Townsend (18:32):
What inspired me to work with the sutras was I had actually just finished painting the Shiva Mahimna Stotram, in seven parts, which took me a long time. I, in my study of Sanskrit, the, the particular tradition that I come from also teaches Sanskrit as the vibrational language one that will move you forward on the path to enlightenment just by being around it. Uh, Sri Bramananda Saraswati, my teacher's guru said, if you want to change your life, put the Sanskrit alphabet up somewhere where you'll see it every day. You'll see I have the Sanskrit alphabet back behind me. And the Sanksrit alphabet just by itself is actually a pretty amazing thing. There's a whole story around how I ended up painting the Shiva Mahimna Stotram, which totally kicked my butt, but I had just finished painting it and I was actually, it was a late spring day in 2011, and I was cleaning my desk upstairs and suddenly had this realization.
Melissa Townsend (19:24):
I've had it all wrong about the yoga sutras, which I had never liked. I started to like them a little bit more because I read them in the course of the, all of them of course in Sanskrit study with Dr. Sharma. And, but nonetheless, even though theoretically, I knew, understood them better. I still had the feeling. My working idea was still related to what many people in the yoga community, in the United States think, which is that the yoga sutras are the yamas and the niyamas, you know, they're a bunch of rules about do this, don't do this. As a former Catholic, a bunch of rules was not what I really was at all interested. Suddenly I realized that I had it all wrong about the yoga sutras. They weren't the 10 commandments on steroids. It was a mind training manual. And prior to that, actually what happened was I suddenly realized that my mind never stopped talking to me.
Melissa Townsend (20:15):
Again you know, so this is 2011. So I'd already been practicing yoga many, many years, and meditating, many, many years. You would think that I know that my mind never stops talking to me, but it was like, it just suddenly hit me. Oh, right. That voice, that voice that's in my head right now saying, you know, why don't you put this, that over there and take care of this and Whoa, what are you going to do with that? Should you keep it or not keep it? Or I don't really know if I'm.. That voice never stopped. Sometimes it was good and fun. And sometimes it was torment, but it still never stopped. And that it was the thing running my life. And I didn't even know for sure what else there was besides it. But I realized, I remembered, that the first yoga Sutra is yoga is the stilling of the movements of the mind.
Melissa Townsend (20:59):
All right, I've been wrong about the yoga sutras, that's mind training manual I have to work with. I have to figure out how to no longer be the one, always kowtowing, the one always going along with whatever that voice inside is saying. I thought, okay, so I have to work with the yoga sutras. How am I going to do this? How am I going to make sure that I actually stick to it? Because I knew myself, I could just be working with the Sanskrit, but left to myself, I would probably not stick to it. There's a million other things that one has to do. So I thought, I know I'll paint them. I did have that voice in my head go, are you nuts? You just finished doing the Shiva Mahimna Stotram and it totally kicked your butt. Why would you agree to do that again?
Melissa Townsend (21:40):
I was like, well, no, no, no. I have to do this. I have to work with the yoga sutras. I'll just commit to Book 1. That's fine. That's just 51 paintings. So that was it. I began working with the yoga sutras via painting them as a way to anchor myself to the process of showing up for them, of working with them, of interacting with them. It was not about doing the paintings. It wasn't about making, it certainly wasn't about the books that I ended up doing or about anything like that. It was about a way to make sure, to connect me to the process of showing up for the yoga sutras and therefore that spiritual practice as a way of grounding myself to a spiritual practice.
Monica Phillips (22:20):
So what changed in yourself throughout process?
Melissa Townsend (22:23):
Oh my God. It has a profound impact on every aspect of my life. So first of all, that was in the late spring. I spent most of the summer figuring out how I was going to do it because even if it's just Book 1, it's 51 paintings and I have a small studio. I started painting them in, so several months later, in the fall with actually this one, the first sutra is atha yoga anushasanam, now the teachings of yoga begin. And the next one - Yogas Chitta Vritti Nirodha - yoga is the restraining of the activity of the chitta (the mind). I had big plans for that one. I was going to go to town. I was going to really show everyone what a good painter I was. I was going to build up this center part into like a really deep thing. Anyhow, I sanded it down. I realized then that all it needed was that gold dot in the center. That actually really freaked me out though.
Melissa Townsend (23:13):
The process of working, I was not the one in charge. I had big plans for that painting and that was not what the painting needed. And the whole process of working with Book 1 was powerful and transformative in that way of the letting go and the paying attention to whatever it was that wanted to guide me through the process. I felt as if the yoga sutras were leading me by the nose. So I guess my answer is actually each book has been different in terms of how it has changed me and changed my life and what I've learned from it. But it's been powerful to have a practice, to have the practice connected to something that you love and that you love doing. I wouldn't say it's always easy. Nine times out of 10, I felt like I was failing and I was gonna fail. And I didn't know if, even if I'm hearing this voice telling me what to do, which at first depressed and made me feel depressed and anxious because this wasn't what I thought I had signed up for. The process of showing up daily to a text and interacting on a personal level with whatever force it is behind that text or that that text is trying to open you up to. However you can find to do that. Whatever creative way is a way of personally engaging, that it can't help but transform your life in so many ways that you can't even begin. It's like having a teacher.
Monica Phillips (24:34):
It sounds like you were practicing Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi through the process of painting each of the sutras.
Melissa Townsend (24:40):
Yeah. And I'm still, I'm working on Book 3 right now. I mean, part of the way, most of the way through the paintings of Book 3 and working on that book, too. So yeah, the process continues.
Monica Phillips (24:51):
Is that the original that you showed us?
Melissa Townsend (24:53):
No, no. The original is 16 x 20.
Monica Phillips (24:55):
That's one of the cards from the book, right. I was wondering how you painted them originally. So they're a larger format.
Melissa Townsend (25:01):
So that was again, I had to figure out. They all hang together. I could share the screen and show what they look like somewhat together.
Monica Phillips (25:08):
Have you done an art show with these paintings?
Melissa Townsend (25:11):
I've done shows with each of them, each of the books when it finished and with actually one that is shown - part with a couple of shows part-way through, too. I've shown them a few different places and sometimes in galleries, but mostly because when I decided to do this, to work with the Sanskrit and especially first with the Shiva Mahimna Stotram and then with this, there was other work that I was doing as an artist that would have been more art world appropriate. But initially I started working with the Sanskrit and painting as a way of bringing that energy out into the world, that transformative energy, as part of my practice, as part of my Sanskrit work with Sanskrit. At a certain point, actually I was going to go in a direction that I knew would be, would really fit well in with the art world and would be a way. That was how I ended up finally finishing the Shiva Mahimna Stotram.
Melissa Townsend (25:59):
A friend who's a lawyer asked me if I would do some work for his office and he's a criminal defense attorney. So most of the time he's defending people who have grown up in gangs, really had a bad life, and are accused of sometimes very serious crimes. So I did a Shiva painting that was - you wear snakes and cover yourself with ashes and hang out on funeral grounds and everything that everybody else despises and finds disgusting, you find, you accept. So Lord, you cannot turn away from me because I too have been abandoned by all of the groups of gods and demons. And so my friend is representing people who've been abandoned by all of the groups of gods and demons. That moved me back towards painting the Sanskrit. And this is all just that most of the time I show the work and you know, the studios and places like that, because those are the people who are initially again, I just started doing, when I started doing Book 1, it was just a way for me to work. I did sort of think in the back of my mind, Oh, you know, maybe I'll create a meditation deck.
Melissa Townsend (27:07):
But when I finished book one, a friend of mine, I had these reprints, she's like, why don't you do a book? Why are these little cards? So I did a book. When I finished, I realized I wasn't supposed to just keep it all to myself. I was supposed to share it. But the idea is that the paintings themselves are an intuitive gateway into the sutras. The paintings are not illustrations of the yoga sutras. They are - the yoga sutras. I had a powerful interaction. They are the yoga sutras as art. The yoga sutras themselves told me, this is the kind of thing that sounds crazy the same way that you say your grandmother came to you. The yoga sutras themselves dictated to me what to do. They are the sutras manifested as art. So they are an intuitive gateway into the meaning of the sutras. So for people who have a hard time reading or understanding the yoga sutras, because they can be intimidating.
Melissa Townsend (28:00):
They're in sanskrit. You have to read the translation first. And then the commentary because the sutra form is so compact. It's like a pneumonic device - combination of haiku and PowerPoint presentation. So it needs to be explained. They usually don't have verbs, also, most of the sutras and they access - each one is like a PowerPoint presentation. They have the points and there's all this other stuff that's supposed to be part of it that is assumed that either, you know, or the teacher who is giving you the Sutra is explaining to you, but for many people, that's a barrier to entry. And the fact that they do relate to another philosophy, it's just and it's foreign. And it's old. Showing the work, the primary reason for it, has been to open up connection to the yoga sutras to others.
Monica Phillips (28:48):
I absolutely love this word, access. And I think about it a lot. Like you, I've been practicing yoga most of my life. I grew up with hippie parents and was familiar with it all of my life and then started practicing at 21 in a studio and I'm 47 now so, yeah, most of my life I've been practicing yoga on some level and it's evolved. It wasn't until 2017, I went to an ashram for a week, an incredible experience. It was there that I actually learned what letting go meant. I was holding onto so much. I was holding on to needing this. I actually love Steph Snyder's classes, which is how I learned about your work. And I would go to Love Story. And I would go, even before that to Yoga Flow Ocean, the studio on Ocean. It was all about this hour and a half sweaty yoga flow that left me feeling completely like I had worked out and then I had relaxed and it was amazing.
Monica Phillips (29:36):
And that was not the yoga we were practicing at the ashram. It was morning meditation. It was a lot of internal work. And I was like, hold on. I'm not going to get a workout. I need to go for a run after the yoga, because I didn't even sweat. It was on day three, I went, Whoa. That's when I decided I would go through a certification. So I'm finishing now, I'll be done with my 500 hours of yoga on February 21st. And it's just, it's been incredible to bring this into coaching. It's why I started the podcast. I thought there's so much wisdom, even in the yamas and the niyamas. Ahimsa, do no harm. How do we experience that? How do we see it? What does it mean for people? How do we let go of the chatter in our heads? The book, Ethan Cross is a professor at, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and wrote this book, Chatter.
Monica Phillips (30:22):
There are so many different ways of getting this information. And so I like to bring it back to this ancient wisdom that infers, how we live today still, and these things that we say, mental fitness, something I coach on comes from yoga sutra 1.2 - Yoga Chitta Vritti Nirodah. It all comes from there. And so these ideas of how we experience it, can't be experienced unless people have access to it. That's what I love about what you've done is art allows people to experience something differently than words. That vision that you give for people is inviting them in to say here's a different way of experiencing this great wisdom that we all can benefit from if we let go of attaching it to Hinduism or Buddhism or all these things. It is all and none. Yoga, some of the yoga practitioners from a thousand years ago were Hindu, were Muslim. They actually practiced yoga through Islam. So it's not attached to a religion. It doesn't have to be. It can be. And so it's this understanding really of what we gain when we stop controlling this internal dialogue and we return to our true self. We can say it, we can practice it. It's really hard to get there. And so it does take this constant practice.
Melissa Townsend (31:42):
And I think as opposed to reading, art, again, there's a long tradition of art and spirituality or art and religion, which is not exactly spirituality, but it's connected in a certain way. I'm a visual artist so visual arts, certainly, you know, you look in churches and mosques actually, they don't have figurative art, but they have decorative art. So there's a long history of art, visual art, connected to spiritual practice on some level, but all different kinds of art, music, dance, sculpture, every art possible. There are deep connections between art and spirituality, both in terms of as a vehicle for spiritual practice, but also as something that is created as an aid for spiritual practice. As a young person, and as a person that went into art, the art that related to spirituality was always the art that I was most interested in. Art has the capability of bypassing all of that sort of rational
Melissa Townsend (32:42):
I'm going to make sense of this and get to it there myself. It has the potential to do an end run around all of that stuff and move you to an experience just because it moves you, just because the experience of beauty, the experience of something that you find that resonates with you as true, and as something that, without your exactly, knowing why, whether it's because it is something that appears to be a visual literal representation, which still has artifice involved in its creation or whether it's something that's abstract. And again, now I'm talking about visual art, something that creates an emotional response in you opens you up to that, some version of that Samadhi experience. Not the same degree as when you actually focus and meditate, or when you have that focus yourself, but it opens you up to an experience of something bigger than yourself, of braking and stopping, stopping all that chatter.
Melissa Townsend (33:46):
That sense of recognition. And the feeling that it brings up is like the gateway into a spiritual experience. It's that for the viewer and as you set out to, as I did, time in my studio then became spiritual practice. Then also the experience of opening yourself up to be the vehicle for something to come through you, you get to experience at both ends in the making, you, by intention and focus, you open yourself up to that experience. And then also the result is an expression of that. Is that experience made manifest. It exists on that middle ground between the spiritual, the unmanifest and the manifest.
Monica Phillips (34:31):
I love this sense of allowing it. I know so many people who want to share their story, write a book, create something, express themselves creatively, but they're stuck. Is there something we can learn from the yoga sutras like you shared and allowing it to come through you to connect to our creative way of working on something?
Melissa Townsend (34:49):
Again, I would say the answer is the thing that made a difference initially was that I did not set out to work with the yoga sutras via painting them because I envisioned sharing with the world, or I envisioned making a book, or I envisioned having a body work. I set out to do that, to work with the yoga sutras. And this was the best way for me as a person to, to be sure that I did it. Once again, the point is to find a way to engage creatively with - for me it was the yoga sutras, but it could be anything that seems like a lifeline, like a potential lifeline to you, to an experience that you want to have - the spiritual experience. It could be, it could be anything. You just want to find some way that's personal to you, that's meaningful to you to show up for it and then let it guide you.
Melissa Townsend (35:45):
That's sort of an answer. You can do this, too. You can do this, too not because then it will help you do the book that you always wanted to get out into the world. You can do this, too. The experience that you want is not necessarily getting the book out into the world. The experience that you want is to show up for the teacher, whether the teacher is the yoga sutras or the Bible or the Koran or whatever it is. Both sides, both you and the teacher want to connect. They want whatever force it is behind you. They want to interact with you. That's what it's there for. It's there to be, to help show you the way to be a bridge, to an experience of yourself as bigger. And that's what you want. You want that the experience itself is bigger. You don't want the book out in the world. You want to feel that you are perfect, full, and complete.
Monica Phillips (36:40):
And a lot of people do want the book out into the world. And so it's then that process of letting go of the outcome.
Melissa Townsend (36:45):
But if you feel perfect, full, and complete, the book out into the world either just happens or doesn't.
Monica Phillips (36:51):
Completely. I was thinking, as you were talking, I coach a lot of business leaders, executives, entrepreneurs, who are creating things that don't exist yet. This idea of innovation. And I was thinking of assignments that connect the power, like starting with why. Ultimately in this process of creative exploration is why am I doing this? How will it help me? Who is the teacher? What is this all for? And because not for the outcome for the process of experiencing it. And so it is this sense of what do I want to create? I forget it says like, you know, don't die with the story stuck inside of you. Do you have a message worth sharing? What is that message? And how do you express it? Is it innovating to create something that doesn't exist yet? Is it something else? And so knowing what your why is, and then how you connect to that.
Melissa Townsend (37:40):
The movie, Soul, which is - we want to do something in the world because it's not pure I-ness. We want to connect as human beings. We want to say, here I am, I was here. I saw this, I did this look, look at me, look, I see this. We all want, there's nothing wrong with that. There's a purity to it as well. But the fact of us, of us being is more important than what it is that we put out into the world to have that.
Monica Phillips (38:09):
This has been so interesting learning about Dharana, Dhyana, Samadhi through art, the integration, connection, and the opportunity to transcend through this process. What are you working on now that you want to share with us?
Melissa Townsend (38:23):
I'm working on the paintings for Book 3, the Vibhuti Pada. I'm most of the way through them, I will have to finish. So I'll finish the paintings. And then I started working on the book as well. And I'm also, I just put out the meditation deck for book one. I didn't have the books for book one and book two. I can show the books. There we go - book one, book 2, proof copy. And then I just did the meditation deck. I want to do a meditation deck for book two also, but book three. So I'm working on book three. Book 1 was transformative and transcendent. And I was in love with the yoga sutras at the end of book one. But, and I couldn't wait to do book 2, to dive into book two. Book two, I got part way through, started to really irritate me, all those issues that I'd always had.
Melissa Townsend (39:11):
Book 2 is called Sadhana Pada, which is on practice and so much like practice, you just keep doing it. And then even when it feels like, what is this? And then you find that you're somewhere else that you have without just like not quite knowing how it happened that something has happened, even when it seemed, it didn't seem as magical as Book 1, something, the paintings in Book 2 really were teaching me the yoga sutras. So at the end of Book 2 I wasn't really sure if I was going to do Book 3. I don't know, but I realized that I'd already done the first painting for book three while working on book two and book three, each one of the books I have learned, I've learned something, both tangible and intangible, something specific and larger than that, that has to do with the title of each of the books. Also Samadhi Pada was, felt very transcendence and Sadana Pada was very much about practice and the Vibhuti. So the Vibhuti is usually translated as accomplishments or powers, but it's V which is an intensifier moved to be. So it's like intensified or special or remarkable, a remarkable manifestation or way of being. But I would say that I'm still, the lesson there is very much, if you think you're doing it, it's not happening. I'm still, I'm on that journey.
Monica Phillips (40:34):
It's so wonderful to hear these experiences from you, Melissa. I even love how you say the words. You teach sanskrit. How do you teach it?
Melissa Townsend (40:41):
Privately. And then I do a lot of yoga teacher trainings. I'm going to do the Love Story Yoga Teacher Training. I do a number of yoga teacher trainings, although we'll see what happens with the yoga world.
Monica Phillips (40:51):
I've been doing it online since March.
Melissa Townsend (40:53):
I have, I have a tarot series, which is great. I just have to say it's the heroes to the fool's journey. It's a journey through the major Arcana as a spiritual path. And it brings in a lot of philosophy and mythology. And so that's really good. And I have astrology. I also have sanskrit classes online and I have yoga sutra stuff. When I put out the meditation deck, I said in my notes that I would put out correct pronunciation, videos, short videos, really short videos with correct pronunciation of the sutras so that you can learn to chant the sutras yourself. If you're using the meditation deck to meditate, you want to know how to say it correctly. I'm an American woman so there's going to be certain sounds that are never as perfectly made by me as they would be made by somebody who grew up making those sounds. But at least you can say it correctly.
Monica Phillips (41:44):
I want to share one quick story, because I love what you say about tarot and psychic readings and spirituality. And ultimately all of the religions have a mystical sense to them. Sometimes they don't get the attention that I think they maybe deserve. What I find so magical about this, which is in yoga. It's the mystical version of Hinduism is that it requires faith. And ultimately that's what we all need is faith in things that we can't see or feel. I love neuroscience. I work with a lot of very cerebral thinkers. So I bring in data to help explain it. And I read this example in Jamil Zaki's book, The war for kindness. And he works at Stanford with Carol Dweck and his book is great. And he shares these real life examples of how we experience these things. And it's a sense of faith. He talks about an explorer in 1912, I'm forgetting his first name, Wagner, who was measuring ice caps.
Monica Phillips (42:39):
And when he would let off explosives, he noticed the ripples in the ocean's floor and that the patterns actually matched the West coast of Africa. Um, moving along to the East coast of South America. And in 1912, he created the theory of Pangea, but we didn't believe him until 1967, when other scientists created this research and shared why and how this worked and that the continents were drifting. And actually the North American continent has moved almost four feet in my lifetime. I think it's pretty extraordinary that there are these things that are incredibly real and tangible, and we can't see or feel them. And we know in neuroscience, our gut transmits information up the vagus nerve to our brain. Our gut and our brain develop in utero together. We have more neurons in our gut than anywhere outside of our brain. And that's powerful. This gut instinct isn't something we, that is fake. It's incredibly real. And that's what I want to invite people in, in this process of understanding the journey from Dharana, Dhyana to Samadhi. Maybe it sounds crazy, Oh, mystical magical. Doesn't really exist. It's not concrete. It's more than that. It's actually the concrete, the things that we hold onto, these physical properties get in our way of noticing all the other stuff that's around us.
Melissa Townsend (43:59):
And on some level, too the whole notion. So Sankhya has a whole series of technical terms and a whole philosophy built around explaining reality. And you could argue with that if you want to get, but on some level too, it restates, it is consistent with the notion of reality. As on the atomic level, there's more space between on the atomic level space, between the matter - In New York city there's the, I forget what it's called, the something of the universe, but there's a great big circle, a sphere. And that would be the sphere would be the sun compared to the earth, or, you know, it compares it to different things. But the final one is that if that sphere is a hydrogen atom, first atom, that's one proton and one neutron, one proton, one neutron, one electron. So there's this huge sphere that's several stories. And then there's a little teeny, tiny dot, not any bigger than - you can't even see it, a little tiny dot and that's the size of the proton. So all the rest of it is space. The idea that matter is, the feeling of matter being so fluid in that way is consistent with the view in sankhya of prakriti. Somehow I don't think I got that as completely as I meant to.
Monica Phillips (45:17):
That's so powerful to think of it that way. So I appreciate that example. It's been such a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much, Melissa. All the links to find Melissa online are in the show notes and we can't wait to see you again.
Monica Phillips - Recorded Outro (45:30):
Thank you for joining me for Yoga Philosophy for Everyday Living. Please learn more about our guests in the show notes and check out their awesome yoga classes. Subscribe like and share this podcast with a friend. And please send me your feedback. I would love to hear from you. You can learn more at www.sparkpluglabs.co.